Friday, July 13, 2007

The Doubting Harry

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1642885,00.html

[Time] 13 July 2007--Joanne Rowling has three fancy houses and more money than the Queen, but she still doesn't have a middle name: the K. is just an empty invention, added for effect when she published her first book. Starting with that first letter, she has orchestrated a sustained dramatic crescendo unlike anything literature has ever seen. By selling 325 million books in 66 languages, she has almost single-handedly made the case that the novel can still be a global mass medium. With the fifth Harry Potter movie opening on July 11 and the seventh and last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, coming at midnight on July 21, the crescendo has reached a grand climax.

Rowling's work is so familiar that we've forgotten how radical it really is. Look at her literary forebears. In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien fused his ardent Catholicism with a deep, nostalgic love for the unspoiled English landscape. C.S. Lewis was a devout Anglican whose Chronicles of Narnia forms an extended argument for Christian faith. Now look at Rowling's books. What's missing? If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God.

Related article:
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070712/28417_Harry_Potter%3A_Occult_or_Not%3F.htm
Harry Potter: Occult or Not? - The Christian Post

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