Harry Potter and the Magic Box of Mystery

I'm a slow reader. This wasn't always the case. When I was young, I read quickly. In fourth grade, we had a competition for who could read the most books on a list that was given out for all who wanted to participate. I remember reading one book about an American kid in Australia that goes on a Walkabout around Ayer's Rock and completing that story in one day. ONE day. I snuck around the teacher, reading when she was instructing, reading at the lunch table, reading after I finished my classwork (I worked fast too). But now that's no longer the case. Now I'm slow. This leads me to Harry Potter. Why? Because after more than a year since its release and after more than a year of reading it, I still have not finished the final book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

As I said above, I used to read quickly. But as the years went by and I became more fascinated with creative writing, so did my interest in how writers wrote, what they were saying, how they accomplished such stirring passages. I became more concerned with reading slowly to fully appreciate what the writer was trying to accomplish, soaking in the details so as to get a full picture in my head. I became so attached to this notion of a complete and total imagined world that how I was affected by the writing became a bigger concern than the story itself.

If a particular sentence impressed me, I reread it. I said it out loud, sometimes over and over to pick up on the cadence, the alliteration, the rhythm. I studied it to decipher its code, to understand *why* it affected me the way it did. This was all done in the hopes that it would make me a better writer. Studying great work can make one great. But if it was more than a sentence, if it was a paragraph or passage that moved me, I wanted to hold on to that feeling. You know the feeling. Its that sudden rush of the pulse when something dramatic happens in your mind's eye, something unexpected or exciting, something that makes your heart leap with joy or crushes it with despair. Its the puppet reacting to the master puppeteer who uses words to manipulate instead of strings.

When something like this happened, I wanted to hold on to it, as if simply experiencing it again would help me see *why* it was good writing. So often, when I pick a book back up after not reading for a few days, I would reread the last few pages before the new ones start, to get me back up to speed, to put me back into that mood the writer had successfully placed me in during my last read-through. And so, of course, this ends up delaying the process considerably.

As for Harry Potter, I'm sure the fact that "Deathly Hallows" is the last in the series has something to do with taking an even longer time to finish. I don't enjoy reading the book quickly just so that I *know* how it ends. I like to extend the mystery, to savor all the twists and turns. If I speed through it, I'm liable to forget what happens, but if I go through it slowly, pouring over every passage, then its greatness will stick in my mind. And since this is the last of the series, it's sure to have many twists and turns, and so far it hasn't disappointed in that respect.

After one particular incident, the surprising death of a beloved character that won't be named here, I was so moved that I had to put the book down. It was a surprising turn that had a lot of thematic weight behind it and the nature of the death was so different than all the characters' deaths that had preceded it in the series. So I stopped reading. I did not really want to go further.

Because going further meant a greater chance of someone else being killed. Now, I'm not going to go into a conversation about the nature of imagining this world and treating the characters like some sort of meta-family and being crushed by the loss of any of them. Instead, I'll discuss J.J. Abrams, co-creator of LOST, and the Magic Box.

A while back, I watched a video of J.J. addressing an audience at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design; a conference joining people from these three worlds) and speaking about the Magic Box. Basically, when he was a kid, J.J.'s grandfather bought him something called the Magic Box, which consisted of a brown box with a large question mark on its front. I believe it was some sort of kit full of magic tricks, with toys, props, instructions, and all sorts of other goodies. Or maybe it had nothing to do with magic at all, maybe it truly was a mysterious grab-bag with infinite potential.

And that's how J.J. saw it. He's been obsessed with boxes all his life- unfolding them, how to build them, what you can put inside of them. Well when he got this box, he chose not to open it. For years, it sat in his room, unopened. And then, on stage, he brought it out to show the audience, and it remained intact, its seals unbroken. This Magic Box has sat in J.J.'s office ever since, a reminder that anything is possible.

That's what the box represents: all possibilities, an infinite number of answers, all sorts of surprises and disappointments. And J.J. never wanted to know what truly lay inside that box. That's how he treats his shows (as anyone who watches LOST can attest). Plots should be mystery boxes that are slowly opened, revealing small bit by bit to the hungry audience.

That's how I view this final chapter of "Harry Potter". Before the book was published, I had all sorts of ideas on how it was going to end, on how I thought it *should* end. And as I get closer to the big finish, as more characters die, and as the plot goes in directions I never considered, one conclusion becomes certain: this will not end how I thought it would. The more I read, the less likely any of my ideas will come true. And this story could have gone in MANY different directions.

So I'm a little apprehensive about finishing the story. I still want it to be open, to have that possibility and potential that anything could happen, but as I get closer to the end, those possibilities will narrow to only one. And as I said before, I like to savor moments, to draw out these epic stories so that they do feel long, and I know I am approaching the climax. I have this feeling that if I pick the book back up, I will not be able to put it back down because the dramatic events that are to unfold will just be SO damn interesting. And then this epic story will come to an end in one night and I won't get to really soak in the atmosphere and mood and take in the weighty events that are to unfold.

And then its over.

And maybe that's the real problem. I just don't want it to be over. Ah well. "All good things..." right? I'll pick it up later tonight when its dark outside and the only noise comes from the subdued television chatter in the background, and then I'll disappear back into that world, ready for whatever is to come next.

--Cbake


PS: If anyone responds to this, please do so without any spoilers regarding the stories after Book 5. Some people who read this blog have only watched the movies and have no idea of what is to come.