The Mao of Harry Potter
This weekend was nice in that it didn’t exist. It crept up on me as I suspected that it was the weekend of the 23rd, so I was fairly pleased when I discovered that a weekend of the 16th even existed. It was a free weekend, one that I hadn’t planned or budgeted for.
It’s an odd feeling, gaining a free weekend like that. Though I had just as many things to do as I usually do on a weekend, the fact that this weekend was unplanned for meant that those things didn’t matter, because my plans for them hadn’t included this weekend. My schedule had just been ripped open in the middle and a whole weekend inserted, as if some higher power had just looked down and thought “You know, that guy’s just working too hard. Let’s give him a spare couple of days.” and then made some sort of, I don’t know, mystical gesture.
It became a weekend of guilty pleasures; time was spent lazing around in parks and gardens, good food was eaten at a fine French restaurant (chicken liver parfait with an onion marmalade, chicken in a goats cheese and green peppercorn sauce followed by crème caramel, food-fans). I even won £10 on the National Lottery, which I used to pay for £30 of books. I know that technically £10 doesn’t pay for £30 of books, but that was ok, because as this weekend didn’t really exist, it meant that any money spent didn’t count.
One of those books was the latest Harry Potter book. I had planned not to buy it this time around, and instead just get it out of the library or even — shock — not read it at all, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that when I decide not to buy something, I will inevitably buy it the second the opportunity presents itself. In my defence, I did hold out for several hours before succumbing.
Armed with my new book and a complicated packed lunch involving cheeses and nuts, I headed for the Oxford University Parks to bunk down in a shady spot and get to business on the book. As I was wandering, I slowly began to realise that I wasn’t the only person who had had this idea.
I wasn’t alone.
They got you too?
The park was busy, but it was a weekend and beautifully hot and sunny so I wasn’t surprised. But there weren’t any people playing with footballs and frisbees, everyone was sitting. This was a little unusual. I started noticing that a lot of them were reading, and it was then it sunk in. Everyone was reading the new Harry Potter book. I’m not exaggerating; it wasn’t just a lot of people. It was every single person.
Now, I’m not easily spooked, but this felt a little bit weird. Everyone reading it was an adult, and everyone had picked the edition with the children’s cover. Nobody actually seemed to be enjoying reading it, though, everyone was just ploughing through it with a grim determination and a steely look in their eyes. As I passed with book in hand, people glanced up, gave a slow nod as they saw I had the book and thus was one of them, and returned to their own pages. As I said — it was a little bit weird.
There were families, with one copy of the book per person. There were couples sunning themselves but again, each with their own copy, turning pages in near-unison — you could almost detect a drop in temperature as a hundred people all turned a page at once and inadvertantly fanned the rest of the park. I started feeling like some sort of interloper, as if I’d infiltrated some sort of sect by just wearing their uniform and wiping the smile from my face. Perhaps if I didn’t start reading soon, someone would suspect — someone would point at me and start screaming an alien scream, alerting everyone to my presence.
I started wondering if the ownership of the latest Harry Potter novel had actually become a legal requirement, in lieu of a compulsory biometric ID card, and I’d just missed the memo. I sat down and began to read, to see whether the entire thing was actually just a front for a Mao-style Little Red Book, and it would be page after page of quotes like:
“How should we judge whether a youth is a revolutionary? How can we tell? There can only be one criterion, namely, whether or not he is willing to integrate himself with the broad masses of workers and peasants and does so in practice. If he is willing to do so and actually does so, he is a revolutionary; otherwise he is a nonrevolutionary or a counter-revolutionary.”
But no, it wasn’t. Unless it was all between the lines and I haven’t picked up on it yet, or unless there’s a secret transmitter constantly repeating the word ‘OBEY’ at subsonic levels. There may be.
They got me a long time ago.
So I sat beneath a tree and read for a while, trying not to think of the surrounding populace, but I couldn’t do it. Not just because it felt weird, sitting amidst the Oxford intelligentsia with all of us reading the same book, but because as people passed — also holding the book — they would look at me reading, and not look away until I had looked up, made eye-contact, and given the slow, emotionless nod. Despite the hot weather, I was feeling slightly chilled, and couldn’t shake the sensation that I was in a John Wyndham novel.
