Less than 1000 posts in a month - why now?

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 180223

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...>
wrote:

> I would maintain she would appear that way only to someone who was 
> for some reason determined to see her in a bad light. 

Ok, I'll answer only for myself.

I doubt that there is anyone who was more predisposed to see her in a
good light than I.  For several years, I'd got great delight from her
works, I'd recommended them to others, I'd *bought* them for others
who weren't inclined to do it for themselves, I'd defended her against
charges of bad writing, of moral confusion, of pedestrian prose.  I
did all of this because I got an astonishing amount of pleasure from
the books, and I wanted the series to go out in a blaze of glory which
put a huge smile on my face and gave me the final jawdropping AHA!

I'll admit to having been worried about the moral arc in HBP, because
she *seemed* to be saying something that undermined the message thus
far, but I trusted her, because I really truly believed that she would
pull it round, that, I suppose, that that would be the Big AHA!

And so I queued up at midnight with a long line of others, grinning to
myself because this was a fantastic thing, that all over the world
people were standing in line in the middle of a summer night to buy a
*book*, in a world where literacy is under threat and where we're told
that our imaginative scope is increasingly limited.  As I stood there,
I remembered what Philip Pullman has said: that there are no
children's books and adult books, only adult books and books that
everyone reads - and I was enthralled at how this was being
demonstrated to me.  I got home, prepared for a long night of delight
- and I was curiously loath to start, because I didn't want the
delight to end.  I wanted to remain a moment longer in that place
where we didn't know, where the possibilities remained as wide as
she'd shown us they were.

I started, though, and in the first chapter I came across was Charity
Burbage.  Now, I'd been paying attention.  I knew that Hermione had
taken Muggle Studies.  When I encountered that name, I thought "We
don't know who that is".  And I got a shock at what I was reading,
because my sense of the horror of that scene would have been much
greater if we'd been able to reach back across four years and remember
Burbage.  I sensed a ball dropped.  

I read on.  I found Hermione's memory charm, which I found personally
distasteful, and I found her later saying she couldn't do them.  I
found the camping trip, which for me went on too long and disempowered
the Trio.  I found Harry's Crucio and MacGonagall's Imperius, set down
with no recognition that the terms had changed.  I found an Evil
Overlord who was condemned finally for not making a choice that the
author had deliberately established that he was incapable of making. 
I found a moral core ripped asunder.  And this bothered me, not
because I was determined to see the author in a bad light, but
precisely for the opposite reason.   

I admit without hesitation that others are completely free to
interpret the text differently.  It wouldn't be the first time that I
had a very different reaction to a text than other people.  But I am
not an unintelligent reader, and just as I am prepared to believe that
their interpretation is as valid as mine, I assert that mine is as
good as theirs.  

I am simply entitled to be disappointed, just as I was earlier
entitled to be delighted.  No other reader can tell me how to receive
the books, and the author cannot do so either.  When she handed DH
over at Heathrow Airport to Christopher Little, she handed it over to
the world.  When she said in interviews that some people might hate it
but she had written the book that she wanted to write, I respected
that.  But no-one made her write it, and after she relinquished it, it
was no longer only hers.  It became part of the great assemblage of
world fiction - good books, bad books, morally cogent books, morally
repellent books, intelligent books, stupid books.  Where JKR's work
stands in that list is our decision to make, and we all make it for
ourselves.

I have made it for the HP books, and no-one is entitled to tell me I
am wrong, just as I am not entitled to tell others that they are.  I
have read what she wrote, because that was the contract she and I had.
   If she wanted us to know that Dumbledore was gay, she should have
put it in the books, however covertly.  If she wanted a loyal band of
Slytherins to come back, she should have put it in the books.  She
chose not to do these things.  I can see for myself that the
Slytherins didn't come back, because the book she gave me is on my
shelf and I can read that part of the battle for myself.  She may now
wish that she's written something different, but that is something
every author has to bear.  

Did I expect her to write a perfect book?  Not even slightly - Dickens
didn't, Austen didn't, Tolstoy didn't - but I expected her to
recognise what a book is, and the post-hoc interviews seem to show
that she doesn't.  It's the best you can do at the time, and it's a
finite object.  It stands and falls as it is, and we write for eternity.  

It was my right to be entranced, and it was my right to be
disappointed.  It is not possible to be disappointed by something one
doesn't have hopes for.