The Triumph Of Harry And Hermione, Hogwarts And All

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday November 28, 2001

Paul Sheehan

The force behind the Potter phenomenon is not a faceless conglomerate, but the creative spirit of a penniless single mother.

Anyone lucky enough to have been in England when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published, bought a first edition of the hardback and then got it autographed by its author, J.K. Rowling, has won the lottery. That book only 500 hardcover first editions were printed is now worth about $45,000.

Even if you don't have the Rowling signature you can still win.

``Entire sets of first-edition hardcovers of all four [Harry Potter books] are now very expensive; they can fetch around #35,000 [$105,000]," Natalie Galustian, of Simon Finch Rare Books, London, told Publishing News.

``We had the first editions of the first three, unsigned, last year and they went for #18,000. There is no other book that comes close it is a bit of a phenomenon."

Just a bit. Although there are more significant subjects in the news, such as the strange reaction to the cloning of human cells, the time to write about the Potter phenomenon is now, because in about a week most people will be sick of the Potter marketing monster.

It's a shame, because the Harry Potter phenomenon is a huge win for whimsy, for literacy, and for woman.

Women? At the risk of blasphemy, the character Harry Potter himself is basically as thick as bat dung. While he inhabits a fantastic world, achieves remarkable things and has great courage, he has basically inherited his special power, and has nothing interesting to say. Strip away all the magical effects, lurid villains, vigorous plots and leave just the dialogue, and this is basically what Harry spends most of the books saying: ``Nearly ... I know ... What world? ... I've found him."

Harry Potter is a vessel. His best friend, Ron Weasley, is a moron. The real character of the series, the only kid with better than average brains, is Harry's other best friend, Hermione Granger. Brilliant, driven, eccentric, she even has a personality.

When we first meet Hermione she has just come from a family with no history of wizardry or witchcraft she's a muggle and she's already read all the books on the reading list. It's not long before she is colour-coding her notes, drawing up revision timetables, and topping the class. Later, every life-or-death test that requires forensic or analytical skill falls to Hermione. If Harry and Ron had to rely on brain power they would be dragon mince.

It's easy to see why Hermione almost steals the movie, and to see which character carries the soul of the author. She is the only character that J.K. Rowling says is partly drawn from her life.

``I have to confess that Hermione Granger is a little bit like I was at her age, though I was neither as clever or as annoying," she says.

The Harry Potter phenomenon is the product of one woman alone. No corporate backing, no marketing department, no creative writing course were involved in the process that led Joanne Rowling, a broke single-mother who had already written two unpublishable novels, to build and sustain a coherent world of glorious imaginative power. Criticisms that the books promote passe stereotypes are merely playing out the inevitable formula in which a few creative people create while an army of uncreative people criticise, categorise and patronise.

This is especially so in the Communications Age, when every creative breakthrough spawns an army of parasites.

Now that the Harry Potter industry is in the hands of the world's largest media conglomerate, AOL Times Warner, a marketing juggernaut is under way from which there will be no escape.

The company's studio, Warner Bros, is making the movies; its record company has done the soundtrack; and its cable networks, Internet system and magazine empire will spread the message.

Even Coca-Cola has spent $300 million for the exclusive global rights to promote the first film, which opens here tomorrow, and the first sequel, which is already in production.

Rowling's close involvement in the movies has delayed the fifth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It will probably be another nine months before we believers can board the Hogwarts Express (from platform nine and three quarters) at London's Kings Cross station, the real place where Rowling arrived at the end of the train journey when she invented this inner world.

See you at the station.

psheehan@smh.com.au