"But what I don't understand, Inspector..." was: Re: DD's Unspeakable Word.

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, GulPlum <hp at p...> wrote:

>
> Personally, I don't see it that way. Being an optimist, I see it as your
> being mischievous and playful. Because, frankly, there's no way on earth
> that you can possibly believe the tripe you spout to be true (i.e. the
> author's intention), is there?  :-)
>
> (Don't answer that one.)
>


Have a care, sir!
Or you may find yourself at the wrong end of my rubber haddock!
In these here parts tripe is a traditional and wholesome comestible. To class
some of my convoluted canonical contortions that highly is to cast an
unwarranted slur on an innocent foodstuff.

But your comment does provide an opportunity for digression and perhaps
to encourage others to consider/elucidate the attraction of HP and for a 
small minority to confess all.

Harry Potter per se holds little attraction for me.
Indeed, why on earth should he?
But as a means to an end - ah, that's different.
That end being entertainment, though of a kind some may consider as 
somewhat misplaced. There's a measure of mischief, right enough (whose 
bars can we rattle today?) but it goes further than that.

It may be an accidental oversight (probably) or a symptom of of an 
unspoken inclination (possible), but the Home Page of this site doesn't 
mention Harry Potter - it's "the works and world of J.K.Rowling", a phrase 
that (IMO) spreads the net a bit wider than a consideration of the life and 
hard times of H. Potter Esq. Jo has created a marvellously complex and 
detailed world, so much so that some have a hankering to prise the back 
off and see what makes it tick. Tinkerers, that's what they are. How the bits
fit together, what drives them, is the way they are presented a true 
representation of the plot arc or can they be made to slot together 
differently? And is there a bit of the old smoke and mirrors in play, 
should we be watching what her other hand is up to? 

Just how many plot twists can be reasonably accommodated in a 7 volume
series anyway? Dunno. But I expect (hope) that we're about to find out. 
We've known from early on that Jo is a devotee of whodunnits - Aggie 
Christie - and judging by the bookshelf on her site, Dorothy L. Sayers too. 
Encouraging indications that there may well be more surprises in store, 
that all is not what it seems. The classical whodunnit always had surprises
saved for the final few chapters, maybe a shocking revelation, but more 
usually an heretofore unconsidered trifle turns out to be critically important.
Jo herself adds substance to such possibilities - 
"I love a good whodunnit and my passion is plot construction. 
Readers love to be tricked but not conned."

To assume that any trickery and obfuscation ceased with book 5 is a bit
unimaginative IMO. At a rough estimate there are still 1000+ pages to 
come. Even allowing a generous 100 pages for resolution, tying up loose
ends and explication, that still leaves a lot of space to be filled; it can't all
be Snape snarling and Harry being petulant, can it? Plenty of room for more
dirty work at the cross-roads and a few more red herrings to waft their 
deceptive scents across the noses of bloodhound fans.

'Cos it's as a variant of the whodunnwhatandwhy genre that HP has 
engaged my attention. More and more it seems to me that it is the past, 
the back-history, that will determine the eventual outcome. So it's not a 
coincidence that key events are still, after 5 books, shrouded in mystery 
and with minimal information provided. Godric's Hollow, the 24 hours, 
Tom and the Chamber, even what happened to old Sally are immensely 
important IMO. There is that cunning knot, the "key to the whole thing" 
that according to Jo no-one has yet unravelled; there's also the massive 
editing and re-writing of the first two books -15 chapters removed from 
PS/SS "because it gave too much away". Now in book 1 that wouldn't be 
the ending, would it? Not likely. But it may well have been just about 
everything else, leaving nothing to puzzle us at all.

Now when an author takes pains like these, I contend that it's more than
an adventure story that we have on our hands, more than an adolescent 
sprog battling the evil mastermind. What we have is a mystery - and 
deliberately constructed as such. And what does an enthusiast of mysteries
generally do? Try to beat the author to the punch, to deduce the solution 
before having it explained in the final wash-up. And roughly, that's what 
theorising is about. But to do it some 'facts' have to be regarded as fluid, 
incomplete, not seen in their true context, even deliberately misleading. 
Fine, so turn 'em on their heads, slot 'em back into the equation and 
estimate what the effect will be. And the resultant speculations range from
the possible via the unlikely to the just plain loopy. Personally I relish 
reading a well thought out theory, no matter how unlikely. You can't help 
but admire some of the analyses/constructions from the fertile minds
that contribute to the boards, even while accepting that they're gonna be 
wrong - probably - possibly - or - let me think about that one a bit more.

It's the plot construction that matters; the whys, wherefores, motivations, 
possible hidden agendas, all skillfully concealed by authorial sleight-of-
hand but ultimately deducible that fascinates. It is, as youu say, very like 
a jig-saw, but a jig-saw with no complete picture of what the finished 
article should look like. Not surprising that some of the pieces get
incorporated into pretty weird constructs.  

Of course I may be wildly wrong in my assessment of what HP is, I admit
that - though I have noticed that there are a few among those who take the 
resolutely bread-and-butter approach who rarely seem to acknowledge 
the possibility of error on their part. The theorists are just being "silly" or
"ridiculous".  So what if they are? No extra points for imposing orthodoxy, 
is there? To the serial offender Harry's trials and tribulations, even the final
resolution *of itself* is less important than the style, dexterity and ... um... 
satisfying completeness (for want of a better phrase) of how it is achieved, 
the eventual realisation, the "Ah! So that's what that meant!" moment. It's 
probably asking too much to expect that every loose end is neatly tied, 
that there won't be many a question paralleling the classic "But what I 
don't understand, Inspector, ....." but all the major wrinkles will be ironed
out at the very least. As for the minor ones - well, we can always speculate.

If on the other hand I've grasped the wrong end of the stick and it is 
intended solely as a well-written children's adventure book with a 
correspondingly straight-forward, even banal rationale behind it (like 'love'
- which would please carpers such as A.S.Byatt, whinging about the books 
not being "numinous" enough) then I'll have written an awful lot of words 
about nothing in posts like this. However, IIRC it was Bloomsbury who 
decided to put the books on the children's list, based on the age of the 
main character in book 1 (Jo was just damn glad to get published) but it
was Jo who later stated quite forcefully that she wrote for herself, with 
no-one else in mind, so my hopes still flicker.

Kneasy
Recidivist theoriser, or should that be theoretical recidivist?