TIME EUROPE
December 25, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 26
RUNNER UP
J.K. Rowling: The Magic of Potter
J.K. Rowling's wizardry turned on a new generation to that old technology, the wondrous printed word
By PAUL GRAY
Three and a half years ago, no one on earth had
heard of harry potter except J.K. Rowling, the
writer who dreamed him up, and the
publishers' readers who had rejected the
manuscript of her first book featuring the
bespectacled boy wizard. And now? Four Harry
Potter novels later, translations into 42
languages later, 76 million copies sold
worldwide later? Strange, strange things are
happening wherever on Earth the young
fictional hero and his friends can be found.
In Germany, Eberhard Bärmann,
president of the Berlin magicians' club
Zauberfreunde, reports that "more and
more grandparents and parents are calling
me because they want to know where their
grandchildren and children can learn
conjuring tricks." Bärmann's colleague
Wilfried Possin, the head of a magicians' organization in Frankfurt, attributes this
surge of interest to Harry Potter: "The books have brought our trade into the
limelight." VLast July the New York Times Book Review revised its best-seller list
by splitting off a separate category for children's books. The move came just in
time to prevent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from zooming to the top of the
fiction list — and joining the three earlier Harry Potter titles firmly ensconced among
the 15 slots. By shunting the wizard books out of its main chart, the Book Review
fiddled with logic but appeased publishers and authors who believed they had been
"Pottered" — denied best-selling status by the J.K. Rowling juggernaut.
In China the People's Literature Publishing House, which once issued the
collected poems of Chairman Mao, this year released 600,000 boxed sets of
translations of the first three Harry Potters, the largest first printing of any fiction
since the communists came to power in 1949.
Rowling's books have bridged political and cultural chasms; they have altered
publishing industries; they have even spurred censorship moves by some religious
fundamentalists. But any assessment of her extraordinary impact should focus
principally on the private transaction, as old as storytelling, between the speaker
and the listener or, a more recent innovation, the writer and the reader.
Here, in the hush of the imagination, is where Rowling works her magic. Listen to
her readers; listen to the children.
Tyler Walton, 9, who submitted an essay for Scholastic's "How the Harry Potter
Books Changed My Life" contest, has undergone arduous treatment for leukemia.
"Harry Potter helped me get through some really hard and scary times," he wrote.
"I sometimes think of Harry Potter and me as being kind of alike. He was forced
into situations he couldn't control and had to face an enemy that he didn't know if
he could beat."
Ashley Marie Rhodes-Courter, 15, another contestant, lived in 14 foster homes
over a 10-year period. "Harry has a lightning scar on his forehead to remind him of
his past," she wrote. "There's one on my back to remind me of mine." A child who
has not experienced personal trauma but has witnessed social strife is Magda
Anastasijevic, 8, who lives in Serbia. Thanks to the international sanctions put in
place after Serbia's war in Kosovo, the Harry Potter books have only just begun to
appear in translation. But Magda's father knows English and has read all four Harry
Potters aloud to her, simultaneously translating the original into Serbian. "I like
Harry Potter because he never gives up," she says, "even though sometimes his best
friends are against him." She knows that Lord Voldemort, the archvillain in the
Potter books, is a bad guy, and she believes the same of deposed Serbian strongman
Slobodan Milosevic. This provokes some literary criticism and political analysis:
"They were totally different because you can see right away that Voldemort is evil.
Milosevic was always pretending he was a nice, good man."
Or how about a child facing nothing scarier than the process of growing up, which
can, some adults may dimly remember, seem very scary indeed? Greta
Hagen-Richardson, 12, lives in Chicago and proudly says she has read each Harry
Potter book many times — 15, 11, 22 and 24, in order of publication, by her count.
"When I first read them," she says, "I thought, 'The characters really relate to
you — they're kids. They have bullies and bad teachers.' It's helped me understand
something — people, maybe my friends, my teachers. It's influenced me to read
more."
Multiply such testimonials — each heartfelt, each slightly different according to the
circumstances of the speaker — by millions, and Rowling's effect on the world around
us becomes, just barely, imaginable. And it's not only young people who love the
Harry Potter books; they have been eagerly adopted by uncounted adults and have
prompted serious academic attention. Vance Smith, an assistant professor of
English at Princeton University who is spending this year as a visiting member at
the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein's old bailiwick, has just delivered a
lecture called "Harry Potter and This Ever-Changing Medieval World" to an alumni
seminar. He praises, among other things, Rowling's clever use of Latin and her
"important and rigorous medieval agenda." Not since Charles Dickens has a
novelist writing in English achieved Rowling's command over a whole
society — young and not so young, of modest means and with money to flambé — and
the Dickens analogy quickly outlives its usefulness. None of his novels were
simultaneous best sellers in dozens of languages; the 19th century world was a
markedly slower place than our own. And Dickens' audience had none of the
distractions that beguile Rowling's readers: no radio, films, recorded music, TV,
video and computer games, the Internet. For years, literary culture has been
portrayed as gasping on life support, sustained only by old-fogey teachers and
hidebound school curricula. The death of the author was surely at hand. And then
along came Rowling.
No one can explain the literally unprecedented Harry Potter phenomenon, starting
with Rowling, now 35, whose life has been changed utterly by the product of her
imagination. Seven years ago, she was the single mother of a small daughter, living
in a two-room flat in Edinburgh, listening to mice skittering behind the walls. Now
she is internationally famous and earning, according to various estimates,
somewhere in the range of $30 million to $40 million a year. Once, during a bad
patch, she dreaded the hostile looks she would attract while lining up at the local
post office to claim her weekly income-support check. When she visited the U.S.
and Canada in October, she stood, with 10,000 pairs of eyes on her, and gave a
reading in the Toronto SkyDome. Nothing in the wonder-filled saga of Harry Potter
seems remotely as implausible as the triumph of his author.
Rowling has managed to maintain a private life despite the maelstrom of attention
and adulation roaring about her. She now has a comfortable house in Edinburgh
that she keeps off limits to outsiders. When not traveling, she takes daughter
Jessica, 7, to school each morning and is able to stroll and window-shop on
Edinburgh's Princes Street almost always unrecognized by fans. She did extensive
publicity during the summer and fall for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, not to
increase sales — a laughable notion given the enormous, pent-up demand — but to
make herself available to some of her young readers. In October she went public for
a project unrelated to Harry Potter but of personal concern to her. She agreed to
become the first ambassador, i.e., spokeswoman, for the National Council for One
Parent Families, a British charity, and donated $725,000 to the cause.
Rowling has a very good reason for trying to keep the world at bay. She is after all a
working writer, committed to producing three more novels that will bring to an end
the seven years Harry and his classmates spend at Hogwarts. And ominous news on
this front emerged late in the year: Rowling's agent, Christopher Little, announced
that there would be no new Harry Potter novel before 2002. (Imagine here a
worldwide gnashing of teeth — baby, permanent and false.) But there will be two brief
new, pseudonymous Rowling books coming this winter, based on titles in the
Hogwarts library: Quidditch Through the Ages, by Kennilworthy Whisp, and
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by Newt Scamander. Rowling will give
the net proceeds to the Harry Potter Fund at Comic Relief U.K., a charity helping
children in the developing world.
With no new novel in the offing, Harry addicts will perforce focus their anticipation
during the coming year on the film version of the first book, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone, directed by Chris Columbus and scheduled for release in
November by Warner Bros. The studio, which shares a parent company with Time,
has already begun stocking its franchise stores with Harry Potter merchandise.
This is a sensitive matter, and all involved are hoping it proceeds serenely. Rowling
knows product spin-offs have become essential to the marketing of blockbuster
films for children, but she has expressed reservations about the commercialization
of Harry Potter.
In one sense, the boy wizard has slipped beyond her control; he is out there,
everywhere, and legions of people feel a sense of ownership. But in the most
important way, Harry still belongs to her. His future is in her head, as is that of the
entire fictional universe she has set in motion.
— With reporting by Mairi Brahim and Sue Cullinan/London, and bureau reports
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