I finished the last Harry Potter book today in a haze of speed-reading. Receiving it from a sullen postal worker at about 1:30 pm, I began with a dubious grin on my face and a light feeling in my heart. I arose from my (very warm) chair about five hours or so later, with feelings that were instantly recognizable. I observed that almost everything that I had previously thought of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, or anything else even vaguely connected with the series, needed examination in a new context. The scales, as they say, had begun to descend.
Before I tell you anything more about the book, I want to make a confession -- I am the most overbearing literary snob there is. My book list typically consists of only Booker Prize winning or nominated novels, or (at the very most) such other paragons of literary excellence as are recommended to me by similar snobs. As such, I tend to take writing seriously, and nothing that anyone writes is worth anything to me unless they write well. Those who cannot, I summarily reject. Also, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I cannot abide translations.
Accompanying this rather heavy-handed attitude is a strong dislike towards the bestselling novel. The only thing worse than a novel badly written is a novel badly written that sells a million copies. To people who ask me of examples of such aberrations, I will excitedly reel out, after a flood of self-conscious eloquence, the following names -- 1) The Da Vinci Code 2) Five Point Someone 3) The Harry Potter series.
After today's reading marathon,however, the last item will grace the above list no more.
Not that the book itself was startlingly revelatory, content-wise. There is no change in style or tone; nothing happens that has not already been anticipated. No characters undergo unforeseen reversals, and nothing really earth-shattering ever happens. In fact, one might even, after reading the novel, conclude that it is a fairly ordinary one, and has nothing within it that recommends itself to readers new to the phenomenon that is Harry Potter.
Which is why I liked it so much. It has been a long journey for Ms.Rowling, but she has emerged from it unscathed and unaltered. She has not, in these past few years, compromised her artistic integrity by, say, changing her characters in order to make them more likeable or (worse) more abominable. She hasn't abandoned her examination of the angst-ridden urban teenager, which has always been a pervasive theme. Most importantly -- and this is something that only becomes apparent towards the end of the seventh book -- she hasn't lost sight of the bigger picture.
That last quality, I think, is what appeals the most. After years of reading of subplots in which conspiracies hinted at and motives rendered obscure, it is a relief to find it all resolved in a way that is both satisfying and compelling. It is not easy to write a series of seven fantasy novels and keep track of all your minor characters and their raison d'êtres; it is harder to do so when they are being subjected to the scrutiny of the entire world. Ms.Rowling has pulled off an admirable coup.
I think it's misleading to criticize this novel, or the ones that came before it; it is important to keep in mind that the intentions of the author were always to write a series of novels for children, a series of novels in which wonderful things happen to ordinary people, and should be judged in that context only. To try and compare her to James Joyce or even James Thurber (as one critic famously did) is self-defeating, like trying to compare The Usual Suspects to Rashomon.
Novels are held together by two opposing elements -- the plot, which continually attempts to propel the reader onward to the next page, and the observation of details, that keep the reader engaged and assure him of things such as the fundamental humanity of the characters. "Thrillers" (for example) abandon the latter comprehensively and render themselves vacuous in the process, whereas most literature abandons the former, and renders itself incomprehensible to a majority of readers. Good novels attempt a judicious mixture of both. The Harry Potter series belongs firmly to this last, most excellent category.
3 comments:
Hmmmm....The style's a tad bit on the urgent side, wouldn't you agree Mr. Watson? I wonder what could have got that old boy thinking off his hat, getting him to finally realize the truth of the matter. It did take him seven thick books to provide him enough evidence to draw up his conclusion.
If you'd ask me Watson, I would prefer to leave the matter open for further investigations & not rely on the well-meaning snob's opinion. True, he did make a good point there with the balancing act between plots & details. But a book is not just about the balancing act, now is it dear Watson? He has most alarmingly neglected during his analysis to throw light on the quality of the medium in which the plots & details are presented. How are we supposed to entrust our opinion on his opinion when the case has such loose strings? This is most disturbing dear Watson - we have to be watchful at all times; not all things are very elementary.
I agree with you, though I feel that you would be better served (communication-wise) by abandoning the sarcastic tone. It tends to obscure the thrust of your argument.
I have not included many details that may have been pertinent to my hasty review. For example, I think Rowling has kept in her mind that all her characters are human, and given them all a measure of ambiguity. Dumbledore, for instance, who I had always thought of as a sort of Gandalf, with intentions only good and pure, is revealed in the seventh book to be not all he seems. Similarly, Snape is not the abomination that we all perceived him to be. The fact that the author has fooled us into thinking that these characters represented the good and the evil side, and the fact that her seventh novel causes us to reinterpret everything we know about these characters in a new light, is an admirable accomplishment.
Another thing that I really liked was the fact that Rowling hasn't compromised on her tone, which has remained, since the end of the second book or so, uniformly tenebrous. She hasn't tried to clean up her darker characters' motivations in order to lessen the average age of her audience. There has always been a sinister undercurrent of murder, torture and death in all her novels, and she has taken no pains to hide it from the public view, or shroud it in frustrating equivocality. Take it or leave it appears to be her attitude, and many millions of copies later, more and more people seem to be choosing the former option.
I didn't include these observations in my review because I thought a)They were fairly obvious, and b) Doing so required me to reveal more details about the seventh novel than I was willing to do. I think it's important to keep the suspense.
Anyway, tell me what you think. I'm particularly interested to know what you mean by "the quality of the medium in which the plots & details are presented".
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