Who wrote the Goblet of Fire?

Who wrote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?

Sounds like a silly question, doesn't it? Of course J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Her name is right there on the cover, she has publicly claimed it and accepted credit for it.

But I am not sure that the J.K. Rowling who wrote the four Harry Potter book was the same person as the J.K. Rowling who wrote books one, two, three and five.

The Rowling who wrote most of the Potter books is a master story teller, a clear and technically perfect writer, a person who cares about the details as much as she cares about the grand themes of her work.

The Rowling who wrote The Goblet of Fire, on the other hand, seems to me at least to have been a different person: a person in a rush, under pressure to take advantage of the building success of her first three books and publish book four as soon as she could. 

The first three Harry Potter books were published in consecutive years -- 1997, 1998 and 1999 -- and each came in at between 200 and 300 pages. That's a remarkable creative pace but, considering the relatively brevity of the books and the simplicity of their plots, eminently reasonable. And these books are masterpieces, technically perfect in the details and creatively impressive in their overall achievement.

Goblet comes in at a whopping 636 pages but was still published only a year after The Prisoner of Azkaban. And, if you read it carefully, it is a sloppy sloppy book.

At a macro level, the plot is hyper-convoluted and nonsensical: once Voldemort manages to place Barty Crouch Jr. at Hogwarts with access to Harry, the entire Triwizard Tournament is rendered unnecessary. Crouch could simply port-key Harry to the graveyard on any one of the many occasions he had access to our young hero and, in the process, Crouch himself would not have had to be sacrificed.

Further, as I have pointed out elsewhere, there are significant problems with key points in this book, problems that should have been caught by Rowling in the writing:

1. Wormtail killed Cedric Diggory with his own wand and yet, when Harry's wand forces Voldemort's wand to regurgitate its most recent spells ("priori incantatem") in reverse order, Cedric emerges as if Voldemort's wand had killed him;

2. In the same "priori incantatem" scene, Harry's parents emerge from Voldemort's wand in the wrong order: it is made clear throughout the books that Voldemort murdered James Potter first, then was forced to murder Lily Potter in order to get to infant Harry, and so Lily should have emerged from Voldemort's wand first -- but James does; and

3. Rita Skeeter must have overheard the entire scene involving Harry, Dumbledore, Fudge, Snape, McGonagall, Sirius Black and the others in the Hospital Wing at the end of the book, including the confrontation between Fudge and Dumbledore -- once Hermione catches her at the very end of that scene, Skeeter could have been forced to write and publish the entire true story immediately so as to force Fudge to admit the truth. And render much of the plot of Book Five unnecessary.

Even so, it is in the details of the writing that the sloppiness becomes unhappily apparent.

I have chronicled in previous posts how skilled Rowling is at providing the reader background information from previous books in interesting ways while still moving the plot of the current book forward effectively. In Chapter 2 of the Goblet, however, she simply slaps it all into the story in long expository paragraphs. This continues in Chapter 3 and, despite a promising opening chapter, we are almost 40 pages in before the main plot even begins.

The book is also rife with the kind of small grammatical errors (for example, subject-verb disagreements, especially when she uses collective noun such as "group of students" but then uses the verb in its plural form "group of students were") that Rowling usually avoids, with run-on sentences (... and ... and ... and ... but) and with examples where she tells us something rather letting us discover it through action and dialogue.

For example, I opened the book at random and came up with this quote as an example of a run-on sentence:

'Lovely,' said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned finger's had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering him out of the room again and opening a nearby door.

 It is possible, of course, that the failure is on the part of Rowling's editors -- perhaps all of her draft manuscripts arrived at the publisher's office replete with errors and the editors whipped them into shape.

Whoever it was, the fourth Harry Potter book fails to live up to the exceptional quality of writing of the other six. And I think it's because Book Four was a significant rush job. Even though it is a mammoth tome, neither Rowling nor her publishers saw fit to take the time necessary to make sure it was of the same quality as her earlier novels in their rush to publish it for their adoring and lucrative public.

And the women shall lead

So Space Channel in Canada is showing the Harry Potter films all through the Victoria Day holiday weekend. I have them on blu-ray, of course, but I always find watching movies on television much more interesting than watching my own copies of them.

