Confessions of a Harry-come-lately
ESSAY | Pottermania turned off this Muggle for years, but the transformation to addicted fan is finally complete
I wanted nothing to do with any of it.
The problem wasn't that I was a literary snob, or that J.K. Rowling's series of fantasy novels were marketed to young readers. I was a J.R.R. Tolkien fan from way back, and everywhere I looked, I saw adults devouring the Potter books as avidly as their children.
Nor was it Harry Potter himself I couldn't stand. It was Pottermania.
(Guillermo Munro/Sun-Times illustration)
To a hype-hating curmudgeon like me, it was nauseating. Harry Potter was being shoved down my throat, and I was determined to keep spitting him out.
Then one day in 2005, for reasons I can't fully explain, my resolve weakened. On Amazon, I came across a boxed set of the first five Potter books in paperback, The Sorcerer's Stone through The Order of the Phoenix. Almost as if I were playing on a Ouija board with a supernatural presence -- was that you, Harry? -- in the room, I felt my fingers tapping out the order. It wasn't so very expensive, I reasoned, so why not find out what all the fuss was about?
I was done for. When the books arrived, I read the first in two days, including short breaks for things like food and earning a living, and quickly understood something of what it must be like to be an addict. Within two weeks I'd gone through the whole stash -- er, set -- and within a month I was standing in line for my hardcover copy of The Half-Blood Prince, which, fortunately for my sanity, had just come out.
In the agonizing two-year wait for the series finale, The Deathly Hallows, to be released on Saturday, I've steeped myself in Potteriana. With Talmudic rigor I can illuminate for you exactly what a Horcrux is, reel off the three Unforgivable Curses, and spar with the field's greatest sages (who tend to be around 12 years old) about whether the sinister Professor Snape is a bad guy or a good one. I've trolled the Internet fan sites, including those in a tizzy about the possibility that Rowling might kill off Harry in the end. (If that happens, which I seriously doubt, the author may have to go underground for a while. Maybe Salman Rushdie has a spare couch.) Heaven help me, I've even tried pumpkin juice.
Naturally, I've watched all the movie versions so far -- the latest, "The Order of the Phoenix," opened this week -- and found them acceptable, though far less satisfying than the books. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry onscreen, is a little too handsome to match my mental picture of the character, which more closely resembles the wand-wielding geek of Mary GrandPre's book jackets for the U.S. editions. (On the other hand, Alan Rickman is a dead ringer for Snape.)
And so my transformation from skeptic to fan is complete. If whatever guided my fingers on Amazon that fateful day emanated not from the spirit world or Hogwarts but from Madison Avenue, I'm grateful anyhow. The Potter craze is that rare example, like America's love affair with the Beatles in the '60s, of a mass infatuation that deservedly grew into a long-term relationship.
No, the Potter books aren't the best fantasy writing of recent years; that distinction belongs to Philip Pullman's great His Dark Materials trilogy, also coming soon to a theater near you. But Rowling has succeeded in creating a compelling, consistent and progressively dark world all her own, one that wears its literary lineage lightly but unmistakably. Harry is King Arthur, Frodo Baggins and Luke Skywalker rolled into one. Joseph Campbell would have been proud. So would Tolkien.
Come Saturday morning, I'll be proud, too -- to stand in line, plop down my Muggle money and spend a day with my favorite wizard.
I wasn't there for you at first, Harry, but now I've got your back. Voldemort doesn't stand a chance.
Kevin Nance is the Sun-Times' critic-at-large.