Harry Potter and the Metafictional Hook
As I sit here pondering the interesting timing logistics of having released the YA fantasy Senrid by Sherwood Smith around this time, so near the release of the final Harry Potter book, it occurs to me that the compelling power of Harry Potter is that it is a metafictionally-charged book.
Harry Potter is a meta-book.
Let me explain.
I have to give the example of myself as a reader and go back several years to the time when I picked up the first Harry Potter book. I wasn't one of those people who started reading Harry Potter immediately. In fact, the first three books were already out and the fourth one was just due to hit the stores when I got the first volume and started to read -- mostly because I was interested in the promotional aspects of this phenomenon. Who wasn't?
And so, as I look back now, it is easy to do so because I made it a point to take mental notes, to observe myself in the role of reader, to try to understand how and why this book had such a weird massive following.
The first thing that jumped at me, in the very first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was that Harry Potter was described as a celebrity, a boy in our modern day and age who was somehow more, a mysterious superstar of magic, of all things. There was an odd sensation that the fictional Harry Potter the kid was simultaneously describing Harry Potter the book -- already a celebrity amongst books, and climbing -- and suddenly the novel popped out from the boundaries of fiction into the real world -- at least it did for me.... So strongly, that I could just about feel the fabric between real and fictional strain and crackle along the edges.
Okay -- look back to your own initial experience of reading Harry Potter and try to remember if you too could feel it?
So anyway, suddenly, as I was reading, I knew the book was "alive" -- not because it was in any particular way better than a number of other wonderful YA novels (Diana Wynne Jones, Sherwood Smith, Jane Yolen all come to mind), but because it had presumed to cross that line between realities into my own world. It's as though it stepped away from itself, turned around and pointed at itself, saying, "Look, look at me!"
I am not kidding you. It was as if somebody put a real honest-to-goodness spell on it, charged it with the metafictional power to exist in the here and now.
Now, when I say this, this bizarre power, or maybe "effect" only lasted initially. As I read on, it subtly dissipated and I was simply drawn into the story on a normal level, and as I went on to read the rest of the books in the series, again, there was none of that compelling initial nigh-supernatural weirdness, only a sense that this is a pretty good story and I should just read on to find out what happens next.
So then, that supernatural "compelling suction" effect exists only briefly in the beginning of the first book. The other books in the series just sort of fall into place in a normal way of curiosity.
Call me crazy, but... how else do we explain this crazy monstrous phenomenon?
Someone has bewitched this whole planet of readers with a magical couple of opening chapters. Talk about a metafictional hook!
So, what's a meta-object, then? It is an object that is partially alive. :-) And if Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a meta-book...
Hmmm.... :-)
Harry Potter is a meta-book.
Let me explain.
I have to give the example of myself as a reader and go back several years to the time when I picked up the first Harry Potter book. I wasn't one of those people who started reading Harry Potter immediately. In fact, the first three books were already out and the fourth one was just due to hit the stores when I got the first volume and started to read -- mostly because I was interested in the promotional aspects of this phenomenon. Who wasn't?
And so, as I look back now, it is easy to do so because I made it a point to take mental notes, to observe myself in the role of reader, to try to understand how and why this book had such a weird massive following.
The first thing that jumped at me, in the very first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was that Harry Potter was described as a celebrity, a boy in our modern day and age who was somehow more, a mysterious superstar of magic, of all things. There was an odd sensation that the fictional Harry Potter the kid was simultaneously describing Harry Potter the book -- already a celebrity amongst books, and climbing -- and suddenly the novel popped out from the boundaries of fiction into the real world -- at least it did for me.... So strongly, that I could just about feel the fabric between real and fictional strain and crackle along the edges.
Okay -- look back to your own initial experience of reading Harry Potter and try to remember if you too could feel it?
So anyway, suddenly, as I was reading, I knew the book was "alive" -- not because it was in any particular way better than a number of other wonderful YA novels (Diana Wynne Jones, Sherwood Smith, Jane Yolen all come to mind), but because it had presumed to cross that line between realities into my own world. It's as though it stepped away from itself, turned around and pointed at itself, saying, "Look, look at me!"
I am not kidding you. It was as if somebody put a real honest-to-goodness spell on it, charged it with the metafictional power to exist in the here and now.
Now, when I say this, this bizarre power, or maybe "effect" only lasted initially. As I read on, it subtly dissipated and I was simply drawn into the story on a normal level, and as I went on to read the rest of the books in the series, again, there was none of that compelling initial nigh-supernatural weirdness, only a sense that this is a pretty good story and I should just read on to find out what happens next.
So then, that supernatural "compelling suction" effect exists only briefly in the beginning of the first book. The other books in the series just sort of fall into place in a normal way of curiosity.
Call me crazy, but... how else do we explain this crazy monstrous phenomenon?
Someone has bewitched this whole planet of readers with a magical couple of opening chapters. Talk about a metafictional hook!
So, what's a meta-object, then? It is an object that is partially alive. :-) And if Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a meta-book...
Hmmm.... :-)