| Review: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter |
| Harry Potter. How could a child with hardly anything
going for him make a billionaire of the author who created him? And
who among us doesn’t wish he or she had thought of it first? The thing is, of course, others have thought of it first. J.M. Barrie, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Roald Dahl. So why did J.K. Rowling hit the jackpot? Certainly not because of Harry. Oh, Harry Potter’s a sweet kid, but the way Rowling writes him, he’s hardly there. He’s a pastel painting compared to intensely realized characters like Dahl’s Charlie of the chocolate factory or James of the giant peach. The tense similarities are there—Harry’s home situation is as poor as Charlie’s, as dire as James’. But where James’ aunts are flattened into pancakes for their child abuse, a terrible act of pure righteousness, Harry’s abysmal relatives the Dursleys are no more than mildly intimidated. The circumstance of Harry’s introduction to his destiny is aligned with Will Stanton’s in The Dark Is Rising. Both Will and Harry are unsuspecting of their nascent powers or their importance to the world of magical charms and potions. Yet, where The Dark Is Rising is intensely full of a threatening evil, with a keen edge of foreboding that keeps you moving from chapter to chapter deep into the night, Harry’s world never really brings you to the edge of your seat. Certainly the potential for a good imaginary scare is there, but it’s never fully realized. Barrie’s Peter Pan is so smoothly written, so full of wit and intelligence, that it leaves Potter in the dust. And C.S. Lewis evokes an entire world whose details one can still remember forty years after closing The Last Battle. Its depth makes Harry seem like a cartoon series. Is the answer as simple as Harry Potter, the movie? Has it all to do with special effects? Videography? Was Harry Potter simply born at the right time to go digital? Or is there something else going on here. After all, it seems that everybody read the books. Why? A dyed-in-the-wool cynic might say, “Because in actuality, the idea for the movie came first. The one publisher who didn’t reject it, who had enough imagination to see the possibilities, called its publicity and marketing departments, those twins for success, and demanded publicity and marketing and lots of it. Voila! The books sold.” A more literary-minded cynic might say, “Because they [the books] are short, devoid of time-consuming detail, taxing thoughts, and tension.” But after all, it is a children’s series, so what do you expect…Sartre? Of course not. But the fact is, a lot of adults read the books, too. So how do we divine the answer to that? The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets are short. In fact, The Sorcerer’s Stone feels not only short, but shortened. As though much magic was wrought by the editorial pen. Whole chunks seem missing. And it’s true that given a world of potential visual, aural, and tactile magical wealth, both books suffer from a major lack of detail. You could be kind and call them efficient. You could also call them empathetic. In fact, uncharacteristically thoughtful of their reader’s stress tolerance. They take you into tense situations, but don’t leave you there long enough to take your breath away or make you squirm or even worry too much. And you never get to see the way out of these situations, when the ways out, if handled correctly, can often be just as scary and fun as the ways in. And I kept wondering…how, with all these potently magical, professional witches and wizards running Hogwarts, did Harry and his friends get away with so much? If wizards and witches are constrained as much as we are by the limits of the five senses, then where’s the fun? Well, Quidditch was fun. And Hagrid. And the movie, that was sweet, though not nearly as much fun as Monsters Inc. Based on The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, it’s certain the Harry Potter series will never find its way into the canon of children’s (or anyone else’s) literature. Will they be read in 2053? Very doubtful. But one thing Rowling can be commended for: in her fictional struggle between good and evil, she does not rely on the power of magic to tip the scales for the good guys. Rather, it’s certain qualities of the human spirit—selflessness, honesty, loyalty, wisdom, courage—that triumph. And that’s a good lesson for kids of all ages.
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