That’s a little bit about what the 7th book is about, though. In the first 6 books, Harry (and us) just sees Dumbledore as a teacher/parental figure, and nothing else. But in the last book, he, and us, come to realize that Dumbledore was a real person in his own right, that he had a backstory, and a life of his own.
Is there a full transcript of this Q&A session? Some of you seem to think Rowling put out this info as a press release or staged the whole Q&A to make this huge announcement.
AFAIK, A question came up, and she answered it - perhaps with more detail and back-story than some of you agree with, but I seriously doubt she approached it as a major announcement, or used it as an excuse to indulge in deliberately controversial revelations. She had stuff in mind when she wrote the books, and when people ask her, she’s not shy about discussing it. So sue her.
Believe me, I am no fan of “Special Editions” and re-cuts of existing art. Yes, I believe released works should stand on their own. But Rowling is not re-writing or re-editing the books, she’s just explaining where she was coming from when she wrote them. I have no problem with George Lucas discussing the evolution of plot-points in his director/producer commentary. I have a BIG problem with digitally inserting a Jabba-the-Hutt scene some twenty years after the film was released.
I sure out there, somewhere, is Santa Pron. and elf pron, too. But, I ain’t googling it.
Yes, it would have been just as disturbing, to me at least, if Rowling had said that Dumbledore was nailing McGonagall doggy-style every other Thursday. It’s just a bit offputting to think of Albus all up in that, whatever “that” happens to be.
No, I don’t think I missed anything. If she had “revealed” that he had had a hetero relationship with some broad in his youth, there’d be no thread at all, much less the torturous reasoning on why JKR was “wrong” to reveal some backstory about her own character.
Bullshit. I didn’t know that she had revealed stuff about Hermione’s parents–if I had, I would feel the same. You don’t seem to understand this, but it’s not the content of the revelation, it’s the act of revealing that bothers me. I find the “epilogue” portion of book 7 distasteful, but that’s my opinion–it’s the most poorly written bit of any of her books.
Darth Vader’s Little Palis correct in essentials. She didn’t do this as a PR stunt, but given the controversy over the books in the first place, she had to known that a brouhaha would follow, so I find even her letting it “slip” thi way to be disingenous. I am NOT of the camp that disapproves that AD is gay.
What worries me is this: will Rowling keep dropping little bits and pieces about characters and plots until we can’t just look to the books for the HP experience? Will someone 50 years from now, have to watch all these excruciatingly boring interviews just to fully understand the HP world? That should NOT happen. I would like to think of Hogwarts etc as a world, not as a commodity that brings the author attention and keeps controversy alive*. I see no reason why Harry et al can’t just stand on their own.
Shirley–Gah. and Puke.
*frightfully naive of me.
Not only do we have the McKellen/Gandalf thing, but she shamelessly stole from Tolkein since it’s also an anagram of
Relubed Ulmo’s Dad! :eek:
Yes, one day we will have to cross reference the JKR Hadith with the JKR Qu’ran.
She really should have just put all this “what they did next” info into the epilogue of the seventh book. I figured that she left some characters’ futures vague so that each reader could imagine the rest themselves; if you wanted to think that Neville married Luna, or that he died young, or that he remained a bachelor, or whatever else, those were all equally valid extrapolations. Now it’s, “Well, no, he marries Hannah and they run a pub together, and that’s canon now.” Why not put it in the book then?
The “Harry Potter Experience” as I think you are defining it could not be experienced by future readers and cannot be re-experienced by you. The experience was only partly comprised by the books from the beginning. Much of it was the excitement (for fans of the series) of each new book coming out, the new revelations about the characters, and so on. Also discussing and anticipating with other fans. Future readers can’t experience any of that any more than present-day readers can experience Sherlock Holmes the way 19th century readers did.
Sorry if JKR’s revelation about Dumbledore liking dick marred your memory of The Harry Potter Experience (Band Name!), but the characters are hers to do with as she will.
We shall have to agree to disagree. What will remain, long after the book signings, interviews, the book debut parties, the fan fic, and the HP action figures are gone are the books (and the films). I hope that will suffice (and it should-if the books have staying power which remains to be seen. HP is part of the children’s classics canon, perhaps not solely on author merit*, but due to the global phenomenom. Once that has died down, it is the next generation that will decide if HP deserves to stay).
Yes, her characters are indeed her own to do as she pleases. It is the vehicle in which she shares such things that bothers me. Not Dumbledore liking dick.
*she’s not the best children’s writer out there, IMO.
Yep.
Well, bless her, she only had about a million words’ worth of books to actually include everything she thought relevant, and if she’d managed to address Bumbledore’s sexuality somewhere no doubt she’d have had to leave something important out, like Harry and Hermione camping out in the freezing woods and living off badly-done fish stew.
This to me is a prime example of “gay by choice” and “doing it for the attention”.
So Dumbeldore’s gay & the love of his life was… the second most Dangerous Dark Wizard of All Time, Voldemort being the first. And it’s a quarrel between them & Albus’s brother Aberforth that results in Ariana’s death. And even if Grindelwald later felt remorse & got himself killed by Voldemort, he’d still been responsible for a lot of death & destruction by that time.
If JKR’s “revelation” is, as I heard in one report, a plea for tolerance, it’s still could be seen as a mixed message.
OK, so Dumbledore was gay. But was he…
A replicant who carried a walkie-talkie and first shot while riding with The Kid in the Tangent Universe only to be saved by aliens?
Hmm? Was he?
To all those that are crying bigotry, face it, some people don’t like authors adding things after the fact. It smacks of attention whorishness and in a lot of cases makes little or no sense. And I’m of the opinion that JKR only made this little tidbit public because she wants to tweak the ultra religious wankers who hate her books so much.
<cautiously> I don’t think so, but that’d be a book I’d read.
A librarian friend just told me that she heard that Rowling is considering writing an encyclopedia of the wizarding world. I didn’t ask her where she heard this from, but that is good news to me.
Rowling confirmed this on her site before the last book was released. She doesn’t intend to write an 8th Harry Potter but she will write an encyclopedia to the series that contains some additional backstories and the equivalent of a literary “deleted scenes”, proceeds to go to charity.
I love the fact that the only writer ever to become a billionaire from print and one of the few ever to have the notoriety of a rock star and groupies by the million is accused of being an attention whore. My guess would be that she wants more attention like Clay Aiken wants to visit a titty bar.
Not necessarily. It’s based pretty closely on the love affair between Stalin and FDR which ended up with Eleanor’s teeth getting knocked out of place, and yet FDR is still a hero.
If I had the necessary equipment and knowledge for a YouTube music video, and if there were pics of Grindelwald, I’d post a video of Dumbledore/Grindelwald pics to the background music of Ike and Tina’s Fool in Love. (“You know you love him/you just can’t understand/the way he treat you like he do/when he’s such a good man.”)
“Dumbledore… I don’t know how to hex you.”
Well, Dickens in his day could claim “rock star” status, no?
If only wealth and fame meant sound mental health, alas…
Right down to the sex with teenaged groupies and the velvet glam coats.
I heard that Dickens once had to get his stomach pumped…