Reading, Writing and Rowling


It doesn’t matter to me whether Dumbledore is gay or not. I have no objections to the Harry Potter books; I have not read them, although many of my children have read and enjoyed them. I do, however, find it odd that the author would “reveal” something about a character at this late date, after the entire series is published. I do object to what her announcement suggests about writers and readers.

If J.K. Rowling wanted us to know that Dumbledore was gay, she should have written the books in such a way as to make it visible. Once the books are published, once she and her editor have had plenty of time to make sure that the words in them are the words they meant to be in them, then they are released into the world for us to read. The world of the story is there for us to investigate – there for her to investigate too, if she like – but she has no right to be looking over our shoulder and telling us what she “meant” if the meaning isn’t there in the text. That’s the difference between writing and conversation: in a conversation, I can clear up your misunderstandings by responding to them, but in writing, the words on the page are all you can expect to get from me, and all I can expect to give to you. They will be there when I’m dead.

I once had this discussion with a colleague about an Emily Dickinson poem that I think can be read as describing a train or describing a river. The colleague looked it up on the Internet and found that Emily Dickinson said it was a train. I said, “I respect her opinion, but it’s just her opinion. Not one word precludes it from being a river or limits it to being a train.” If she meant to, she should have chosen different words.

This has to do with the integrity of the text and the freedom of the reader. I would have been glad to hear Rowling say she considers Dumbledore gay – a remark about her own reading of the text. I would have said, “Really? Where to you see that in the story?” But an assertion about the character, so clearly unnecessary from a reasonable reading of the text that it makes an audience of fans gasp, is an after-the-fact tyranny of an expert rather than another member of a shared world. It may show social compassion, smart politics or shrewd marketing, but if she meant to communicate that characteristic of Dumbledore’s in the book, she’s admitting to poor writing.