Harry Potter and the Curse of TMI

I'm agreeing with Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News, who says, "with the greatest of respect," to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling: "Shut up. Please."

Now that Rowling has outed the brave and brilliant wizard Albus Dumbledore, Weiss wonders, will she leave nothing to the imagination?

In Canada recently, during her North American book tour, Rowling suggested that Hermione probably reads Margaret Atwood. Harry himself and Ron probably read nothing much at all.

What's next? The revelations that Hagrid moves to the suburbs and opens a Big & Tall men's shop? News that Neville chucks the three-headed dog eat three-headed-dog world of Hogwarts politicking to grow PYO produce on a small spot in Surrey?

"As a fan, I can understand both the authorial impulse and the public interest," says Weiss. "As a reader, it's making me nuts."

Me, too. The best stories, in my mind, leave a little room to the reader's imagination. They don't tie everything up in a nice tight package. If they did, there'd be less room for us to think about the rich untold parts, to invest ourselves and own imaginations in cultivating the fuller story.

Last week, my 10-year-old and I finished Gossamer by Lois Lowry, another writer who connects us to fantastical worlds filled with creatures we don't meet in this one. The book centers on ethereal creatures, "dream givers," whose physical expressions are never described much at all. More than midway through the book, however, Lowry lets slip that the dream givers are tiny, no larger than a stack of quarters.

My friend Liz, who was reading the book with her daughter at the same time we were, confessed, "I was bummed when I read that... because it wasn't how I pictured them in my mind to be."

Dream givers were more "real" to Liz when the author didn't push her own vision on her, but allowed Liz -- or any reader -- to vest the books with their own take.

At the end of Gossamer, it's not clear whether a young boy living in a foster home is permanently reunited with his mother. Things certainly seem headed that way, but Lowry doesn't wrap the package too tightly. She lets us draw our own conclusions -- which, by the way, has sparked many interesting conversations around the dinner table about might have happened to the boy.

Which brings me back to Harry Potter. I'm sure Rowling's recent revelations sparked plenty of dinner table conversations among her fans, too, including me and my two kids. But it's not nearly as satisfying an exchange, and the conversations feel more like gossip than discussion.

Authors like Rowling and Lowry do us a rich service. They challenge our thinking and spark our imaginations. But please: Leave it to us to take it from there?

Comments

[Qbear]

I appreciate J.K.Rowling adding this detail to the story line. Gay and lesbian young readers can have a nice fictional character .

[Epin]

Rowling's grace under pressure is admirable. What author in the history of the planet has been interrogated to the point that she has about every detail of every character--even the minor ones--in a series? I haven't checked the numbers, but there are probably more readers of Harry Potter than there were humans on Earth in Shakespeare's time! (No, I am not comparing Rowling to Shakespeare. She's very good but she is not Will!)

[mae692]

Rowling, here (Toronto) for the International Festival of Authors, was asked why she chose to announce last week that Dumbledore was gay – and that he had a mad, ill-fated, boyhood passion for his fellow wizard Gellert Grindelwald – instead of making it explicit in her series of Harry Potter novels.

"Because I really think that's self-evident," the 42-year-old British author replied. According to Rowling, the subsequent conflict between the two wizards laid the foundation for the final showdown of the series. "The plot is what it is and (Dumbledore) did have, as I say, this rather tragic infatuation," said Rowling.

"That was a key part of the ending of the story. So there it is. Why put the key part of the ending of my story in book one? If you're an author you might understand that when you write the ending, it comes at the end."

Later, she repeated that, "It is in the book. It's very clear in the book."
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Books/article/269817
----

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more transcript from Carnegie Hall , which was packed so obviously somebody wants more information.

[TangerineToad]

I agree Anne.

Revelations like that are best left to one's posthumous memoirs.

It's bad enough that every Harry Potter book is a movie so that people have an image of Daniel Ratcliffe as Harry instead of whatever might have popped into their heads.

But to go into more details... on the other hand, I'm sure these characters are so real to Rowling she can't help but to gossip about them.

