“The Casual Vacancy” was released yesterday to throngs of readers salivating to get their hands on JK Rowling first adult novel. To date, JK Rowling has delighted readers of all ages with her Harry Potter series.
JK Rowling is now a rather shy billionaire who doesn’t easily discuss her new wealth. She comes from humble beginnings and pulled herself up by her bootstraps using her talents. Rowling would tell us that it was more than that. Playing of the gotcha Obama phrase ” you didn’t build this,” Rowling very much assures us that she “didn’t build this.”
According to the Washington Post:
…[T]he author of the Harry Potter series wasn’t shy about stirring a leaky cauldron of class politics.
Once a financially strapped single mom, Rowling penned her way to literary fame and became a billionairein the process. But she says she doesn’t relate to the feeling of many American conservatives that everything they have they can look at and feel, “We built it.”
“I know that in your country at the moment, [you have] this ‘We built it’ catch phrase,” Rowling told Cynthia McFadden, referring to Republican pushback against President Obama’s more communitarian view that, as in the Bruce Springsteen song that played after the president’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, “We take care of our own.’’
What Obama said: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” What he says he meant: We all rely on one another, and benefit from public works in some way. What his critics heard: From government comes all good things.)
Rowling’s own feeling, she said, is that it was Britain’s government services that allowed all her industry to pay off.
“I worked extremely hard… I take credit for the work. But I received a free education. I received free health care… I’m unapologetic about saying this,” she added. “I had pneumonia when my daughter was under one year old. If we hadn’t had free health care in this country, God only knows what would have happened to either of us. I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud. But. I do take issue – and this does go to the heart of this book, which is why I have to say it—with anyone who truly feels it’s a 100 percent down to them.”
Rowling gets it. Too bad more Americans don’t. Meanwhile, who has read her novel? It is supposedly quite racy.
chirp chirp, all I “hear” is crickets………….no one commented yet, hmmmmm.
Perhaps everyone’s off reading it, or any of the books we picked up at the National Book Festival in DC or the Fall for the Book at GMU-Fairfax these past 7 days. It’s rake up some leaves and then read a book weather.
I admire JKR for her mastery of storytelling, for being able to write under enormous pressure both before, during and after her HP fame, for donating money to help other people, for speaking out on select issues and for protecting her children from the glare of cameras. I hope her new book is a good read.
Any local writers, you’re welcome to network with us at http://writebytherails.blogspot.com/ and come out to the Arts & Crafts Festival at the Winery at La Grange on Oct. 13, where we’ll have some tables up and be selling a variety of books by local authors.
Waiting for it on audible books.
Harry Potter is pro gun and libertarian.
Obama’s “more communitarian view”
COMMUNItarian=COMMUNIst
Slow, http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2007/07/09/law-professor-harry-potter-has-hidden-message/
Barton wrote a paper entitled “Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy” that was published in the Michigan Law Review in May 2006. The paper is being reprinted as a chapter in the book, “Harry Potter and the Law” (Carolina Press), due out this summer. He also has lectured on the topic at a “Power of Stories” seminar in Gloucester, England, in July 2005.
In “Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy,” Barton details the political messages he’s discovered in the Potter books:
“What would you think of a government that engaged in this list of tyrannical activities: tortured children for lying; designed its prison specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; placed citizens in that prison without a hearing; ordered the death penalty without a trial; allowed the powerful, rich or famous to control policy; selectively prosecuted crimes (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); conducted criminal trials without defense counsel; used truth serum to force confessions; maintained constant surveillance over all citizens; offered no elections and no democratic lawmaking process; and controlled the press?
“You might assume that the above list is the work of some despotic central African nation, but it is actually the product of the Ministry of Magic, the magician’s government in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.”
Again, JKR shows that its not Government that saves humanity and both the muggle and wizarding world but children that break wizarding laws, arm themselves with weapons and bring force on force.
JKR may herself be a radical lefty but her utopia is libertarian. 😉