Authors, readers and texts

[girlyswot]

Often I find myself thinking about the HP fandom when I'm supposed to be working and vice versa. Partly this is because of an interesting overlap in terminology - I'm reading through books on the formulation of the New Testament canon at the moment. Someone recently described JKR's interviews as 'deuterocanonical' and, of course, we're all accustomed to the terminology of canon in the HP world.

For the book that I spend most of my days and hours and weeks and years studying (the Christian bible), there is no possibility of interviewing the long-dead human authors. The only way to establish what they meant in their books is by means of the text itself (once the relevant historical, linguistic and other analyses and comparisons are done). The text must stand alone in creating meaning, telling stories, establishing characters and so on.

I think perhaps this is why I am so ambivalent about, oh all right, opposed to, treating JKR's interviews as if they are 'canon'. Someone recently made a comment about the HP characters only existing in JKR's head and that she knows them better than anyone and that's why we should listen to her interviews and take her comments as absolute.

I disagree. I don't think Harry Potter lives in JKR's head. I think he lives in the text of the seven books. I profoundly hope that JKR will never be tempted to write 'book 8' but if she ever were to take on such a task, I think she'd quickly discover that some of these things she's saying just wouldn't work in the world and with the characters who already live on the pages of her books.

I also think that we as readers shouldn't need to ask her questions. Before book 7, yes of course - there were questions that we knew we needed answers to (and we also knew they were the ones that wouldn't be answered in interviews) but now we have the whole story, the completed canon. And it is quite clearly complete. I thought DH was a tour de force and I have to say that it has changed my opinions of Rowling as a writer quite significantly. She has told a great story, one that has real depth and meaning, and one that has power to change its readers' minds and hearts. The story is done and should be allowed to speak for itself. The answers to all the questions we need to know are there already in the text and it's lazy to ask JKR to spell them out for us.

Comments

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

Ros, this is an area where our professional areas of expertise overlap, and I agree with you -- but from a different angle.

In the area of U.S. Constitutional law there is always a tension between treating the Constitution as it was "originally intended" by its authors, and treating the words as having changing meaning over time. There are problems with both methods. If you apply original intent, then you are stuck with meanings of rather broad and vague words that are 220 years out of date and entirely inapplicable to the world as it now exists. (The document is excruciatingly difficult to alter, and so we're pretty much stuck with the words that are there.) But if you treat the words as having changing meaning over time, then (it is argued) they have essentially no meaning at all.

The way I resolve this condundrum is to remember that the authors of the document didn't have a singular intent, but rather a collection of intents and interests that often contradicted each other. The only intent we know for sure they had, was to write these particular words. We also know that they were free to choose as specific or as vague words as they liked, and in some places they chose highly specific, technical terms. We should conclude, therefore, that where the words were more vague, they were vague on purpose, in order to allow future generations to reinterpret them as needed.

In the area of HP, JKR is unusual in that she actually had such detailed backstories and future stories for her characters. Not all authors need such things, but apparently she does. But I'm also certain that she changed her mind over time about those stories -- two famous examples are her decision to kill Remus & Tonks and her decision to "save" Arthur. Thus, JKR's "intent" as to what happens to these characters is not fixed, but fluid. The only thing that is fixed are the books themselves.

Having said this, I will admit that I rewrote the middle section of Minding the Baby after reading the LiveChat interview. Originally I had written Narcissa emphatically assuring Andromeda that Bellatrix was not Tonks's killer. JKR directly contradicted that, and so I rewrote the scene -- it was naturally much nastier as a result. Should I have stuck to my guns? Who knows?

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

That's such a good example, Ken. We can't read into the minds of the founding fathers, we can only read their words. And, as you point out, we can get quite a lot of information from words - why did they choose this rare word rather than that common one which means almost the same thing? Or this vague one, or this specific one?

I'd say with regard to your story - you were free to do either. Except that, as fanfic writers we have the problem of plausibility. If, say, Mary were to write her Ron the Builder story now, there would be at least some readers who would denounce the whole premise as implausible on the basis of the interview. You might want to say that's their problem, but if you're writing stories for people to read, you have to bear it in mind.

I do think it's interesting that JKR has such detailed backstories for so many of her very minor characters. I generally know some odd things about my characters that don't make it into the story, but not their whole CV and family tree. Do you?

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

It really depends. For relatively short stories I know practically nothing about the characters except what I put on the page -- and that's true for other details as well. It drives some readers crazy that I can't tell them exactly what "The Emmigration" was in my Excavations story, example -- but I didn't need to know it for the story itself, so I didn't bother figuring it out.