Toad

PS: I think you have another post in the reaction from all these people who didn't read your post and jumped to the conclusion that you had a problem with Rowling revealing someone's sexuality. Says so much about the Victim Culture in our society.

[JeffreyWeiss]

Here's my reply to people who for some reason focus on the sexuality aspect of Rowling's revelation:

Even as I said in my column that an author has a responsibility to readers, I think that readers have a responsibility to respond to what the author actually writes.

And I *think* I made it pretty clear in the column that the specifics of Rowling’s ‘revelation’ were irrelevant to my point. If she had, say, announced that Dumbledore had a secret twin brother who died as a child, and that the death shaped his personality, I would have been just as upset.

If, on the other hand, Rowling had put in the books that Dumbledore – or Harry or Hagrid, for that matter – were gay, that would have been just another interesting detail among the many for me.

She’s hinted she was going to write an encyclopedia with some details that never made it to the books. If she does, I’ll buy it.

There’s precedent for authors adding to what seemed to be finished canon. Walt Whitman published several versions of Leaves of Grass. Tolkien did it big-time. My edition of Return of the King is about half appendix. He put his backstory – and plenty of future stuff – in the books eventually as text. Not to mention the books that his kids keep publishing from his notes that are unfortunately, in the main, all but unreadable.

So if she wants to make Dumbledore’s sexual orientation – or Ron’s profession or Hagrid’s permanent bachelorhood or any of the other stuff she’s been trickling out – part of the written hardwired structure of Harry’s World, she can do it. If she’d ask me, though, I’d tell her to leave the margins empty so that we readers can fill them in.

[pagemonkey]

This story is starting to drive me a little crazy. Everyone who's complaining about Rowling's "outing" of Dumbledore is missing a very central point. She was answering a question.

As Neil Gaiman, an author I believe we can all trust to be an expert on any subject writing-related, pointed out, every author has reams of material about their characters that never gets used.

Rowling clearly had this idea about Dumbledore all along, and, when asked directly if he'd ever been in love, she offered some back story that hadn't gone in the books. The only other options were to refuse to answer or lie. I'd like someone to explain to me how either one of those is better than what she actually did.

[pchdriver]

Dumbledore's orientation wasn't relevant to the stories Rowling wrote, but she knew him well -- it's possible that the fact informed his character in certain ways. And this seems to me a perfectly reasonable Q&A response to a child's question about his back-story.

The problem is that this even made the news. If Rowling's answer had been, "He was engaged to muggle girl, but his family broke it up," it would have been a non-story. And those who don't attend Q&As or visit fan sites would have been left to their own imaginations.

-- Christian Gulliksen

[JeffreyWeiss]

Thank you for noticing my work!

Jeffrey Weiss
The Dallas Morning News

[scinoir]

So you are telling me that a writer does not have the right to share his or her character's backstory with the readers when directly asked?

If you dont care to know Dumbledores sexuality, or the shape of the mole on harry's right butt cheek, or whatever else Rowlings chooses to disclosed when asked, then simply dont read about it.

I am a writer, and I know that a writer doesn't control his or her characters. That character has a past, a present and a future. That character is alive and is thus allowed to have any traits, virtues, or vices that any living breathing man or woman can possess.

Why is it not okay to know Dumbledore is gay? It was okay to learn that Harry is heterosexual. Why is a main character being gay treated as something that the story could have been without, something excess, when other characters have obvious heterosexual impulses and relationships and we read of them without any care. Are you trying to say heterosexuality is normal and homosexuality is abnormal Ann?

[Ann Handley]

Oh jeez. The sound you hear is me rolling my eyes.

Of COURSE not.... whether Albus is gay or not isn't the issue at all. The point is that I feel that Rowling is managing the character for her readers, post-publication -- when I'd rather be left alone to interpret that on my own. As one commenter said here.... Rowling's words carry special weight and reach, and I'm wondering if she's aware of that?

So what's wrong with her saying, when asked directly whether Albus was gay, "Well.. what do you think?" Can we draw our own conclusions? Can she trust her readers -- most of whom are HUGE fans and have followed her and Harry throughout all the books -- to figure Albus out on our own? Can less be more? Like the Lois Lowry example?

