I did it. I was still up at midnight (not purposely, but there you go) so the dog and I got in the car and drove to Tesco.There wasn't a "mad rush". But as far as I could see there were one's and twos at all the checkouts with their Harry Potter books in hand. Some with multiple copies. Tesco had an offer on - spend £50, get the book for just £5 (£10 normal price).
Well, throughout the HP years, one has had to admire JK Rowling. I mean - when was the last time I saw people lined up at every check out in a supermarket at midnight (or, indeed, any time at all for that matter) to buy a BOOK as soon as it was released? A BOOK for goodness sake, like it was a fashion item. And people won't just put this on the shelf, they'll really read it.
Of course marketing has something to do with it. But not at first - not when no-one had the foggiest idea, not when it was entirely the preserve of a few middle class kids. And marketing can't make people actually read something that's terrible, even if it can make them buy it.
I'm 70-odd pages in. First impressions - she does write well. Better than number 6, which I am afraid I felt turgid most of the time. The zing is back, even if the tone remains dark. I'm a little nervous about the body count this book will rack up - no spoilers here, but we're already getting through them is all I'll say.
And there was just a little moment of excitement as I held the book in my hands for the first time. I love books. I love the feel of them, the weight, the solidity, the way the physical form is so pedantic and yet it holds the key to unknown flights of imagination. Wonderful contradiction. I consume books, drink them in, allowing words to fill me and feed me and nourish my mind. This book has a special place - last in a series, a series that has revolutionised reading and publishing, a series that has had an effect on the culture of our land, a series that has had publishers eager to find "the next Harry Potter" (there won't be one, not in those terms, this is a unique phenomenon) though many readers stimulated by the experience (especially, I think, its core market - the young) have gone on to discover other things. I started this series as I came here to Pontypridd. There are kids who don't remember life before it. Now it comes to a conclusion.
And yes, I should be reading the thing rather than writing about it, but actually, I like to take a moment to enjoy the moment (see post number 1 on this blog!) and not let it pass me by. The thrill of reading a new book should never be glossed over. The reality of getting into the book can be stunningly disappointing - but this moment of arrival is always wonderful. And this book, I feel, will keep up the momentum of this moment throughout its pages, and leave me with a sense of glorious fulfillment and loss at the end - fulfillment as the series is fittingly concluded; loss as there are no more words to read, and the book again becomes just a book, a lifeless collection of print and pages, my imagination having left it behind once more.
Now: back to it.
11 comments:
"a series that has revolutionised reading"
How?
"this is a unique phenomenon"
All phenomena are unique!
That said, I agree that the whole Potter thing has been impressive. JKR's writing itself doesn't hook me, but no one can deny that she's created a world that's caught people's imaginations. My husband and sons are big fans, and I have followed along in my own way (I even read the last 50-100 pages with hubby).
It has revolutionised the process of reading for vast numbers of people in a culture where reading is seen as irrelevant or elitist by making reading essential and for the masses. That is a revolution, and I love it!
I don't live in a middle class ghetto, I live in a very ordinary working class area. And still the thing sells like hot cakes because ordinary people in a society where reading had genuinely been sidelined (by TV, film, music, video, games, etc etc) are reading in their droves. That is a revolution, and JK Rowling and her vast publicity machine deserve our thanks for it. Once people are reading, they are imagining, and that is remarkably healthy in a culture. I love it!
The books themselves may not be perfect literary works, but they have great imaginative qualities, and tell a super story. They bring home themes of friendship and loyalty, honesty and integrity, perseverance and struggle, and how all of these things get tested but mostly stand the tests thrown at them. Children's literature doesn't often do as well as this, and popular adult literature doesn't often do it so well either - give me this over Dan Brown any day.
You know, it's about 140 years since they were lining the docks in New York, calling out to the ships as they arrived - does Little Nell live? All over the world last night, on TV, on the internet, in bookstores and supermarkets, people were rushing to find out - does Harry live? It is the only literary comparison I can draw. I know of no literary event like it in my lifetime; I don't think I will see its like again. It's a BOOK for goodness sake, and the world is going mad over it.
Which does make it unique!
(And whilst accepting that "phenomenon" can mean an unusual occurrence, I think its primary dictionary definition doesn't require the "unusual" to be there, so my "unique phenomenon" isn't really the tautological statement you make out!)
Every observable event is unique in the trivial sense. Sunrises may be commonplace and essentially similar to one another, but today's is still unique in that no other sunrise is identical with it.
But I was (and am) just being a pain.
"[The HP books] have great imaginative qualities, and tell a super story. They bring home themes of friendship and loyalty, honesty and integrity, perseverance and struggle, and how all of these things get tested but mostly stand the tests thrown at them. Children's literature doesn't often do as well as this"
It's your last sentence that I disagree with. Children's literature often does very well, indeed, at all the things you named (and, just one post ago, you seemed to be dissing books 4-6 in the Potter series for not doing it as well as they might have done). Why Harry Potter caught on in quite the way it did continues to baffle me; I have false-started the first book several times without being able to get into it.
But I'm an outlier, and I know it. It would be silly to deny that the Potter craze has been amazing, and I even agree that we may not see anything like it in our lifetimes (though you never know...). Moreover, I hope you're right, and that the long-term legacy of the Potter experience is the transformation of many might-have-been non-readers into readers. I'm just not sure why such a thing would necessarily happen.
