The Lionising, the Wizard and the Closet
Oct. 20th, 2007 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceHmph. So Rowling says Dumbledore is gay. After all the books and all the reviews are written, after all the fuss is over, she trots this out.
Two things. If this is the case, it really shouldn't need saying, surely? It should have become evident, it should be at least inherent if not explicit somewhere in that vasty text. If it's not there to be read or interpreted, then it's not material and it really doesn't need saying. It either matters, or it doesn't; if it matters it needs to be there, and if it doesn't matter then who needs to know? Etc. That old phrase "show, don't tell" comes bubbling to mind; if she has to out him after the series is finished, then she hasn't done it right.
Also, I'm unimpressed by her choosing to do it now, at this cold dead end of all the hoo-ha. While the books were still happening, it might have been significant, even if only of a creative failure; now it feels both morbidly cautious and somewhat cynical, as though a final poke at the cooling ashes might ignite just a little more media glow.
Two things. If this is the case, it really shouldn't need saying, surely? It should have become evident, it should be at least inherent if not explicit somewhere in that vasty text. If it's not there to be read or interpreted, then it's not material and it really doesn't need saying. It either matters, or it doesn't; if it matters it needs to be there, and if it doesn't matter then who needs to know? Etc. That old phrase "show, don't tell" comes bubbling to mind; if she has to out him after the series is finished, then she hasn't done it right.
Also, I'm unimpressed by her choosing to do it now, at this cold dead end of all the hoo-ha. While the books were still happening, it might have been significant, even if only of a creative failure; now it feels both morbidly cautious and somewhat cynical, as though a final poke at the cooling ashes might ignite just a little more media glow.
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Date: 2007-10-20 10:57 am (UTC)One can of course take things out of context.
"Everyone keeps saying, 'it must be so onerous. Doesn't it hurt your hand?'" she said. "But, honestly, that's the bit I really enjoy." Hmm. Snicker. In reference to what? Her writing? No. This in response to all the book signing she is doing on her current US tour.
The fact that Dumbledore has been 'outed' by his author is typical to me of the sort of mawkish, PC right-on all inclusiveness of Harry Potter as a whole - with its veneer of jolly hockeysticks Englishness so appealing to folk outside its shores - and why I have found it antiseptic in the extreme. No fabulous literary botany there. And perhaps one reason why it has been so vastly successful!!
The fact that she has amassed £500,000,000 out of it is not sour grapes at all!
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/howard_jacobson/article2811630.ece
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/howard_jacobson/article94818.ece