Wednesday, December 19, 2007

New JKR feature in Time Magazine

Time Magazine has announced that author J.K. Rowling was a runner-up for the 2007 "Person of the Year." The current issue of the news magazine has a lengthy article and Jo's answers to ten questions! So here is the new quotage and canon:

"Runner-up: J.K. Rowling" by Nancy Gibbs
  • Although the bible verse "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" on James and Lily's grave is the "theme for the entire series," Jo is not trying to convert her readers to Christianity.
  • "It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God."
  • "I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form," she says. "And that includes in my own religion."
  • On Wizard rock activism: "It's incredible, it's humbling, and it's uplifting to see people going out there and doing that in the name of your character," [...] "What did my books preach against throughout? Bigotry, violence, struggles for power, no matter what. All of these things are happening in Darfur. So they really couldn't have chosen a better cause."
  • "He's [Harry's] still mine," she says. "Many people may feel that they own him. But he's a very real character to me, and no one's thought about him more than I have."
  • On the epilogue: "I kept arguing that 'love is the most important force, love is the most important force.' So I wanted to show him loving. Sometimes it's dramatic: it means you lay down your life. But sometimes it means making sure someone's trunk is packed and hoping they'll be O.K. at school."
  • Jo is currently writing two books: an adult novel and a "political fairy tale."
  • "If, and it's a big if, I ever write an eighth book about the [wizarding ] world, I doubt that Harry would be the central character," she says. "I feel like I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years and see how we feel then."
Rowling Answers 10 Questions About Harry
  • JKR chose the people who came to walk with Harry in the forest as he was going to his death because they were in some way were parental for him, or gave up their lives for him.
  • Having Harry's blood in him was a bit of "goodness" for Voldemort, and gave him one last chance. If he had repented he would have been healed to a remarkable extent.
  • Voldemort's Avada Kedavra succeeded in "killing the part of him that is not truly him, in other words, the fragment of Voldemort's own soul that is still clinging to his. The curse also disables Harry severely enough that he could have succumbed to death if he had chosen that path."
  • Harry was right to feel repulsed by the baby-like remains of Voldemort's shattered soul.
  • What did Dumbledore really see in the Mirror of Erised?
    JKR: "His family, alive and whole and reconciled."
  • Harry and Voldemort are distantly related through the Peverells, but you could say the same about Harry and most other wizarding familes.
  • Draco Malfoy marries Astoria Greengrass, the "younger sister of the Greengrass family."
  • Jo repeats her earlier assertion that Ron's adult career was working at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, where he "does very well."
  • Tonks was a Hufflepuff.

1 comment:

rmacapobre said...

she speaks with wisdom