As anyone who has read this blog will know, I am not a fan of the movies that were made, loosely based as they were, out of J.K. Rowling's books. That being said, I have also tried to be fair and honest in identifying those areas where I feel the films have enhanced or, by necessity of the medium, adapted the books in a meaningful, interesting way.

I've just sat down in front of the television to watch the last hour of the second part of The Deathly Hallows. The first scene I saw takes place in the Great Hall where Snape demands that the students and staff of Hogwarts turn in Harry Potter and he, instead, emerges from the crowd of students to challenge Snape and, by doing so, set up the final battle of Hogwarts.

I don't love it, overall. But I love Snape in this scene ("ee - qual - lee") and I love the feeling of, I don't know how to describe it, triumph of having Harry emerge to challenge him and McGonagall step forward to defend Harry.

And it is not lost on me that McGonagall and Molly Weasley, two strong adult female characters, step forward to duel with Snape. And, even further, I love the fact the first people to step forward to protect Harry after Pansy Parkinson tries to convince the student mob to turn him over to Voldemort are women: first Ginny, then Hermione, then Cho Chang, then Katie Bell and Parvati Patil, and, as several males start to join Harry's defenders, Lavender Brown.

Add one more detail: Luna Lovegood is the one, in the film, who tells Harry not to bother to go to the Ravenclaw common room but to find, instead, the ghost of the Helena Ravenclaw to help him track down the diadem.

These are pretty strong feminist moments. While two men stand at the centre of the final conflict, it is women who provide the primary, immediate and on-going support to Harry in winning that battle. It's really quite wonderful... and unexpected, considering the fact that Rowling, for all the opportunities she had to fill the Harry Potter books with strong, dominating female characters, too often failed miserably in that regard.

While I love the books and tolerate the movies, I have to admit that, at times, the films are better than the books when it comes to their depiction of women.

Not So Trivial Flaws

Trivial Pursuit, Harry Potter edition.

Very excited to get this as a gift from a sibling and her family for Christmas this year. To be honest, I had never even heard of it but was delighted when it showed up under the tree.

"Please please please," I pleaded as I opened the box for the first time. "Let this game focus on pure Harry Potter..."

Trivial Pursuit, for those of you who don't know, was created in Canada I believe way back in the 1980s and was an instant hit, first in its home country and then around the world. After the original edition, with its six original categories of questions (if I remember correctly, Geography, Science and Nature, Arts and Literature, History, Sports and Leisure and finally Entertainment), there followed the Silver Screen edition (which focused on movies exclusively), the All-Star Sports Edition (which is self-explanatory) and then the Genus II edition, which returned to the original six categories. At some point in there, the original creator of Trivial Pursuit sold the game to a major American producer.

From there, a series of special Trivial Pursuit games were released, one for every major fad that came down the pipe. Despite this serious dilution of its core base, Trivial Pursuit continued to thrive.

It's a story that sounds kind of familiar to Harry Potter fans, isn't it? Humble beginnings, surprising success, a sell-out to a U.S. conglomerate and a rapid proliferation of spin-offs that move the "franchise" into a deeper and deeper dive for profit and further away from its roots.

Although the Trivial Pursuit, Harry Potter edition, has many merits -- it focuses on the original seven, true Potter stories and ignores the inspired mess of Hollywood insipidness and merchandising frenzy that followed -- it also suffers from two flaws:

1. It prefers the American versions of the original stories over the British versions; and
2. It prioritizes the events of the films over the events of the novels.

The first flaw is perhaps understandable -- an American game maker is attempting to appeal to an American audience and so uses "The Sorcerer's Stone" etc., the name familiar to its audience.

The second flaw is inexcusable. The books are Harry Potter -- the films are merely adaptations of Rowling's novels (and significantly problematic adaptations at that).

So when you face a question in the Trivial Pursuit, Harry Potter edition, like, "Who burned down the Weasley's home?", you know the correct answer is "no one" because, well, the Weasley's home was never burnt to the ground in the novels.

In the films, of course, Bellatrix Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback do set fire to the Burrow.

And when you get a question like "What Muggle game appears in the background of Mr. Weasley's workshop?", you know that there is no answer because Rowling never describes the "workshop" in such detail. Sure, in the film, you see that there is a pinball machine back there but that is merely a choice made by a set decorator, not a creative decision of the creator of Harry Potter.

The least the game designers could have done was to introduce each question with a qualifier -- "In the film version" and "In the original novels" -- to point out the difference.

