back with Harry (part 1)

In preparation for the release of the final volume of the Harry Potter series, I'm rereading the first six books sequentially and bracing myself for the sad and imminent goodbye.

Over the years the Whale, Sweatshirt, and I have repeatedly discussed whether art can be considered "good" or "bad," or whether it's a subjective mess--a question of taste--a debate in which the only truth you have is "I like this" or "I don't like that." I'm not going to extend that conversation here, except to acknowledge that the dialog is ongoing, and that people far smarter than us have also failed to resolve the matter convincingly.

That said, for me the Harry Potter books are among the most important to have been published in my lifetime; and I suspect that this is true for many others as well, especially for readers whose growing up has more or less coincided with Harry's. For us the seventh book has a lot to live up to: Rowling's characters have become our friends, and her imagined world serves varyingly (and sometimes simultaneously) as an escape from, a revelation into, and a critique of our real one.

The first Harry Potter installment, however, shows little of Rowling's achievement. It is a clever and breezy book, sometimes funny but never affecting. The six puzzles that Harry & co. solve to get the Sorcerer's Stone could have come from any Dungeonmaster's manual; the surprise unmasking in "The Man with Two Faces" is pure Scooby Doo.

The one scene that created a feeling other than amusement in me took place on the train to Hogwarts, when Harry and Ron become acquainted over Chocolate Frogs. This moment made me tear up: having read the other five Harry Potter books, I recognized it as the beginning of a friendship that will develop and strengthen over many hundreds of pages. My own loves, platonic or not, all started just this simply: from games and chatter came forces that would shape my life.

It is worth clarifying, though, that this scene meant something to me only as a prelude to better ones. I believe that, while charming by itself, The Sorcerer's Stone owes most of its significance to the other books Rowling has written; a mystic might say that this story has been retroactively improved.

Examples of this phenomenon abound, but I'll limit myself to these: The Hobbit steals weight from The Lord of the Rings, Hamburg-era Beatles are quaint only after hearing Rubber Soul, etc., Picasso's early, realistic paintings fascinate us largely in relation to his later, experimental work, and the "famous first lines," all of which are remembered because the books that followed them were worthy.