There were so many emotions running through me when I first read this the other day that I can’t remember what came first. I was surprised and felt a little consternation (er, wait, what?) at first, but what lasted was delight. This explains so much!

I guess it occurred to me that there would be people who would use this as further ammunition against J.K. Rowling and the books, but it wasn’t until after I read some of the comments at cnn.com like my friend suggested in his blog about the subject that I realized how upset people were.

Now, I’m not going to respond to the people who would be shocked and morally offended by any character, especially in a children’s book, who is gay. There is nothing I can say that will affect how they feel about the subject. I am sorry if this will prevent some parents from letting their children or future children read the books, but I hope those who truly want or need to read Harry Potter will find him somehow.

There were a couple other reactions as well. One was why does it matter? Another was variations on the theme: if it was really important, she would have/should have included it in the story and is therefore only revealing it now to make money/stir up controversy.

As an aspiring writer I tend to look at things I’ve read differently, so I do have an answer to these points. This is of course, just my opinion and I have no window into Rowling’s mind and I could be completely off base, but this is how I see it. And also it’s been several months now since I read the 7th book for the second time so it has faded a bit from my memory.

1. It DOES matter. Why? Because it is part of who, as a character, Dumbledore is. I do not for one second believe that Rowling did not have this planned out from the beginning (or at least from whenever she knew that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had been friends at one point). It’s not something she has tacked onto the end now just because she could. I’m sure as an integral part of who Dumbledore is, this facet of his life was filtered through everything she wrote about him. It just wasn’t necessarily visible to us (or Harry–more on that later). The fact that he was gay and in love Grindelwald explains so much about what Harry and we all found out about him in the Deathly Hallows. I have to admit that although I still respected and admired Dumbledore, I was disappointed in his actions as a younger man. I was sympathetic, but I, like a lot of readers, I think, had put Dumbledore on a pedastal and I wanted him to live up to my expectations, even after he was dead. I was disappointed that he could speculate on the Hallows and the power they could bring with this foreign wizard, disappointed that he let it go so far that it would cause his sister’s death and disappointed that when he saw Grindelwald amassing power, it took Dumbledore so long to confront him. Now we do know. He had fallen in love that summer, with all the passion and abandon of the young. I don’t know why it relieves me so much, but it does. I guess it’s because I didn’t find Dumbledore’s actions understandable before (despite his explanations to Harry–or is that Harry’s subconscious projection of what Dumbledore would have said in that weird little afterlife?). Anyway, now I do find everything understandable and therefore less disappointing. I guess I’m a romantic. 🙂
2. Despite the importance to Dumbledore’s character and all the revelations about him and the Elder Wand in the 7th book, it DOES NOT matter. Why? Because it doesn’t matter to Harry and it’s Harry’s story. There is a reason why the books are called Harry Potter and the such and such. Except for a very few exceptions, the books are told from Harry Potter’s perspective. I think by the time Rowling sat down to write the first book, she knew the whole background of all her major characters and quite a few of her more minor ones. Some of that is integral to those characters. We all have things that happen to us, people that we meet, that are of primary importance to who we are today. But if we are a minor character in someone else’s story, no matter how important that event/person is to us, doesn’t mean it matters in the story. This is one of those times. For the majority of the series, no matter how Dumbledore was shaped by his sexuality and how it related to “his great tragedy” in terms of Grindelwald, it didn’t matter to the STORY, HARRY’S STORY, to what was happening at the time. Did it matter that Dumbledore was gay when Harry first came to school and then learned all about Voldemort and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Did it matter when the Chamber was opened? Did it matter when Dumbledore and Voldemort battled in Order of the Phoenix or when he was mentoring Harry in Half-Blood Prince? No. It didn’t. It didn’t have any bearing on the story at all. Harry didn’t even wonder about Dumbledore’s family until forced to in the 7th book.

To sum up. I suppose if Rowling had managed to give Harry away to find out along with everything else in the 7th book, she could have done that. It would have been nice to know when learning about Grindelwald and his sister and everything. But I think it would have been a difficult thing for Harry to find out and really, compared to everything else that was going on, very unimportant.

Anyway, that’s my opinion.

After a couple months of dithering, I have finally officially registered and paid up to attend this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York. As this convention is more geared toward professionals than newbies, I doubt there will be much on how to get published or changes to meet agents in pitch sessions or anything like that. Instead there will be panels on different literary topics, lots of published authors and publishing professionals around and books galore. At least that’s what I think it will be like. The theme this year is ghosts, which isn’t that relevant to my work, but perhaps I will be inspired to write something. I’ve gotten ideas from stranger places. 🙂 I’m hoping to enjoy the atmosphere, meet interesting people and talk about books.

I’m still waiting to hear that my hotel reservations will be confirmed, but hopefully they will call me soon. I put my credit card number in and everything, so if I don’t get word soon, I’ll have to call them, which will not make me happy.

I signed up to go to the awards banquet and have added almost all the nominees to my booksfree.com list. It will take some work to read them all before the convention, but I’d like to at least be informed about one category. I’ll probably have to buy some of them, since booksfree isn’t really good at sending me books in the exact order I want to read them. But that’s ok. They’ve all been nominated, so they should be really good, right? I might do a post on my pre-read impressions and then maybe follow-up with post read impressions. Definitely be on the look-out for a post or two about my experiences at the WFC.