the book was just a bystander

[rm]

I 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.

Comments

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

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.

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 rm more into something like this?" I felt this way with The Lives of Others and Once too.

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.

Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I can only hope that at some point you and I have a chance to sit down and chat in person over some nice cool beverage. Because yes. Oh, my YES.

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: .

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, you also make the assumption, quasi-erroneously, that I'm not reading/seeing (and I see a lot more films than I read books, because of both time and what I do) this other stuff. It just doesn't lend itself to discourse (or the arc!) in the same way.

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.

...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw that reference. I know you see other things, but you never seem as passionate about them as you do about this other stuff. For example, I think that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a zillion times better than anything Baz has ever done. It's in a different league. Now, maybe you've seen it too - but I don't feel the passion.

I am looking at my own interest in narrative lately, and part of my frustration with so much of the genre stuff is the stale quality, the predictability of the characters, etc. We all have to look at what we find challenging and I am skeptical of genre's ability to tell me anything I don't already know. That doesn't seem like its point. We go to genre, in part, to be reassured. I saw The Squid and the Whale recently, and thought - why isn't rm passionate about this film? It's set in New York. It has great acting and terrific characters. But none of it is reassuring.

my post was in no way

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

a dis to your intense connection to this Harry Potter series.

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

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's cool. This was not a response to anyone in particular, at all, although I'm realizing people are totally going to take it that way now.

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

This is just lovely, and in some ways akin to what I feel - though of course for different reasons, different stories in my life, different connections. It all ties up and closes, whether I want it to or not.

You've put your feelings down so beautifully here, I just had to say something.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

What surprises me about this entry is seeing you identify your life so strongly this way. Because your life is your own.

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?

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

It's odd, the way these books have worked their way into the fabric of my own life, particularly considering that I put the first book aside unfinished, the first time I read it. These things always seem to come unnanounced.

And yeah- Rose's. Sunday. *sigh*

[nobodyreally.livejournal.com]

"first credit in a major motion picture"

do tell...

[rm.livejournal.com]

The stuff I posted about the dancing I did in the film last week.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think you're entitled to your opinion and I also think you're wrong. I think some people see it that way, because that's what it would be if they did this sort of thing. I like to play and I like to recount and much more than most people, I have the luxury to play and the luxury to recount. I've busted my ass the last 7 or so years to have a life where I never have to be anyone I don't want to be. I don't particularly believe in a single absolute self. And my life in the context of HP or Swordspoint or for that matter in the weeks that my Macbeth and I in Australia couldn't stand to be apart from each other despite the fact that we felt differently towards each other both in and out of character is inifnitely more my own and honest, than the life I once lived in kahki, the life where I wasn't supposed to do these things.

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.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Astounding but dilatory?

Stories aren't identured servants or slaves. We don't own them - though sometimes, I suppose they own us.

And we've all met the people who belong to just one - and they are scary.

Stories aren't solitary. Hemingway once said that you couldn't call yourself a writer unless you had a reader. No one's truly brilliant alone. We're all "in response to" or "based on." Without that wealth, we'd all be alarmingly poor - admit it or not, as we like.

And contributing to fill those spaces of inspiration - that's what makes a living art.

In conclusion ...well no point, really. Except you can't be yourself, if I'm not myself, seeing you being yourself. And maybe adding something along the way.

fiction is all. then again, I'm prejudiced.

Re: ...

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

I am looking at my own interest in narrative lately, and part of my frustration with so much of the genre stuff is the stale quality, the predictability of the characters, etc.

Yes. I felt that way myself when I stopped reading genre fiction. Nowadays, I go back to it, occasionally, and yes, some of it is fun, but it's . . . different. Maybe along the reassurance/no reassurance lines you describe.

This is not to call anyone "wrong" in enjoying genre fiction. Hell, I have my own film genre I get weirdly psyched about (okay, it's serial killer movies, I'm sad to admit). But I do go to it to be reassured, and I recognize that. The enjoyments seem different to me somehow.

[amara-1783.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for sharing this, as it really hit a cord with me :)

Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh totally. It's much more interesting to me than "post your 42nd LJ entry" which is so context-free.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's appreciated.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Merci.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I have no idea when I have time to go at all, with all teh stuff I have to do at home. I'll probabyl stop in briefly on Thursday.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm glad.

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

No, it's not "wrong" to like genre fiction - any more than it is wrong to like some deserts. But when that's all people eat, then they usually get fat and sick. And the same is true for people who do nothing but consume genre fiction and other genre products. Part of this is, as a friend suggests, a class issue. Poor people comfort and narcotize themselves on junk food and TV. Middle class people numb themselves with sentimentality and too much sentimental genre. Part of what I can't understand is why anyone who was really well-educated and living in a sophisticated, urban environment would find certain kinds of genre so compelling.

It's also the age of the genre fiction. Clark Ashton Smith, for example, wrote some great fantasy and horror stories (as well as some very good poems). But because he wrote stuff in the 1930s, no one cares. Likewise, Robert Aickman wrote some truly disturbing and really challenging horror fiction from the late 1940s into the '70s. But, perhaps because of the fact that his stuff isn't "current", very few people read him.

I know rm is a bright and well-educated person. This is why I am bewildered as to why she spends so much energy on stuff that I think is okay for kids, but... I would think she'd be hunting down and enjoying the weird little books, plays, and films that had escaped the notice of the philistine general public. I am really confused as to why she's not as enthusiastic about this more off-beat stuff. But I'm also confused as to why many of my other, otherwise bright and well-educated, friends, aren't more interested in the outre that much either.

There is an article here that has a number of criticisms of the HP phenomena that resonated me - mostly the lemming-like "coliseum" feeling it seems to have now.

Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Invariably my 42nd post is probably about how I drank a cup of coffee and made a face at the cat and not some deep window into my soul. Of course there probably isn't much more in my soul than coffee and making faces at cats.

(actually I looked it up and my 42nd post is a link to a webpage that describes the Woodlawn section of the Bronx... I have no idea what it is on my previous journal.)

I think many of us are feeling this is an end of a major chapter in our lives thing. But man, you seem to be having an intense time of it right now. It sounds stressful, but good. (The Coldstone Creamery dude notwithstanding.)

Re: Hope you were wanting to hear similar confessions in response!

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's really lovely. And I'm melancholic by nature anyway, so this is all a pretty sweet time for me.

Re: .

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

I like the way the WP article to which you linked put it:

So we're experiencing the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity.

More to the substance, though, didn't both Jonathan Lethem (in criticizing J.R.R. Tolkein's influence on fantasy) and Stanislaw Lem (in criticizing the whole sci-fi genre) have similar observations about the routinizing tendencies of those genres? And this is from authors who "fit" into those genres.

I don't know what to do about any of this. On hand, this loss of "literary biodiversity" saddens me. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that direct criticism ever works--people just dig their heels in. I mean, I see that happening in other contexts as well. So. I'm still figuring out how to be a better advocate for the sorts of works I like.