Of course, I would love to have a TP game that focuses on the books alone. Or even one that has a separate category for the films: "Film Facts" or "Film Adaptations" or some such. But to have an HP TP game that actually treats the books like they don't matter?

Not acceptable. Not even remotely acceptable. But typical of the trajectory both TP and HP have followed since their humble but outrageously creative beginnings. TP and HP have both been sold out and are being exploited by soulless US conglomerates who care more about profit than art, generating cash flow than creating magic.

"I haven't read the books but I'm a huge fan" -- AARRGGHH

We've all had this conversation:

"You're a Harry Potter fan?" someone says to us. "So am I! I must have seen each of the movies a dozen times!"

You: "What about the books?"

Someone: "Oh, I haven't read the books. But I'm a HUGE fan!"

Doesn't that make you want to scream? Can we not all agree that, if you have not actually read J.K. Rowling's original Harry Potter novels, then...

YOU'RE NOT A HARRY POTTER FAN!

I don't care how many times you've watched those ridiculous movies. I don't care that you know the film dialogue off by heart and that you can name the actor who played the auror who is standing at the gates of Hogwarts when Harry trudges up, his face bloodied, near the start of the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, or that you think the portrayal of Draco Malfoy is simply dreamy.

If you have not read the books, even once, you are not a real Harry Potter fan.

That's why I can't stand Harry Potter trivia events these days. In North America, at least, the organisers' idea of a show stopper, a stumper, a question that separates the fans from the wannabes, is something ridiculous like: Who was the gaffer on the second movie? I don't know and I don't care. I can barely watch the films at all, not to mention studying their ludicrously long credits to prepare for a trivia contest. Ask me about Rowling's world, her characters, her plots, her details... don't ask me about the movies.

What is happening in American society is that the movies are replacing the original books as the canon of Harry Potter. This is ridiculous. The movies are fine as stand alone projects -- some of them are even mildly entertaining -- but they cannot and must not replace Rowling's works as the foundation of Harry Potter fandom.

Not only are the film versions significantly inferior to the books as stories, as narratives, as world-builders -- they are flawed even as films. They are internally inconsistent and self-contradictory. They have plot and character-development gaps through which you could fly a hippogriff and they undermine many of the most praiseworthy of the themes, of the creative decisions, of the original books.

I have described many of what I perceive to be the films' shortcomings in other blog posts so I won't rehash all of that now. Suffice it to say, in my Harry Potter fandom, if you haven't read the books, you're not a Harry Potter fan. Okay?

What is Harry's crime in the Half-Blood Prince?

There is something that has always bothered my about one of the key scenes in The Half-Blood Prince.

As you will no doubt recall, in the later stages of the novel, Harry sees on the Marauders Map that Malfoy is in a boys bathroom with Moaning Myrtle. Harry enters the bathroom and finds Malfoy leaning over a sink, crying, while Myrtle attempts to soothe him.

Harry takes no action, other than to stand looking at Malfoy. Malfoy pulls himself together and looks up into the mirror. He sees Harry standing behind him, draws his wand and casts a spell at Harry. That spell misses and a duel ensues.

The two are well-matched (surprisingly so, considering Harry's experience and training, but I wrote about that in an earlier post). After several shots back and forth, Malfoy attempts to cast the Cruciatus curse on Harry but Harry is a shade quicker, hitting Malfoy with the mysterious Sectum Sempra spell that he found in his potions text.

Malfoy collapses to the floor, bleeding profusely and dropping his wand. The duel is over. Harry takes no further offensive action but merely stands by as Myrtle screams and Snape thunders into the room to render aid to the bleeding Malfoy.

From what I can tell, Harry did nothing wrong. He walked into a public bathroom. He watched a schoolmate cry. He responded to an attack by that schoolmate. He avoided being tortured by that schoolmate (who was attempting to use an Unforgiveable Curse on him). He took effective action to render his attacker incapable of continuing the attack, without actually killing his attacker. He took no further aggressive steps once his attacker was incapacitated.

Where is the crime? Why is he punished? Why is he subjected to such significant vilification from Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall and even Hermione?

Malfoy cast the first spell and started the duel with no more provocation than that Harry happened to be standing there watching him cry. Malfoy escalated the duel by attempting to cast an Unforgiveable Curse. Harry defended himself once attacked and stopped once he had rendered his attacker incapable of continuing to attack.

