19 responses so far ↓

• 1 revgeorge // Jul 31, 2007 at 9:28 pm

  Travis wrote,

  “Minor point, I know. It really has been an interesting window into the writing process to compare Rowling’s past interviews with the final product.

  Even now, post Book 7, she changes her mind about things not specifically in canon. Ron, for example, has gone from being an auror to working with George in the joke shop in a matter of two days.”

  Yes, JKR has written a really in depth & long series. 7 books & also those two schoolbooks. I think she said at one time that she was always checking the Harry Potter Lexicon to see what she’d written about someone or something. Plus, she has us rabid fans wanting to know every last little detail.:) Although I’ll be happy to wait for the encyclopedia.

  I can’t imagine how authors do it, though, keeping everything straight. I think of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. He’s up to, like what, book 12 or 13? I finally stopped getting every new book because just to figure who was who & where things were I’d have to go back & read the whole series over again!

  Fortunately, JKR’s never done that to us. The locations have always been fairly consistent, Privet Drive, the Burrow, & Hogwarts. The characters, both major & minor, have been well drawn out, with not too many to become confusing.

• 2 Lori // Jul 31, 2007 at 10:23 pm

  There is a definite difference in the ages of Albus and Muriel implied in Muriel’s own words. She heard about the brawl over the coffin by eavesdropping on a gossip session between her mother and Bathilda. This may not seem to add up to 40 years between the ages of Albus and Muriel–but it could. The gossip about the Dumbledore family have been revived as Albus gained fame.

• 3 reyhan // Jul 31, 2007 at 10:47 pm

  The point is, JKR is free to change her mind about stuff she hasn’t written. Information shared in interviews, to which we resorted more and more in the days just before the release of Deathly Hallows, is not binding.

  She will not, however, knowingly change the canon, not even in the manner of comic book superheroes who die heartbreakingly one year, and come back the next with a very superficial explanation of how they’re still alive (it was only a dream, or an identical twin or a clone died, or the story took place in a parallel universe, etc, etc.) This shows integrity. And the canon is sacrosanct.

  In retrospect, she should not have answered any questions about what would happen. Alternatively, we should not have hung on every word.

  But like Travis, I’m cool with that.

• 4 Michael // Jul 31, 2007 at 10:51 pm

  Actually I’m pretty sure that the joke shop is what Ron did immediately after Hogwarts - he still became an auror, just later on. I think JKR says as much in the chat.

• 5 korg20000bc // Aug 1, 2007 at 6:02 am

  revgeorge,

  Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time = The Waste of Time.

  What a wornout, derivative work. I’m surprised that Frank Herbert hasn’t filed breach of copywrite proceedings against Jordan.

  Matthew

• 6 Dave the Longwinded // Aug 1, 2007 at 8:38 am

  I took Muriel’s comments in the vein of a know-it-all gossip who wanted to sound more important than she really was.

• 7 revgeorge // Aug 1, 2007 at 10:18 am

  korg20000bc wrote,

  “Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time = The Waste of Time”

  Hey, I said I wasn’t reading it anymore.

  Besides, I never read Frank Herbert, except for the first Dune book which I found immensely boring. And he can’t file copyright suits because he’s dead. In fact, he died before the first Wheel of Time book was put out.

  Anyway, I wasn’t trying to say anything about Jordan’s work except as an example to show how an author could get details confused over the course of a long work. And thus maybe we should go lightly on JKR for seeming to contradict herself in certain details such as Ron’s job(s) after the war. That’s all.

• 8 Carla Lute // Aug 1, 2007 at 11:53 am

  I had stacks and stacks of notes with names lists, class schedules, and timelines just trying to write fanfic in J.K.s world. (yeah, so I’m OCD) The wizarding world is a bit like a small town, so it’s almost more important to keep up with all those little details than it is in an expansive epic. Contradictions pop out more because we notice those little details.

  I love the intimacy of J.K.s world. And coming from the Star Wars fandom, the Lexicon is very, very cool…something SW people have been making stabs at for a while…so many details.

  I really like Ron working at the joke shop. For some reason that fits in my mind better with his character. As someone else said, he could have done the Auror thing later…maybe he and George develope something impressive in the defense line.

  I’ve drawn some lines with note making for my own worlds. I’m just not taking it to Tolkien’s length of creating new languages…I started to once, got the alphabet somewhere, then decided earth has quite enough languages already.

  And I dropped Wheel of Time after the first chapter.

