And Cole – perhaps JKR can start a newsletter called the Daily Prophet, issuing Rita Skeeter-like scoops on the secret lives of her characters? I’m sure she’d have a few readers…

“What may or may not have happened is entirely up to the viewer, that’s what makes it art. Having said that, I know EXACTLY what happened and it’s funny that I’m never going to tell anyone. But did no one see the obvious smoldering passion between the Blue Hand guys [in the series Firefly--ed.]? MAN, did you guys miss the boat.

“In my world, heroes bugger each other senseless. Not all of them, but more than you’d think, and probably not who you’re thinking.”

But it takes a level of sophistication, and . . .

In that spirit, I think it would be wonderful if Chase now announced that Tony was in fact gay.

To be somewhat fair to Rowling’s writing choices, if not her subsequent admissions, it’s not as if she’s very comfortable (or interested in) directly addressing romance of any kind in any of the Potter books. Be it Harry/Cho, Harry/Ginny or Ron/Hermione, her heart’s just not in it, and when it appears it’s perfunctory, theoretical and at arm’s length. So it’s altogether unsurprising that she would skirt *way* around Dumbledore’s sexuality in the text itself.

I feel bad that I never picked up on any queer subtext re: Albus. I must have been distracted by all those thousands of pages of boarding school boys waggling their wands and ramming their broomsticks at each other.

Count me among the annoyed, for so many reasons. There are the narrative considerations of setting up, after-the-fact, the cliched “doomed” gay character. There’s the fact that she’s never really quite understood how popular culture works (something even Lucas seems to have grokked), thinking apparently that we all share her understanding of Harry’s world. And there’s the fact that she went and stated it in that context, attempting (in her mind) to sound “brave” and “progressive” but really coming off as cowardly and paranoid.

It’s all the more fodder for exploring practices of contemporary authorship, though, so it keeps my interest stoked. There’s something about a traditional “Author” (capital-A writer of literature [said with as much pomposity as you can manage] in our barbaric [and again] world of the movies, and the television, and the XBox, and the internets, yadda yadda) making these claims so publicly that betrays media culture’s continued appetite for individuated, celebrity-based, definitive authorship. Fan culture is much too noisy and “chaotic” to sit serenely opposite Oprah, Matt Lauer, Terry Gross, or Michiko Kakutani, after all.

Bob/Jonathan/Kristina – I read here statement a little less strategically than you all seem to. I don’t think she was intending to shape fanfic/interpretations by positing Dumbledore’s sexuality. Based on what little I’ve read of Rowling in interviews, it seems like she knows much much more about the world of Hogwarts than she put in the books, having mapped out an entire universe, with history, future events, unstated character traits, and so on. For her, these are all part of the storyworld, whether they made it into the books or not. So when she’s asked a question, she references this extensive catalog of imagination rather than just the released texts. The effect of this is that for her canon is much bigger, and it’s understandable that hearing/reading something that violates her understanding of the storyworld might make her bristle. But for us naive readers who only have her thousands of pages of text to guide us, her “truth claims” feel overly prescriptive.

I agree with Jonathan’s disappointment that she didn’t bother including this little tidbit in one of the books – it probably wasn’t in fear of more right-wing backlash or worries that it would hurt sales (hah!). Perhaps she underestimated the tolerance of her audience to feel compassion & respect for Gay Albus? Or maybe she wanted to avoid explicitly blaming his love for Grindelwald for his inaction, along the lines that Rob suggests a la Willow? Or she was just chicken…

Cole – you thinking that maybe Tony was really gay? Care to elaborate?

Thanks all for the comments!

Jonathan, I don’t think writers as readers are a bad thing. In fact, I wish more writers were aware that in the end that’s all they are–another reader of their own text. Especially when distanced by time, writers may bring new things to their own texts and that, paired with their memory of being inside the writing process, can be immensely interesting. Within the fan community, fan writers often create so-called DVD commentaries (for a neat example, which actually adds writer and beta comments, thus highlighting the collaborative process, see here), in which they discuss the writing process and often offer their reading of their own story. But most of them also make it very clear that this does not suddenly offer a “definitive” reading. So, for me, the problem isn’t JKR becoming a reader of her text but trying to remain the reader. It’s about authors and authority (which is why I, personally, tend to prefer the term writer : )