Malfoy was forgiven for attacking Harry and forgiven for casting an Unforgiveable Curse.

Harry was found guilty of defending himself effectively from an unprovoked, serious, perhaps deadly attack.

Okay, I can understand that Snape, who hates Harry immensely for a variety of perhaps understandable reasons, might see this an opportunity to get at Harry. Fine.

But McGonagall? Once she heard Harry's story and interviewed Myrtle, wouldn't she intervene in support of Harry? Wouldn't she demand that Malfoy, once recovered, be punished (and likely expelled) for launching an unprovoked attack on a schoolmate and for attempting to hit that schoolmate with an Unforgiveable Curse?

And Hermione? Sure, she doesn't like the Half-Blood Prince's book. And sure, she quite properly chastises Harry for using an untried curse on someone like this. But why does she so thoroughly condemn Harry for his actions?

From a narrative perspective, on the other hand, I can understand this scene and its outcome. It provides action in the middle of a fairly static plot. It permits the duel between Malfoy and Potter that we have been hoping for since book one. It creates a reason for Harry to be forced to miss the final Quidditch match and sets up the climax of the Harry-Ginny romantic build up.

And, of course, if Malfoy were punished or expelled at this point, the climax of the entire novel would be impossible -- with Malfoy kicked out of school, there would be no way for Dumbledore to be trapped by Death Eaters on the top of the tower that fateful night.

So I see the value in the duel and Harry's punishment to Rowling as a writer but... the outcome of the duel still does not make any sense in the world of the novels.

Rowling would likely have been better to have the duel start less decisively -- Malfoy and Harry square off, trade words, then begin to duel together. And she should never have had Malfoy attempt an Unforgiveable Curse. It doesn't have much impact in the course of the action scene, it is unsuccessful and it creates the problem of Malfoy getting away with attempting to cast it.

Then, Harry could legitimately face punishment for using a curse without knowing what it did and, perhaps, for responding to Malfoy's less nasty attack with a ferocious spell that endangered the life of a schoolmate.

These are not major changes I am suggesting but I think they would make the outcome make much more sense and not seem so contrived.

Voldemort versus Grindelwald: Who was the more powerful?

Okay Harry Potter fans, easy question: between Grindelwald and Voldemort, which evil sorcerer was more powerful?

Perhaps not such an easy question. And, unless J.K. decides to find a way to have the two of them duel each other, probably not one we will ever be able to answer definitively.

But, for the sake of the intellectual exercise, let's look at the evidence that Rowling does provide in the seven Harry Potter novels.

The only direct comparison made in the books appears in Rita Skeeter's scathing biography of Albus Dumbledore, which is excerpted extensively in The Deathly Hallows. In her book, Skeeter writes: "The name Grindelwald is justly famous: in a list of Most Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown."

In Skeeter's estimation, Voldemort was the more dangerous of the two. Does that mean he was more powerful as an individual wizard? Not necessarily: from my understanding, it means only that, in Skeeter's highly untrustworthy opinion, Voldemort posed more of a danger to the wizarding community than did Grindelwald.

But Skeeter does make an important point: in any comparison of the two evil wizards, Albus Dumbledore is a useful measuring stick. After all, Dumbledore faced both Grindelwald and Voldemort in battle.

Of Grindelwald, Dumbledore himself says this: "They say he feared me, and perhaps he did, but less, I think, than I did him...Not what he could do to me magically. I knew that we were evenly matched, perhaps that I was a shade more skilful."

And, of course, Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in their fateful duel.

So Dumbledore believed and then later proved that he was slightly more skilful (powerful?) than Grindelwald.

What about Voldemort?

It is common knowledge that Voldemort feared Dumbledore. This is a fact repeated over and over again, by any number of knowledgeable persons, throughout the seven novels, beginning in the first chapter of the first novel when Professor McGonagall says, "Everyone knows you're the only one You-Know -- oh, all right, Voldemort -- was frightened of." At that point, of course, Dumbledore admits from the outset that "Voldemort had powers that I will never have".

It is also a fact that Voldemort never sought a direct confrontation with Dumbledore: their duel in the Ministry of Magic took place only because Voldemort arrived not knowing that Dumbledore was there already and ignored Bellatrix's attempts to warn him of Dumbledore's presence in the building; and Voldemort sent Draco Malfoy to kill Dumbledore in Book Six and assigned Snape the task of murdering the headmaster if Draco should fail, rather than confronting Dumbledore himself.

