"Beneath her fingernails, the frost makes billions of tiny diadems and coronas on the slats of the bench, a lattice of dumbfounding complexity."
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014 Scribner
One funny way that Joanne Rowling and the Harry Potter books have affected me is in introducing me to words and names in the English language, words and names of which I had never before heard nor read, words and names that now jump at me from the page when I encounter them in my daily life.
It's quite wonderful, really, for me. I already had a decent education in English Literature and the history of Western Europe and North America, through university and into grad school, and my career as a journalist and then a lawyer had exposed me to all kinds of different areas of study, of expertise, of knowledge. So my vocabulary was already pretty good.
That's why it is such a thrill for me to find an author who can expand my knowledge base even further, who can introduce me to names and words and phrases that I had never before encountered.
Rowling is one of those people. And so is Anthony Doerr.
"Diadem" was completely new to me when I first read of the Diadem of Ravenclaw in the Harry Potter books. I had to look it up in a dictionary to find out what it meant.
The second context in which I have found that word, lying like a gleaming jewel in the grass, is in Doerr's novel All The Light We Cannot See. And, amazingly enough, it is from the point of view of a blind character, Marie-Laure, that Doerr presents the word which, for me, has come to convey a sense of dazzling beauty.
"Hermione" is another such word, a name of which I had never heard until a buck-toothed, frizzy-haired little brainiac walked into my life in The Philosopher's Stone. I have already written about my later encounter with another Hermione in another context.
I wonder how long this will continue to happen to me. When I am 90, will I stumble across "diadem" in yet another book and be immediately transported into Rowling's magical world yet again?
For me, some words and names are Rowling's property -- she introduced me to them, she made me cherish them. Anyone else who uses them is merely borrowing them from Harry Potter.
Showing posts with label Joanne Rowling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joanne Rowling. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
Respecting the intelligence of young readers
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have started searching the internet for early interviews with J.K. Rowling as part of my effort to understand her writing process. I am interested in understanding both how she approached planning and writing such a complicated story (broken down, as it was, into seven separate novels) and to what level of detail she had actually planned the seven-book arc in the early years.
It's been an interesting experience, as much because there are really very few interviews available from the early days -- before or as, say, the second book was written -- as because of what I am learning from the interviews themselves.
For example, I confirmed what I had long suspected: the books are published under the name "J.K. Rowling" because the British publisher worried that young male readers would not pick up a book written by "Joanne Rowling", a clearly female writer
Although it seems clear that she now finds the publisher's request that she use her initials silly and potentially problematic, Rowling has admitted that, at the time, she was so grateful that someone was going to publish The Philosopher's Stone that (as she told the New York Press Club in 2000), "I would have let them call me Enid Snodgrass if they published the book so I really wasn’t that bothered with it".
I love that comment for two reasons: one, it exemplifies what a fun and funny person Jo Rowling is and, two, it gives me a potential approach to understanding other questionable decisions that were made with regard to the Harry Potter books and films. For example, take Scholastic Books' decision to Americanize the books for the US audience and any number of the decisions made by the makers of the films.
Is it possible that J.K. did not feel she was in a powerful enough position to oppose Scholastic when it decided to rename the already successful first book The Sorcerer's Stone out of fear that American youngsters would not understand or be interested in a "philosopher's" stone?
That decision was made very early, apparently in conjunction with the awarding of a significant advance to Rowling for the American rights. It was made, in fact, before Joanne Rowling was JOANNE ROWLING, the international star writer with significant personal wealth. Is it possible she disagreed with the proposed Americanization but didn't feel like she was in a position to resist it?
From what I've seen, Rowling has a great deal of respect for young people and their intelligence. In that NY Press Club appearance, she actually chided the host for making a less than kind comment about the handwriting of one young person who had submitted a question. I cannot imagine that she would have agreed with Scholastic's contention (whether stated openly or not) that American youngsters would be scared off by the word "philosopher" in the title.