There are some things, though, that I do have to know. When I'm doing a story like Counting to Five Thousand, which has a number of characters of different ages who appear in different years, I have to write a chronology of events and births because otherwise the whole thing will fall apart. So I knew exactly when Phillipe, Ned, Goerges-Jacques and Petra were born, exactly when each of the three scenes in the book happened, exactly when Ginevra died, etc. For Returning Were As Tedious I'm keeping a list of the students at Hogwarts at the same time Severus is (not all of them -- only the ones he meets or hears about), including their House and year. But not beyond that. Unless the detail is important to the story in some way, I don't bother.

I can understand JKR, though; especially with backstories. Sirius's dialogue had to be realistic from the word go, and she felt she could accomplish that only if she knew his family background etc. I get that.

[stmargarets.livejournal.com]

I don't think Harry Potter lives in JKR's head. I think he lives in the text of the seven books. I profoundly hope that JKR will never be tempted to write 'book 8' but if she ever were to take on such a task, I think she'd quickly discover that some of these things she's saying just wouldn't work in the world and with the characters who already live on the pages of her books.

Amen, sister!


Novel writing hinges on cause/effect. That's why revelations about JKR's backstory for her characters almost always makes sense, since she's showing us the cause of why the characters are acting that way in the text. The problem with the Trelawney-type pronouncements is that there is no logic trail for us to be led along until we belive. Ron as Auror (for example)doesn't take into account his reaction to the locket - perhaps if JKR showed us how he handled Dark Magic in other instances, that we could start to believe it.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Quite right.

I think I just need to forbid myself from looking at the 'What would you ask JKR' thread at the Quill ever again. I just want to shout at all those people who apparently need to know where H/G live or what age Minerva retires or what position James Potter (Jr) is going to play at Quidditch. USE YOUR IMAGINATION!!!!! And go back and read the books better and work it out for yourselves whatever way you want.

[stmargarets.livejournal.com]

LOL - glad to know it's not just me. :)

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

What would you ask JKR? (I saw your rant!)

I agree. We don't need to know every little detail of what happens next. I'd be more interested if she wrote up what had happened before PS started. I thought she probably got the epilogue about right. There was enough information for those who have no idea without going into details. (And now I know Draco married Mary, I'm quite satisfied). The only concrete information wasn't really anything we hadn't worked out already (Ron married Hermione and Ginny married Harry and they had a few children).

All her comments at interviews suggest to me that she really hasn't got it worked out and is just saying what occurs to her at the time.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Well, this was my contribution to the Thread of Doom:

I'd like to ask her, if she was starting over again, what would she do differently? Are there parts of the books she's unsatisfied with and why? Are there things which she wishes she'd written differently in the earlier books that she felt constrained by when writing the later ones? Does she feel that she's grown as a writer through this process and how will that help her when she starts writing something different?

That's the kind of thing I'm actually interested in knowing. What seventeen years of being a writer has taught her.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

I didn't read your question. Far more interesting that what colour bathroom curtains Ginny chose! I haven't looked at that thread since the first few questions. It hasn't been very interesting on the whole. But the part about earlier books constraining how she wrote the later ones is very interesting.

So no questions about Charlie's arms and physique then?

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

I prefer to use my imagination!

[gabrielladusult.livejournal.com]

The answers to all the questions we need to know are there already in the text and it's lazy to ask JKR to spell them out for us.

That's why, despite the fact that she says George never gets over Fred's death, I know that George is going to be OK. His ear was a metaphor for Fred -- the ear can't grow back, and there's a gaping hole where it once was, but George bounced back, told jokes, managed without it. He's going to be fine, not the same, but fine.

I think like some of her backstory notes (the class list, etc.) what JKR says in interviews is kind of like WIP notes. This is what she's imagined, but she hasn't written it all out yet to see if it would work/make sense. Suppose book four was the last book and she said in an interview, "Well, I've always imagined Arthur Weasley would die in Harry's fifth year." Then she goes on to write the fifth book and finds out, you know what, Arthur dying doesn't fit -- well, that's it. She didn't lie, she changed her mind -- and if she was ever to write, "Harry Potter and the Peaceful Nineteen Years" she may find that Harry, while still wanting to fight dark wizards and dark magic, just can't manage to do it in even a revolutionary uncorrupted Auror department (he was never one for a chain of command and organization)-- or maybe he'll follow Ginny around as a Holyhead Harpy groupy and solve mysteries on the side...but I think that the future is open no matter what JKR's interviews relate.

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder what "getting over" Fred's death would mean, in this context, anyway. I don't think anyone ever fully gets over the loss of a loved one, but most of us are able eventually to become functional and even happy afterwards. Indeed, if I can go all mystical on you, the knowledge of the loss makes the eventual happiness all the more profound.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

I think you're exactly right about Fred and the ear.

WIP is a really good way of thinking about the interviews. It's not that she hasn't thought about some of these things at all, just that she hasn't worked out the whole picture in the way you need to when you're actually writing. I hope you'll find some way to write the stories you want to within the framework that book 7 has left.