Читать книгу An A–Z of Harry Potter - Aubrey Malone - Страница 18

The stand-up comedian Steven Wright tells this joke: ‘I wrote a few children’s books—not on purpose.’ For too long this genre has been the Cinderella of literature. In the same sense as children were once looked on as unformed adults, so children’s writing has inhabited a kind of limbo for authors who are perceived to be unsuccessful (or, as Mr Wright would have it, accidental) ‘adult’ writers. Rowling dislikes being called a children’s author as she feels her books can be equally appreciated by adults. An enormous number of adults agree. As Elizabeth Heilman writes in Harry Potter’s World (Routledge), as far back as 1998 adults were reading them ‘behind false grown-up covers’ to hide their secret addictions. (They’ve since come out of the closet because the books are now published in adult editions as well as children’s ones.)

‘I never saw myself as consciously writing for children,’ Rowling claims,‘but rather for myself.’ She adds that she doesn’t feel she has to write a quote unquote adult book to earn herself bona fide authorial chops. However, one gets the impression she has a sneaking wish to write a book (or many books) for adults in the future. Adult writers she admires are Nabokov and Roddy Doyle—particularly for Lolita and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, respectively. The latter book has marital disharmony as its theme—something Rowling can well identify with. Doyle has also written evocatively about childhood, especially in his Booker Prize-winning novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.