(Another interesting question: did Voldemort at that point know that Dumbledore had been injured by a curse? I doubt it. Even though Snape did not know about the Horcruxes, I would expect that he would withhold the key information about Dumbledore's injury from the Dark Lord. Imagine how differently the story would have played out if Snape had, in his ignorance, told Voldemort that Dumbledore had been injured cracking open ring? Would Voldemort have put two and two together and realised that Dumbledore was hunting Horcruxes?)

It also important to note that Bellatrix, one of Voldemort's most trusted followers, believes that it is imperative that she warn the Dark Lord that Dumbledore is in the Ministry, even though, at that very moment, she fears for her own life and faces severe punishment for her failure to obtain the prophecy. In fact, she tries not once but twice to warn him ("Master, you should know..." and later "But Master -- he is here -- he is below --"). This suggests that Bellatrix knows that Voldemort would not wish to meet Dumbledore in the Ministry, or at the very least might change his approach if he knew his former teacher was present.

And Voldemort's own reaction to Dumbledore's sudden appearance is also telling: "'What --?' cried Voldemort, staring around. And then he breathed, 'Dumbledore!'"

So Voldemort's is afraid when he discovers that he must face his former teacher.

In the duel that follows, Dumbledore's focus is split between fighting Voldemort, keeping Bellatrix trapped and protecting Harry, and yet he is still Voldemort's match. The battle ends in a draw, with the Dark Lord choosing to withdraw (first by possessing Harry in a vain attempt to get Dumbledore to kill the boy and then by fleeing the Ministry) rather than continue to fight Dumbledore.

 It would appear from this evidence that Voldemort did indeed fear Dumbledore and that Dumbledore was the more powerful of the two.

I come to this conclusion even though Rowling writes, just before Voldemort possesses Harry: "For the first time, Dumbledore sounded frightened." From the context, I would argue that Dumbledore is not afraid of Voldemort at that point but for Harry. He recognises the threat to Harry and fears for his welfare.

I may be wrong, of course. Perhaps, in that moment, Dumbledore felt personally afraid of Voldemort. But even then, that does not prove that Voldemort was more powerful than Dumbledore but merely that, momentarily in a duel in which Dumbledore's attention was divided, Voldemort momentarily seemed to gain the upper hand.

So that leaves us with two Dark Wizards, both of whom feared Dumbledore and both of whom were unable to defeat him in a one-on-one duel. Grindelwald battled Dumbledore straight up and lost. Voldemort fought a distracted Dumbledore and withdrew.

It's not conclusive by any means but my gut tells me, based on the evidence in the novels, that Grindelwald would have bested Voldemort had the two ever duelled each other.

Concussions can lead to good things

A recent severe concussion left me warned off reading, watching TV, listening to music... thinking for two weeks. After that, I was permitted to read but only very simple books, only children's literature.

For some people, that restriction would be an absolute curse but, when you're a huge Harry Potter fan, it's more like a blessing. I was basically told that I couldn't go to work, I couldn't do any work around the house; I just had to sit around and read Harry Potter. What a nightmare!

So, in the next four weeks, I read the entire seven-novel series over once again, from Philosopher's Stone to Deathly Hallows.

An amazing experience. A testament to the greatness of these seven books and their author.

And I noticed some things this time around (I have read each of the seven books at least 20 if not 30 times), things about which I will have to write future Potter Thoughts posts:

1. J.K. does an amazing job of creating voices for her different characters -- this leapt out at me while re-reading The Chamber of Secrets with the newly introduced Gilderoy Lockhart and Colin Creevey especially;
2. The books have some laugh-out-loud moments -- the scene where the Weasleys get trapped behind the fireplace insert at 4 Privet Drive, for example, and many others;
3. Albus Dumbledore is unfailingly polite in all situations, a practice I would do well to imitate, even if his politeness sometimes hides humour;
4. I'm not sure if Rowling remembered how she designed Number Twelve Grimmauld Place in The Order of the Phoenix by the time she came to write The Deathly Hallows -- there seem to be too many inconsistencies and discrepancies.

 I also picked up the third of the illustrated versions of the novels -- The Prisoner of Azkaban. Like the first two in this fabulous series, this one is fantastic. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Surprising!