J.K., your postscript is a little late
Dumbledore, gay? Shouldn't Harry Potter's creator have said so in at least one of the seven books?
By ROY PETER CLARK
Published October 28, 2007
I've read all seven books in the Harry Potter series three times, and I've seen each of the five movies at least twice. I have applauded author J.K Rowling for her fully realized creation of an imaginative world and her contribution to literacy worldwide. I have praised her craft in my book Writing Tools.
So it is with more than some discomfort that I announce a serious grievance with the author who is richer than the Queen of England.
On Monday, as I crunched my Cheerios and flipped through the newspaper, I came across this stunning paragraph on Page 2B of the St. Petersburg Times:
"Author J.K. Rowling revealed Friday that master wizard Albus Dumbledore is gay, giving some passages about the Hogwarts headmaster and rival wizard Gellert Grindelwald a new and clearer meaning. The British author of the Harry Potter series stunned her fans in New York when she answered one young reader's question about Dumbledore by saying that he was gay and had been in love with Grindelwald, whom he had defeated years ago in a bitter fight. The news brought gasps, then applause at Carnegie Hall, the last stop on Rowling's brief U.S. tour."
It appears to this humble writer that Ms. Rowling suffers from some literary version of post-partum depression laced with separation anxiety. She's in mourning now that her fictional little birds have flown the nest. What's next? Voldemort was a Scientologist? Harry was really Jesus? Hermione was a member of the Labour Party?
If Rowling were a student at Hogwarts, the school of magic she created, her stern teacher, Severus Snape, would be forced to give her a month's detention for her terrible lack of literary judgment.
You just can't go around announcing things about your fictional characters THAT ARE NOT IN THE BOOK! If you want your readers to suspect that Dumbledore is gay, you've got to put the evidence in the narrative. You've got to show us some gayness, and, given the eccentric world you've created, those purple robes and frequent out-of-town trips are not enough.
Announcing what few could have guessed - that the world's greatest wizard is gay - is like Mark Twain revealing that Huck Finn was really black or Nathaniel Hawthorne disclosing that Hester Prynne was a lesbian.
Here is why I think her announcement was wrong:
1. If Dumbledore's sexual orientation was important enough for a public announcement, then it should have been made more explicit in the book.
2. By not putting it in the book, Rowling implies that an important part of the headmaster's identity was too taboo to reveal to readers, and what does that say about her view of the nature of homosexuality?
3. The revelation probably means that some children will be prevented by scrupulous parents or teacher from reading one of the best sagas of all time.
4. If J.D. Salinger wants to say more about Holden Caulfield, he is free to do so: IN ANOTHER BOOK. Rowling's announcement violates the unwritten contract between author and reader that says: It is the writer's job to offer all the relevant evidence in the text, and the reader's job to imagine the lives of characters beyond the boundaries of the book.
This is not the first time that Rowling has violated this contract. After she received criticism that her epilogue described only the future family roles of her main characters and not their professional ones, she immediately described the jobs that Harry and Hermione might have occupied.
Seven books, five movies, thousands and thousand of pages. If that is not enough space to fit in everything we need to know, Jo, then all the rest, as they say, should be silence. Dumbledore doesn't belong to you anymore. You gave him to us.
-- Roy Peter Clark is senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which owns the St. Petersburg Times. He is the author of the book "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer."