Ten years ago, J.K. Rowling was a 30-year-old single mom living on welfare in a chilly one-bedroom flat in Edinburgh, and no one had heard of Harry Potter.
Ten years and 325 million copies later, the Harry Potter series is a legend and J.K. Rowling is a billionaire - richer than the Queen of England. And millions of children and adults worldwide have made a huge home in their hearts for Hogwarts and Polyjuice Potion, for Harry and Hermoine and Ron and wizardry.
Now the seventh and presumably final book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” hits the stands and J. K. Rowling's words on finishing it in an interview earlier this month were: "Actually finishing it was the most remarkable feeling I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t have told you which was uppermost-- euphoria or feeling devastated."
Listen to an On Point discussion on what has made Harry Potter so huge.
Why do you think Harry Potter speaks to people so loudly? What message did it have that we were longing to hear? If you have read them, what have you take away from the books?
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Comments: 4
Formulaic? Certainly. The 12 steps of a myth. Messianic saga. Fantastic mixture of puzzles, sleuth, clues, story, multiple and seemingly endless layers of human experience.
She, and it would be hard for me to believe she alone - editors, friends, have put together a compendium of the human experience that I belive will stand the test of time.
The negative comments I have heard from religious circles about wizardry belay the old saying you can't tell a book by its cover. Obviously they haven't read that the underpinning for the whole set is love, courage, truth, get out of your comfort zone and bleed for the truth. Have the courage to stop and think about what you're doing and how it affects the world, let a lone your situation.
Ever notice that magic has almost nothing to do with the plot line? It's a device. Ever notice how the protagonist characters force the reader to question the clues and explanations? A wonderful credit to the writer's interchange of voice.
I can't say enough about how deep this series is. Technically and philosophically it is rich and deep. The true popularity is the audience identifying with the wring of truth that touches every one of our personal struggles.
We shall see if it is truly epic; the test of time will tell that. For now, it is nothing less than vintage. I hope the world takes the time to enjoy this series and learns as much as I have. I only wish I could practice all that I have learned.
Since the Harry Potter books are, ostensibly, "children's" books, parents can read them (until my daughters were in their mid-teens, I vetted everything they read, although I don't remember actually forbidding either from reading any specific book) without feeling too "uneducated," and they are actually good stories, with a good plot, something that many modern authors seem to disdain, fairly normal-acting characters (leaving aside the magic), and accessible, albeit somewhat inelegant, writing. The world in which the characters exist is sufficiently similar to real life to be understandable, and sufficiently distinct to be exotic.
I don't know whether people will be reading the Harry Potter books in the next century; critics certainly have a less than stellar record in predicting which books will be read in the future. See, for example, Melville's Moby Dick, which was widely disparaged by the critics when it was issued.