Will Success Spoil Harry Potter? Was: Do You Peek?

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 81772

"bohcoo" wrote:
<snip>
> I peeked. So, am I the only one? Did anyone else get their book out 
> of the wrapper and immediately look for the death scene?

Not me. I wasn't on HPfGU yet and was avoiding the hype; I wasn't 
even sure I believed the "somebody's gonna die" PR.
 
> So, then -- how are you going to be reading the last two books in 
> the series? Are you going to Peek? Look at the last page or two, 
> just to see who is still there, saying goodbye on the Platform as 
> they part for the summer?

I don't plan to peek, although if #6 is as bleak as #5, I may read 
the end of #7 right there in the store before I commit to buying or 
reading it at all. (Who am I kidding? Well, I might! Shut up! I'm a 
bit conflicted here, in case you couldn't tell.)

> I feel sorry for JKR, in a way. We have postulated the plot 
> possibilities so thoroughly, with speculations so spectacularly 
> intellectual, that I wonder if Rowling sits at home reading some of 
> them and saying to herself, "Oh no, what am I going to do NOW? I 
> wasn't going to get THAT sophisticated with it. . ."

I feel kinda sorry for JKR, too, but not that way. When I read the 
part of the post-OoP interview she gave where she said she missed 
writing in cafes because it made writing less lonely and that she 
does most of her writing now in front of a computer, I just went, 
Oohhhh! A certain amount of loneliness, of aloneness with your 
eyeballs turned around backwards in your head watching, feeling, 
creation occur between your ears, is necessary. (I hang out with 
writers and scribble stuff occasionally myself; can you tell?) The 
hustle and bustle of cafe customers and staff must have been a 
wonderful anodyne. Now, not only does she not have that, but the 
warm, intimate and joyous space in her head that Harry and the WW 
sprang from has become a commodity in the world arena. Most writers 
want to be read; what has happened to JKR and Harry doesn't even fit 
into "be(ing) read" anymore.

> She has commented that the Harry Potter story jumped into her mind, 
> fully formed. She knew how it was going to end before she set the 
> first word on paper. Do you think she has changed any of it in 
> light of these worldwide expectations?

I hope she avoids all the fan discussion sites, and all our endless 
and lovingly merciless deconstruction and prognostication, like the 
plague. The only voice she should be listening to about Harry is her 
own. The only fingerprints in the story should be the author's. I 
worry that we are getting in the way and that the story is suffering 
for it.

How many of us have lovingly crafted expressions of theories and 
philosphies here and been deflated by having it picked to shreds or 
being told that it's been said a hundred times before? (Go ahead, 
admit it.) Now imagine that you have spent *years* of your life and a 
hundred times as much TLC on something and that thousands of people 
(at least) have focused on it and are doing to it what we do. She's 
an amazing writer, but she's only human. And we don't know yet that 
the whole thing is going to come together in the end, do we? Hmmm?

Sandy, trying to imagine what to include in a "care" package to JKR