When first it came out I pretty much ignored the children's book. My wife pays more attention to fads and was given a copy of the first book. She liked it and suggested I might. I preferred not to break the habits of a lifetime and only got around to reading a sudden best-seller long after it's public desirability had peaked.
It has always been true for me that books fell into my orbit only after everyone else had finished with them, and so it was with the first Harry Potter book. Imagine my surprise when the novel reflected so much of my strange English life early on, buried in an educational establishment fronted by magicians claiming all sorts of supernatural powers hidden beneath their black magical robes. Harry Potter resonated with me.
I read the second novel in the series, generally a disappointment when a sequel travels a path previously trodden and thus requires less exposition. Hogwarts was less mysterious and thus less interesting.
The third book allowed me to drift away from the plot whatever it was. Since then I have failed to follow the ramblings of the boy magician, ignored calls for his anti-Christian banning and managed not to wonder how it is the author becomes as rich as the queen of England. Yes indeed as the cliche will have it; we inhabit a strange world.
It has always been true for me that books fell into my orbit only after everyone else had finished with them, and so it was with the first Harry Potter book. Imagine my surprise when the novel reflected so much of my strange English life early on, buried in an educational establishment fronted by magicians claiming all sorts of supernatural powers hidden beneath their black magical robes. Harry Potter resonated with me.
I read the second novel in the series, generally a disappointment when a sequel travels a path previously trodden and thus requires less exposition. Hogwarts was less mysterious and thus less interesting.
The third book allowed me to drift away from the plot whatever it was. Since then I have failed to follow the ramblings of the boy magician, ignored calls for his anti-Christian banning and managed not to wonder how it is the author becomes as rich as the queen of England. Yes indeed as the cliche will have it; we inhabit a strange world.
(Me, Mexico 1981, Vespa P200E).
Evading Harry Potter and not remembering my time at Downside School in England between 1971 and 1975, has become harder with the publication of the last book in the series and all the attendant noise. Living so far from the world of my school days has made the Potter story a valuable aid to providing strangers a short cut to my youth.
"Yes," I say, " my school days were like those of Harry Potter."
"Including the magic?" they ask with hopeful disbelief in their voices. Everyone wants magic, against all logic that it cannot exist.
"Yes, " I add solemnly. "With the magic."
Of course it was magical, getting up before dawn, and walking silently, like a thief down long empty corridors. magical because my presence afoot and alert was with legal cause, I was en route to the most magical mystery of them all- transubstantiation.
I was educated from the age of 13 to the age of 17 by Benedictine monks, men sworn to poverty who lived splendidly in the monastery, to which was attached my boarding school. Daily they went about monastic duties gliding silently through cloisters, down corridors and into choir stalls. And there by the dawn's early light, aided by the warm glow of candles we celebrated together the magical transformation of bread into God.
That's more magic than Harry Potter ever managed.
Like Harry Potter, the magic of that period has faded; too many pre-dawn masses, I dare say, similar in all respects to a surfeit of bestsellers: just too rich a diet for my mundane mind. Magic has lost its appeal, and I'm the poorer for it.
Evading Harry Potter and not remembering my time at Downside School in England between 1971 and 1975, has become harder with the publication of the last book in the series and all the attendant noise. Living so far from the world of my school days has made the Potter story a valuable aid to providing strangers a short cut to my youth.
"Yes," I say, " my school days were like those of Harry Potter."
"Including the magic?" they ask with hopeful disbelief in their voices. Everyone wants magic, against all logic that it cannot exist.
"Yes, " I add solemnly. "With the magic."
Of course it was magical, getting up before dawn, and walking silently, like a thief down long empty corridors. magical because my presence afoot and alert was with legal cause, I was en route to the most magical mystery of them all- transubstantiation.
I was educated from the age of 13 to the age of 17 by Benedictine monks, men sworn to poverty who lived splendidly in the monastery, to which was attached my boarding school. Daily they went about monastic duties gliding silently through cloisters, down corridors and into choir stalls. And there by the dawn's early light, aided by the warm glow of candles we celebrated together the magical transformation of bread into God.
That's more magic than Harry Potter ever managed.
Like Harry Potter, the magic of that period has faded; too many pre-dawn masses, I dare say, similar in all respects to a surfeit of bestsellers: just too rich a diet for my mundane mind. Magic has lost its appeal, and I'm the poorer for it.
