a little out of hand

I wrote most of this as a comment elsewhere, but I think it deserves its own post.

It seems to me the HP-spoiler thing is getting a little out of hand. Leaky Cauldron’s now got a letter-writing campaign to the NY Times, because of their review of HP7 that, in Leaky’s words, “goes against the author and änyone who cälls themselves a true Harry Potter fan.”

But the NYT article doesn’t strike me as unfair, for a book review. To avoid spoilers here, I’ll work by analogy. If Pride and Prejudice came out tomorrow and I were to review it, I would probably talk about the relationship between Elizabeht and her family, the pressures on E. and jane to marry well, the offers and dilemmas put before them. I might mention Darcy and Wickham and Mr. Collins as suitors for Elizabeth’s hand. I wouldn’t do is to mention that Elizabeth and Darcy end up together.

I think the NYT review has done the equivalent; they’ve talked about choices and dilemmas in the book, but not given away the ending. I do think it’s fair to talk a bit about the plot of a book; how else would anyone be able to read a review and recognize if the book is something they’d enjoy? If reviewers are not allowed to give away *anything*, they’re reduced to using only adjectives in their descriptions (because even comparisons to other works could give away too much plot) and I don’t think that’s sufficient to convey the flavor of a book.

I also think it’s downright presumptiuous of Leaky to assume that they get to define the wishes of änyone who cälls themselves a true Harry Potter fan. Even malicious people can be “true fans”; I hadn’t heard that any test of character was required to love a book (though books can be self-selecting of the types of people who love them, it’s still possible to read and enjoy a book while missing some of its basic messages.) It is probably fair to say that all decent people who are HP fans are against spoilering people who don’t wish to be spoilered (how long until that verb shows up in the dictionaries?) but even there, each fan will have his or her own definition of what constitutes a spoiler.

Rowling herself tends to be more temperate than many of her fans and, not surprisingly, is better with words than a lot of them; her own website simply asks for “everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are lookin forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day”. This is still a little unreasonable, I think, since she’s asking for the secrecy of the entire plot. Other books don’t get that. Granted more people are waiting eagerly for this than almost anything else I can think of but it’s still not reasonable to expect every detail to remain a secret; after all we already know lots of what will happen just from Rowling’s own interviews and some parallels with the other books. We know there will be a big battle in the end, for example, because there has been in each of the other books. Also, of course, it’s illogical; we won’t all be reading at the same time, thanks to time zones. Close enough, though.

I care a lot about this book. Thousands of others do – maybe millions. But you don’t get special privileges just for caring, unfortunately. Just ask Harry Potter – it’s a lesson he’s had to learn all too well.