And then there is the decision to eliminate Snape's "test" from the film of that first book. I found it bad enough that screen-writer Stephen Kloves was permitted to make what I consider to be inexplicable decisions to change the Devil's Snare test and the winged key test (I don't think the film versions were any more vivid or visual than Rowling's originals); why eliminate entirely the logic test that Hermione solves?
Was it again because film viewers weren't considered smart enough to follow the test? Was it because they didn't think the riddle with the bottles could be translated onto film in an interesting way?
To me, Snape's logic puzzle was a key moment in the book, both in terms of the excitement of the moment (Hermione is able to keep a cool head under intense pressure) and in terms of promoting the characters and themes of the book.
We learn from it to respect the different abilities that Hermione and Harry bring to the table: moments earlier, Hermione had dismissed her own "cleverness" in deference to Harry's qualities of "friendship" and "bravery"; Snape's test serves to show how important Hermione's intelligence, her cleverness, her level-headed rationality truly is in pressure situations.
Sorry, I digress. I just wonder if, in those early days, Joanne Rowling felt she could challenge some of these decisions with which she must have, in some way, disagreed.
It's been an interesting experience, as much because there are really very few interviews available from the early days -- before or as, say, the second book was written -- as because of what I am learning from the interviews themselves.
For example, I confirmed what I had long suspected: the books are published under the name "J.K. Rowling" because the British publisher worried that young male readers would not pick up a book written by "Joanne Rowling", a clearly female writer
Although it seems clear that she now finds the publisher's request that she use her initials silly and potentially problematic, Rowling has admitted that, at the time, she was so grateful that someone was going to publish The Philosopher's Stone that (as she told the New York Press Club in 2000), "I would have let them call me Enid Snodgrass if they published the book so I really wasn’t that bothered with it".
I love that comment for two reasons: one, it exemplifies what a fun and funny person Jo Rowling is and, two, it gives me a potential approach to understanding other questionable decisions that were made with regard to the Harry Potter books and films. For example, take Scholastic Books' decision to Americanize the books for the US audience and any number of the decisions made by the makers of the films.
Is it possible that J.K. did not feel she was in a powerful enough position to oppose Scholastic when it decided to rename the already successful first book The Sorcerer's Stone out of fear that American youngsters would not understand or be interested in a "philosopher's" stone?
That decision was made very early, apparently in conjunction with the awarding of a significant advance to Rowling for the American rights. It was made, in fact, before Joanne Rowling was JOANNE ROWLING, the international star writer with significant personal wealth. Is it possible she disagreed with the proposed Americanization but didn't feel like she was in a position to resist it?
From what I've seen, Rowling has a great deal of respect for young people and their intelligence. In that NY Press Club appearance, she actually chided the host for making a less than kind comment about the handwriting of one young person who had submitted a question. I cannot imagine that she would have agreed with Scholastic's contention (whether stated openly or not) that American youngsters would be scared off by the word "philosopher" in the title.
And then there is the decision to eliminate Snape's "test" from the film of that first book. I found it bad enough that screen-writer Stephen Kloves was permitted to make what I consider to be inexplicable decisions to change the Devil's Snare test and the winged key test (I don't think the film versions were any more vivid or visual than Rowling's originals); why eliminate entirely the logic test that Hermione solves?
Was it again because film viewers weren't considered smart enough to follow the test? Was it because they didn't think the riddle with the bottles could be translated onto film in an interesting way?
To me, Snape's logic puzzle was a key moment in the book, both in terms of the excitement of the moment (Hermione is able to keep a cool head under intense pressure) and in terms of promoting the characters and themes of the book.
We learn from it to respect the different abilities that Hermione and Harry bring to the table: moments earlier, Hermione had dismissed her own "cleverness" in deference to Harry's qualities of "friendship" and "bravery"; Snape's test serves to show how important Hermione's intelligence, her cleverness, her level-headed rationality truly is in pressure situations.
Sorry, I digress. I just wonder if, in those early days, Joanne Rowling felt she could challenge some of these decisions with which she must have, in some way, disagreed.
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