Comments on: Thoughts on Deathly Hallows Eve

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:15:46 +0000

Late reply, yes, but Jason I’m not so sure about whether we can conflate a spoiler and the actual last chapter (or last two chapters). There still is the difference between hearing what happens and reading it in JKR’s own words. And many HP fans I know have been discussing the last chapter without really discussing the rest of the last book per se. My little hypothetical experiment would still be interesting therefore to see who inhabits the grey zone between spoiler-reading and reading the whole thing.

Btw, JKR, Harry, and I enjoy our joint birthday soon, on July 31. And yes, I do have a scar on my forehead

By: jmittell

jmittell — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:05:00 +0000

Jonathan – I doubt that many would pay $2 for the knowledge that was freely obtainable online. Based on the huge number of google hits for this post searching for HPDH spoilers, I believe that market is well-saturated! People are paying & consuming the book in large part to find out what happened, but for a large number (perhaps even majority) it’s a place to return to, to inhabit and dwell in for the last time – until the rereading starts.

Rob – welcome to WP! I look forward to your feedback here, and encourage anyone reading this to check out his excellent post on the HP reading phenomenon…

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

I’m with you Jason, on being bothered by Rowling’s hard press against spoilers. It betrays either a nasty corporatist control-freak-ism, whereby she thinks that she should be able to dictate how her books are read, and/or a fundamental lack of confidence in the book as having anything worth reading other than a “does Harry die or not” answer on the last page.

Taking each in turn, I think it’s interesting that most authors make a big deal of saying that they want people to read their books as the readers wish to, and while they may question odd readings of their books (“War and Peace is actually a paean to the guinea fowl”), tend to invite all sorts of interpretations and practices. The move towards wanting to control your readership is very much corporate, and seems to speak of the degree to which she might be seeing Potter as a business first, an art second (not that business and art can’t live together, but here I mean what she personally puts first?

As for a potential lack of confidence, I would actually have loved to do the experiment of walking down a line at Barnes and Noble and asking people if they’d like the book, or for, say, $2, the last chapter. My suspicion is that a lot of people might take me up on the latter? That’s not to suggest that the story is *only* what happens, but I do wonder whether after 6 books, some people have had enough story to satisfy them, and now simply want the conclusion. I wonder, in other words, at what point a continuing story has become enough of an entity in a person’s mind and imagination to not really require much more than a shred or two of narrative. If that makes sense

By: rbhardy3rd

rbhardy3rd — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:09:11 +0000

Now that I’m on WordPress, I can leave you comments. Watch out! My long-winded remarks on the Harry Potter phenomenon can now be found on my WordPress blog:

http://robhardy.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/common-reading/