Maybe this is because I can't quite get my head around the idea that reading is perceived among the masses as elitist and not for them. Whenever I go into a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the "beach books" (aka "airport books"), "chick lit," DaVinci clones, and books based on video games. Meanwhile, the kiddie section pushes "Goosebumps" and "Captain Underpants" and "Star Wars" serials. It's literature for the non-reader, and it sells (heck; I buy some of it).
A few years ago here, the "Left Behind" books were extremely popular among evangelicals, including many people who might not otherwise have been caught dead reading fiction. For the first time in "my" corner of Christendom, I heard fellow parishioners talking to each other about books-- but I wasn't especially heartened. Of course, J.K. Rowling's a better writer than Tim LaHaye & his partner. I just hope she's good enough to leave her fans wanting things besides imitation Potter.
"It's literature for the non-reader, and it sells (heck; I buy some of it)"
I'm not so sure I agree. I am not a total HP or JK Rowling fan - I don't think these books are perfect, as I keep making clear, and as you pick up on. The distinctions I am making are exactly as agianst airport novels and the Star Wars serialisations that are short on imagination that get pushed out as books for non-readers and fired at them at places where they are vulnerable (At the airport: "Oh no - I have a fortnight on a beach and nothing to do! I'll take a book! Which one! This one says "Best Seller" on the cover....")and I do think too many children's books come in this category too.
The HP books aren't "literary", in that seldom do you find yourself simply enjoying the use of language employed (JK is no Margaret Atwood, and wouldn't ever think she was), but that's no bad thing. Count Basie is no Beethoven - but neither was Puccini - and I can enjoy all of that, so why get snobbish over books? They do what they do (on the whole, and with exceptions) well, and if over a series of seven books there were longeurs - hey, she kept her audience. Not bad.
I was not heartened by the "Left Behind" series either. Mercifully it was never big in the circles in which I move, but it was never about reading, really, was it? Like many evangelical movements, it wasn't an attempt to get people into reading, it was an attempt to inculcate a certain form of theological propoganda using books. Books weren't the aim, reading wasn't to be lauded per se, and imagination wasn't called for at all: indeed, quite the opposite - this was a one track and (I'm afraid I felt) rather sinister way of making as many people as possible sign up to a particular minority theological opinion without realising they had been conned into so doing. (Oh, but it's based on the Bible - yeah, about as much as the koran is.)
And I hope that her fans are left wanting good stories with important life themes told well. And I hope some of them find them. The book sold three million copies this weekend - and I think that is the UK figure alone. If a fraction of those people carry on discovering books, many of them will find the really good books that exist out there, and one or two may even become really good authors because of this whole thing.
So my dear friend, feel free not to get the whole deal, but as a bibliophile put away your worldweariness and rejoice at this event: many people may read HP and then find lesser things to amuse them and then get bored with books, but many people will move the other way too. This thing is so huge I feel totally confident in saying that somewhere someone even now is borrowing The Little World of Don Camillo because once they read Harry Potter.
WARNING - PLOT SPOILERS MAY BE CONTAINED IN FOLLOWING COMMENTS!
Who's world-weary? ;-) Interestingly, it never even occurred to me to think there was something sinister behind "Left Behind." I actually saw it as just one more attempt at creating an insular "Christian" sub-culture, this time by writing "our own" thrillers so people didn't have to buy airport books.
You say "Left Behind" wasn't "an attempt to get people into reading," and, except insofar as whoever markets any book wants to get people into reading, you're probably right. But does that lofty goal inform JKR's work, either? She generally says that this has always been simply about telling a story she wanted to tell.
And, after reading bits of the final HP book, I find that I believe her more than I have ever done since Pottermania insured that her every expressed thought got into the newspaper. All the fevered coverage over the years of her calculated killing of characters ("My character died today" was one headline during the period she was writing book 5) and of her musing over the ultimate fate of Harry (if she killed him, she pointed out, at least she would get to have the last say regarding his life) used to activate my cynicism buttons. "'Just telling the story I want to tell,' my eye," I'd think. "Next you're going to tell me George Lucas already had 9 Star Wars films fully outlined before the original went into production."
However, the ending JKR wrote for the series seems truer to the spirit of the early books (I have followed the overall story arc, even though I don't enjoy her writing) than my cynical self would have expected. It restored a bit of my faith in superstars. :-)
Sorry for making you anonymous there, Camillofan, I wanted to put a warning as your vey mild reference to the ending might upset the unwary!
I have now got to the end, and...
Actually, I loved it.
I'm only 3 chapters in...
But I agree with what you say about how you love the feel and weight of books. And I have to say that the dimensions of the HP books (in hardback) are very good indeed. Most hardback books are too big, most paperbacks are too small. Harry Potter books sit in between and are just the right size... why aren't more books this size?
So I've finished reading it now. Quite a satisfying ending I think. And JK has being saying for years that she wrote the final chapter of the last book years ago - presumably she actually meant the epilogue bit - so that's why its in keeping with the spirit of the earlier books, it was written at the same time as them.
And for a review full of spoilers, but also full of praise, from one author to another, AN Wilson in the Times can be found at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/children/article2139573.ece and is well worth a couple of minutes of your time. But it is FULL of spoilers!
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