• 9 Ann-Marie // Aug 1, 2007 at 12:28 pm

  Auntie Muriel struck me as the sort of person who always knows EVERYTHING about everyone else, even if she doesn’t really. I figured she was slightly reconfiguring second- or third-hand gossip to impress “Cousin Barny” and anyone else who might be listening.

• 10 Dave the Longwinded // Aug 1, 2007 at 1:00 pm

  Ann-Marie, exactly! She struck me as the 65 year old at the family reunion who claims to have known personally and quite well a famous person in the family that died 70 years ago.

• 11 Scott // Aug 1, 2007 at 6:28 pm

  Matthew, I have to admit I am a fan of Robert Jordan. I have read all the books so far several times each. I like his style of writing and I like the world he created. I think he has just fallen into a trap a lot of authors have trouble with if they get famous. He figured out that he will sell boatloads of books every time he comes out with a new one, so he has been stretching the gravy train out, to mix some metaphors a bit. His first few books were really good. The last 5 books or so should have been condensed down into maybe one book. He also goes into WAY to much detail about stuff that we have no interest in. And I think that since he takes so long between books he tends to think he needs to remind us of stuff that has happened before. A lot of authors do that, and it’s annoying. All of these things are problems I’ve seen with other authors. Anyone read the Left Behind books? I stopped reading those after a while because it was too obvious they were just stretching out the story to sell more books. They even used some high school tricks I used to use, like using a large font, making large margins, and tweaking the line spacing just a bit, so you get more pages with less actual words. It’s amateur, but when each book sells a bazillion copies, it’s easy to understand why authors do it.
  Now, to bring all this back to JKR and HP, this is one thing I really appreciate about JKR. She has always planned on 7 books and has not ever been tempted to drag the story out just to sell more books. And she certainly would. If she had said halfway through that she was really going to finish in 10 books, everyone would have been ecstatic and bought all of them. I know I would have. But she stuck to her original plan, and I respect that.

• 12 THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER // Aug 2, 2007 at 12:07 am

  The Christian Hallows…

  The Christian motifs of Book 7 in the Harry Potter series are pretty obvious, from Harry’s willing sacrifice of himself to save the world, his afterlife way-station conversation with the spirit of Dumbledore (Just because it’s in your head, Harry,……

• 13 Calvin // Aug 2, 2007 at 10:36 am

  I am a fan of both the Harry Potter and the Wheel of Time books. It is a toss up to say which one I like better although I think I lean towards the Wheel of Time. Saying so may be tantamount to blasphemy in some circles, but so be it. I tend to be highly anticipatory, but not obsessive, of any new book from either series.

  If you don’t like a book on the grounds that it is too indepth, that is your loss, but don’t make the mistake of simply classify it as “a waste of time.” In attempting to make such an across the board derogatory statement concerning a book or series, you belittle yourself in the eyes of those who enjoy books of that caliber. Seeing such a statement, the first impression that I get is that the book was simply beyond your ability to comprehend. That is probably not accurate, but you conveyed that meening to me anyway. To someone like me, it is that depth of writing that makes the Wheel of Time a pleasure to read. Jordan is passionate enough about his work to make the characters virtually live and breath. Some author’s talk about their worlds like they are real to them, Jordan’s books read like the world is real to him.

  Yes, Robert Jordan repeats himself in places, but so does Rowling. Does that make either story less enjoyable? No, considering the size of both series, I think they can be forgiven such lapses. Sometimes, especially in the Wheel of Time, that repetition is actually necessary to draw your attention to a point that seems like a trivial detail. Sometimes it is those little details that are the red flags indicating things are not what you expect.

  Rereading the entire Wheel of Time before you can proceed with a new book is, in my oppinion, essential. Then again, I would say the same was true of the Harry Potter books. I know I will have forgotten important details, and would guess that most other people have too. Take the locket horcrux in The Half Blood Prince. It wasn’t until I reread the series, including Half Blood Prince, prior to my starting Deathly Hallow’s that I connected RAB with Regulus Black. Maybe some of you got the connection on the first reading, but I did not. Rereading the series enabled me to connect the dots prior to reading the Deathly Hallows though. Did I guess what Snape’s argument with Dumbledore was about during Half Blood Prince prior to reading Deathly Hallows? Yes, but not after the first time reading the book. It took rereading it to put the pieces together. I don’t hear people complaining about needing to reread Harry Potter to make sense of the disparate plot elements. Why should the need to reread be fine with Harry Potter but not with the Wheel of Time? Frankly, I’m always amazed at how something apparently insignificant the first time you read the books can suddenly, after you’ve read the next 5, make you say, “So that’s what that meant.” It shows meticulous planning of the entire series. Rather than complaining, take pleasure in the fact that the 5th and 6th and 7th reread of a book still reveals something you overlooked. The quality and depth of the writing makes them worth rereading.

