the book was just a bystander
Jul. 16th, 2007 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmI have written, at length and not infrequently, over the years about why the Harry Potter books mean something to me, but those statements have been almost entirely about the child I was and the actual content of the books -- characters, themes, etc.
But, at risk of repeating myself, it is also important to me to note that one of the big reasons I am so ticked about the spoiler thing isn't just because I want to experience certain events of the book contextually and in the moment, but because when that book comes out, a big chapter of my life comes to a close. And I don't even mean the Harry Potter chapter, really, since I'll be at Terminus and there will still be the movies and so forth.
But Michael introduced me to those books. I remember sitting in his apartment in Brooklyn the night Book 4 came out. Urban Fetch delivered it, and he said he wasn't going to talk to me until he finished it and handed me the first three.
When I finished the fourth one, I whined to Soren, that I had nothing to read and I was obsessed with Snape and I needed something to take my mind off of it. Soren gave me Swordspoint and said Alec reminded him a bit of me.
So the Harry Potter books have been with me through four apartments and many jobs. They've been with me from before I decided to be an actor. They are directly responsible for several of my romances, two of my most pivotal friendships, and an astounding writing partner. They are indirectly responsible for my life as a fencer, for Patty and I meeting (and she's not even into Harry Potter), and a number of other odd and lovely circumstances in my life.
So while I may grieve the conclusion of the series and the possible passing of characters who have essentially held my hand through a lot of the blinding stupidity I've engaged in in these last years, there is also the simple grieving of this particular story -- not the one about Harry and Ron, Hermione, and yes, Snape -- but the one about me.
It would be intense under any circumstances, but under the circumstances of getting my first credit in a major motion picture, under the circumstances of Patty moving in with me, under the circumstances of Rose's Turn closing, under the circumstances of my finally making real and solid progress with my novel, and under the circumstances of yes, Michael and I being able to exchange friendly emails about his family, it all feels very solid, important, circular. That all these things reach such points of demarcation at once is a little weird, you have to admit.
So when people say "how can these books mean so much to you, they suck for all these reasons?" my overwhelming feeling isn't that they don't get it, or that they're wrong, but that they've overlooked the way the weave of my world interests me so constantly in my own peculiar serendipitous brand of self-absorption.
Sure, I can't wait to read what happens. And the grief part, after tensing up for it for so long, will be a relief. But the secret is, I half expect to wake up on the afternoon of 21st, after having stayed up all night and into the morning reading, and discover that I finally look my age.
And that is probably my last word on that, at least until I've read the thing.
But, at risk of repeating myself, it is also important to me to note that one of the big reasons I am so ticked about the spoiler thing isn't just because I want to experience certain events of the book contextually and in the moment, but because when that book comes out, a big chapter of my life comes to a close. And I don't even mean the Harry Potter chapter, really, since I'll be at Terminus and there will still be the movies and so forth.
But Michael introduced me to those books. I remember sitting in his apartment in Brooklyn the night Book 4 came out. Urban Fetch delivered it, and he said he wasn't going to talk to me until he finished it and handed me the first three.
When I finished the fourth one, I whined to Soren, that I had nothing to read and I was obsessed with Snape and I needed something to take my mind off of it. Soren gave me Swordspoint and said Alec reminded him a bit of me.
So the Harry Potter books have been with me through four apartments and many jobs. They've been with me from before I decided to be an actor. They are directly responsible for several of my romances, two of my most pivotal friendships, and an astounding writing partner. They are indirectly responsible for my life as a fencer, for Patty and I meeting (and she's not even into Harry Potter), and a number of other odd and lovely circumstances in my life.
So while I may grieve the conclusion of the series and the possible passing of characters who have essentially held my hand through a lot of the blinding stupidity I've engaged in in these last years, there is also the simple grieving of this particular story -- not the one about Harry and Ron, Hermione, and yes, Snape -- but the one about me.
It would be intense under any circumstances, but under the circumstances of getting my first credit in a major motion picture, under the circumstances of Patty moving in with me, under the circumstances of Rose's Turn closing, under the circumstances of my finally making real and solid progress with my novel, and under the circumstances of yes, Michael and I being able to exchange friendly emails about his family, it all feels very solid, important, circular. That all these things reach such points of demarcation at once is a little weird, you have to admit.
So when people say "how can these books mean so much to you, they suck for all these reasons?" my overwhelming feeling isn't that they don't get it, or that they're wrong, but that they've overlooked the way the weave of my world interests me so constantly in my own peculiar serendipitous brand of self-absorption.
