Mandatory Harry Potter Post

Twenty years since we first heard the words 'butterbeer', 'Slytherin', 'Quidditch' and 'Sorting Hat'. How time flies. As do young witches.

At the risk of annoying those who believe people should read only age-appropriate books, I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone towards the end of 1997, at the age of 22. I was between degrees, working the night-shift at a British Gas data entry centre (there are many horror stories), I was ill one week and I'd read every book in the house. My youngest sister (I'm the oldest of six) tossed me a brightly-coloured book and explained that she'd only bothered with a couple of chapters because she hated reading – since then I've tried to disguise her every Christmas and birthday present as a book just to wind her up. By the way, I should thank her: that first impression, first edition paperback is worth a healthy sum now.

As a reading experience, bearing in mind I was delirious with 'flu, I enjoyed it. Having read all my sisters' Blyton boarding school novels, all of Alan Garner (still the best), the Narnia series, The Dark is Rising (never, ever watch the film), The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Worst Witch, The Secret Garden, The Box of Delights, Jennings and pretty much every children's book written, it was all very familiar, but well done. Certainly the writing was occasionally clunky, and the structure fairly plodding, but I thought it was a superior bricolage with some additional interesting things. Yes, they're liberal-bourgeois wish-fulfilment, but I'm bourgeois and liberal, and rather feel that there's not enough of it about. So despite subsequently doing a Welsh literature MA and PhD, I kept an eye on children's literature, and carried on reading the Potter novels. Come 2000 I got my first teaching gig on a module about families in literature: I did what I think may have been the world's first academic lecture on Harry Potter: one of the things I did was pass round a big pile of the books I thought had most influenced The Philosopher's Stone.

The two things I thought Rowling did increasingly well as the series appeared were comedy, and the shifting, uncertain nature of teenage friendships: how they're made and how they're lost. I thought, and still think, that she does loss and depression – particularly Ron Weasley's secret inadequacies – very well. I also liked her increasing taste for satire: the Ministry of Magic moves from being a classic British shambling bureaucracy to an oppressive surveillance culture modelled on the post-Iraq War/9/11 security state, Dolores Umbridge, the sadist in frills, is a comic but also chilling masterpiece, while Rita Skeeter is a pitch-perfect parody of the Daily Mail's columnists (a comic version of Sophie Stones from Jackie Kay's Trumpet).

Halfway between Miss Mapp and Theresa May

Other arguments made against the Potter novels are fairly predictable: derivative, clunky, middle-class, fantasy, Satanic (yes, oft-banned in US states and various other places), over-extended (I'd agree: the more books anyone sells, the longer they get because nobody wants to take a blue pencil to The Money) and lacking in social realism. All true to some extent, but they're also well-pitched for their audience, they address subjects such as death with a sensitive touch, they promote a degree of liberalism that's often lacking – just have a look at C. S. Lewis – and there are far worse-written books out there. They got boys and girls reading over the course of years, and they made literature central to popular culture for a good few years. I have a sneaky feeling that the primary-colours moral lessons contained in the series, alongside Terry Pratchett's later works, may be responsible for young peoples' increasing interest in egalitarian socialism.

I don't know that I'll ever read them again unless I find myself teaching them – I have no children to read to, but I am mystified by the strength of feeling Rowling and her works arouse. It's almost as if their popularity has meant that they and she have achieved the status of straw men or public property. In reality, they're page-turners written by someone who isn't and shouldn't be expected to be perfect, right all the time, a Delphic oracle or the Devil Incarnate. The novels and their author are interesting, thoughtful, flawed, warm products of their contexts and cultural environment. They make some people happy and they annoy other people. They answered a need for a particular type of fiction at just the right time. That's all.

Finally, if you're a Potterphobe reading this, THE BOOKS AREN'T FOR YOU. They're for children. How easily this is forgotten in the rush to praise or condemn. Twenty years has passed: we can all relax and assess the actual texts at leisure.

JK Rowling: right first time.

I somehow suspect that Harry Potter news isn't at the top of your priorities, but I thought this was interesting – and disappointing. In a heavily trailed interview which hasn't yet been published, JK Rowling said that:

…her famous protagonist ought to have ended up with Hermione instead.
In a rare interview given to Wonderland magazine, she said: "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment…That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."

