Dear JK,
I’ve been peckish about your last book, since I read the last few words of your epilogue, “Nineteen Years After.”
And that was before I found out, from you, that Dumbledore is/was gay. Others suspected it: they more astute than I could ever be. My gaydar is not good at all. It turns out that Grindelwald was more than just a pal.
That was a neat trick, JK. You turned Dumbledore into a hero for zillions of kids. You waited until the book sales smashed one superlative after another, and the Brinks trucks lined the drive of your post-welfare mansion.
Then, after the kids (and priests like me) were lined up in your palm, eating out of your hand, you squeezed the bird, Slytherin-like. You seemed to really mean the "Christian parallels" and "obvious religious meaning," and we (myself included) were very happy.
But then Dumbledore the hero, the wise man, the quasi-Christ-figure, you outed. Gay, despite no real narrative logic that demanded him to be so.
The gayness of Dumbledore is only a useless appendix (though, doubtless, quite a profitable one: now that the family market has been exhausted, this latest revelation opens up the new über-rich childless childish gold-vein of the self-involved, who practice their simultaneous (not mutual) communion before the Mirror of Erised).
Ex post facto, and clearly tangential to the story line, you announced this hero as a homosexual. The syllogism is neat, I have to admit. To bring out of the closet what had been squirreled away inside, the argument goes something like this in the daylight:
- Major Premise: I admire Dumbledore the powerful and wise and mostly good …
- Minor Premise: Dumbledore is gay …
- Conclusion: therefore all gays are powerful and wise and mostly good and I must admire them.
Especially if I’m a kid, and especially if Dumbledore’s been fashioned, over the last decade, like a golem into the only father-image left in the West: theoretically good-intentioned, calm and detached except for exceptional moments, absent at other exceptional moments, frustrating, goofy, manipulative, proficient at visiting infirmaries and at making incomplete revelations.
Now that’s a Dad – the product of bourgeois post-childhood psychotherapy.
Well, JK, enough of Dumbledore. I suppose you and your associates at Scholastic saw an opportunity to ram home a score for the home team under the rubric of tolerance. Is that what you think evil is? Is that the sum and range of Voldemort’s deviltry – just a cheap, sniveling, nitwit bigotry? That Voldemort is evil because he murders people on one hand, and on the other and sinister hand, because he is intolerant?
I realize now that there was something I clearly missed in my earlier missive to you. Then, I was concerned mainly about the quality of the hero. I asked you then to make of Harry a real hero that could no longer remain mundane, that could not rest in the familiar world. In the revolution wrought by a hero in his land, his translation to the higher worlds impels the narrative toward tragedy.
I mean romantic tragedy, not the effluvial ironic tragedy of modernistic scapegoats like Willy Loman. The real death of Harry would have wrought redemption for your storied world.
As it turned out, there was no death. No, I’m serious, neither he nor Mr. Voldemort really died while Harry was clutching that stupid resurrection stone (did you mean a Christian resonance here? … the very fact of its Gospel echo makes its hollowness all the more awkward). That particular “deathly hallow” was one of the dumbest and cheapest deus ex machina maneuvers of all time: “I’m technically dead, Voldy, so I did that self-sacrifice thing so your Deathly Stick is bootless … but, mind you, I’m not really dead as I'm up here in the White Light chatting with Dumbledore who’s telling me everything while we’re watching you gross us out with your naked self … and since I’ve got this neato magic rock with me, I’m going to use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card and play dead until I can really fight you at the end by making you curse me and then bounce the curse back on you.”
That’s quite a complicated programme, JK, and you have millions of pre-pubescents and adolescents and adults (refugees from the modern important literature of free association and inverted commas) arguing over the ins and outs of your metaphysics like a mystical soap opera.
That is the best thing that can be said of your piece. You tied up all the important loose strings (leaving enough untied to make space for further “non-plot-advancing” additions to the canon). You had them all marked out in your spiral-ringed college-ruled notebooks: character vectors, slope lines for plots and formulae for their intersections, chronology marching along the x-axis.
It was a neat geometry, Ms. Rowling, and that’s what soap operas do.