Sure, I can't wait to read what happens. And the grief part, after tensing up for it for so long, will be a relief. But the secret is, I half expect to wake up on the afternoon of 21st, after having stayed up all night and into the morning reading, and discover that I finally look my age.
And that is probably my last word on that, at least until I've read the thing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
.
Date: 2007-07-16 07:46 pm (UTC)Speaking for myself, it's more that I sometimes wonder why you aren't as enthusiastic about stuff that's more adult (as I judge it) - or more complex or nuanced. Peggy and I are almost done watching The Best of Youth and it's yet another film that I see and wonder, "Why isn't
It's not just you, but I feel this way about many of my friends who seem to go for the glitz and the genre over the other stuff. They're well educated; they're living in urban environments; they aren't dumb at all. But the sort of stuff that I think might register on their cultural radar never does.
Re: .
Date: 2007-07-16 07:51 pm (UTC)That said, you often give me great film/book recs. So I have to use this as an excuse to say "OMG, see Goya's Ghosts." It has structural problems, but it raises a lot of issues I think will interest you about religion/freedom/revolution/self-interest and Javier Bardem is mind blowing in the thing.
...
From:Re: ...
From:.
From:Re: .
From:...
From:Re: ...
From:Re: ...
From:.
From:Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!
Date: 2007-07-16 07:47 pm (UTC)I started reading HP in 1999. I heard an interview with Rowling on NPR when Book 3 came out. I bought the first book that day. I found fandom shortly after that. Almost 8 years! And while I don't have quite so many things as you do (MY WORD! :D ) I just finished grad school. I have a rewrite dependent acceptance of a short story at a major lit magazine. We're on the cusp deciphering what is making me so sick. We're trying to buy a house. We got married a few weeks after Book 6 came out. Second anniversary is quite soon. The friends I speak with almost every day? I know them all because of the HP fandom. So this ending is huge for me.
But really the single most compelling reason this series of books is important to me is that I was horribly depressed when I discovered the books. They were the only thing that broke though the fog I was in until I went on medication. I sort of feel like they saved my life.
Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!
Date: 2007-07-16 09:41 pm (UTC)Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!
From:Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!
From:my post was in no way
Date: 2007-07-16 08:21 pm (UTC)I am sure I too have my way of weaving the imagined with the real as it relates to my life story.
I wish you great reading when the book is released. Which is weird ....because that statement makes it sound like it is has been in prison.
Re: my post was in no way
Date: 2007-07-16 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:25 pm (UTC)You've put your feelings down so beautifully here, I just had to say something.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:29 pm (UTC)I'll even go out on a limb here and say that one reason I really, really don't get the fanfic thing is that you are so brilliant on your own, that from here, seeing you writing fanfic looks like you hanging onto the last vestiges of your fear.
I think you spent a long time afraid to truly be yourself, and that fear is still sticking around.
What would your story be like if it was only yours?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:38 pm (UTC)When people ask me what I do for a living, I laugh and I tell them I live an almost entirely fictional life. when they ask what it means I explain I'm an actor, and a writer and a serious student of historical fencing.
I despise the idea of defining my life by anything, particularly by what I do (in a normal career sense), and that response is the best I can do to meet everyone's needs. There is a profound difference, to me at any rate, between basing one's life on something and using something other than a basic calendar to mark the phases of it.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:...
Date: 2007-07-16 10:44 pm (UTC)I think, if I published a novel - even a novel that many, many people loved - I'd be appalled to discover that it was inspiring people to write fanfic based on it - rather than inspiring them to write their own original work themselves. While imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, you have to wonder if you've made an error of a certain kind.
With all the genre and the fantasy stuff out there, at a certain point someone's real story, their authentic lived experience, becomes more interesting or compelling than any fantasy or science fiction exercise could be. At what point will we all start to revolt against escapism?
Re: ...
From:.
From:Re: .
From:.
From:Re: .
From:.
From:Re: .
From:...
From:Re: ...
From:Re: .
From:Re: .
From:Re: .
From:Re: .
From:Re: .
From:Re: .
From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 01:56 pm (UTC)Have you actually read her fanfic?
No one's story is only their own, anyway. We are all part of one another's stories. No story can tell the whole truth of anything, only parts.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:31 pm (UTC)And yeah- Rose's. Sunday. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:37 pm (UTC)do tell...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 10:20 pm (UTC)They have charted an arc of my life, from childhood to adulthood. When this book comes out they will end something.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 02:14 pm (UTC)Pshaw! Embrace your awakening connection with a great series!
