Harry Potter and the Spoilers of Doom →
The book’s been out for less than 24 hours and already Wikipedia knows everything. That’s citizen journalism at its best!
The book’s been out for less than 24 hours and already Wikipedia knows everything. That’s citizen journalism at its best!
Another Huffington Post blogger weighs in:
Rowling created this world that lives in our imaginations, and this is her final gift to her people. So no, it is not just about readers not wanting to know anything about the book in advance, it is about readers not wanting anybody else to know anything about the book in advance, so its arrival can be experienced by everyone all at once. It’s like a Schroedinger’s cat thing — the story has not actually ended one way or the other until the official release, and then suddenly the ending is at hand, there for all to share in together.
Oh, for goodness sake. Knowing the ending doesn’t change enjoyment of the book one bit. And the NYT review didn’t reveal the ending anyway, so what’s the big deal?
The New York Times got its hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s series, and posted a review on its Web site. And people are mad, MAD, that the ending might be spoiled by reports like this. Case in point:
With who knows what spoilers? That’s not rhetorical; I don’t know what spoilers because there WAS NO SPOILER WARNING EITHER WAY. So I didn’t read it (though in scrolling to the end to see if there was a “with” involved — a sure tip-off to the identity of the book-buyer — I did see the words “Ginny Weasley” and my heart flared with fear, and hope, because Ginny Weasley is AWESOME). But honestly, embargoes are in place for a reason, and entreaties from the author (or the Crying Game director, for that matter) are there specifically for the benefit of the public — the very same public the NYT is purporting to serve with their rushed-to-print review …
Please. Screaming about spoilers implies that the pleasure derived from a story comes solely from plot — and that’s plot in its most basic, pedestrian form: this happens, then this happens, then this happens. Sure, plots hold a reader’s interest, but they aren’t the sole component of a good story. Knowing, for example, (spoiler!) that Rosebud is just a sled doesn’t make Charles Foster Kane a less interesting character, or his losses by the end Citizen Kane any less tragic. In some cases, knowing how things end improves appreciation of a work; (spoiler!) Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense gains pathos when the audience knows that he’s actually already dead.
Anyway, the Times report hardly spoils anything. Below is the nearest thing to a “secret” I could find (spoiler!):
Harry’s journey will propel him forward to a final showdown with his arch enemy, and also send him backward into the past, to the house in Godric’s Hollow where his parents died, to learn about his family history and the equally mysterious history of Dumbledore’s family. … Indeed, ambiguities proliferate throughout “The Deathly Hallows”: we are made to see that kindly Dumbledore, sinister Severus Snape and perhaps even the awful Muggle cousin Dudley Dursley may be more complicated than they initially seem, that all of them, like Harry, have hidden aspects to their personalities, and that choice — more than talent or predisposition — matters most of all.
That hardly gives anything away, and only makes me more interested in reading the story. And that’s because the ambiguities mentioned here tug out what makes Harry Potter’s story so engaging. The older and more experienced he becomes, the more the world strips off its veneer of black and white, so that Harry finds himself in a world of shifting, gray ambiguities. The opening scenes of The Order of the Phoenix illustrate this well: Mundungus Fletcher, supposedly a wizard on the side of good, leaves his post watching Harry to engage in a criminal deal, exposing Harry and his bullying cousin Dudley to the deadly Dementor’s kiss. But then the old neighbor lady — who always seemed like a harmless muggle — turns out to be a spy sent by Dumbledore to watch Harry from the very beginning of the first book! With her help, Harry escapes — and is promptly expelled from Hogwarts for using magic in front of a muggle; never mind that Harry’s used magic expressly to save that muggle from certain death.
If the layers of ambiguity and uncertainty continue to pile up until the end, when the Dark Lord does battle with a nearly-dark-himself Harry, the story will have come to a satisfying conclusion. I only hope that old Draco Malfoy, the snotty rich-kid bully who’s pushed Harry around from the beginning, will finally listen to his conscience and do some good for a change.
