Have at it.

[leftsockarchive]

No more caffeine or sugar for you people!  :)

Okay, seriously.  Honest questions.  All are welcome to comment.  All opinions are respected.

Should Rowling grant or not grant interviews?  Why or why not?

Should Rowling answer questions vaguely, or in detail?  What difference, if any, does it make to you personally?

Do you think Rowling is making things

Comments

[exartemarte]

I have already expressed my view in my own journal. I’d like to address some of your questions, though.

Should she give interviews? Yes - as long as she is happy to do it and people enjoy them, as they clearly do, then I wouldn’t wish to spoil the fun. I quite enjoy the interviews myself, and I find the JKR that we see when she’s doing a reading or interacting with young readers quite an attractive personality.

Should she answer vaguely or in detail? I don’t think there’s a general answer to that - it has to depend on the nature of the question and the information that she has. I’m sure she’s asked questions about things that she’s never thought through in detail, so a vague answer or none at all is all that’s possible. It doesn’t affect me personally as long as she isn’t making it up as she goes along, which is pre-empting your next question, or straying too far outside the scope of the books.

Is she making things up? She obviously speaks much more freely now that she doesn’t have to worry about giving things away, but I doubt that she makes things up on the spot in order to answer questions.

Does what she says affect your approach to enjoying the books, reading fan fiction, or writing fan fiction? That’s the big one, and the answers are yes, yes and yes. If she discloses relevant detail that helps to explain events or motivations in the books then that contributes to my enjoyment of them. Irrelevant detail doesn’t, and it can limit the exercise of my imagination as well as detracting from the pleasure of both reading and writing fan fiction. Gay Dumbledore was a case in point. Maybe I’m not the most perceptive of readers but, for me, Dumbledore’s sexuality was never an issue in any of the books - and by the end of the books he’s dead, so it’s not an issue, period. I think the only possible effect of her declaring Dumbledore gay is that it will detract from fics that assume he wasn’t. Similarly, I think marrying Neville to Hannah, about whom we don’t know much, contributes zilch to the books and serves only to constrain our imaginations.

To a degree, I’m with Ginchy on this, except that I prefer to create my own epilogue.

They’re her characters, of course, and she’s entitled to do as she likes with them. I would be happier, though, if she could resist the temptation to announce random facts that are outside the scope of her books. If she wants to be specific about who marries whom, and wants to name their children and specify their careers, etc, then perhaps she should write book 8. Otherwise, I would rather she left me as a reader (and also as a reader and writer of fan fiction) free to exercise my imagination.