If you've read the Harry Potter novels, you'll know that despite his bourgeois niceness, Harry is the alpha male: the Chosen One whose suffering, death and resurrection will rid the world of evil Voldemort. Hermione (my personal favourite for obvious reasons) is one of Propp's Helpers, aiding Harry by reading and thinking a lot. Ron is also a Helper – most of the time – thanks to his key qualities of loyalty, groundedness, patience, good humour and determination.

However, Ron's an interesting character. The youngest son and nearly the youngest child in a large family of poor and boisterous over-achievers (as the oldest of six, I can report that my own sisters and brother are pitiable, broken-down and damaged individuals)*, Ron clearly suffers from depression and self-esteem deficiency both within the family and in his social circle. Lacking confidence in his abilities and overshadowed by the more obvious talents of his friends, he plays the novels' Everyman, channelling the fears and perspectives of the non-heroic reader.

In the novels, Hermione and Ron's very gradual romance plays out over the multiple novels with a good deal of humour, angst and fumbling (emotional, that is), as Hermione's impatient intellect, Ron's self-doubt, their traumatic experiences and adolescent development combine to impede their progress. Harry's Christ-like isolation initially seems to preclude him from forming relationships: destined to die, he has a brief relationship with Cho Chang but seems to be transcending romance until Rowling unexpectedly provides him with a life partner in the form of Ron's younger sister Ginny, providing Harry with a reason to live and the novels with a good deal of awkward Freudian worry and comedy.

JK Rowling now regrets not pairing the Hero with Hermione who is almost his female counterpart: characters constantly tell her that she is the most accomplished and intelligent witch of her generation. I like Hermione because she's a popular culture intellect, but I'm sad that JKR has decided that 'literary' concerns should have paired her off with Harry. In Propp's Morphology of the Folk-Tale, the Hero completes his Quest and is rewarded with the Princess, who is therefore reduced to a prize for success. This is what Hermione would have been, to the detriment of both the text and the novels' moral universe. Harry and Hermione would have been a Power Couple, the confirmation of a set of values which prizes heroism, beauty and perfection over everything else and assumes that Ubermensch types should be paired off together. And as a correspondent points out: Hermione and Harry are an excellent example of passionate, devoted non-sexual friendship. One of the later films flirts with attraction between them when Ron's depression causes him to (temporarily) abandon them, but they resist. One of the sexist clichés I hate most is 'men and women can't be friends, there's always sexual attraction': not true in life, why should it be true in fiction?

Hermione and Ron upset the standard model of the folk tale, and open up a new range of romantic possibilities. Why does Hermione love Ron in Harry Potter? Perhaps because he's honest, funny, faces his own demons, struggles for a defined identity and doesn't have a Messiah Complex. Ron is an inspiration to those of us who aren't hero material but hopefully do have loveable qualities suitable for the Muggle world. There isn't an obvious alternative partner for Ron in Harry Potter given that he's clearly written as heterosexual – leaving him alone might have been interesting but not appropriate for the kind of novels they are, in which loose ends aren't wanted, whereas pairing him with Hermione suits Rowling's mildly subversive approach to social structures.

So I'm sad that JKR feels the pressure of hegemonic ideology and regrets not doing the obvious thing. The point of Ron/Hermione is that attraction is more random, ambiguous and mysterious than Hero/Heroine recognising each other's greatness. Ron is flawed and near-perfect Hermione is attracted to him. If that's not a wonderful, mysterious and inspiring thing, I don't know what is.

*This is not true. They're all high-achievers who view me with a sense of amused pity.

Happy Birthday, Hermione Granger

I mean it. I'm well aware of the usual objections to Harry Potter: unoriginal, overly politically-correct, flabby prose, adults who read books for children should be ashamed yada yada yada. But today I'd like to leave the literary debates aside and simply note that Hermione - who should really have been the main character rather than the helper (in structuralist terms) - is a true role-model. She repeatedly saves the world by reading a lot and thinking about things carefully.

Perhaps I'm biased. After all, I read a lot and am supposed to think carefully about things, as a teacher. But there are plenty of 'action' heroes who rely on instinct and brute force: James Bond certainly hasn't got to grips with deconstruction. There aren't enough thinkers in the battle of good versus evil.

A lot of people think Hermione's a stereotypical nerd: certainly other characters find her bossy, interfering and impatient: even Ron and Harry do so at times. This, I think, says more about them than it does about her. It's a way of dividing readers and characters between elementary and intellectual souls.

