Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)

by J.K. Rowling

Goblet of Fire, book four, was the best one. It had the feeling of being really comfortable with its own terms, like a sitcom that’s finally hit its stride.

There’s that comfort-pleasure we get from fictional characters being recognizably themselves; the warmly, status-quo-affirmingly formulaic joke that’s supposed to elicit an “Oh, Chandler!” Not the most edifying sort of pleasure; there’s something sleepy and doughy and stupid about reassurance-entertainment. It’s like the heat rising off a sleeping person’s body. But it is nonetheless a very desirable commodity, and it is not easily earned.

Though in our desperate need for comfort we sometimes try to snatch it out of thin air. This guy who visited my roommate in college actually said, with fond exasperation, “Oh, [Chandler]!” about a friend of ours that he had not yet met. I am tempted to use the word “American” in talking about what’s so sad about this pathetic over-readiness to be sleepily comfortable with a sitcom-life, but I don’t really believe in making pronouncements about national identity like that. Still, I bet they don’t do that sort of thing in China. For example.

In re: the fifth book. The first time I read it, I think I was dismayed by what seemed at the time like a nerdy, undeserved emphasis on characters less essential, less earned. Just like my impatient annoyance as a third grader finding that “Eowyn” and “Theodred” and so forth, introduced long after exposition time had come and gone, were actually going to figure in the plot. As if! Furthermore, my degrading memory had wiped away several secondary characters, especially those introduced in book three and then played down in book four, like “Sybil Trelawney” and “Remus Lupin.” It’s dismaying to return in search of the warm sitcom glow and realize that you’re watching an episode from that off-key season where they have a monkey.

On this read, however, “Cornelius Fudge” and even “Bellatrix Lestrange” still meant something to me, and as a result the book seemed less arbitrary and, you know, Trekkie. Nonetheless, by book five, a calculating soapiness has crept into the plotting. I’m not complaining about the kids flirting and dating each other – that stuff’s fun, particularly when it’s indulged at length in the sixth book – I’m talking about the main storyline, which becomes increasingly crabbed and finicky as the series plays out. Considering that she started with the broadest possible mythical strokes – young chosen one vs. legendary evil – she’s certainly worked herself into a lot of loopholes and thumb-twiddling. The recurring and confused issue of House-Elves typifies the way she’s maybe let her imagination run in too many different directions at once.

This state of affairs is reinforced, if not actually worsened, by book six, in which she systematically demystifies the bad guy and literally breaks the threat into a series of technicalities. It’s too late to be disappointed at this turn in the series, which has been happening gradually all along. Like I said about book three, it feels like she’s constantly working out clever solutions to having been backed into a corner. There are worse forms of entertainment. For my part, I find this sort of plotting inspiring to read – if I ever have to solve these problems, it tells me that there are always solutions and everybody will love them even when they’re complicated. Plus, the very ubiquity of the franchise makes it exciting to find out what happens next, since it involves us in a worldwide phenomenon – another “American” line of reasoning, there.

This last book owed the most obvious debt of any of them to The Lord of the Rings, if you ask me. I could swear it included a couple of shots described directly from the recent movie versions thereof. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; fantasy is all in good fun and good fun is community property. But it’s more satisfying to tour this funhouse when you can’t still hear the echoes of the group in front of you, if you know what I mean.

Hey, you know what was pretty good when I was in fourth grade? Those Lloyd Alexander books.