I am afraid that this method of storytelling – this iron maiden of your geometrical notebooks – is the culprit behind Harry stripped of heroism, Voldemort disrobed as a pulp novel nutcase, Dumbledore denatured and disoriented by the white light, and the whole story denuded as merely a graphic novel with no pictures.
You dropped the ball, JK. You tried to have it both ways, the cutting and eating of the cake. You wanted to marry Harry off to someone (it might as well have been Ron’s sister) and land him into domesticity with three kids, nodding cursorily to Draco at the Hogwarts Express. You desperately – and, might I add, naively – scrabbled to punch down the hero back into his mundane loaf pan. And in tethering Harry back to the pre-lapsarian world, you demoted him from hero to Mr. K. in The Castle.
You made his heroism ironic because his death was ironic. Jesus' was real.
I know why Harry couldn’t rise to the occasion. It is because his sub-creator (that would be you, JK) could not rise to the challenge of evil. I don’t expect much, if any, of today’s literature to treat goodness with much respect: but I continue to think that evil ought to be dealt with in concrete and vivid detail. God knows we’ve seen enough of evil to write expertly about it.
You never adequately explained why Voldemort was so wicked. You explained his madness, perhaps, with all that stuff about being lonely and weird, cursed by a mean father, burdened with a wretched mother, damned to a boarding school like Dotheboys. You built up a case for a psychopath: you cobbled together an explanation that would have suited a school shooter like the ones at Columbine or VT.
I wouldn't be so strident here if you had left the villain as a crazed Gadarene -- evil yes but also stupid. It is possible for the protagonist, after beating such a knave, to return back like Odysseus after planting his oar to some sort of normalcy (with even that normalcy renewed and restored).
But villains who are not crazy, who want power and state, language and meaning, time and space -- these villains are much more than demons. When you so darkly moved your Harry from the precincts of fairy tale to necromancy ... when you settled the cloud of 1984 and Goebbels on the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts itself, you incarnated Voldemort and shifted him from the dastardly to the satanic.
And when you do this, the hero who conquers can never go home (unless you capitalize the "h"). Returning him home is like Frodo pretending he can stay in the Shire. Or, it is like suggesting that the Theotokos and Joseph had kids after the Crisis, like any other family.
Voldemort was more than sorcerer or demon: he orchestrated revolution to usurp the order and he commanded destruction of the good: this is not the work of a bulleyed boy who was misunderstood, but of someone who was more likely to have been pampered and permitted the full exercise of his prurient demands. School shooters may be produced by bullies at school, but mass-murdering despots are produced by rather cushy church-less upbringings. They are too intelligent, too focused and aware of what they want, too well brought up.
Voldemort, as your character, is a slander to all the orphans and nerds and marginalized bullied kids. Isolation and nerdification do not a devil make. God-denying does.
Lessee, how to really make a Voldemort, instead of your way JK? Deny the Trinity. Lie about the good. Sever the sign from its meaning. Objectify the people around you. Construct your own world and populate it with yourself. Sanctify your auto-eroticisms. Revile the Cross. Time-travel to alternative universes to run away from the Cross.
That, by the way, is exactly what real monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible, and Robespierre did: revolution toward an alternative, non-Created, universe. It was their way of reading Hegel, after all.
That is what I missed in my last letter. For a Hero, you’ve got to deal with Evil. And to deal with Evil, you've got to know that there are worse things than death, slavery or even intolerance ... and you’ve got to believe in God.
And that is what you missed, JK. You tried to take the Cross out of the Christian myth, and update it for the neo-mythic post-ironic age. It doesn’t work, mainly because the age is still ironic and always will be (sorry Northrop). You made of the devil a silly tawdry villain, who busies himself with tying up maidens on the railroad track, caring nothing about perdition.
For a while, while I was captivated by your tale (until that disastrous ending and farcical Carnegie announcement), I fancied that in you we might have another Tolkien or Lewis, to help our souls stave off the Camazotz tide of IT. Certainly not them, but a shadow at least, more at the level of L’Engle. Surely, I thought, you can pull off something like that (maybe you did, time will tell).
