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Headmaster, Indeed

By Roy Peter Clark

RELATED

"JK, Your Postscript Is a Little Late," by Roy Peter Clark. "Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on Definitions of 'Is' and 'Gay,' by Edward Rothstein. "Blogospheric Reaction to an Outed Wizard," by Mike Nizza.

If there's one thing I do not have, it's a dirty mind.

OK, so I DO have a dirty mind, which makes me even more upset at J.K. Rowling's public revelation that one of the great characters in the Harry Potter series, Albus Dumbledore, is gay. If there were any evidence of that in the books, surely my dirty mind would have seen it.

Not that I haven't wondered what wizard sex would be like. Wasn't it Freud who said: "Sometimes a wand is not a wand"?

A more serious take on Rowling's unnerving revelation appeared in a column I wrote for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, which scooped by a day this good article by Edward Rothstein on the same topic in The New York Times. My basic argument is that an author should not present to the public information about her characters that is not in the book. Any important evidence should be placed IN THE BOOK.

I'd love to hear your opinion on this topic. Do the characters in fiction narratives "belong" to the author or to the readers? Isn't it the writer's duty to present the evidence in the text, and the readers' to imagine a back story or an epilogue? How do you feel about the revelation that Dumbledore is gay? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Full post as published by Writing Tools on October 30, 2007 (boomark / email).