I certainly don't want to get into any discussion of the film version: try typing 'Hermione' into Youtube and you'll enter an awful world of bitchiness, neo-paedophilia and American teen angst soundtracked by the drippiest of whine-rock.

Any character which promotes reading research and contemplation deserves praise. Here's a line for my new students:

I've learned all the course books by heart of course. I just hope it will be enough.

Unfortunately, she occasionally lets the side down:

 "Books! And cleverness! There are more important things--friendship and bravery…"

Don't listen to her, kids. She doesn't really mean it.

We shall never see its like again

What was Rebekah Brooks thinking about on September 11th 2001? The Telegraph has acquired cassette tapes which give us some insight:

 A few hours after the attack on the World Trade Centre, I was asked by Rebekah to dress up as Harry Potter. She wanted me to dress up and go to her office in the middle of the newsroom.

SK: Which date was that?

CB: That was on Tuesday, September 11. It was the afternoon, less than three hours after [the attacks]. I went into her office and Andy [Coulson, the deputy editor] was on the sofa and Rebekah was on the phone. Andy asked me where was my Harry Potter suit and I made some excuse, saying: it's not here, it's in the photo studio. [Actually], it was in the office, but it was hardly appropriate for a journalist to be prancing about as Harry Potter. Andy told me I should always have my Harry Potter gear around, in case of a Harry Potter emergency, and told me that the morning after, I was to dress up for conference as Harry Potter. So, at that time, [when] we were working on the assumption that up to 50,000 people had been killed, I was required to parade myself around morning conference, dressed as Harry Potter.

GM: I have told you that this is not going to be held against you. Charles, you should think very seriously about coming in on Tuesday.

CB: Well, to be frank, Greg, as far as my future at News International is concerned, I haven't toed the line for the editor's pet project. I didn't prance around while the World Trade Centre was being bombed, for her personal amusement. I can't just stroll in.

GM: Why not? Charles, that is what we do - we go out and destroy other people's lives. 

Wow. So this is the kind of campaigning investigative journalism which various Murdoch representatives have told us will be lost with the demise of the News of the World.

Hang your heads, carping Britons, hang your heads.

Homage?

This is the new trailer for the imminent Harry Potter film. I was struc by how similar it is to parts of the Lord of the Rings films, primarily the one in which the band travel through the mines of Moria.

Obviously the plots are similar, given that there aren't that many plots available, as Propp knew (damaged hero ultimately isolated by the burden of destiny, doubt, betrayal, extremely powerful evil adversary, travel, magic, destroying magical objects, white-bearded powerful mentor occasionally tempted to wield authority, temporary defeat), but the cinematography seemed very familiar - minor key orchestral music, running along mountain tops, man in white beard falling backwards, just as when Gandalf falls into the Chasm. There's certainly a filmic grammar for epics, especially magical ones. Does the predictability affect your enjoyment, or perhaps enhance it?

Banned books special

It's the American Library Association's banned books week, as Intelliwench reminds me - more an American thing, as the European countries tend not to ban books much any more (though Ireland in particular had a strong track record in closing its citizens' eyes). It's easier to ban books in the US because it's a very democratic country - there are elected citizens on school boards, in the dog-catcher's office, on the town, county and state boards of education, plus the myriad of legislatures, and stupid people are often the ones who stand and vote…

Britain prefers to allow dictators and businessmen in other countries to sue in British courts over books not even sold in Britain - the US has even passed a law to stop this libel tourism.

But I digress. How many of the banned books have you read, and which ones astonish you most? Philip Pullman's back in the top ten after the film of The Golden Compass (which should be banned on artistic grounds), Anything which presents homosexuals positively attracts the book-burners, as does Harry Potter. Amongst the classics, The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men and Huckleberry Finn attract the ire of banners for 'language' offences or political content.

This is the 100 most frequently challenged classics: I've read 62 of them and have read other works by virtually all of them. Some are stunning choices - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, lots of E. M. Forster, Hemingway, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and Willa Cather! Most of them clearly annoy people on the right, though there are a few, such as Gone With the Wind which have attracted the opprobrium of the dimmer bulbs on the left.

Early Friday conundrum: what would you ban? Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer, How Green Was My Valley - all on quality grounds. Oh, and that chick-lit author who's standing for the Conservative Party - Louise Bagshawe.