It's Harry's World and We're Just Living In It

You may have heard that the new Harry Potter book came out. I have read it. It was good. There will be more on that later. Right now, though, I want to talk about the Harry experience.

Besides reading the book itself, I have really enjoyed how this has been A Harry Moment. It is one enjoyable aspect of having a mass media culture that lots and lots of people can live through a fun thing together. I remember reading at some point an article about the release of the Beatles' St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. (I'm pretty sure that I read this in 1987 when, you know, St. Pepper's had been "20 years ago today.") Someone in the article was describing how he had been in college at the time and he and his fraternity brothers were out on their balcony playing the album and he slowly realized that every other fraternity on the street had it playing out of their house, too. That's what the release of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows has been like.

We went to a big release party and stayed up until 12 midnight and watched as kids -- and adults -- gleefully came running out of the bookstore with their copies. We went with friends and, within five minutes of getting the book, their 8-year-old daughter was telling our 8-year-old son Enthusio that, "oooooh, there's a chapter called "The Wedding.'" I sucked up all of the reviews of the book as soon as I finished it. I watched MSNBC before it came out to hear about leaks of it and unauthorized sales and other examples of the Dark Arts that were deployed in the days leading up the release. I read Stephen King's column about how he couldn't wait for it to come out.

And I really enjoyed being a part of all of that. It just doesn't happen that often.

Most phenomena kind of sneak up on you and then are all over. The original Star Wars was kind of like that, as I recall from when I was 6. The Matrix was like that. Nirvana was like that. (I know I had a hard time grasping and enjoying "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when it first came out.) Michael Jackson's Thriller was kind of like that.

There are a lot of possible phenomena that don't become phenomena. Being a Star Wars -- well, "junkie" doesn't seem right, "devotee" or "acolyte," I suppose -- I was all geared up for The Phantom Menace to be freakin' awesome. Ask The Muse, she'll tell you. She taped the trailer off Rosie O'Donnell's show one day and I couldn't stop watching it. But, then, the movie came out and the initial signs weren't encouraging. And, then, I went to see it. And, then, I realized in horror that the movie actually . . . sucked. Sucked a lot. Had some really weird and questionable and borderline-racially-insensitive stuff in it like the trade federation guys who spoke like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Had Jar-Jar Binks. Noooooo! Attempted to explain how you became a Jedi from testing your blood for mitochlorides, I think, though I have tried to black the word out. Aaaaaaah!

So the experience of the last Harry Potter book's release has been great. Everyone was into it and the book was good and you couldn't get away from it in a good way. A fun time together was had by lots and lots of people. No one sang Cumbaya, but we could have.