Writers and Errors
I'm going to say something that will upset a lot of people.
Yes, the canonical author can mess up his or her own canon. Yes, it's possible.
Take Orson Scott Card, for example. The man freely admits that he has problems with timelines. You can get a serious headache trying to force all of the chronology of all his Enderverse books to make sense.
Rowling also had timeline problems in HBP. The most significant one involved Albus Dumbledore. When Slughorn spoke to Tom about Horcruxes, he said that the subject had been banned by Dumbledore.
But in Tom Riddle's sixth year--1943-1944--Dumbledore was only the Transfiguration teacher, not the Headmaster. Armando Dippet was the Headmaster. Dumbledore didn't have the authority to ban anything.
The same goes for Voldemort's "job interview" with Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office in 1955. Now, according to CoS, Dippet was STILL Headmaster then. And according to Remus in PoA, Dumbledore didn't become Headmaster until a few months before Remus entered Hogwarts--which would have been 1971.
I've seen all sorts of explanations for this particular error--that Rowling is cleverly trying to show that this is a false memory, that Dippet had just delegated the interviewing authority to Dumbledore, and so on. But the truth is...Rowling sucks at math. And she admits that she doesn't re-read her books after she writes them. I think that she just plain forgot.**
Which is certainly possible. In On Writing, Stephen King mentions an anecdote about an entire character who was forgotten by his author:
"When asked about the murdered chauffeur in The Big Sleep, [Raymond] Chandler--who liked his tipple--replied, 'Oh, him. You know, I forgot all about him.'"
I love that. I love that Chandler just came out and admitted that he made a mistake. Because here's the thing: All writers make mistakes. Even professionals. Errors are not the exclusive property of amateurs. And you don't become infallible once you start selling. Or, in fact, at any point at all. (Though we'd all like to think that we do.)
But somehow it's not considered quite polite to mention any of this, especially if you're a member of fandom. Some fans will go so far as to say that canon writers CAN'T contradict their own canon, CAN'T create Mary Sues or Gary Stus, CAN'T write characters OOC, because, well, it's their canon.
On the Mary Sue and Gary Stu issue, I have only this to say:
Anne Rice, Elizabeth Hayden, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and Christopher Paolini...I'm looking at YOU.
Professional authors can't contradict something that they already wrote? Oh, it's possible, especially in long series where the author changes over the years, and as he or she does so, so does his or her interpretation of what is happening. However, what's already been written...well, it doesn't tend to change along with that new interpretation.
In HBP, Rowling had some previously-used spells that didn't do the same thing this time around that they had done the first time. "Relashio" springs to mind. In GoF, according to the Lexicon, it "shoots a jet of fiery sparks. Underwater," as we learn when Harry casts it during the Second Task, it "fires a jet of boiling water." But in HBP, a wizard called Bob Ogden uses it to knock Marvolo Gaunt across the room to stop him from strangling his daughter. Same spell, but very different result.
We also have people casting the wrong spells and getting the right results, thanks to a retcon. The spell to awaken the unconscious used to be "Ennervate"; as of Book 6, it was retconned into "Rennervate"...which completely ignored the millions of copies of books that had "Ennervate" in the text.
And yes, Rowling can do that. She can even specify that this retcon is to appear in all future editions of all future books.
But however much she changes it, there's going to be someone who remembers it the other way, and who would have preferred that there had been no change. I saw the original Star Wars movie--Episode 4, now--when it first came out. Now, George Lucas can make as many director's cuts as he wants...but in the original version, which I saw when I was sixteen, Han shot first. And nothing can make me un-see that.
What I truly love is George R. R. Martin's attitude toward fans and continuity. In the acknowledgments of his latest book, A Feast for Crows, Martin thanked the maintainers of the Westeros Concordance (the A Song of Ice and Fire's online encyclopedia:
...And let me sound a fanfare too for Elio and Linda, who seem to know the Seven Kingdoms better than I do, and who help me keep my continuity straight. Their Westeros website and concordance is a joy and a wonder.
Now that's class.
**A friend of mine (quinby) and I have a running argument about which timeline is more screwed up, that of the Enderverse or that of the Potterverse.