But you never really pulled off a good story. A decent tale, yes, but neither tragedy nor comedy wherein reality is explored, God is perceived, evil is fought. There was in your tale neither Christ nor Antichrist. A lot of goodness to be sure, but even more badness that remains unrecognizable, free-floating, and unsecured to a reference of meaning.
A good Christian story like The Lord of the Rings will have saints and orcs, the genesis and future of light, along with the ringlore of evil. It will not be permitted in Sunday School, as good stories often cannot be. But it will be enshrined in Christian imagination.
You took fragments of the Christian story, but you fashioned them into another shape. Because of this (and not because of Dumbledore's irrational gayness) it will not fit into a Christian imagination. Not for long.
Accordingly, you might be a protestant author, but you’re not a Christian one.
I'm not sure what "HypoChristianity" means, especially in this context. You may have wanted "hyper," but I'm not sure.
My being a follower of Christ is a hope, not a self-deception.
If you think that I exhibit venomous hatred and bigotry, then you know neither real venom nor hatred, and "bigotry" is a label that you have learned to foist on a morality that is neither fundamentalist or obsolete, but simply Christian.
"Venomous hatred" is more accurate a description of what some writers get when they openly disagree with the self-affirmation of the gay culture.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | January 19, 2008 at 07:48 AM
How you can exhibit such vemonous
hatred and bigotry and deceive yourself that you are actully a follower of Christ is laughable.
HypoChristianity at it's best.
Dan
Posted by: Dan Ivanov | January 13, 2008 at 02:39 AM
You disagree with more than a couple, James.
Rowling was acutely aware that she was divulging more than just a "minute" of everyday life when she described Dumbledore as gay. By her own account, this fact was key to his character. I disagree, and I thought it was unnecessary in the grammar of her narrative and inappropriate in the moral fabric of her fantasy. It is not right to characterize, ex post facto, a "father" character after he has been accepted as such by a zillion children. Describe him as gay up front, but don't camouflage the fact on one hand as a bit of minutiae, and on the other hand, clearly reveal Dumbledore's gayness as an operative dynamic in one of the central, plot-driving characters.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that I preferred Dumbledore now as a two-dimensional villain. I still admire the Dumbledore character and am inspired by him, as I harbor a deep interest in the whole Potter canon.
Finally, I'm not sure what happened to Solomon and Lot, but their actions received real old fashioned condemnation -- much more than what you saw me lobbing at the headmaster. And I am rather sure that King David repented of his homicidal adultery. Psalm 50 is the product of that searing penance.
Are you suggesting that Dumbledore repent of his homosexuality? That JK conceives of him in his elder years as regretting his relationship with Grindelwald?
Now THAT would be a story.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | December 03, 2007 at 05:51 PM
I take issue with a couple elements from this post:
a) Authors deal with the minutiae of every-day life: they describe the look, the feel, the scent to try to convey upon the reader the spirit of a scene. If describing the draping of a fabric or the color if a flower is worthwhile, I'm not certain why the briefest reference to one's sexuality should be deemed "irrelevant".
b) It seems you would prefer that Dumbledore be portrayed as a two-dimensional villain now that it has been said that he is gay. Is it impossible to believe that a person may have other redeemable characteristics even if they are gay? It's not as if JK went into great length to describe Dumbledore's sexuality, anyhow. In addition, Scripture is filled with far more troublesome personalities than Dumbledore: King David (a murderer and adulterer), Solomon (who kept concubines), Lot (who impregnated his daughters) ... the list goes on and on.
I just don't think this level of condemnation is warranted.
Posted by: James | December 02, 2007 at 07:12 PM
FWIW, I apologize for the way my comments seem to have misdirected Fr. Jonathan's intended discussion, and my acerbic and cryptic choice of words set off Mr. Granger. My mistake. All the same, there are those of us who tremendously enjoy both fine literature and good pulp... but don't confuse the difference, nor does our ability to distinguish between them mean that we hold ourselves in high esteem, but that we esteem the truly great authors and artists and their works.
