More on Wand Order Mistake

[Penny & Bryce]

No: HPFGUIDX 25890

Hi --

justanopinion2001 at hotmail.com wrote:

> 
> I've been following this wand order correction discussion with
> interest.  I have to say that I am a little surprised at some of the
> statements made.  Collectively, the tone sounds a little bit
> like "JKR didn't handle this the way she should have (and she didn't
> consult this group), so I'm not going to play any more."

Speaking for myself (and my interpretation of Steve's message on this 
topic), I'd say you've read this wrong.  Of course we don't expect her 
to have consulted this group!  As Steve said, we just figured that if we 
could come up with creative explanations for the "error," then we figure 
she could also.  Doesn't mean that she *should* have done anything other 
than she did; it just means we noted that she *could* have taken other 
routes.

  Also, I
> sense a bit of condscension toward newbies ("You weren't there in the
> beginning, so you can't possibly understand, so any new or restated
> ideas about these errors aren't as important because the old-timers
> have worked this all out already").  That's probably not what was
> intended, of course, but it did occur to me.

Again, I think you're mis-reading.  Perhaps you missed the original 
question(s) where someone (or more than one person IIRC) said that they 
didn't understand why some of us had a problem with the way the wand 
order correction was handled.  Steve was merely trying to explain the 
position of some of us old-timers. He was giving the context of how we 
all had debated the issue and how we came to find out about the fix and 
what our subsequent thoughts were.  I was merely adding a bit to what 
Steve already said.  We were in no way trying to say that newbies (or 
even older members) couldn't add their own thoughts about whether it was 
or was not handled appropriately.

> I thought the point here was for people to discuss the books and
> canon and to enjoy noodling about these issues.  If people are of the
> view that this one, isolated wand order thing is the end of their
> admiration for JKR, well, OK.

I don't recall anyone saying that exactly.  Saying that one believes 
that the wand order problem could have been corrected more creatively 
does not mean that said person has no admiration for JKR.


> 
> As for the way the error was fixed, I think people are blowing it out
> of proportion.  If Lily is supposed to come out first, then that is
> what should be fixed.  Adopting a bunch of far-fetched theories to
> cover up a simple error seems to make the problem much bigger than it
> really is.  Giving interviews, holding press conferences, issuing
> press releases is over the top, in my opinion.

A press conference & appearances on talk shows (interviews) would 
perhaps be over the top.  A press release, OTOH, would be fairly 
customary, given the publicity that surrounded the discovery of the 
error in the first place.  I was a corporate lawyer for a good number of 
years, and if I'd been corporate counsel to Scholastic, I would have 
advised them to issue a press release for public relations reasons if no 
other.  The wand order was a doozy of an error IMO.  And, it affects 
over 5 million copies of GoF.  What bothers me is that the error was 
spotlighted in a high-profile piece by CNN and followed up by Salon.com 
IIRC, and the publishers just didn't respond at all.  These articles 
specifically said that the fans were all abuzz & speculating about what 
the different order might mean for future plots. So, IMO, it makes sense 
for the publishers to issue some sort of public response.  By staying 
silent, they were essentially saying that speculation should continue. 
So, it seemed rather underhanded & sneaky IMO for them to just suddenly 
start issuing copies with a corrected version of that scene.  AND, at 
least one of our members wrote to Scholastic and received a form letter 
back saying that there were no errors in GoF that were being corrected. 
  Someone else called Scholastic & got the same response.  Even if the 
corporate decision was not to issue a public statement, it doesn't 
follow that you should *lie* to the reading public.  It just wasn't 
handled well at all IMO.


> Fans like this group will find out about the revision (and we did).  The rest of the world
> does not care.

Press releases go out all the time about things I don't care about. It 
just would have been picked up by all the HP groups, ignored by the 
world at large, & everyone would have been happier for knowing that a 
mistake had been made & was being corrected.

Instead, this group found out because one of our members was flipping 
through a later printing of GoF while waiting in line somewhere or 
something & found it.

  
> Re-writing other parts of the book to make the scene work better is overkill.

No need to re-write other parts of the book.  They need only have 
changed more within the scene itself.  Again, this is "just my opinion" 
(like your yahoo ID!).  To have Harry thinking that his mother was the 
woman he'd thought of more than any other that night, while the reader 
has only seen him thinking of his father ... just didn't work too well 
for me.  That's all.

Penny