A plea for tolerance?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Not sure quite what to call this - it's a comment I made on an earlier thread, where it was pretty deeply buried. I'm posting it as a separate comment because it's something I feel pretty strongly about.

Yes, I know - this is a sporking community. We are making fun of the Harry Potter books, and, at times, some of us can get quite irate in our discussions. But - please, please, can we refrain from getting irate towards J.K. Rowling?

Here's what I mean: I'm really not comfortable discussing the character of an actual human being just because I find her books frustrating. I'm a bit of a structuralist. The author is dead once a book has been published, and that cuts two ways. The author is no more privileged in his/her interpretation than any other reader, because the work belongs to the readers now. And there are limits to what we can extrapolate about an author's belief, personality, etc, based on the work s/he has written.

As angry as I get at the awful, mixed messages in these books, I think we must never forget that a real, vulnerable human being wrote them. It isn't right or fair to trash her while trashing the books. (Though I like to think we're not trashing them, but subjecting them to rigorous criticism!) And I'm really not comfortable with speculating about her family life and personality based on the words she's written. Though I do believe all real art is "true" in a deep sense, and reveals the heart of its creator, I still think the art has, and must have, its own validity. You see what I mean?

I hope to be a published author one day. Though I neither want nor expect Rowling's level of fame, I wouldn't like it if anyone psycho-analyzed me on the basis of my stories. I don't think any of us would - and many of us do some type of creative work. Would we like to be called "stupid cows" because a reader found our work stupid? The person is not the work.

So I think it's fine to discuss the image of God in Rowling's stories. I think it's fine to question the heavy use of Christian symbolism given the non-Christian content of the stories. Heck, I've done this myself, repeatedly! It's fine to discuss the mixed messages about race, bullying, authority figures, and so much more. But I'd rather not discuss the psychology and personal life of the woman who wrote the stories. J.K. Rowling is a woman trying to write, and raise a family, and live, in this real world. We shouldn't forget that, no matter how angry her books make us.