By Christina Radish
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J.K. Rowling at an appearance to greet 1,600 public school children at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on October 15, 2007. |
In October, British author J.K. Rowling toured the United States for the first time since 2000. Having written continually since the age of six, the idea for Harry Potter first came to the Londoner in 1990, as she was traveling back home on a crowded train. After struggling to get it down on paper, while juggling motherhood and a full-time teaching career, Rowling had a finished book, but things didn’t get any easier from there. Rejection letters from agents and publishers resulted in the book not getting published, until she received an offer from Bloomsbury in 1996, starting a literary revolution. Seven books and five movie adaptations later (and, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is currently in production), Rowling is the first author billionaire.
Making stops in New Orleans, New York City and Los Angeles, Rowling took a break from signing books for schoolchildren to speak with the press, including MediaBlvd Magazine, at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, to answer questions about her hugely successful series, about a wizard named Harry Potter.
MediaBlvd Magazine> What made you want to do a book tour across the country?
J.K. Rowling> The last time I was in the states was 2000, and it’s been a little unmanageable, timing-wise, in terms of the numbers who were turning up. But, I really miss being able to interact directly with the readers, and we had to think of a way that we could manage the numbers of kids and ensure they were safe. I missed the direct contact of answering their questions in person, so this seemed like the ideal way to do it. It seemed fair. Everyone always says to me, “The signing must be so arduous. How’s your hand?" Honestly, that’s the bit that I really enjoy.
MediaBlvd> How is the Harry Potter encyclopedia coming along?
J.K.> It’s not coming along. I haven’t started it yet. It’s really not anywhere, at the moment. I always said maybe I’d do the encyclopedia, and that’s still the case, but I never intended it to be the next thing I did. I want to take a break and step back, and then, in due course, I may go and do that. I’ve always said that, if I do that, it will be for charity. That would be something. But, it would be valuable charity-wise.
MediaBlvd> Why did you kill Dobby, and what was the motivating factor for Harry to continue his quest?
J.K.> For me, Dobby’s death woke Harry up to what he was doing. It was the death of someone that was very vulnerable, and really entirely guiltless in anything concerned with this world. He wasn’t even a wizard, and he was murdered. It’s another senseless murder, in the same way that Cedric Diggory’s death was senseless. It was purely because they were there. I think there’s something particularly chilling, in entirely innocent victims of violence. And, it woke Harry up. It focused him. I suppose you could say, very prosaically, Dobby had to die, so he couldn’t tell Harry who sent him, but that’s not why. I always knew that Dobby was going to die, and how he was going to die.
MediaBlvd> Which was the hardest book in the series to write, and why?
J.K.> It would be a contest between three of them. Four were pretty easy to write, and I enjoyed writing them. Three were hard, and felt like hard work, and that would be numbers two, four and five -- Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. For different reasons, they were all tough. Chamber of Secrets was the only time where I ever had genuine writer’s block. I’d never had it before, or since. I can clearly remember agonized moments during Goblet and Phoenix as well.
MediaBlvd> Why did you make overt references to religion in Deathly Hallows?
J.K.> I actually have four references. The William Penn quotation, right at the beginning of the book is one, and I really enjoyed choosing those quotations because one’s a pagan source and one is from a Christian tradition. The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. I was raised in a Christian tradition. I do struggle with it a lot, and you can see that in the books. At any given moment, if you asked me if I believe in life after death, regularly for a week, I would come down on the side of yes, I believe in life after death. But, it’s something that I wrestle with a lot. It’s something that preoccupies me often, which is very obvious within the book. I never wanted to talk that openly about it because I thought it might show people just what the story was, and where we were going. They’re very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was bound to find biblical quotations on tombstones. But, those two particular quotations that he finds on the tombstones epitomize the whole series. They sum up all the themes in the series. But, of course, Hogwarts is a multi-faith school.
MediaBlvd> How did you pick the quotes that you decided to open the seventh book with?
J.K.> I’d always known it was going to be those quotes, always. I’ve known exactly those two passages since the time Chamber of Secrets was published in 1998. They just say it all to me. They really do. In a way, they were the guiding light to the series. I always knew that, if I could use them at the beginning of book seven, then I’d go where I needed to go.
