Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been in a particularly confessional mood of late, in the midst of her ongoing conjuring of the seventh and concluding book in the madly successful boy wizard series.
A week ago she wrote on her website that airport security in New York tried to pry book seven manuscript from her intransigent grasp as she boarded a plane to the U.K. back in August – a move she resisted with stony steadfastness.
“They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t; sailed home, probably,” she wrote.
“Not Close to Finishing it Yet”
Now this week in the “Rubbish Bin” section of her cyber home, the 41-year-old writer addresses the rumor that, “JKR has written 750 pages of book 7, and told a journalist this at the tea party for Driving Lessons,” the new British film starring Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Potter flicks.
Rowling writes, “Oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease. I haven’t written 750 pages of book seven, and if I had, I’d be very worried, as I’m not close to finishing it yet,” she says. “I was at the tea party for Driving Lessons, though, so this isn’t pure fiction. The journalist reports that I said that Rupert is ‘absolutely terrific’ in the film. He is, so that bit shouldn’t be in the rubbish bin at all,” she concludes cheerfully.
Ah, she dotes on those kids. I think it’s sweet she would attend a “tea party” for a film she has nothing to do with simply because her “absolutely terrific” Rupert was in it. A lot of authors have very contentious relationships with the film versions of their work and the people who make them – not Jo Rowling.
Potter Power
Potter series U.S. publisher Scholastic is addicted to the adventures of the lad wizard and his cronies. Company quarterly results for the period ending August 31 were down drastically from the same period last year when it released Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Total revenue fell to $334.9 million for summer quarter ’06, down from $498.4 million in ’05.
I am certain Scholastic and U.K. Potter publisher Bloomsbury were hoping for book seven sooner rather than later. However, they’ll have to wait just like everyone else.