Yes, the canonical author can mess up his or her own canon. Yes, it's possible.
Take Orson Scott Card, for example. The man freely admits that he has problems with timelines. You can get a serious headache trying to force all of the chronology of all his Enderverse books to make sense.
Rowling also had timeline problems in HBP. The most significant one involved Albus Dumbledore. When Slughorn spoke to Tom about Horcruxes, he said that the subject had been banned by Dumbledore.
But in Tom Riddle's sixth year--1943-1944--Dumbledore was only the Transfiguration teacher, not the Headmaster. Armando Dippet was the Headmaster. Dumbledore didn't have the authority to ban anything.
The same goes for Voldemort's "job interview" with Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office in 1955. Now, according to CoS, Dippet was STILL Headmaster then. And according to Remus in PoA, Dumbledore didn't become Headmaster until a few months before Remus entered Hogwarts--which would have been 1971.
I've seen all sorts of explanations for this particular error--that Rowling is cleverly trying to show that this is a false memory, that Dippet had just delegated the interviewing authority to Dumbledore, and so on. But the truth is...Rowling sucks at math. And she admits that she doesn't re-read her books after she writes them. I think that she just plain forgot.**
Which is certainly possible. In On Writing, Stephen King mentions an anecdote about an entire character who was forgotten by his author:
"When asked about the murdered chauffeur in The Big Sleep, [Raymond] Chandler--who liked his tipple--replied, 'Oh, him. You know, I forgot all about him.'"
I love that. I love that Chandler just came out and admitted that he made a mistake. Because here's the thing: All writers make mistakes. Even professionals. Errors are not the exclusive property of amateurs. And you don't become infallible once you start selling. Or, in fact, at any point at all. (Though we'd all like to think that we do.)
But somehow it's not considered quite polite to mention any of this, especially if you're a member of fandom. Some fans will go so far as to say that canon writers CAN'T contradict their own canon, CAN'T create Mary Sues or Gary Stus, CAN'T write characters OOC, because, well, it's their canon.
On the Mary Sue and Gary Stu issue, I have only this to say:
Anne Rice, Elizabeth Hayden, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and Christopher Paolini...I'm looking at YOU.
Professional authors can't contradict something that they already wrote? Oh, it's possible, especially in long series where the author changes over the years, and as he or she does so, so does his or her interpretation of what is happening. However, what's already been written...well, it doesn't tend to change along with that new interpretation.
In HBP, Rowling had some previously-used spells that didn't do the same thing this time around that they had done the first time. "Relashio" springs to mind. In GoF, according to the Lexicon, it "shoots a jet of fiery sparks. Underwater," as we learn when Harry casts it during the Second Task, it "fires a jet of boiling water." But in HBP, a wizard called Bob Ogden uses it to knock Marvolo Gaunt across the room to stop him from strangling his daughter. Same spell, but very different result.
We also have people casting the wrong spells and getting the right results, thanks to a retcon. The spell to awaken the unconscious used to be "Ennervate"; as of Book 6, it was retconned into "Rennervate"...which completely ignored the millions of copies of books that had "Ennervate" in the text.
And yes, Rowling can do that. She can even specify that this retcon is to appear in all future editions of all future books.
But however much she changes it, there's going to be someone who remembers it the other way, and who would have preferred that there had been no change. I saw the original Star Wars movie--Episode 4, now--when it first came out. Now, George Lucas can make as many director's cuts as he wants...but in the original version, which I saw when I was sixteen, Han shot first. And nothing can make me un-see that.
What I truly love is George R. R. Martin's attitude toward fans and continuity. In the acknowledgments of his latest book, A Feast for Crows, Martin thanked the maintainers of the Westeros Concordance (the A Song of Ice and Fire's online encyclopedia:
...And let me sound a fanfare too for Elio and Linda, who seem to know the Seven Kingdoms better than I do, and who help me keep my continuity straight. Their Westeros website and concordance is a joy and a wonder.
Now that's class.
**A friend of mine (quinby) and I have a running argument about which timeline is more screwed up, that of the Enderverse or that of the Potterverse.