I would parry suggestions regarding my ignorance - which by the way is great and why I sign myself Thickheaded - duh! - with the simple note that management of a technique or list of techniques conveys something of the artisan, but less of the artist. Art is and always has been something more ephemeral to define, and the inspiration of the muse often beyond the artist's own control. The Greeks recognized this... yet today we are less inclined to admit that realization is more than craft. Those who give life to their characters truly do give them life of their own and they succeed beyond themselves and they indellibly impress themselves upon our imaginations. But I digress.
Mary-Leah, I'm not sure what age group you're looking for or particularly what your standards are. I'd suggest asking a school library mom or grand mother for recommendations. Tell them what you want and the interests of the child, and I suspect you'll have to wade through a few, but you'll find some real gems. There are wonderful new books out there, and some of the prose is really, really good. And of course the old greats are still out there, and the vocabulary of the older works... well, it's closer to the basis of the SAT's then you'll find elsewhere. For my bit, a fantasy series I enjoyed recently was Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game". It's pulp, but fun and reasonably well told. His inspiration was Isaac Asimov's Robot trilogy... and comes close, but his prose isn't in a Ray Bradbury class. Sci-Fi has always been didactic and these books are no exception.
One closing note from the librarian mom I share my life with: Rowling has changed publishing to the extent that authors are now-a-days virtually required to write a series. I guess this is no different than the impact of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, but it seems increasingly out of control, pushing many beyond their measure. Also, please note that my comment regarding the source of reference is not meant in any way other than to simply to distinguish among librarians between those who love books, and today's more commonly found librarians who specialize in cataloging information.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: James the Thickheaded | October 24, 2007 at 08:36 AM
Hey, everyone, (note the element of fatigue and cheerful aggravation) I did not get in this to argue with John Granger about Dumbledore. I did not post anything on his site (I only do so on my sister-in-law's place, and at the kind offices of the Ochlophobist when I am particularly brave or feeling oddly intelligent).
I am neither endorsing Harry or condemning him.
I don't like it that JK said that the "father figure" is gay, and it doesn't matter one bit when and how and in what context the applause was made. I don't want to talk about applause or Dumbledore's celibacy. It's getting a little ripe, n'est-ce pas?, when we surmise the unknown, unreported, unwritten unnatural inclinations of a fictional character. I don't know what "gay" means here, but she didn't say "I've always thought that Dumbledore was a celibate gay."
I wish that children could have their stories and the hearth would be safe, the firelight shutting out the dark and cold.
I wish that I could have MY stories without them being added onto, rewritten, deconstructed, theorized, hermeneutized, redacted, inclusivized, egalitarianized, politicized, spun for profit and focus groups, positioned in the market for leverage and movies and franchised till Kingdom comes.
I rather like childish things, still, but I have no luxury, Mary-Leah.
Fr. Stephen is a good father figure. I'll go to him and ask him if there are any stories left in the world for a child.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | October 23, 2007 at 10:20 PM
Interesting...
I am very much inclined to agree with John Granger, but enjoying an alternate perspective nonetheless.
Posted by: emily | October 23, 2007 at 06:39 PM
And Fr. Jonathan knows how to spell "germane"... :)
Posted by: Handmaid Mary-Leah | October 23, 2007 at 06:32 PM
As Fr. Stephen so aptly put it on Glory to God for all things!
Why cannot children be left to childish things while they have the luxury? This was nothing that was germain to the story or it would have been placed in the actual books.
Posted by: Handmaid Mary-Leah | October 23, 2007 at 06:30 PM
Thank you all for your kindness and conviviality.
Anna, to a degree you're right about celibate homosexuality. The germane issue here is whether by celibacy you mean the usual abstinence from commission, or the wider meaning of Orthodox chastity, which involves not only abstinence from commission, but more importantly demands interior chastity from the passion of lust, and from communion with the psychic images and insinuations that precede the act.
In these weird modern times, we are used to the term "orientation," although that concept is absent in the Fathers. I suspect that the Fathers might say that there is the potential for any passion, and thus any commission, within any soul-darkened person. Therefore, a homosexual orientation is not just 10% of the population, it is potentially 100%.
I would accept that, just as long as it is stipulated that homosexual ideation and commission (as well as any sexual activity outside of the nuptial sacrament of a man and woman) is -- well, I'll go old-fashioned here -- sin.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | October 23, 2007 at 06:16 PM
Also a word to those who will watch only the movies -- you will get a truncated, poorly acted version of J.K.'s story, stripped of most of its deeper meaning. Just fyi.
Posted by: Anna | October 23, 2007 at 05:43 PM
Just a humble suggestion -- J.K. gives us no reason to believe Dumbledore was ever involved in any kind of sexual activity (when would he have had time/space/privacy?), and I see a long-term celibate homosexual as a triumph for Christianity, not a threat to it.
Posted by: Anna | October 23, 2007 at 05:41 PM
Fr. Bless!
As usual well said. I have not read any of the books, I am always the type to wait for the whole of a series to come out and then buy the lot, guess I will pass on Harry and just watch the movies when they hit television. That will happen soon enough.
I do find J.K's timing suspect, as you have pointed out but, gosh, what about those who have invested in supportive publications?
Especially those who went out on a limb, before it was popular to do so, and supported the Christian themes that they perceived within the Potter series? Now they are left to defend J.K. and her creation as much as she is willing to, their investment is as risk.
Good luck with that, Mr. Granger, you have invested in the author of that series and are at her whim, she can sink your suppositions with one interview, and her support of the homosexual agenda.
Mr. Granger says that the denizens here are... well, talk about judgments, I won't go there, he has an investment and books to sell. I do wish him luck, and I mean it.
Dumbledore? J.K. has kept her name from the upper echelon of Christian literati by this one move... her efforts could be all that you say, yet, current society deems popularity and the tokenism of relativity, applied equally to everyone, to be all that is necessary for entry in to the beau monde.
Our standards have fallen very low, very low indeed.
In Christ,
the handmaid,
Mary-Leah
Posted by: Handmaid Mary-Leah | October 23, 2007 at 04:29 PM
I fear I'm not too proficient at moderating comments, so I'll let this one pass, too.
By all means, pass and be published on this smug site, even with your link to your Amazon offerings. I will probably purchase the 5 keys, since they've been so heartily recommended.
I'm puzzled though by your tone. Rowling's a big girl and I'm sure she can take a critique, even if it turns out to be mistaken. Surely I am not the first to raise these issues, especially pertaining to her failure to accomplish what I thought was her main goal and opportunity. There have been others, Harold Bloom among them, who have raised substantive doubts about the quality of her writing. She may write well as a children's author, but not as an adult.
I am also quite sure she can take my complaint about Dumbledore. She was ready for the barrage.
I received some ribbing from my colleagues about my affirmation of Rowling in my first post on Harry. The gag usually went like this: "You're a priest, and most of us have condemned this stuff, and here you are announcing that you read it out loud to your kids?" They were amused when I rehearsed to them my voices for Dumbledore, Voldemort and Dursley. Most were not impressed.
Now I get raspberries from the other quarter: "You're smug, counter-intuitive, uncharitable, and a stone-thrower from high places." I guess you're amazed that I'm not on board with the rubric "remarkable literary achievement." Nevertheless, I am still entertained by her tales: but "literature"? Aw, shucks, no.
Renaissance Florence is hardly a commendation, and neither is the alchemical theme all that alluring. I don't know if Dante would have recognized his stuff in the canon. I do hear Austen in Rowling: I hear her better in O'Brian ... I rather think that Austen would have found JK's penchant for the supernatural upsetting and then, later, pretty pedestrian.
This is a small site, Mr. Granger. We do all we can for good authors and Orthodox writers. The times demand a frank critique on one hand, and a fraternity on the other.
I will let all my comments stand (though I'll correct spelling), as long as they're not commercial, blasphemous or too vulgar. You can afford to moderate.
I will not.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | October 23, 2007 at 12:57 PM
Joseph asked me to return but I don't see enough common ground here for a discussion. We're approaching the books from different and irreconcilable perspectives.
