[HPforGrownups] Re: What if she got run over by a truck?

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 38504

On Mon, 6 May 2002, abigailnus wrote:
> Repeat after me, people, Warner Brothers does not own Harry Potter, 
> Joanne Rowling does, and her heirs will own him on the event of her death.

Just wanted to comment, and this bit of text seemed the easiest place to 
hang it off of. 

It's reasonably common for authors to make specific statements in wills or 
other legal documents about how to handle their literary estates, and so 
on. They can certainly pass on the copyright and trademark holder status 
in that way. 

My father was a non-fiction author who had written about 30 books before 
he died in 1990. His will dealt with what would happen if he died (my 
mother would take over the copyrights, etc.) and what would happen if he 
and my mother were both killed at the same time (I forget what they 
decided, but I think it was that my older sister would take it over. 
Regardless, they made appropriate legal provisions.) And my father, while 
fairly prolific, wasn't writing high-profit stuff. (He was a specialist 
in Greek theatre history, though he wrote several books on other bits of 
theatre history.) 
 
Obviously, the person who has died can't prevent the person they've handed 
rights over to from selling the rights off, or allowing use of them, if 
their executor decides to. But in general, most literary executors try to 
go by stated preferences. 

> And finally, can I just say that I find the entire discussion a bit morbid?  
> What would happen if JKR were to be run over by a truck is that her husband, 
> her daughter and the rest of her family and friends would be heartbroken, 
> for the rest of their lives. 

I'd like to respectfully disagree. Distressed, yes. But I think that 
'heartbroken for the rest of their lives' is a little much, and dismissive 
of those who have lost loved ones who do *not* consider themselves 
heartbroken.

As I mentioned, my father died about ten years ago. I was 15. I certainly 
miss him a great deal, and I have a harder time with it at some points 
than at others. I wish he could have met my husband, for example. He never 
got to see me graduate from high school, never mind college. 

But I certainly don't consider myself heartbroken - I have a happy life,
and a quite happy and emotionally functional heart. So, to all apparent
purposes, does my mother. She hasn't shown any desire in having another
romantic relationship, but she has plenty of good friends, an active
social life, and lots of other forms of emotional interaction.

There's a big difference for me between the concept of 'missing someone, 
but getting on with one's life and enjoying happiness' and being 
heartbroken, which has all sorts of connotations for me of someone who has 
*not* successfully made it through the grieving process, and who is still 
focusing on loss rather than looking for other happy things and going on 
with their life.

I know that my father, for example, spent a great deal of his energy while 
he was dying (he had cancer, so his death wasn't sudden or unexpected) 
making sure that I continued to be able to do things that made me happy, 
and that he was very concerned that I continue to have a happy life, even 
if he couldn't be there for it directly. That has always seemed to me to 
be a very good way of doing things - personally, I'd hate it if I died, 
and my husband was never happy again.

To pull this back to the HP novels, this is actually one of the 
reasons I love the books: it's quite rare to see a book deal with the 
aftereffects of loss of a parent in quite the same way. 

Harry obviously still misses his parents (as do Sirius, and Lupin, for 
that matter). But at the same time, all of them seem to be good models of 
*healthy* grieving and moving beyond grief, not wallowing in what might 
have been, but getting on with (eventually) what they can do now. Harry 
obviously wishes he could have known his parents better (witness the 
mirror of Erised, for example) but he also agrees that focusing on the 
past is not in his overall best interests. 

There's a big difference between occaisional wistfulness, and ongoing 
heartbreak. It's a lot easier to live with the first. And it's a lot 
easier to be *around* someone who has gotten to the occaisional 
wistfulness stage. 

-Jenett