A mother who edits

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T A B L E_T A L K

A recent report by the American Psychiatric Association questions the degree of harm done by child sexual abuse. Join a heated discussion of the report in Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Conned by a Jewish mother
By Inda Schaenen
I thought if I cooked like Molly Goldberg, I could land myself and my family in her warm, loving, safe world
(03/30/99)

One big dysfunctional family
By Fiona Morgan
Former cult member can laugh about it now
(03/29/99)

Remembering Carole Sund
By Wendy J. Williams
A community of mothers mourns the death of a woman murdered on a sightseeing trip
(03/26/99)

Tell me the truth
By Sallie Tisdale
Or if you're going to lie, at least do it truthfully
(03/23/99)

Breed old, die late and leave a beautiful brain
By Michele Y. Pridmore-Brown
The evidence is in: Old mothers live longer and are smarter than the rest of us
(03/24/99)

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BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

THIS SORCERY ISN'T JUST FOR KIDS | PAGE 1, 2
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The hero of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is an outsider, one who, like many other outsiders in kids' literature, learns to value the things that have always made him feel separate from the people around him, and who also learns that the means of escape from his solitary existence has been within him all along. The book is a dream of belonging, and of discovering self-sufficiency and courage. What matters, though, is the flesh Rowling puts on those thematic bones. I don't think you can read 100 pages of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" before you start feeling that unmistakable shiver that tells you you're reading a classic. Rowling's own story is irresistible: a single mom, she began writing the book while unemployed and got a grant from the Scottish Arts Council enabling her to finish it. The first book in a cycle of seven (the second volume is already out in Britain and will be published here in the fall; the third volume will appear in the U.K. in June), "Harry Potter" has become something of a children's publishing phenomenon, one of those rare books that crosses over to adult readers (it's currently on the New York Times Bestseller list).

Harry Potter's life starts with one of the tragedies that heroes carry with them like scars (in fact, he bears a mysterious lightning-shaped scar on his forehead). Harry's parents are killed when he is just an infant, and he grows up in the shabby care of his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and their horror of a son, Dudley. The Dursleys are the sort of oppressively ordinary dullards that Dahl took delight in savaging -- not because they're ordinary, but because they're so utterly self-satisfied about being ordinary, and so suspicious of anyone who isn't. They're characters who epitomize the word the book's wizards use to describe people without magical powers: Muggles. (We've all got a few Muggles in our families.) Within the stultified suburban London confines of 4 Privet Drive, Harry lives a Grimm existence, sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs (which he shares with spiders) and being the whipping boy for Dudley and his sluggard pals. Life continues this way until Harry is 11, when suddenly an emissary from Hogwarts, a school that has trained generations of wizards, drops into his life. The messenger, an enormous bear of a man named Hagrid (who will become Harry's protector), informs Harry that he is in fact the son of wizards killed by the dark wizard Voldemort. Voldemort was not able to kill Harry (he could inflict no more damage than that lightning-shaped scar), though the word is that the dark wizard is biding his time, consolidating his power. With his own training ahead of him, Harry is whisked away to Hogwarts and there begin his adventures.

Rowling is the most matter-of-fact fantasy writer you could hope for. Each marvel -- like the owls who deliver morning mail at Hogwarts, or the school sport of Quidditch, a kind of field hockey played in the air while riding broomsticks -- is treated in a one-thing-after-another manner that keeps any hint of preciousness from creeping in. Her straightforwardness (with just the right degree of the nasty humor kids love) keeps her writing grounded. She's come up with a nifty metaphor for the way in which magic exists in the guise of the ordinary: The world of wizards exists in comfortable parallel to the Muggle world, visible only to those with powers, happily invisible to everyone else. Thus, the train to Hogwarts leaves from a hidden platform at King's Cross, and the wizard business district is accessible only from a walled courtyard behind a pub.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" unites the English novel of school day exploits with the humorous, macabre fantasy that Dahl perfected. In the time-honored tradition of the latter, Harry quickly locates a best friend (Ron Weasley, the latest in a long line of siblings who've attended Hogwarts, his being the sort of middle-class family that sacrifices to send the kids to a good school), a nemesis (the snobby rich kid Draco Malfoy), the class overachiever who nonetheless becomes his friend (Hermione Granger), the little kid made to be picked on (Neville Longbottom) and the teacher who seems to have it out for him (Snape). It's the best compliment I can pay Rowling that she's created characters who live up to the names she's picked out for them. They're types, yes, but so fully drawn that they break the molds.

I realize that the book I'm describing sounds like no more than an amusing diversion. But I said that literature is a diversion that offers a way back to life. And while comfort may be one of the goals of those children's books that are fantasies of belonging, there's nothing cushy or insular about the best children's books, which never deny the possibility of pain or loss. You might even argue that the tragedies of these books hurt even more (the way the tragedies of great musicals do) because they occur within an idealized fantasy world. "Harry Potter" reassures its readers that they won't get lost as they enter into new experiences, but at the same time it never denies the ache of what you leave behind. That's the emotional balance Rowling maintains, and I can sum up the keenness of this book's emotions by quoting the passage that describes the author's most remarkable and moving invention. Prowling around the school one night after lights out, Harry stumbles upon a room that contains a mirror. Looking in it, he's startled to see himself surrounded by a crowd of people with eyes and hair just like him. Harry doesn't know that the mirror shows whoever looks into it their heart's fondest desire, but the realization dawns on him that he is "looking at his family, for the first time in his life." Rowling continues:

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

How long he stood there, he didn't know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn't stay here, he had to find a way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother's face, whispered, "I'll come back," and hurried from the room.

The beauty of that passage, in both conception and execution (Rowling is an astonishingly visual writer), needs no explication. But perhaps you have to have made your way through too many exquisitely crafted novels that didn't make you feel anything beyond a vague admiration for their craft to understand why reading a passage like that can seem as necessary as coming upon a drink of cool water when you're parched. So I don't want to condescend to J.K. Rowling by saying she's written a wonderful children's novel. She's written a wonderful novel, period. And to those who insist that novels should impart lessons, let the lesson of "Harry Potter" be the only distinction worth making in literature: separating the Muggles from the wizards.
SALON | March 31, 1999