Frankly, the news hook here that many have picked up on is the "Dumbledore is gay" thread. But she's also talking about Hermione reading Margaret Atwood... Harry not reading at all... and I'm just saying, "Can we stop this now?" Can you let your readers figure it out?

If we just want to debate whether gay is "normal," (again: insert eye roll here), I think you need to find another post. Because that's not the point at all. And it's not an issue I'd ever "debate," in fiction or in life.

[NotaBeliever]

When I read that good ole Dumbledore was thought to be gay by his creator, my own thoughts ran in several streams. There is the "oh, that'll give the fundies another reason to boycott Harry Potter" stream. Then the "if I ever read Harry Potter books again, I'll think old Dumbledore is an even cooler character" steam. Then there is the "too much information" stream. I don't fish in that stream. I love spoilers on everything I read, listen to, and watch. So if the author wants to make things a tiny bit more interesting after the fact,more power to her.

[jhNY]

Given the scarcity of book readers generally, I propose we take small comfort in the fact that folks are worked up about anything inside one, or about a person who wrote one.

[Ann Handley]

LOL... that is so true!

Thanks to all for commenting...!

[Mrrar]

It's funny watching the Harry Potter fans say things like this.

It makes me realize that these are not the same people who follow Star Trek or Star Wars... Or Lord of the rings, or any other popular scifi/fantasy setting.

The degree of information that Rowling has provided and fleshed out in regards to harry Potter is microscopic, compared to what's been fleshed out about such characters as Luke Skywalker, or even Geordi LaForge. Many fan bases deeply appreciate this sort of honesty and openness about characters. It makes the characters more real.

You, Ann, seem to think or feel that I guess that these characters reside in your mind alone. That they are purely imaginary constructs, but the way of characters like these is that they become entities independent of anyone at all. They are -themselves-, alive and real in a non-real way. They exist, somewhere, somehow, but only so far as they've been defined.. When the author further defines them, it's not taking away from your vision, it's focusing it into what the vision really is.

::shrug::

[HighPlainsAg]

I've never read a Harry Potter book, but I've been a professional reader and writer all my adult life, and complaining about Rowling's comment is silly. Any decent writer knows more about her characters than she tells you, just as any decent writer lets her characters decide who they are and what their backstory might be. The richness of a character depends upon things unsaid.

Rowling didn't say, "Oh, didn't you guess he was gay? Look again!" She said, "I've always imagined him as gay." If I imagine a character was abused as a child, and I write a story about him, I am not obliged to TELL you he was abused, but I am under some obligation to write him in a way that is consistent with a victim of abuse. How far can you go with that? Well Andrew Vachss has kept the details of Burke's being abused as a child under wraps for what? Twenty years?

It is perfectly correct for me to say, at any point, "I've always imagined that he was abused as a child." It happens to be true. Rowling's answer doesn't mean he's "secretly gay," or even that he's "relevantly gay," but it is a truthful answer to the question, "Has he ever been in love?" So what's the problem?

[mbjesq]

In a work of fiction, there is only the book asnd the reader's imagination. What the author creates about the characters beyond the pages of her books have zero ontological standing; they have no truth because the facts can exist in the written words. Jo Rowling's declaimations about her characters are therefore meaningless, having no more weight that extra-textual speculations of any of her readers. They are also annoying, however, since, as the author, she is in the unique position of being able to turn blather into literary truth by sitting down at her keyboard.

[CitizenE]

The books stand on their own, but why not let readers in on the author's internal backstory? Dumbledore is gay? Who cares? Another character is a were-wolf for God's sakes. That Dumbledore fell as a young man, whether gay or not (he's actually celibate in the series), for another wizard is the underpinning of the whole finale. If Ms. Rowling used the idea of infatuation, even gay infatuation, as her inner understory, and then tells her readership, it reveals something about the author and how she works creatively. In addition, the whole of Harry Potter is informed by an anti-Puritanical, pro-tolerance perspective; Ms. Rowling has quite the bully pulpit--Dumbledore was gay: swallow that, those of you who have tried to burn these books. Why not?