  I won’t disagree that sections of The Wheel of Time seem drawn out. I can get really annoyed while reading some portions of the books. It isn’t so much the pace of the book though, as a dislike and desire to be done with a particular character. There are times when I would gladly strangle any and all of the heroes in the series. It makes those portions laborious to read, but that doesn’t make me stop liking the books. Does laborious reading meen Jordan is just trying to make a few extra bucks? Not in my oppinion. There isn’t any reason for him to do so. He started planning out his next series several years ago already and, should his health permit him to write it, you can rest assured it will sell very well. He is just trying to tell the story the way he envisions it, seriously flawed characters and all. I even find myself psychoanalyzing characters to see why the act as they do. He draws you in to the point were you really want to know the characters and what motivates them. If it gets a little out of hand at times I can forgive him that. It happens to a lot of authors without it being a deliberate attempt at more money. The books that seemed like filler on an initial read begin to look quite important as the last couple books (1 more to come) were written.

  Concerning the Wheel of Time being a worn out derivative work, just pick up any novel, especially in the fantasy and science fiction genres. You can say the same about virtually every book written as all of them share common elements and traits because of their roots in mythology and religion. Even much of the Harry Potter books are derived from pre-existing ideas. There is nothing wrong with using traditional content and themes, it is what you do with it that makes a difference. If there was even a remote chance of a copyright suite against Jordan do you honestly think that Hebert’s estate wouldn’t have done so already? If The Wheel of Time is a derivative work based on Dune, then Dune itself is just another derivative of still older works that The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Belgariad, etc. all adapt, derive and borrow from.

  For those of you unfamiliar with the Wheel of Time, there are currently 11 volumes in the series with one final book, tentatively titled “A Memory of Light” currently being written.

• 14 Pip // Aug 2, 2007 at 11:13 am

  The epilogue takes place 19 years after the defeat of Voldemort. JKR said Harry and Ron would eventually become aurors (Kingsley asked for Harry). Ron helped at the joke shop and then headed off to do be with Harry. Each character appeared to have pursued other things during those 19 years and then found themselves are their present positions/places in life.

• 15 Mrs. Lovegood // Aug 4, 2007 at 11:19 am

  I think Jo has a problem with Maths, as they call it in the UK. That’s how Dumbledore’s age can fluctuate, the exactness of it isn’t important to her plot. She’s proved this when she’s discussed the size of the student body at Hogwarts. I think she just doesn’t stop to think it out. That if Dumbledore was 150 (or so) then he’d have been 43 when Muriel was born — she doesn’t stop to make this calculation because it doesn’t matter to her. This is probably the explanation for the missing 24 hours that we’ve all theorized about and then wasn’t even mentioned in the book.

  Other parts of her plot are planned out very carefully, obviously. If I wrote it, the math would work out, but much of the rest wouldn’t be nearly as brilliant, which just goes to prove that writers don’t have to be mathematicians.

• 16 Trish // Aug 4, 2007 at 5:46 pm

  Travis–
  I just reread Aunt Muriel’s bit this morning. She doesn’t actually claim she was there. She says she got it from Bathilda Bagshot, and some of the others who were there at the time.

  Not that that makes her any less a malicious old bag of wind. . .

• 17 Travis Prinzi // Aug 4, 2007 at 10:17 pm

  Trish, I’ll have to re-read that when I get the chance. Steve Vander Ark had the same impression I did, that Dumbledore’s age was changed for Book 7.

• 18 Rosie Powell // Aug 14, 2007 at 12:28 pm

  Ron DID eventually become an auror for the Ministry. But he started out working at the joke shop with George.

• 19 esoterica1693 // Sep 3, 2007 at 1:32 am

  The WOTM card for Sept now confirms that APWBD got younger, as JKR has his birthdate as 1881 as opposed to ca. 1840.

  Of course she also has his deathdate as 1996 instead of 1997…. Maths, Jo, MATHS! They’ve invented these things called calculators, which should work in your muggle house if not in Hogwarts….

Leave a Comment