Spoilers - do they really spoil your enjoyment?

[girlyswot]

One of the things I've noticed in the hysteria surrounding the announcement of the publication date of Book 7 (which I still can't quite remember is called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) is a number of people who won't be able to read the book the instant it comes out talking about how they'll 'protect themselves' from finding out what happens.

Now I'm the kind of person who likes to know what's going to happen.  I often read the last chapter of a book first so I can see what the big events will be (some books are harder to do this with than others!).  Especially in mystery or detective fiction I like to know the solution so I can enjoy reading the book, taking my time over the prose, without scrabbling through just to see who dunnit.  I didn't read HBP until it had been out for a couple of months and I already knew Dumbledore died (though not that Snape killed him).  It didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book in the slightest.

I fully expect not to read DH the moment it comes out.  I'm too mean to pay hardback prices, so I'll either borrow from a friend or wait for the paperback or a remaindered copy or something.  But I'll be happy to know from other sources how it all turns out.

So here's my question, does knowing the ending necessarily spoil one's enjoyment of a story?  Not according to however many million people watched and enjoyed Titanic, for instance.  Or for anyone who's ever re-read a book, or gone to see a film of a book or a real-life story that they already know.  It seems to me that the enjoyment is in the telling of the story, not so much the story itself.  A good story can stand to be retold any number of times.  Can't it?

ETA:  I made a poll!  *is very excited at mastery of LJ technology*.  Please tick the boxes and leave me a comment to let me know what you think.

Comments

Aagh!

[(Anonymous)]

I might have guessed that an entry on spoilers would itself contain a spoiler, and now I know something about HP6 which is rather significant and which I didn't know before (having only just finished HP5). I think the problem with spoilers is that there comes a point where people "ought" to have read the book and therefore it is okay to talk about what happens. Clearly we have reached that point now with HP6...

But I wish I didn't know what I now know about HP6. It's funny how you can't delete knowledge from your head like you can from a computer. Maybe we're not just advanced computers after all.

Anyway Ros, hope you're having fun Stateside

Tom Watts

Re: Aagh!

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Tom!! I just assumed that anyone who was reading this was already up to speed.