MediaBlvd> How do you feel about certain groups of Christians protesting your work?
J.K.> You know what? I go to church myself. I don’t take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion. I passionately believe in freedom of expression and freedom of speech. I’ve always taken my annual inclusion on the most banned books list as a massive compliment. You look at the writers on that list, and what can I say? There is a place for debate about issues, and there’s certainly a place for debate about what we show our children and what we read to our children. But, attempts to ban things are always counter-productive. I’ve met more than one child whose parents did’'t want them to read Harry Potter and, of course, it became the one and only thing they wanted to read. In a way, it’s great advertising.
MediaBlvd> In regard to Dumbledore crying in shame at King’s Cross, will he spend eternity there?
J.K.> No, no. I love Dumbledore more for his frailties, and it was important to show that. And, it was part of Harry becoming a man, that even this man he revered is alone, had his frailties and had made his mistakes. After all, Dumbledore is, although he seems to be so benign for six books, quite a Machiavellian figure, really. He’s pulling a lot of strings. Harry has been a puppet, to an extent. I don’t think, in book one, you would have ever admitted, for a moment, as a reader, that you would feel sympathy for Snape, rather than Dumbledore. But, that was the trajectory that I was aiming for, by book seven.
MediaBlvd> What’s the most challenging aspect of writing these stories -- the characters, the dialogue or the idea?
J.K.> Really, it’s the idea, to be honest. If I look back at the writing of Harry, primarily at any hardships I remember, and they were all external hardships. It was all about child care, people getting sick and the financial demands. I had to work. Harry obviously wasn’t bringing in any money, while I was writing the first book. And, when I’d started writing the second book, I had no income from the first. It’s those things, when I look back, that I remember mostly. While I was writing, there was external pressure. If I could have gotten rid of any of that I would have, and that wasn’t my publisher’s fault, but just the situation. Sometimes the British press was difficult. That was a real shock. I’d never, in a million years, have dreamed that I would have journalists banging on my front door. And, I’d never, in a million years, dreamed that I would have long-lens photographs taken of me or my children. Those things were really a challenge, sometimes. The privacy of Harry’s world that I was working in was so hard to maintain.
MediaBlvd> Did the movie stars ever ask you for hints on what would happen next?
J.K.> I think they were always petrified about it. They didn’t want to know. Daniel did pretend he knew the ending of book seven, and then he got a little taste of what it’s like to be me. I went onto the set, and Dan and I had a long chat, which was great. I was talking about the book, during the writing of Hallows, and I said to him, “Dumbledore’s giving me a bit of trouble. I thought I’d take a break for a bit and come down and see you.” And, he said, “But, Dumbledore’s dead.” Then, he immediately said, “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” After I said that, he went down a corridor to the other kids, because they were still being schooled at the time, and he said, “She told me. I know what happens.” Of course, then he was besieged, and he started to panic. That’s exactly what it’s like being me, so it served him right. So, he knew. I told all of them little bits. I told Emma the most. She nearly fell off her chair laughing, when I told her who she’d have to kiss. If they make the Hallows film faithful to the story, she’s going to kiss both of them, which is kind of fun.
MediaBlvd> Would you do another fantasy novel, or are there other genres that you want to explore?
J.K.> This may come back to bite me because every time I say, “I will never . . .,” in my life, I do it within the next two weeks. But, I’ve probably done my fantasy. Because Harry’s world was so large and detailed, and I’ve known it so well, and lived in for 17 years, it would be incredibly difficult to go out and create another world that didn’t, in some way, overlap with, or maybe borrow a little too much from, Harry. So, I’m probably not going to revisit fantasy. As far as other genres, I don’t really think like that, to be honest. I don’t think, “What genre will I write in next?” It’s really what idea comes to me and what I’d like to do.
MediaBlvd> What are you doing with your spare time, now that you’re finished writing Harry Potter?
J.K.> I will always write. I wrote a lot of rubbish before Harry Potter, and I will certainly keep writing. I do feel that I’m on vacation, at the moment, inasmuch as it’s the first time, in 10 years, that I don’t have a deadline. So, it’s really enjoyable to spend time with my kids and not feel guilty that I’m not writing the next book. But, I’ll always write.
