Mourning the Boy Who Lived: A Eulogy

My life changed forever because my mother had a doctor's appointment. I was 14 years old and she had trusted me to the safety of a chain bookstore while she went to her appointment a few doors down. I didn't get an allowance, but she had given me twenty dollars so that I could buy a book and a snack while I waited.
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" had just come out in hardcover and there were displays everywhere. I had not yet heard of this Potter fellow, but as I read the back of the book, I was immediately interested. And then I realized this was book #3, which meant there were books #1 and #2 around somewhere. I found a paperback copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on a nearby rack and settled myself in for a read.
What felt like moments later, my mother stood over me, ready to leave. I had read myself into Diagon Alley and I had to know what happened next. So, I purchased the book and continued reading. I read in the car, I read in the back room of my mother's furniture store, I read at the dinner table (much to my father's chagrin). And, when I finished, I insisted that my mother sit down in the family room and let me read it to her out loud.
I was inextricably hooked. I bought "Chamber of Secrets" and "Prisoner of Azkaban" and devoured them. I pre-ordered "Goblet of Fire" from Amazon and was in the bathtub when the package arrived. The UPS man was very startled to have a dripping wet 15 year old girl open the door in nothing but a beach towel, snatch the box, and leave her bewildered father with the details.

Before I knew Shakespeare's Hermione, I knew Rowling's and, Krum-like, I pronounced it Her-mee-own for the first two books. I fell in love with Rowling's brand of magic - new and old, practical and ridiculous. I loved the ideas of boarding school, of Quidditch, of house points and centaurs and steam trains. Everything about it conjured something new and wonderful.
My sophomore year of college, the first film came out, and, while it wasn't perfect, it brought a solidity and reality to the world I so desperately wanted to be a part of. And then there were more books and more movies - I celebrated each release with fervor, among the first in line to get the newest installment or adaptation. I studied abroad in England between my junior and senior years of college; and standing on the steps at Christ Church college, all I could hear was Maggie Smith's voice saying "Welcome to Hogwarts." I worked at a bookstore when the fifth book was released and, dressed as Rita Skeeter, interviewed local children for the newspaper.

And now we've gotten to the inevitable. Friday morning at 12:05am, I will sit in the theatre for the last installment of Harry Potter. Then, it will all be over. Sure, I can go back and re-read the books, re-watch the films, experience Rowling's recently announced Pottermore. Last January, I went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando and had what, for me, is the closest I'll ever get to a religious experience.
But, it won't be the same. I have lived the last 11 years of my life in a constant state of anticipation. The next Harry Potter book/film has always been just around the corner. On Friday morning, when I leave the theatre, I know I will feel the bleak desperation that finds us all on Christmas afternoon. This thing that we've looked forward to is now finished - but instead of a day, or a week, a month, or even a year of anticipating, I have been anticipating for almost half my life.

A friend of mine said that when the credits roll on this last Harry Potter film, she knows that her childhood is truly over. The same cannot be said for me. My childhood ended when I called my mother from 3,000 miles away and found out that my father had passed away. Then, I retreated to Hogwarts - to the familiarity of the Great Hall and the Black Lake and the Gryffindor Common Room. To the characters I love like friends I have known my whole life.
These stories have been with me through a cross-country move, a parent's passing, college, dating, graduate school, marriage, jobs, becoming an adult. They taught me that "right" is flexible, that friendship trumps all, and that magic is where you find it.
And, while I'm sad that this, like all good things, must come to an end, I know that I will never see that lightning bolt font or hear the tinkling dum-da-da-duh-da-dum-dum dum-da-da-duh-dum without feeling a thrill of excitement and a tug of nostalgia.

To you, Harry Potter, the boy who lived. Thank you.

The Magic Men

Recently, I finished rereading The Prestige by Christopher Priest. I think it ranks as one of my favorite books. It has all the elements I find appealing in a novel - Historical setting, fantasy elements, a twist of some sort, and complex characters. It also has what I would normally consider a strike against it - first person narrative throughout (for five different characters!). However, Priest handles this choice so deftly that the narrative style becomes intrinsic to the story, which is how things should be.

The story itself is a steampunk infused, pseudo late-gothic thriller. The first-person narratives sit like nesting dolls, one within another, and the reader must crack open the shell of Andrew's mystery to get to the Lady Angier's to get to Borden's to get to Rupert's. The revelations occur slowly but satisfyingly, but, once the final mystery is unearthed (literally), the shells snap back, closing both the remaining characters and the reader out of the fantastic history and thrusting them, shivering, into the cold of reality.

The film adaptation, by virtue of its medium must needs differ from the novel, but Pajiba.com's review of The Prestige sums the matter up quite nicely. Daniel Carlson writes, "Magic and movies are a lot alike, notably because some essence of the thing is inherently lost in the dissection. On one level, it’s disappointing to find out the magician’s secret: That’s all? He palmed the coin? He forced the card? Then again, I never was one to subscribe to Mark Twain’s sad belief that learning to pilot a riverboat robbed the Mississippi of its beauty; to me, learning the trick only enhances the showmanship used to pull it off. However, people are often tempted to carry that sense of letdown, of betrayal, over into cinema, especially when it comes to movies built upon misdirection and a killer twist."

He's right in some respects, but what you lose in the genre shift is the overreaching effect that the main characters' actions have on their families into the present day. In the film, the twist satisfies less, not because you can chalk it up to "movie magic" but because the trick is revealed within the tricksters' lifetimes. The book, as is almost always the case, far surpasses the book - allowing the story to exist within various types of text - a history within a diary within a first-person novel narrative. In the film, the jumps back and back and then forward again sometimes lose the viewer and one is left unsure if this is happening "now" or if this is something that has happened before. The film is a lovely addition to the tale of The Prestige; something, perhaps, better enjoyed with the book rather than instead of it.

Growing Up Goth

I grew up on the sunny Central Coast of California, loving the Gothic. Now, I'm not talking the "oh, my upper middle-class life is a veil of tears - I must clothe myself in the mourning weeds of a misunderstood youth and 'Please, Mom, I have to stop at Walgreen's on the way home to buy more semi-permanent black hair dye'." type of Goth, I'm talking misty moors, haunted houses, and brooding gentlemen. So, below is the brief history of my time in the Gothic mode:

The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett
Rappacinni's Daughter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Speckled Band Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The short stories of Edgar Allen Poe
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Dracula Bram Stoker
The Thirteenth Tale Diane Setterfield
Gormenghast Mervyn Peake
Pretty much anything by Shirley Jackson - particularly We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Picture of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde
Edward Gorey's anything - but I like "The Curious Sofa" best

I'm sure that, with enough time and energy, I could come up with twenty more, but this is a solid start. Now go to the library, and get reading!