J.K. Rowling Hits T.O. For “Harry Potter” Reading
Posted October 23, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
She may not be a real wizard but she’s great at holding an audience spellbound. J.K. Rowling, arguably the most famous scribe of the new century – and inarguably the richest – came to the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto Tuesday to read from the last book in her series, ” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
It was deathly quiet while Rowling acted out her own prose at the International Festival of Authors, with those in attendance the lucky winners of a contest to see the scribe in her only Canadian appearance.
While fans had a lot to ask her, everyone was interested in just one topic: Albus Dumbledore. Rowling made worldwide headlines last weekend, when she admitted the Hogwarts headmaster was gay. She’s amazed at the reaction that’s engendered among fans everywhere. “It certainly would never be news to me that a brazen and brilliant man could love other men,” she explains. “So I know that it was a positive thing for at least one person because one man came out at Carnegie Hall. I’m not kidding.”
The author claims she knew about her character’s sexual orientation “probably before the first book was published”, but didn’t think readers needed to have that information. And she insists she only made the revelation because someone directly asked her during an appearance in New York City.
So who was the headmaster’s unrequited love? In case you haven’t heard, it was the dark wizard Grindelwald, a fact integral to the final novel. “The plot is what it is,” she relates. “(Dumbledore) did have, as I say, this rather tragic infatuation, but that was a key part of the ending of the story so there it is. Why would I put the key part of my ending of my story in Book 1?”
But Rowling insists while she didn’t reveal anything earlier because she wanted to stay ‘focused’ on her writing, she thinks it was obvious all along. “Absolutely. I think a child will see a friendship, and I think a sensitive adult may well understand that it was an infatuation.”
And she defends those who might attack her methods. “As my character, I have the right to know what I know about him and say what I say about him.”
She also dealt with the complicated rules of the game Quidditch, explaining only a woman could have created a sport with so much multi-tasking, and confirmed that killing off Dobby the elf was the toughest thing she had to do.
Rowling was also given an Order of the Forest Award for her work in boosting environmental causes.
Fans were ecstatic with the experience, with one teenager noting it was Rowling’s reading that charmed her the most. “It’s like her voice actually, it brings the magic of Harry Potter alive. It was just incredible and I’m really glad to be here today.”
