BITTERSWEET

Last night I finished the last Harry Potter book. It may sound childish and corny, but that last page closed a chapter in my life.

My sister's gentle (about one year worth of) badgering opened the door. At the time Harry and I met, he already finished his fourth year at Hogwarts. I instantly fell in love with his world, and the amazing imagination of his creator and her wonderful sense of humor. Like everyone else, I had to suffer the three year waiting for the fifth installment, and the subsequent two years each for sixth and then the final seventh. In the interim, there were the usual heated discussions, musings, and loads of guessing; and, of course, constant re-readings.

Now that the saga is over and almost all the questions have been answered, so that we can compare notes and see who and when was right, there will be no more anticipation, no more waiting, no more British Amazon or mad dashes on Saturday night to book stores, there is a certain sense of loss. We will never say good buy to Harry; but the relationship will be different from now on, and that brings forth a bittersweet feeling.

Of course, as usually happens in the case of something very popular, everyone and their brother had to get on the bandwagon and express their opinion; and, as always, the predictability of the usual stupidity is amazing. For example, I do not know who first decided that JK took her ideas from Star Wars, but the idea stuck and every single critic felt it incumbent upon him or her to repeat it. Then there were the usual musings about supposed other sources, like Lord of the Rings, the discussions of why the books are so popular, the predictions of wherever or not they will survive after this generation, the critique of her writing style, mentionings that for some people reading her books is like being subjected to the Cruciatus curse, counting of the amount of cliches on every page, the phrase "her flatfooted dialogues", the suggestions that here she sacrifices the plot for character development and here she sacrifices character development for the plot, the learned scholars' discussions of what and how supposed to happen according to the cannons of classical literature and mythology, hints that she was lying about having the whole series in her mind beforehand and only writing them when her first books turned out to be so popular, et cetera, et cetera... The most fun ( at least for me) was provided by our Christian "brothers". From paralleling Harry to the late JC to accusing him of teaching witchcraft and occult to our children and everything in between, like predicting the future disobedience of children as a direct result of reading those books; let's just say it was very, very amusing.

I just feel like adding my two cents worth to all this. As I always maintained, liking or not liking of any kind of literary work is a purely personal and subjective thing; on the other hand, repeating somebody else's moronic opinions, usually without touching a book, is, well, moronic; plus it reminds me of the good old Soviet phrase: "I did not read, but I feel honor-bound to say..." Of course, the craziness will slow down a bit simply because there are no more books to look forward too; but surviving for the next few generations? Hell, yes. Classic or not? That will probably be decided in about hundred or so years, because, let's face it, "true classics" have to be at least that old and written by somebody dead. As for all the discussions of literary merit or the lack thereof, allow me to paraphrase the dialogue from one of my favorite BW movies. It was called "Love in the Afternoon" with Cary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in the lead. Cooper's character keeps giving compliments to Hepburn's, to which she replies "I am too thin, and my ears are too big, and my teeth are crocked, and my neck is much too long" to which he replies: "That's true, but I like the way it all hangs together!" True beauty does not have to be symmetrical and perfect to give immense delight and sublime pleasure.

One of the main reasons, in my humble opinion, why these books are so unbelievably popular, aside from Rowling's unending imagination and humor, is their deep humanity. Everybody can relate to them and everybody can find some parallels to their lives in there. There are a lot of likable and admirable characters, but not one of them is perfect; they are all human, with their flaws, mistakes, and shortcomings. In our wonderful times of nihilism, modernism, post-modernism, general fascination with psychotics and perversions, moral relativism, and very strange definitions of when and how and under what circumstances does human life have value, how can a simple story about school for magic and its students attract attention and become a bestseller? The "childish" book about ordinary people with extraordinary talents living right next to us is fascinating enough; when you add to it the beauty of friendship, loyalty, selflessness, humility, innocence, heroism, love being "the deepest magic of all", and the morality tale of "our choices, not our abilities, which make us who we are", is it any wonder that everyone from seven to eighty seven years old can't get enough of the book?