Harry and me

(Illustration by Jillian Tamaki).

I don’t care whether Harry Potter has encouraged more children to read. I don’t want to know if author J.K. Rowling has another series in her. I’m not concerned about what sales records have been smashed. And, please, pretty please, don’t ask me to sign a petition demanding a Harry Potter spinoff starring Neville Longbottom or Nymphadora Tonks.

Unlike many of my millions of fellow Harry fans, who dread the July 21 release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as much as they long for it, I’m resigned to the end. I’ve never liked art that overstayed its welcome, especially successful franchises that hang on too long because someone is either too scared or blocked to move on, or else is trying to wring out a few extra bucks. I love NBC’s The Office, but there’s something even more pleasing to me about the near-perfection of the finite, 14-episode UK version. I would have preferred Sherlock Holmes to remain in his watery grave at the Reichenbach Falls, for John McClane to have retired after Die Hard and for James Bond — who’s back in book and movie form next year — to give the martinis and girls a rest already. News of a Sex and the City movie got a big myeh from this quarter; it would have been better to let sleeping Blahniks lie.

I’ll miss Harry and his friends, Hermione and Ron, of course, and the great, wise wizard Dumbledore, too. A late convert, I didn’t start reading the series till number three, The Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), had already been published, but from page one of The Philosopher’s Stone (1997), I was hooked. Rowling is a mediocre stylist — all but her main characters are generic types who “grin sheepishly,” “shout angrily” and “blush rosily” — but she sure can weave a gripping story. Her mastery of suspense and plotting has improved with each book. I recently spent an instructive two weeks rereading the first six and discovered not only Rowling’s meticulous continuity but clues and key plot threads that had been planted from the very start. (If she gets bored of retirement, she would make a great show runner for an HBO series.) For inspiration, she’s indebted to both Charles Dickens’s serialized novels and English boarding school literature. But her real forebears are C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman. The reason she’s outstripped the popularity of those three great writers is less for what she’s added to the genre than for what her magical series is missing: there’s little of Tolkien’s plot-dragging geeky detail, or Lewis’s priggish piety, or Pullman’s killjoy, Santa-Claus-is-dead socialism.

(Raincoast Books)

Unlike The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series is contemporary enough to attract Generation XBox — teen wizards wear trainers and debate the merits of Quidditch over soccer — and Rowling has injected the novels with a certain amount of realism. She acknowledges Britain’s current diversity — albeit superficially, as some critics have noted — by populating the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a mix of students that includes Parvati Patil, Cho Chang and dreadlocked Lee Jordan. Embedded in Hermione’s campaign against indentured elf labour and in the Death Eaters’ racist-like hatred of Mudbloods (wizards of non-wizard heritage) is a message of inclusion and tolerance.

Those modern, liberal sentiments aside, Rowling’s series is, more than anything else, a nostalgic love letter to an idealized jolly old England. Ron’s mother, Mrs. Weasley — all clucking and plump, with her homemade mince pies and hand-knitted jumpers — is the epitome of the salt-of-the-earth, working-class type that Rowling clearly adores. Her greatest contempt is saved for the snobs and aristocrats, many of whom (no surprise) are followers of nefarious Lord Voldemort. Setting the stories at a time of chaos and violence allows Rowling to evoke the British at their most resolute. As it has played out from book one, the wizard struggle against Voldemort is a metaphor for London during the Blitz: by candlelight, in their bunker-like safe house, Harry and his pals crowd around the “wizard wireless” for news, while Aryan-blond Lucius Malfoy organizes his fellow Death Eaters for an attack. Meanwhile, the ever-sturdy Mrs. Weasley conjures up homey cauldrons of beef stew and soothes frights with a nice hot cuppa.

This excessive tweeness has a tendency to overshadow what’s truly great about Rowling’s series: her colourful and conflicted main characters. Severus Snape, Hogwarts’s greasy and embittered potions professor, is one of the most memorable creations in popular literature. A Voldemort sympathizer turned spy for the good side, Snape aids Harry and his supporters at great personal risk and with the utmost resentment. When it’s revealed that Snape’s enmity dates back to his own school days, when he was tormented and humiliated by Harry’s dad, it’s a major turning point for both the boy and the series. The long-dead hero father whose memory Harry has worshipped turns out to have been a bit of a show-off and a bully. Against the backdrop of Ultimate Good Versus Ultimate Evil, Rowling never forgets the smaller but no less significant battle inside each of us between our best and worst natures.

All these qualities might have made for a popular story, but what turned Harry Potter into a global phenomenon was Rowling’s canny decision to unspool this tale in closely guarded instalments doled out every few years. There’s no real reason why the narrative arc needs to span seven novels, but, oh, what delicious anticipation was created each time a new book was released. Coinciding as it did with a golden era of serial TV dramas like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Lost and 24, the Harry Potter series helped readers rediscover the pleasure of being part of a collective holding of breath, of an impatient worldwide wait to discover what will come next.

Copies of J.K. Rowling's latest book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sit ready for distribution inside the Amazon.com fulfillment center in Fernley, Nev. (David Calvert/Associated Press)

As popular culture becomes increasingly fragmented, when TV can be watched on demand and news filtered and personalized by an RSS feed, it’s a rare experience to be part of a mass and singly focused audience. How old-fashioned to line up at midnight for our copies of the new Harry Potter, the way we all tuned in for Princess Di’s wedding or the final episode of M*A*S*H. It feels hopeful, too: if readers from Harlem to Tokyo can be united in their joy and worry over Harry, maybe there’s more common ground in our post-9/11 world than we suspected.

We’re united in our suspense, too. In this day of spoilers and gossip media, the fact that the outcome of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hasn’t been leaked until the final hour is an achievement worthy of the stealthiest wizard. For me, reading the last three books in tandem with millions of others has been one of Harry Potter’s resounding pleasures. With so much media devoted to arts and entertainment, there are few films, books, TV shows or songs that we can approach with fresh eyes and ears. By the time most of us watch a movie, we’ve heard the behind-the-scenes dish about its stars and seen the trailer ten times over. And when we crack the spine of a brand new book, a dozen critics have already told us what to think about it. The global conspiracy to keep the plot of each Harry Potter book a secret has allowed readers, whatever their age, to experience it like a child: unspoiled and on their own terms. No wonder the series is so beloved. Despite its record sales (300 million and counting), reading each book moments after its simultaneous worldwide release feels as intimate as if Rowling had written it personally for us.

Time will decide whether the Harry Potter series is a classic or just a passing fad. Whatever the outcome, this weekend, there will be some real Muggle magic at work. Millions of us will stay up long past our bedtimes, ignore our loved ones and forget to eat. We’re about to find out the fate of a lonely, orphaned boy we’ve watched find true friendship, fight dragons, fall in love, learn to perform a Patronus spell, lose two of his father figures and discover that the future of the world rests on his skinny, adolescent shoulders. The end is nigh. Long live Harry Potter.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is published by Raincoast Books and will be released on July 21.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBCnews.ca/Arts.

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