Potter and such

So the time has come once again for "Potter-mania" to wrap its sweet embrace around the world. (I promise this will be my only post on the subject until the movie in November) First I want to point out an observation, adult Potter fans are definately more obsessive than Star Wars geeks. I went to the Media Play midnight madness sale and needless to say I ended up coming back the next day because I could not take the craziness of some of these people. I tried to resist reading the book as long as possible to focus on the 2 classes I am taking but slowly but surely succumbed and had the book finished by Wednesday night. Just about every fantasy series that I can think has a book like this one...where is comes in is always different but its a necessary evil. The book that gives background and sets things up for the final conflict. In the series books that I have read these have come in various parts of the journey, in The Chronicles of Narnia it came in 'The Magician's Nephew' (the first book in the series but usually shown as Book 6 in boxed sets and such), in the Dark Tower series, although I am not finished, I would say Book 4 'Wizard and Glass,' which tells the story of the gunslinger's past, and in the Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles it came early in 'The Vampire Lestat.'

The book answered a lot of questions such as why Voldemort seems immortal, his origins to a degree, and a few others which I am not going to entirely give away because I know a few of you are still not finished. This morning I was bored and took a brief glance through a couple of the message boards and found myself rolling my eyes a lot. It wasn't so much the speculation of how it will all end and what not because human curiosity always takes hold about the future. It was the amount of bitching, pissing and moaning about the death in the book. I can't say I wasn't mildly surprised or even taken aback by what had happened but its not news. Rowling has been keeping the fans apprised, probably around the release about Book III, Prisoner of Azkaban, that the books were going to get more violent, sad, and that there would be deaths, including main and secondary characters. I can understand people growing an attachment to someone such as this but I felt that the way it was written, from the scene in the Tower to the end of the book, was absolutely beautiful. Unlike the death of Sirius, where there was emotion there never really seemed closure or really good glimpse and the grieving process and how the characters were affected, it was just poof he's gone. With the death in Book VI we saw how this death affected everyone, we saw the grieving process in full, Anger, Denial, Acceptance etc etc.

I'm really not going to make any real guesses about what happens next in the book, I will be glad to debate and talk about it with anyone, but I am not going to sit and obsess about a what will happen next like many of the fans (obviously its ok for the children to do this...but adults that are clogging up message boards bitching out Rowling...you people need to move on...its a book). I have Colin, school, my niece and my friends who are far more important that spending my every waking moment speculating whether a character is truly dead and how it will end. And given that its been an average of 1.5-2 years between books, its a waste of time. That's not to say that I want to know the ending of the book just as badly as the rest of the world, its a matter of patience.

The beauty of these books, granted they are based in a fantasy world, is it focuses on growing up dealing with friends and school and enemies, the hardships of being different from the norm, and it centers on a orphan who's parent's were murdered, his aunt and uncle treat as an outcast, and the villain is still out there looming not only the main characters' subconcious but the readers as well. Kids are being forced to confront one of many issues that parents aren't exactly open about talking about, death and handling it. Not that I am saying that the deaths in these books prepare children for the loss of a loved one but introducing the concept and informing children that not everything in life is all roses is good. What is so wonderful about this book is it is getting a generation of kids and teens to put down their remote controls, video game controllers, cell phones and other modern distractions and getting them interested in reading. I hate to sound preachy but this country is not exactly known for its literacy, astuteness or educational system and since working at the library over 10 years ago its great to see (not to sound cliche) a cultural phenomonon such as this happening. Even more amazing is that this is spilling over into other books, ie Artemis Fowl, Lemony Snicket and even some of the classics. So great, right?

Well not so fast. I can't forget the most undesirable and obnoxious (yes more so that the aforementioned adult fans) is of course the whining and mincing and tantrums carried on by many of the Christian sects. (I can't say the Christian Right in this case but even some Catholics, who have become somewhat more moderate and tempered in some instances, take issue.) My contention with these people is how many of them have actually sat down and read the books from cover to cover, even one of them. Clearly although magic is a theme of the book its not really the main focus. Granted we do know the classes that Harry is taking and even some of the spells but not much detail is given to the processes behind much of the magics and sorcery other than what we need to know. And quite frankly, even the author admits this, much is stolen from myth, some of which she bends to her story line, and the spells and what not are made up. So are we to ban children from learning about the ancient greek myths or Egyptian myths etc etc because they do not focus on monotheistic beliefs? I saw an interview from one of these idiots in South Carolina, where the interviewee claimed this was teaching children the 'arts of witchery and wicca.' Bullplop! Horsepuckey! I have yet to hear one story of a child getting on a broomstick and leaping off a roof top or poisoning their parents 'because I read it in a Harry Potter book.' These people need to realize that people are turning away from the Church (Catholic, Protestant, or any other) because the Western religions are slow to change and aren't aren't exactly accepting of new and different. Then again these are faiths that rely on tradition and doctrine that is old, and seem to pick and choose what passages benefit them and their interpretation and which don't (there are people out there, yes, including my dearly beloved aunt who actually believe the planet is only 6-7000 years old) might I bring up the subject of eating pork and slaverly, common themes in the bible. We see the books of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein rife with fantasy and magic and yet these same people draw the conclusion that they are mirrored on the faith or the life of Christ. I am no theologian but to someone who has read the Bible cover to cover and went to a Catholic High School, these are flimsy connections at best. And why is it just Harry Potter, why not the entire Fantasy genre, even the other 'non-Potter' books that are focused on children? I can't really say and I am not going to venture a guess as to why. It seems they are making the rules up as they go. (And its not just with literature, I remember fairly recently there was a Baptist Church down south that was boycotting Disney because of Gay Days) In the mean time, to those of you who are buying the books sherely to burn them (yeah I remember the Nazis doing a similar tactic, that's what I think of you people) feel free to keep buying them...all you are doing is putting more money into the pocket of the author and I am fully confident that she can whether the storm. Its all well and good to have a system of values, morals and ethics but keep them to yourself, because I have my own set and to me, your set of values is nothing more than a type Neo-Puritanism, which did not last long at all.

In the meantime, I am going to keep on enjoying these books and maybe a few others with an open mind and will continue to debate, speculate and think because its human.