Call me crazy, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t truly believe that [insert famous person here] really exists unless I see him/her with my own eyes. I’m convinced that it’s not just me: it’s the people who scan tabloids in the checkout line and enjoy being constantly reminded that stars are “just like us!” It’s the screaming fans tripping all over each other to touch the singer on stage; the truly devoted who camp out for days to snare a pair of tickets to meet J.K. Rowling.
That’s right; good old J.K. While I need only glimpse the President from afar in order to be convinced of his realness, in her case things are a bit different. Not only could I not believe she existed until I laid eyes on her, but I equated proof of her existence with proof of the reality of Harry’s world. Just basic third year arithmancy, if you ask me.
Admittedly, I may have accidentally confused my ticket to J.K. Rowling’s reading and book signing at Lincoln Center on October 16th with an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Happens to the best of us, does it not? (Wait, don’t answer that.) As I settled into my seat on that fateful Tuesday evening, a small part of me (okay, all of me) expected the wondrous wizarding world of Harry Potter to materialize on the stage.
Michael Pietsch, a publisher at Little Brown, addressed the audience first, laying down a few “house rules” before introducing novelist and bookstore owner Ann Patchett, who would be engaging in a question and answer session with J.K., as a “glimmering avatar of books and reading.”
“We all carry Harry and his epic human world inside of us,” continued Keats, as each member of the audience drew in a breath of anticipation. Keats prefaced his introduction to Rowling, remarking that the audience must be deeply familiar with her work and accomplishments, “unless you’ve inhabited a cave for the past ten years,” before adding – “in case you moved into that cave two weeks ago” – that Rowling’s latest novel, The Casual Vacancy, had reached bestseller status only days after its publication.
The applause was deafening as J.K. Rowling herself strolled onstage, but nothing like the din I expected would accompany the apparations, floo powder, and portkeys that would bring Hogwarts to Lincoln Center. A girl sitting in the row ahead of me burst into tears, and with good reason: the woman who had created the world which captured our imaginations for so long was real, but she did not bring with her the people we really wanted to meet. Where was Dumbledore? Where was Molly Weasley? And where, for crying out loud (pun most definitely intended), was Harry? Instead, Ann Patchett stood to greet the woman of the hour, exclaiming over the roar of the audience, “I thought I understood but I don’t understand…I’m at a Stones concert!”
Patchett’s statement almost perfectly sums up my experience that evening. For some reason, I had ignored all the glaring signs that this evening would be largely about Rowling’s latest book, The Casual Vacancy, and had assumed that since J.K. Rowling = Harry Potter, the evening would be a cozy discussion of all things wizard. For all the talk of Harry Potter that evening, I might as well have been at a Stones concert.
Okay, not quite. In contrast to the loyal “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” readership, the last thing I wanted was to discover that Rowling was not a living, breathing piece of the world she created but rather simply a talented writer whose creativity had catapulted her into unimaginable fame. With the realization that this evening would be more about meeting a remarkable writer and less an opportunity to go all fangirl, I found myself appreciating the woman behind the magic. As Rowling answered first Ann’s questions and later those pre-submitted by members of the audience, she began to emerge as a deeply thoughtful, rather funny, and somewhat disappointingly normal, down-to-earth, ordinary person.
Amid a technical – but fascinating – discussion of the difficulties of writing, Rowling admitted, “I spend my life trying not to spoil my own books for people,” in response to which the audience chortled appreciatively. This would be one amongst just a few references to the wildly popular Harry Potter series she sprinkled throughout the evening, no doubt to placate the hundreds of fans who, like me, were probably more eager to discuss Harry than Barry. On that note, had I been aware of the opportunity to pre-submit questions, I would have demanded that Rowling riddle me this: “If the protagonist in the series that made you famous is named Harry, why, pray tell, would you christen the character in your break-away novel Barry?!” It boggles the mind.
