Rediscovering Hogwarts: Some Non-Magical Advice for Lauren Edelson

I’m sure that J.K. Rowling — at least in her more lucid moments — would provisionally agree with the conclusion of this piece.

But first off, let’s celebrate something. I have a fair record of being pretty rough on the New York Times when its folly merits exposure, but the appearance of the little op-ed by a teenager, referenced above, is an example of a newspaper doing what it was created to do: reflect and honor the insight of ordinary people and not just superstars like Friedman, Dowd, and Brooks. Well done, Sulzberger and Co.

Now, as to the substance, since I have a passing interest in the matter, let me take a moment to start a dialog with Lauren Edelson. Because I think this wise young lady’s complaint applies not just to Harry Potter but to all literature, indeed all art. When it is allowed to become a mere self-image, both the art and the culture suffer. The meaning that we all seek in our lives will not blossom as long as we make the facade our identity.

That point noted, if I were a college professor I would be advocating for featuring the Potteriad amid the academic experience, whether I taught at a liberal arts school or a military academy or a two-year community college. Literature done well fulfills a need that the best products of our video-obsessed generation cannot. The most recent movie of the Harry Potter story, which I believe appears in DVD today, is a case in point. The film, probably out of necessity, excludes all the political themes of the novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Did you know, for example, that the actual novel opens at No. 10 Downing St., with a scene that is as aggressive an assault upon the superficial self-consciousness of the political mind as anything you’ll read in the blogosphere today? There is also a scene near the midpoint of the novel, another in a series of Christmas scenes that I refer to as Rowling’s “solstice moments,” in which Harry confronts the Minister of Magic with a relentless exposure of the manipulative obsession on the part of the state and its figureheads.

One could go on at length about this (I did for about 220 pages, in fact); the main point is that if students were allowed to explore both the personal and social meaning of the Potteriad, they would easily penetrate its imagery. In art, the appearance is but the gateway to self-discovery, the handle to the door of perception.

Now children (and let us keep reminding ourselves that college kids are still children, or at least “transitional adults”), being children, will do things like play Quidditch and dress up as wizards and name their dormitory after their favorite Hogwarts House. As any creature in the animal kingdom would remind you, play, too, is central to learning. What young Lauren Edelson would like to recall to us all is that play is not the end of development. Therefore, what I would in turn remind Lauren is that play is also that gateway of greater meaning, of deeper experience. Thus, I would urge her not to leave “Harry Potter frozen in high school,” but to allow it a fresh voice within her. Harry’s story is, after all, a tale of growth, the movement from childhood to maturity. Growing up is not a process of leaving behind the art and the life of youth, but rather of perceiving it and experiencing it anew, much as the great poet urged us:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.