Harry Potter and the Perils of Extra-Narrative Pressure
I finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” yesterday, and it was good– a satisfying end to a seven part epic.
However, outside of the classroom never before have I felt such extra-narrative pressure to finish a book as quickly as possible.
“Keep reading before the ending gets spoiled!” I thought, and many others thought the same thing. I scrupulously avoided spoilers (except for one awful headline on Slate.com that suggested which way the black/white “does he die or doesn’t he?” would go… an NO you won’t hear it from me). I didn’t talk with people about it.
While reading, I’d keep thinking, “only 100 pages to go until I’m safe. Until I know what happens FOR MYSELF.”
I’ve read tens of thousands of books and this is unique in my experience.
Most importantly, while ordinarily the cognitive back-and-forth between the experience of a fiction and the creation of that experience is pleasurable (that is, “I’m really enjoying this ‘Hairspray’ movie and– hey! that big fat Baltimore mother is played by JOHN TRAVOLTA making allusions to ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’… and hey! I only know that because I’ve seen those OTHER movies… oops, something interesting is happening… better pay attention”) in this case it wasn’t. Something about the competing bodies of knowledge of my experience of books 1 to 6 and the massive spoilage in the media made it hard for me to engage with the fictional experience.
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