by Travis
Rowling rarely mentions Tolkien, but I’ve found in the process of writing my book that she has far more in common with him than I had previously realized. Chalk it up to the Cauldron of Story (which is precisely what I do, actually….) In the recent interview for El Pais, translated (with some possible errors) here, Rowling invokes Tolkien on the theme of death:
Q: Solitude, death. We speak of dark things. At its best, literature comes from that.
A: Well, I think it was Tolkien who said that all the important books are about death. And there’s some truth in that because death is our destiny and we should face up to it. All that we have done in life had the intention of avoiding death.
Does anyone know the exact quote to which she’s referring, and is it accurate? She seems uncertain about her quote. This is a happy moment for me, because I just sat down to day to write a section of the book on the theme of death and the links between Tolkien and Rowling.
Another favorite moment was when she spoke as though the story had origins greater than herself, something I argued in a recent pubcast:
Q: What did she tell you after she read the books?
A: She asked me why I did this thing or another, and I my answer was that that’s the way it had to be. Yes, sometimes you can give an automatic answer, like some things were made up as literary mechanisms, elements that helped the plot. In other cases, is harder to explain the process of writing. I wrote it because it came up that way. Sometimes I wrote as if something or somebody was saying it to me.
Q: Could you describe what that something was?
A: There are so many answers to that question. I could say: “It was me, it was my subconscious.” Yes, it was my subconscious, so what I’ve written comes from everything that I’ve done and all the people I’ve known because everything and everyone are somewhere in my head. Or I could say it was the muse, and I like to think it was the muse, because that means the writer is not aware of the origin of what they’re writing, or at least is not fully aware of it, and I know it’s a clichéd word about the Harry Potter books, but they’re magical.
And yes, Rowling is invested in the elections over here in America:
I want a Democrat in the White House. And it seems a shame to me that Clinton and Obama are rivals because they are both extraordinary people.
No political arguments here. But for fun, I might take it over to my other blog 
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Amy H. Sturgis
// Feb 13, 2008 at 8:10 am
In one of his letters (part of which I quote in my article “Harry Potter is a Hobbit”), Tolkien implies that all stories written by humans are about death. He explains that his work is “about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!” He repeats this sentiment many times in different ways. Perhaps that’s what she was thinking of?
2 Travis Prinzi
// Feb 13, 2008 at 9:33 am
Amy, that’s the quote that came to my mind as well, assuming she wasn’t direct quoting. I’m guessing that’s the one to which she was referring.
3 Dave the Longwinded
// Feb 13, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Death floats under the surface or at the edges of everything, even if only figuratively. We and all our materials belong to a cycle of life and death reflected in so many cultures. My American Lit Prof used to talk all the time in class about America’s “Death Drive” in literature, the insatiable need to believe we are careening toward some inevitable end. He believed that American Lit distinguished itself from British Lit in this fundamental way, that we tend to address death in a much more literal way. Whereas European cultures might rely on mythical symbols of death, we use very literal “symbols”, like the atomic bomb. It all had to do with the the deep history of European colonialism and myth, whereas we Americans tend to divorce ourselves from such things.
I’m not sure it matters, but I often wonder if an American writer could have written Harry Potter, at least with the same (sometimes flawed) skill as Rowling. Plenty of Americans take on adventure and fantasy, but the three high water marks we discuss here are all British.
4 korg20000bc
// Feb 14, 2008 at 4:59 am
Here’s another Tolkien death quote-
“And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.”
Matthew
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