Pottermania

As fate had it, I found myself working on the American shore of the Atlantic this summer, with my family vacationing on the English. Thus, it was with mixed feelings that I contemplated reviewing the latest Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” during the brief weekend I’d be spending with my wife and children. I knew that the moment my plane touched down at Heathrow, a friend would be waiting outside Ottakar’s bookstore in the town of East Grinstead to buy the fourth Harry Potter book, just as I waited outside Ottakar’s a year ago with my son, Gabriel, for the third, at the very moment the book would go on sale. And I knew that much of the weekend would be spent immersed in the 636 pages of the English edition (734 in the American) of a book as large as a Quidditch quaffle.

I was not alone. My wife reported a carriage-full of riders on Sunday’s London train, adults and children alike, stuck into “The Goblet of Fire.” As it was Wimbledon Finals Weekend, one could even glimpse copies at Center Court: Potter vs. Voldemort providing 3 hours of entertainment during Sunday’s rain-delayed Sampras vs. Rafter after Harry eclipsed Venus on Saturday.

For the millions of readers “of all ages” (and in this case hyperbole just might be understatement), the advance reports of the length and the new features are all true. Yes, the book is twice as long as its predecessors, although, thankfully, not because Rowling has had to gum up the first few hundred pages with enough exposition to fill a World’s Fair. For better or for worse, Rowling is betting that any who chooses to dive into “The Goblet of Fire” have already waded into at least one of the other Potters. I, for one, breathed easier once I realized that the new volume would not begin with the traditional chapters on Harry’s maltreatment at the hands of his ill-tempered relatives, the Dursleys (although I must admit that Gabriel can’t get enough of them).

Instead, as foreseen in the crystal balls of elementary schools around the world, “The Goblet of Fire” opens with The Quidditch World Cup. It also introduces a new sport, The Tri-Wizard Tournament, featuring students from the Francophone Beauxbatons and the Teutonic Durmstrang--two wizard schools hitherto unsuspected in what appeared to be an Anglophilic world of independent schools for witches--who send a champion each to do battle with the hero of Hogwarts.

The humor of “The Goblet of Fire” is unremarkable (mostly of the make-fun-of-foreign-accents school--the Durmstrang pronunciation of Hermione’s name as Hermy-own-ninny, for example) although there were enough bon mots to keep Gabriel in giggles: “Percy wouldn’t recognize a joke if it danced naked in front of him wearing Dobby’s tea cozy.” There are even a few comic turns presumably thrown in for the adult audience: jabs at the European Community’s enthusiasm for regulation in references to mandated “cauldron thickness,” magical tents with 10 bedrooms and Jacuzzi and a tilt at yellow journalism with the introduction of a particularly annoying papawicca named Rita Skeeter.

And then there’s the question of hormones. Harry is now 14, that funny middle age that finds some boys shaving and others still waiting for their voices to drop. News of Harry’s interest in girls was part of the pre-pub gossip. But from the evidence in “The Goblet of Fire”--a few mentions of a distant crush on the athletic Cho Chang--Harry is still singing soprano.

Rowling decided from the start not to make her hero an ageless Charlie Brown. And yet Harry and his stepmom, Rowling, seem reluctant to let Harry grow up. With three volumes to go of her promised seven, Rowling would be well-advised to pull her Peter Pan down to earth, let him be a little bit dark and a little bit dirty and see what happens.

Rowling does try to inject a bit of burgeoning social conscience into Hermione’s character in the heavy-handed way, perhaps, that only adolescents can burgeon. Hermione discovers that house elves like Dobby (whom Harry freed from the dominion of the father of his nemesis Draco Malfoy in “The Chamber of Secrets”) are unpaid and poorly treated. Throughout the book, she attempts to organize them into a union--although Harry and Ron (and presumably Rowling) try to convince her that the elves are frightened of freedom. By both my and Gabriel’s reading, this makes “The Goblet of Fire” the first children’s book to endorse slavery since “Little Black Sambo.”

But Rowling’s biggest gamble in Round Four is the one that has made the biggest waves at all ages. Someone, Rowling has told her audience, one of Harry’s friends, is going to die. Wagers have certainly been placed around the world (as they were in Gabriel’s sixth-grade class) as to the identity of the unfortunate friend. But though some may have guessed correctly (although I reckon not), few may have guessed who is responsible for the death.

Harry Potter is a marvelous creation, an ordinary boy who discovers at age 11 that he has extraordinary powers. An ordinary boy who discovers that he is brave and resourceful. But if that’s all Harry were, he’d be a dreadful bore and long since remaindered. There is a paradox at the center of Harry’s nature, as there is with our best heroes, our Hamlets, our Macbeths, our Dantes, our Elizabeth Bennetts and Mrs. Ramseys. Rowling’s greatest achievement in “The Goblet of Fire” is to turn the paradox at the center of Harry’s nature into painful action. Readers of the previous books will know that, upon his arrival as an 11-year-old first-year student, Harry was “sorted” into Gryffindor House, the one of the four Hogwarts houses that is known for the bravery of its founder. He could as easily have gone into Slytherin, home of the ambitious and, not coincidentally, of the greatest number of dark wizards and witches. In addition, at the defining moment of his life, when his parents died to save him, the infant Harry was scarred by the Evil Lord Voldemort, and a portion of Voldemort entered his veins.

Though this admixture of blood has, in earlier volumes, enabled Harry to overcome obstacles thrown in his way by Voldemort and his henchmen, “The Goblet of Fire” shows Harry failing at the same time he succeeds. Harry’s very decision to be fair and brave leads directly to the death of one of his friends. And although magic might be used to prolong life--and there are some very old wizards indeed and some who are seeking the Elixir of Immortality--there is a rule in the World According to Rowling that we have hitherto suspected but only now have heard in fact: Neither potion nor spell can cross into that undiscovered country and bring the dead back to life.

When Harry managed a brief glimpse of his dead parents toward the end of the book, both Gabriel and I thought back to the saddest moment of the series--an episode in the first volume, when Harry discovers an enchanted mirror that displays whatever the viewer desires the most. As Harry gazes, he sees himself standing in front of a man and a woman who look very much like him--his parents. It is a reflection that might make all of us parents and children pause from literary quibbling and familial squabbling, especially as we fly back across the mirrored surface of the Atlantic. And yet, once we’ve landed, what a surprise to find “The Goblet of Fire” surprisingly light and easy to heft back onto the shelf. *