A couple of days ago
marked the anniversary of the publication of the 1st Harry Potter novel in
1997. And I began "serializing" a speech I made at Western Reserve
Academy about my experiences reading HP. In that first installment I wrote
about how I'm an obsessive reader of an author's complete works; in the second,
about other authors’ complete works I’d read—especially Anthony Trollope; in
the third, about hat was it that made me cave, that made me read all of Potter?
Reminder; I delivered this speech at Western Reserve Academy on May 4, 2012.
Next day I
bought the books. And by the first of
August, as I’ve already said, I’d read the entire Potter-saga.
And I was
weeping.
Crying like a
sissy. Like grandson Logan seeing a
costumed lunatic on stilts.
The whole damn thing
just got to me.
Yes, the stories
are derivative—what fantasy novels aren’t? And, yes, Rowling often tells us more than we
want or maybe even need to know. But—and
here I believe is her greatest asset as a writer for young readers—she tells
the truth. By the time children can read,
and surely by the time they have advanced very far in school, they know this
world is not always a good place. They
know they are sometimes hurt by people who love them; they know they can’t
trust everyone, even people in their own homes; they know that people have
secrets; they know that “bad” people sometimes do good things, that “good”
people sometimes do bad ones. They know
the meaning of fear. They know that if
they tell the truth and say what they believe, they will probably suffer. They know that if they are not like everyone
else, they will suffer. They know that
no matter what they do, they will
suffer. They know that cheaters can
win. That liars can get away with
it. Yet they also know that it’s still
better to be on the right side, no matter what.
Better to battle Voldemort and be scared and scarred than to join him
and be destroyed.
This is the
world whose geography J. K. Rowling charts in the Harry Potter books. It is a fantasy world more real than what
exists in many “realistic” novels—or certainly on “reality television.” It is a world that children live in. And they recognize it immediately. I know I did.
On the night of
Monday, October 22, 2007, almost exactly three months after I polished off
Potter, I savor, in bed, the last sentence of Trollope’s last, unfinished novel,
The Landleaguers, a bit of
dialogue. A man says: … they don’t lave a por boy any pace.
And that’s
it. And Anthony Trollope’s last published
word … peace.
I get out of
bed, walk over to the study of my wife, who is writing, eyes locked on her
screen. I hold The Landleaguers before me, fanning its pages. Joyce hears, turns, sees me and the book. Sees the tears in my eyes. She knows that look. She’s seen it before. And, months (years?) hence, I hope she’ll see
it again.
Perhaps she
will For now rising near my bed is a new
pile—a tower of Richard Powers’ novels. His
first? 1985: Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.
As I finger that
first volume, whose cover shows an old photograph of three young farmers in
their dark ill-fitting suits walking down a country road, the title makes me
think of the very end of Shakespeare’s Much
Ado About Nothing. A wedding is about
to commence—weddings often mark the end of Shakespeare’s comedies, a device
still popular—and the happy bridegroom,
Benedick, decides he wants to dance
before the service. And so he cries out:
Strike up, pipers!
And then everyone
just dances and dances and dances …
**Note: I read several of Powers' novels (which I loved), then got sidetracked and was reading all of John O'Hara ... I'll get back to RP, though!
No comments:
Post a Comment