JKR's opinon. was What JKR's up to

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 98668

Abigail wrote:
> Of course, this attitude isn't unique to fandom.  In literary analysis, 
> the author's opinion on his or her own work is rarely taken into 
> consideration.  Authorial intent should be made apparent through the 
> work, or not at all.  Robert Frost vehemently denied that his poem 
> Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening expressed a desire for death, 
> but that is how that poem was read by many.  JKR created her characters, 
> and so in a way she knows them better than we ever will.  But if we see 
> something in those characters that she may not have intended to put 
> there?  JKR doesn't like Draco Malfoy, but some of us find him 
> interesting or pitiable.  Are we wrong?
> 
> Mandy is right to say that JKR has the same right as any of us to 
> express her opinions about her own creation.  What I'm saying is that 
> her rights don't supersede any of ours to do the same, although for the 
> record, I don't perceive her website as an attempt to curtail or control 
> fandom.  In the world of Harry Potter, JKR is god, but that doesn't mean 
> that her word, unless it comes between the covers of a book, is the 
> undisputed truth.  An author has every right to say 'that's not what I 
> wrote', but a reader has an equal right to respond 'that's what I read.'
> 
> Abigail

Antosha:
Wow. I am so conflicted on this subject. Yes, I agree: a piece of art--a novel, a painting, a 
performance--has value only insofar as it effects the audience. Art is a form of 
communication and as such belongs to both the creator and the recipient. Indeed, I would 
go a step further than you do here and say that the multiplicity of a work's possible 
interpretations is actually a measuring stick for its relative artistic merit. That's why 
Coleridge called Shakespeare "myriad minded"--his work is so complex and rich that it 
can be interpreted in almost as many ways as there are people to view/read it. During the 
1930s, there were a pair of famous productions of Julius Caesar: one (American) was a 
left-wing attack on authoritarianism at the expense of individual expression; the other 
(French) was consciously fascist, an exploration for the need of the state to crush 
individuals who would tear the nation apart by putting themselves above it. Both worked.
Does the Harry Potter series work on that high a level? Well, we'll have to wait to see.

Which leads me to my next point: the work isn't finished. Until we can see the opus 
complete, it is presumptuous of us to tell the author--the only person on earth who 
knows where we're going--that she's wrong about her work. We can't say what Draco is 
like yet--we don't have all the data. We can barely say what Harry's like--he's still growing 
and changing, as are all of the other characters, something I think JKR is handling better 
than any other author of children's books I can think of.

I think it is miraculous, the imagination, intelligence and breadth of thought that the fans 
bring to bear on her work. But it's still her work.

At least until book seven is published. ;-)