[HPforGrownups] Re: Readers in the WW (was: JKR and "Think of the Children!")

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 162115

Jen:  Neri's point works along with the character point though, that part of 
the reason JKR didn't make Harry a book lover was so the WW wouldn't be seen 
as part of his imagination or the lines wouldn't be
blurred once he does enter the WW.  In Narnia the kids don't believe Lucy at 
first because she does have a wonderful imagination, in part from being very 
literate and living with book-reading siblings.
Plus in a fantasy series like Narnia or the Borrowers, there's an adult 
outside the world who knows of the world and lends the air of "it doesn't 
matter if it's true or a child's imagination, believing makes it real."  JKR 
completely bypassed such a storyline by having the Durlseys know the WW is 
real and decide to deny it, as well as having Harry act as a fairly 
unimaginative boy--even his far-fetched dreams turn out to be real!  That 
way there's *no* question the WW exists, no question it's part of Harry's 
imagination.

Magpie:
But I can't help but think this all sounds like an unnecessary defense, a 
way of saying that Harry would be a reader except JKR had these reasons not 
to make him that way., so maybe he should be counted as one anyway.  Why is 
that needed?  Why can't we just say that one of the things we know about 
Harry as a boy is that he doesn't particularly like to read, unlike some 
other fictional characters.  I don't see anything about the story that would 
make Harry liking books a problem, any more than it would have been a 
problem to have him be bad at sports.  It seems like it's just the way he 
is.

This aspect of his personality doesn't need to be chalked up to outside 
forces such as: he didn't have access to books at the Dursleys (but would 
have read if he had), JKR didn't want the WW to be mistaken for his 
fantasies (so he can't be a big reader or our own suspension of disbelief 
would collapse), fantasy characters aren't allowed to read (otherwise Harry 
would), if Harry read JKR would have to make up Wizarding books for him to 
read (and she doesn't like to make things things up;-).  I don't think 
Harry's being a reader would confuse anything or make the WW seem less real 
or blur any lines between fantasy and reality.  It would work fine.  Harry 
just doesn't happen to be that boy.

zgirnius:
I still don't think it is logistics that prevent us from seeing Harry read 
for pleasure. I believe he really doesn't, much. Hearing him chat about a 
fictional work of fiction, or read an unnamed one instead of practicing 
Occlumency when he is stressed out, or mention one, however silly its name, 
and so on, would tend to make me view him as a reader, as Rowling's 
descriptions do not. Not that this makes me dislike Harry or respect him 
less; I just see him as different from myself in this regard, where (for 
example) Hdermione and younger me might have had this as a trait in common. 
(I do accept the idea of reading history books and other works of 
non-fiction for
pleasure, as Hermione's reference to some enormous, dusty tome or other 
suggests she does).

Magpie:
Exactly.  After six books and thousands of pages I feel like I've gotten 
plenty of cues that Harry isn't a reader, which is no worse than the fact 
that Herbology isn't his favorite subject.  Given what we've seen of Harry's 
daily life--which is a lot--it's pretty clear in what direction his 
interests generally fall.  As types go, he's not the kid who reads a lot.

Neri:
OTOH, blurring the difference between imagination and reality, this would be 
a whole different level, and it's a level that wouldn't contribute to the HP 
series. For example, take the theory that everything happening in the series 
is a dream or something that Harry is imagining in his closet in the 
Durselys. In the end of Book 7 he's going to wake up and find that none of 
it really happened. Most HP readers hate this theory, and for a good reason. 
If JKR started to
cast doubts on which part of the Potterverse is real and which part is 
Harry's imagination, it would have screwed up our sense of realism, that 
things are really happening and are really important and we care about the 
characters and what will happen to them. We'd
never care so much about what happens in, say, "Alice in Wonderland", 
because what happens to Alice never feels quite real and isn't supposed to. 
Which is why Alice *does* read fiction (providing it has pictures in it).

Magpie:
Are you suggesting that if we'd happened to be told that Harry liked to 
read --including fiction--in the opening chapters of PS, that that would 
somehow give the theory that the whole story is his imagination more weight? 
Because I really don't think that's true.  Nor do I think that the fact that 
Alice sees no use in a book "without pictures or conversations" somehow sets 
up that she's a big reader of fiction and therefore she's going to turn out 
to have been asleep through the whole book.

Neri:
Since you mention Star Wars, has anybody noticed that Harry lives in the 
Nineties and he appears to never have heard of Star Wars? He hears about 
evil wizards "going to the Dark Side" and he never
thinks "hey, this is like Star Wars". Harry not only doesn't read fiction, 
he also never goes to the movies, he never watches television (except for 
the news), he never watches video and he never plays computer games. All the 
things that Dudley does without being
the great intellectual and imaginative type.

Magpie:
I hesitate to say this because I don't mean to pretend I know your personal 
motivations, but I can't help but jump on those last words "without being 
the great intellectual and imaginative type" because it seems like that's 
exactly why Harry's disinterest in books is an issue is because it's seen as 
somehow insulting, as if it's a way of saying he's stupid.  (Which of course 
is partly the point of telling us Dudley's own books are untouched.)  Harry 
is not a kid who references Muggle culture for anything. The books aren't 
postmodern in that way, where the characters think of themselves as heroes 
in the kinds of stories they've read or seen on TV (which probably helps 
keep them from being dated and irritatingly hip).  But even that I think 
could be done along with a Harry who happened to read a lot.  He would just 
be a different character, so he'd probably be different from the ground up.

Neri:
So the point here isn't that Harry doesn't like to read. The point is that 
the whole fiction element is totally absent from his life, or at least from 
what JKR chooses to tell us about his life. Why? Because
it would interfere with our feeling of the reality of the
Potterverse.

Magpie:
There's probably a lot of reasons for all the characters to be everything 
they are. I don't think this one aspect of Harry necessarily comes down to 
this one thing.  There's lots of ways Harry could have been a reader without 
it threatening the realness of the WW, imo.

-m