We’re on vacation this week, my husband, my two teenaged stepchildren, and me. The first twenty-four hours Jacob was lost to us, his nose firmly planted between the pages of J.K. Rowling’s latest; now it’s Anastasia’s turn.
Jacob is ineffably sad. It should never end, he contends; he, for one, would like to see what the elderly Harry Potter might do with magical dentures.
There’s a general sense, one gathers, of many devotees not wanting it to end. Over on Second Life, a whole role-playing group pretends to “be” Harry Potter & co., although it has to be said that that particular attempt appears to distinegrate rapidly into drama and nonsense.
But isn’t there something to be said for stories coming to an end? Despite postmodern literary meanderings, didn’t we all learn, at some point, that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Those aren’t the arbutrary dictates of some nasty schoolmaster; they’re the tried-and-true conclusions of centuries of storytelling, from Gilgamesh onward.
It will be interesting to see what Rowling does next. It will be interesting to see if, in the years to come, Harry Potter is enduring enough to be granted a place next to Alice and Bilbo and Aslan in the children’s fantasy hall of fame. But in the meantime, won’t it be interesting to …
… talk about something else?...
And then we’ll all be … beyond the elements of style!