Date: 2007-07-16 10:38 pm (UTC)<Catherine, the heroin> "...It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?"
<Henry, the hero> "Why not?"
"Because they are not clever enough for you -- gentlemen read better books."
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; -- I remember finishing it in two days -- my hair standing on end the whole time."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 02:43 am (UTC)Anyone who doesn't understand such a notion doesn't read properly and should go back and be taught what an emotional connection can truly be.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 03:43 am (UTC)hells yes
Date: 2007-07-17 04:08 am (UTC)anyhoo, i am just out of tech for my latest show and must get some sleep. due to the overlap of my last show (i did two weeks where i was in rehearsal for one and in performance for another, which was hellish), i am behind on re-reading books 1-6, so i will be purchasing deathly hallows this week, but will not start it until i have finished rereading --- therefore i will not be reading lj or any other internet that may spoil it for me. i am doing this (despite doing it so late) because i want to fully experience book 7 without trying to remember what happened in a book i read 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. call me a geek for doing this and i will wear the name with geek girl pride. besides, i don't really want the story to end yet...
where are you going to buy your book on friday?
Re: hells yes
Date: 2007-07-17 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 01:55 pm (UTC)1. She's demonstrated that "unpleasant" is not the same as "evil" and that "nice" not the same as "good" in a genre all too frequently polarized along those axes.
2. She's strewn words and names throughout her books that bespeak a lifetime of discovering, archiving, and delighting in the oddments of the English language.
3. She's been able to turn a fairly transparent and unpracticed literary style into fiercely readable books because she's humble enough not to weigh it down with forced craft. She's jettisoned ornament and polish for the sake of velocity and whimsy, and it was absolutely the right choice, given both her own native talents and the sort of story she's trying to tell.
4. She's been able to tap into the feverish, pomp-filled, claustrophobic legacy of Public School Stories and siphon away much of the pernicious class-doctrine and sadism of them, while keeping a lot of the stranger subcurrents in place. I think part of why HP has such an intense slash community is due to these echoes of Tom Brown and toast racks and fagging; it's a horrid, delightful atmosphere to work in. Witch Week was my first experience of it; there again, it was co-ed, mixed-class, and dealt with magic, but it had a feel to it that fascinated me as a kid, and I never read anything like it until I picked up Harry Potter in college.
5. She's never apologized for these books. Not for pissing off the fundies, not for affronting the literati, not for the length of her books, not for drawing a disproportional share of the kids' book market, not for her too realistically angsty and hormonal teenaged characters, and not for the death and pain that's coexisted with silliness and adventure in the stories from the beginning.
She's never needed to preach any particular line in these books. She's never needed to use them as a mouthpiece to justify herself. The one thing that's rung clearly from the first page straight through is that she writes these stories and these characters because they matter to her. The shape of the phenomenon would have been so radically different if the timing or pitch had been just a little bit altered. I don't think it was at all inevitable that these books turned into the massive success that they were. But I don't think the books themselves would have changed much if she had been writing for a cult following. They're drawn from their own source. And you can tell.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 10:28 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-18 06:58 am (UTC)Yami no Matusei is an average anime in terms of story/characters/animation quality, where the characters
What draws me so strongly isn't usually something inherent in the media alone, nor is this response just a way to mark off a calendar by what the media one was consuming at milestones in one's life. It's a combination of the right story meeting me at the right time (and it's not even always the first reading, just the ones that mattered in that way), and the way that story and my experience of that story over time became part of me.
Fan fiction and discussion seem like a way to even further appropriate/appreciate/deepen my personal connection to a particular work. We re-tell these stories we love, and they change on every re-telling to foreground more of what we loved, or were intrigued by and so on, and none of that is static.
I think self-absorption has to help, but, yes, all of this holds what something means to me above any alleged inherent or author-intended content. I would think that unless you are the sort of reader who involves your 'self' very much in the text, this whole experience just won't make sense.
I've never been so involved with a canon that was coming to an end like you are facing with the Harry Potter books. I will, however, be thinking of you as I read my copy-- as you are indelibly tied to both Snape (and Richard St. Vier) in my mind.
Thank you very much for writing this.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-18 02:03 pm (UTC)Man, thank _god_ for the fencing right now.
This is what I keep telling myself -- no matter what grief the book gives me ove the weekend, on Monday I can go in and fight, and then it'll be okay.