Ideas Emerging

(Just a warning: this isn’t the first post about Harry Potter this week, and it won’t be the last post about the book this month.)

In its latest issue, Time Magazine takes a look at the work that goes into editing, printing, and distributing J.K. Rowling’s latest book. For the publisher, Scholastic, there’s an added layer of complexity to this in order to preserve the ‘magic moment’ —

The magic moment is a rare and delicate thing: it occurs only when the reader comes to the book in a state of pure ignorance, with no advance knowledge of its contents. For the magic moment to happen, the theory goes, the reader’s mind must be preserved in a state of absolute innocence — it must be, in Internet parlance, spoiler-free. So to preserve the magic moment against informational contamination—via the Web or watercooler conversation or the Rita Skeeters of the global media– Scholastic has created an infrastructure around Deathly Hallows unlike anything the publishing world has ever seen.

Now that is worth considering in the context of this blog — we live in a world where spoilers run loose. Full length films are downloaded from P2P sites weeks before they’re released; music blogs post tracks from albums long before they go on sale; the powers that be are making every effort to tamp down all these kinds of activities, and it does no good — piracy flourishes.

That’s why there’s something touching to me about a company like Scholastic trying to create a night of magic for millions of people. And it’s why I’m glad that most of the major Harry Potter blogs have decided to refuse to discuss or post any spoilers whatsoever. In the time between now and midnight on July 21st, you’re bound to see multiple stories about the ending of the book. It’s inevitable that even with all the precautions, some store somewhere is going to do something stupid and sell a copy early. But my advice is to ignore it.

I’ll be in line at 12:01 that Friday, and I’ll probably stay up all night reading. And I’ll smile at the fact that, all across the world, there will be millions of people exploring Hogwarts one last time, together.

–mc