Geriatric Harry
Now really. That’s just silly. And yes I know he’s being jokey, but I bet he also means it, and he ought not to.
Would we even remember Little Nell if she hadn’t died in such spectacularly mawkish fashion? Would we prefer that Emma Bovary didn’t swallow the poison and instead became a clochard, cadging francs at the agricultural fair? And do we really want to contemplate Harry, now bald and grizzled, the lightning-shaped scar faded into an age spot, retired from magic and, pint in hand, prattling on about old quidditch matches? Surely it makes more sense to employ the other kind of magic, and go back to Volume 1 and start over.
Little Nell is welcome to die in childhood, I’m with dear Oscar when it comes to Nell, and with Emma B it’s fifty-fifty. The whole novel heads for her clumsy futile death, but on the other hand, it’s not self-evident that she would have been a duller character at fifty or seventy. But what I really take issue with is the look at Harry’s future. Why is that how he would end up? Bald and grizzled, fine, because that’s how it goes, but why would he be retired, and above all why would he be a pub bore prattling on about his childhood? Eh? Eh? Whence the dreary view of old age, eh? Why couldn’t and wouldn’t Harry go on doing magic all his life, why wouldn’t he become more interesting and wise as he got older? Some people do after all. Not everyone turns into a prattling bore in old age. Some people are prattling bores in old age, to be sure; I know some people like that myself; but they were prattling bores before they got old. Some people go on being interesting and curious and mentally active and thoughtful, even into old age. Imagine that! Charles McGrath might be one of those people himself.
I couldn’t link to the article, but I just like you don’t share the assumption either that if someone lives to get old they will become boring or useless. Some of my best friends have been lots older than me. Sounds like another stereotype that needs to be shattered …preferably before I get old, as this might result in old people being treated better.
“Surely it makes more sense to employ the other kind of magic, and go back to Volume 1 and start over.
The only author I’ve read who could pull that one off was E. R. Eddison, in The Worm Ouroboros.
It’s myth, not literature. Death is a valid option for mythical heroes.
Yeah well I’m quite long in the tooth myself and I tell you what, honey, I’m a lot more interesting now than I was when I was an ignorant young ignoramus. I’m no nicer than I was then, I’m no less whiny and fretful, I’m just as bad-tempered and impatient, but I am more interesting. And so is pretty much everyone I know. (Of course some of that is selection bias. Or maybe all of it. I don’t get friendly with boring people. You know what I mean – the kind of people who have nothing to say but love to talk so tell you about their socks or what they had for lunch or something they see out the window as you drive past. Those people never make it past the high forbidding friendship gates. I’m very sorry, but I have a strict policy on that.)
Damn – I was just about to e-mail you my interesting collection of photos of electricity pylons…another potential relationship goes west.
So now you can have your socks for lunch. Tell us about it later.
“I don’t get friendly with boring people”
But is it your experience that they try to get friendly with you? Just wondering how it compares with my experience. In my mid-teens I had a framed quote on my wall from a letter Fred Allen wrote to Herman Wouk. The quote begins “The weekends bring the people who can only kill their time by taking up your time.” I think everyone who ever came to visit wondered whether they were included.
Yes. Yes. Yes, it is my experience that they try to get friendly with me. Oh yes, yes they do. They insist on talking to me when I want them to be silent instead. I flee from them, I barricade the door, but whenever we are forcibly thrown together – then comes the detailed discussion of the socks, the dog, the wothless ‘opinions’ gleaned from the Wall Street Journal, what the neighbours are doing, that house there. Oh yes. How friendly they do try to get.
Photo collection sounds quite fascinating in comparison, Chris!