Wild about Harry, Hogwarts and all
Thomas M. KEANE, Jr.
Much has been made of the publishing and cultural phenomenon
that is the fifth and latest installment of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
It is something else as well: a literary happening that bodes well for those
who fear that in a video-addled world, books are somehow disappearing from our
lives.
Rowling's kickoff book, 1998's "Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone," seemed a marvel at the time: a children's book that
actually made the New York Times bestseller list.
That, it turned out, was nothing.
Each Potter book since has been a bigger selling than the
last. The newest, "Harry Potter and the Order of the
Yet the Potter books aren't the ordinary kind of mass-media
events defined by special effects-laden movies or character toys at Burger
King. These are serious books. Rowling's first was 309 pages - printed in
small, dense typeface, just like adult fiction. Each subsequent book has been
longer; the latest is a staggering 870 pages. All told, the five books are
nearly 2,700 pages. By the time the seventh, and last, is completed, the pages
could well number 4,500.
Yet kids are reading them.
Immediately after the latest installment arrived Saturday
(to avoid some sort of catastrophic sibling war, we ordered two), my daughters,
11 and 13, disappeared. Taking breaks only for food and water, they read
constantly, finishing up after
Bryn, the youngest, slept the next day until nearly
My kids were hardly alone in this behavior. In families
across the nation, this has been a week marked by long silences and children
curled up on couches and pillows. In a world of video games, television and
instant messaging, how can this be happening?
When we got the first Potter book in spring 1999, the two
children were of an age where they still preferred I read them to sleep. From
the opening pages, Rowling drew one into the tale of an orphaned child abused
by his aunt and uncle and subconsciously aware he is out of place in their
world.
At the end of Chapter 3, we find a miserable and unloved
Harry, trapped with his aunt and uncle on a rocky and otherwise deserted island
far at sea, watching the clock as it ticks down to his 11th birthday.
At that moment, impossibly, there is a knock on the door.
Telling the kids it was late and we would pick up the story
tomorrow, I put down the book.
They shrieked. We read on.
Rowling, as many have noted, is not the most technically
gifted of writers.
Her dialogue is often clumsy, she excessively relies on
words - like "sniggers" - that jar the reader, and some of her plot
devices are problematic (the "Time-Turner," a gadget in the third
book that enables the young magicians to go back in time, springs to mind).
But good writing is not necessarily
a function of one's wordsmithing. Nor does a weak plot device have to undermine
a story's strength. When it comes to the things that matter, Rowling seems to
have a firm grasp of her craft.
Rowling creates enormously interesting characters in a
fictional setting that is simultaneously strange and familiar. Each installment
builds on the other, with the once-simple world in which Harry finds himself
becoming ever more complex. Characters that we thought were good (such as
Harry's dead father) turn out to be deeply flawed; others that were just
nasty-minded foils (such as the Potions' master Snape) become deep and multifaceted.
And the wizarding world, we find, is not necessarily
very high-minded: It tolerates slavery of house elves, it has its own version
of racism (pureblood vs. mudblood wizards) and it is too willing to ignore evil
in its midst.
In other words, the saga is much like growing up: It's the
search for one's own identity as the simple absolutes of childhood give way to
the moral complications of adulthood. And Rowling does
all this in an engaging and exciting fashion that challenges her readers. The
plot strands are convoluted (which is one reason the
books bear rereading) and terrible things happen to important characters.
Moreover, Harry himself is no paragon. Now in his adolescence, he is oftentimes
jealous, moody and far too full of himself.
This is the stuff that, to an
unprecedented degree, has captured imaginations everywhere. At a time
when children have been reading less, Harry Potter dramatically bucks the tide.
Kids, it turns out, really do like to read. All they need is what Rowling gives
them: a good story, well told.
Talk back to Tom Keane at