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.