As any die-hard Harry Potter devotee would know, Rowling is nothing if not a pro at character creation and backstory. For the Harry Potter series, Rowling weaved intricate backgrounds for each of her characters – family trees, histories, hobbies – much of which did not make it in to the actual text of her novels. For The Casual Vacancy, Rowling explained, she took much the same approach to character development. When Patchett wondered whether it was painful to leave so many details out and even at times delete entire scenes, Rowling addressed her fellow writer and explained, “You know this. We are ruthless people as writers.” Regarding a particularly gruesome autopsy scene she decided to cut from The Casual Vacancy, Rowling explained that, although she had spent many hours on it, the scene was just “too shocking for its own sake.” Critics have commented that The Casual Vacancy is a deeply adult and sometimes “profane” departure from the decidedly child-oriented Harry Potter, yet Rowling maintains that the irreverence was not simply gratuitous.
Recalling a farmer she had once seen on television proclaiming that, “we must protect children from their own imagination,” Rowling condemned his attitude as the “worst thing in the world” and declared that she believes it “very, very wrong…to censor what a child reads.” To Ann’s follow-up question – whether Rowling had considered that younger Harry Potter fans would beg to read Rowling’s very adult novel – Rowling replied: “Yeah, well that would be really inappropriate.” So just who is old enough for this “adult” book? “I personally would be comfortable with the right fourteen-, fifteen-year-old” reading The Casual Vacancy, asserts Rowling, though she believes a conversation with younger children about “why not” to read the book is probably a good idea.
On writing villains, Rowling waxed philosophical: “We’re all phased by, perplexed by, the person we meet that has that darkness,” explained Rowling, remarking that “children are very familiar with fear and children’s literature for centuries has given a place where they can explore that.” Admitting to feeling a “great connection” to adolescents, Rowling added that she considers adolescence a time of “vulnerability, a time of life when you’re starting to appreciate – is this too strong a word? – evil” and its existence in the world. “True villainy is bizarrely rare” in adult books, Rowling noted, musing aloud that “perhaps as we’re older, we’d rather not look.”
Rowling was famously close-mouthed when it came to details of her Harry Potter novels pre-publication – and with good reason. In another rare, though brief, mention of the series we all secretly wanted to hear more about than anything else, Rowling commented on her secrecy. “Discussing an idea before I’ve written it,” avers Rowling, “is really the way to kill an idea stone-dead. They all sound like terrible books. They all sound like rubbish.” Turning to the audience, Rowling advised, “If an author says to you, ‘I have an idea for two frogs sitting in a bucket,’ you say, ‘That sounds very interesting.’ We’re very thin-skinned people.”
Of course, Ann asked Rowling what it was like to write The Casual Vacancy and leave Harry behind. “Yeah, I was terrified,” Rowling candidly declared, “I’m so glad I did it, but yeah, it was terrifying.” The book explores intense, real-world issues, like drug addiction and poverty. Rowling has mentioned her own experience living off of welfare as a young, single mother and was compelled to explore this topic in The Casual Vacancy in order to help readers understand the plight of the truly poor and grasp the extent of the sometimes “humiliating experience.” Rowling is quick to clarify that this was only one of the effects she hoped her book would have, maintaining that The Casual Vacancy is “political in the sense that it deals with themes that are broadly political.”
When Rowling declared, “I love writing for children and I will definitely write for children again,” Patchett was quick to corner her with the question that had each member of the audience on the edge of his or her seat: “What’s next?” inquired Patchett, hastily adding, “I mean, obviously you’re not going to tell us.” True to her usual style – and Patchett’s suspicions – Rowling responded vaguely: “There’s an idea I’ve got for a kids’ book that I love and I think that might be the next thing I publish.” Classic Rowling. In what might have been her most charming moment of the night, Rowling sighed as she confessed, “I do feel like I still walk in and out of Hogwarts.” Cue melting hearts of audience members.
As I waited in line for Rowling to sign my copy of The Casual Vacancy, I practiced what I would say to her when I finally met her: “You changed my life!” or “You’re my hero!” or (if I was feeling particularly belligerent) “Would it have been so terribly hard to bring along Hermione?” When the time came, though, I had no more than three seconds as Rowling scribbled her name inside my book. “Thank you!” I mustered up, in what was no doubt a deeply original, eloquent encapsulation of everything I could possibly have said to the woman whose books so incredibly impacted my life. In response, Rowling looked up at me and gave me a silent smile. Okay, so no actual words, but there was something very meaningful about the way she made eye contact. I just know she understood.