The consensus here seems to be, excuse me for speaking frankly in a very frank, even smug forum, that the Harry Potter books are as popular as they are because they are so bad and millions of readers have no taste or idea of what makes edifying, challenging reading (they're all stupid). That is a counter-intuitive and uncharitable position, if I suspect, uncharitably, that it must be satisfying in a way to someone arguing it. A more common sense and humble place to begin is with the assumption that people love these stories because they are very well written and they are uplifting in some way (cf. Eliade's thesis about the religious function of entertainments in a secular culture). That has been my working principle, and, looking at Ms. Rowling's work seriously, it seems to hold up very well. These are very good books, in the several senses of "good."
An examination of Ms. Rowling's work as literature, for example, reveals an excellent grasp and use of narrative misdirection (a la Austen, her favorite writer), literary alchemy (from Shakespeare and Lewis, two more favorites), a hero's journey (classic monomyth with Dantesque changes; Rowling is consumed by Renaissance Florence imagery and literature), traditional symbolism (almost exclusively Christian), and postmodern themes, the latter being a consequence of her being a writer of her times writing about the concerns and beliefs of her audience. Dismissing this remarkable accomplishment as serial Seagull reflects much more on the, ahem, ignorance and arrogance of the reader than the failings of the author. I write about these five keys to unlock Harry Potter in a book with that title.
If you want to discuss the books as literature and Potter mania as a counter-cultural phenomenon rather than throw stones from your high place, please join us at HogwartsProfessor.com. It is a moderated site, I am obliged to say, and little if any of the self-satisfied, self-important and, again, excuse me, snarky comments above would have received a pass.
I attach two posts I made at HogPro on the Christian meaning and alchemical artistry of Deathly Hallows in place of joining a discussion here of that book's merits and failings. Thank you for the invitation to join you -- and farewell!
John Granger, checking out
http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=160
http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=155
http://astore.amazon.com/zossimapress-20
Posted by: John Granger | October 23, 2007 at 11:18 AM
And who actually suggested Rowling was writing literature and not pulp? Lotta dough in pulp. Even (or especially) kid-pulp. Sure am thankful to have taken a "pass" after book one. Did anyone ever suggest Rowling was in a class with C.S. Lewis or Tolkein? Classical guitarist Christopher Parkening once counseled not to make the all too common mistake of confusing success with accomplishment, but to strive for the latter. Rowling took the other course and became a phenomena. If you'll forgive me, the whole Harry Potter blather has always reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.... except issued in multiple volumes for a serial effect and profits. And if that suggestion only results in a head scratching "What?" ... you have my point exactly.
Posted by: James the Thickheaded | October 23, 2007 at 07:06 AM
Fr. Jonathan,
I think you make some excellent points that I wish John Granger would interact with you on rather than focusing on the recent comments by JK. Maybe John will come back for a good discussion.
Posted by: Joseph | October 22, 2007 at 07:31 PM
I've read all the books except the last one to my children. I've always found them to be clever, but rather shallow. They hint at something greater, then usually disappoint. Dumbledore's "outing" fits the pattern.
Posted by: Discipulus | October 22, 2007 at 05:21 PM
Dumbledore's gayness, John, is a disappointment but not my chief concern. Didn't you think that that last bout with Voldemort was at least a tad contrived? The plot schematic looks like a Rube Goldberg Device.
I won't burn my copy, but it sure didn't live up to the cachet and panache JK established in the first few volumes: wizards/witches as hippies ... magic not as occult but as quidditch and the Leaky Cauldron ...
Rowling, to patch things up, became awkward, lurching from a fairytale-tone to something akin to Lovecraft. The bildungsroman progress from child magic to adolescent "bloody mary" necromancy was not convincing.
Posted by: Fr. Jonathan | October 22, 2007 at 02:52 PM
For another, less biting view of Ms. Rowling's comment in Carnegie Hall last night, please see http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=198.
John Granger, just visiting
Posted by: John Granger | October 22, 2007 at 02:27 PM