I wonder if this isn’t all part of some larger plan, that the initial purchasing of the Harry Potter books is simply known to J.K.Rowling as ‘Phase One’, and I wonder what will happen after the seventh and final book is published. Will it just contain just one trigger word that will turn us all into mindless zombies to do her bidding? Or has that — raise eyebrow, cue dramatic music, reverse dolly zoom — HAPPENED ALREADY? Eh?
You know far too much - JK will hear of this.
Pity, I always enjoyed this blog.
My mother bought me the book on Saturday morning. I still haven’t had time to even read the first page. I think this makes me a freak.
Actually I was going to hold out for the paperback edition to go with all the others I own but it didn’t quite work out that way…
I finished it last night. It’s essentially 600 pages of nothing happening. Weirdly disappointing.
That’s because it is a children’s book!
Being for children is no excuse for being bad. George Lucas tried the same argument and it didn’t work for him either.
I have about 80 pages to go and I’m still desperately holding out for some plot development… Fortunately this one reads much easier than the last two so it will be over soon.
Oddly enough, my girlfriend is nagging me to hurry up and finish so she can discuss parts of the book. What’s there to discuss?
Perhaps she wants to discuss the nagging feeling of having been swindled? It sounds like Rowling has palmed everyone off with a load of “will this do”-style flannel. Not that I’ve read the book, of course. Or intend to, for that matter.
The only real plot development actually takes place around the last 80 pages or so anyway. Up until that point I got the impression that Rowling had miscalculated her ‘plot-to-school-year’ ratio and had been forced to write a book where nothing happens just to reach her seven-book promise.
I haven’t read it, and I’m not going to. I haven’t read any of the others, either. There’s no real principle behind this, except that I just don’t think it’s my kind of thing. It is a kid’s book, after all, and I’ve been burnt by following the book zeitgeist before (namely by the dross that is The Da Vinci Code).
I think it’s a bit like the Star Wars phenomenon - you know it’s going to suck, but you go and see it anyway. All the reviews say it’s pants, your friends say it’s pants, and you know you should save your money. But just like Paul you’re weak and you want it, so it’s out with the wallet and you get 600-odd pages of children’s literature to plough through.
I don’t know about you, but I have stacks of books to read. Books I’ve bought and not got around to reading yet. Around this time last year (having just moved for the 4th time in 2 years) I realised that there’s still unread books on my shelf that I took to University with me, and the thought struck me that I might die having never got around to reading them. A year on, and I’ve dented the pile, but not by much. I’m trying hard to not buy books and I have slowed the pace of aquisition but there’s still a backlog. Problem is, a lot of them just don’t set my world aflame. I’ve got a copy of Fyodor Dostyevsky’s The Idiot that I want to read at some point, but it’s not sitting in my cupboard screaming “Read me!” the way that Orwell’s Down & Out in Paris and London was. So although I bought Fyodor’s tome 3 years ago, and Orwell’s book about 3 weeks ago, one is read and one isn’t. It’s also a matter of commitment - 200 pages of 20th century English writing is much easier to digest than 600+ pages of 19th century Russian, so it seems like it’s going to be much more of a slog than it probably would be. It’s a lot easier to start on the lower-commitment book, as although I do like to read I don’t have much time available to do it. Over the past year I’ve been working and commuting via public transport, so I got 30 minutes of reading time each day (15 minutes each way). I don’t think Dostyevsky is the kind of writer that lends himself to being dipped in and out of.
Interestingly, I find myself in Australia at the moment. This is a country of places A and B, with Large Distances between them. As a result, I’m sure I’m going to have lots of time to read as I travel around. But it’s a holiday, so of course I’ve bought myself a book I’ve been looking forward to (Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver) and Fyodor remains at home, unread.
Well, don’t post any spoilers about Quicksilver. That one’s sitting in *my* pile of books that I’ve bought and haven’t read yet. No JKR books in my pile, either.
I have a copy of Quicksilver as well. I got halfway through it before realising that the thought of reading anymore was actually really depressing, particularly with the knowledge that there was another two books in the series. Still, it’s got a very pretty cover, and that counts for a lot.
Incidentally, books are really expensive here. You could probably get a nice industry of book-smuggling on the go, complete with book mules and all.
I wasn’t going to buy this one yet because firstly I’m already reading another book, and secondly I’ve just had another child - so plans to read books are literally being shelved temporarily. However, I happened to be in a supermarket on 16th, and there was a pallet full of the blighters, so I bought a copy. Haven’t read it yet though.