Something about the way you hold that quill makes me feel so masochistic...
JKR's Time interview has the potential to be a little spoilery, so consider before you click. Interesting read, though.
I think the writer gives Jo a little too much credit here:
Rowling adapts an inherently conservative genre for her own progressive purposes. Her Hogwarts is secular and sexual and multicultural and multiracial and even sort of multimedia, with all those talking ghosts. If [C.S.] Lewis showed up there, let's face it, he'd probably wind up a Death Eater.
The HP universe isn't really so diverse; certainly no more than any other piece of contemporary fiction, and less than many. Comparing it to the Narnia series, written half a century ago, is silly. Nor do I agree with a later suggestion that Rowling refuses to view herself as a moral educator to the millions of children who read her books. Her work, particularly everything pre-Ootp, is grounded in moral absolutes. Infuriatingly so, in the case of the Slytherins. The fact that they're more modern than, say, the rampant Catholicism of C.S. Lewis hardly makes them studies in relativism.
Much of Rowling's understanding of the origins of evil has to do with the role of the father in family life. "As I look back over the five published books," she says, "I realize that it's kind of a litany of bad fathers. That's where evil seems to flourish, in places where people didn't get good fathering."
True, dat. But more important, I think, is the role of good/bad mothering in the lives of Harry and others. In fact, the whole HP series is turning out to be a veiled treatise on motherhood. Initiated at a time when JKR was a single mother, natch.
Other interesting bits include drawing a parallel between the personalities of Dumbledore and Rowling, a criticism of the flatness of Voldemort's character, and Jo's somewhat consternating (to me) contention that her books aren't all that "secular." Excuse me, but why the apologetic tone? Where I come from, secularism is TEH HAWT.
I think the writer gives Jo a little too much credit here:
Rowling adapts an inherently conservative genre for her own progressive purposes. Her Hogwarts is secular and sexual and multicultural and multiracial and even sort of multimedia, with all those talking ghosts. If [C.S.] Lewis showed up there, let's face it, he'd probably wind up a Death Eater.
The HP universe isn't really so diverse; certainly no more than any other piece of contemporary fiction, and less than many. Comparing it to the Narnia series, written half a century ago, is silly. Nor do I agree with a later suggestion that Rowling refuses to view herself as a moral educator to the millions of children who read her books. Her work, particularly everything pre-Ootp, is grounded in moral absolutes. Infuriatingly so, in the case of the Slytherins. The fact that they're more modern than, say, the rampant Catholicism of C.S. Lewis hardly makes them studies in relativism.
Much of Rowling's understanding of the origins of evil has to do with the role of the father in family life. "As I look back over the five published books," she says, "I realize that it's kind of a litany of bad fathers. That's where evil seems to flourish, in places where people didn't get good fathering."
True, dat. But more important, I think, is the role of good/bad mothering in the lives of Harry and others. In fact, the whole HP series is turning out to be a veiled treatise on motherhood. Initiated at a time when JKR was a single mother, natch.
Other interesting bits include drawing a parallel between the personalities of Dumbledore and Rowling, a criticism of the flatness of Voldemort's character, and Jo's somewhat consternating (to me) contention that her books aren't all that "secular." Excuse me, but why the apologetic tone? Where I come from, secularism is TEH HAWT.