J.K. Rowling & Stephen Fry

It was at Christmas five years ago that I had the strange experience of listening to myself on the radio all day long on Boxing Day as a radio broadcaster for the recording of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It has been a privilege to be the voice of JK Rowling. I work on six books, two thousand seven hundred and sixty-four pages and 100 hours and 55 minutes of recordings. The characters are familiar friends and enemies to me, but like millions of people I eagerly await each new installment. I first met Joe almost seven years ago when Ella came to the studio where I was recording the first book.

She remains notoriously reticent and, like millions of Potter fans, I'm fascinated by what it's like to live with Harry, where the inspiration for the books comes from what she thinks of her critics and what she'll do when she finishes the final chapter, so when Joe agreed to record a conversation with me, I jumped at the chance, Joe, I asked him a good question, it would just be which character do you identify with most when you're writing or When you're reading what you've just written, probably Harry really because I have to think in his head. much more than any of the others because everything is seen from their point of view, but there is a little bit of me in most things. characters I think they say about writers that I think it's impossible not to put a little bit of yourself into any character because you have to imagine their motivation.

Did it occur to you when you were planning the books, waiting for the first one to be published? many people who have never been inside a boarding school would identify with the very particular world of an English boarding school that Hogwarts represents well, the truth is that I have never been inside one either, of course, I had a comprehensive education but it was essential for the plot. that the kids could be locked together somewhere overnight, this couldn't be a day school because the adventure would end every other day if they went home and talked to their parents and then had to go back to school every two weeks.

I also wander around at night so it had to be a boarding school, which was also logical because where would we educate their children? This is a place where there will be a lot of noises, smells, flashing lights and you would want to contain. It was somewhere far enough away that Muggles wouldn't find it all the time, but I think people recognize the reality that many children are cloistered together, perhaps more than they recognize the boarding school environment. I'm not sure I did. I'm familiar with that, but I think I'm familiar with what kids are like when they're together.

The thing is that you have created a world. It's the kind of definition of successful fiction that is having a world that's somehow circumscribed by itself. governs its own ethics its own cultural flavor and smell and senses and you have done this and that is why it is very common to hear children and adults dream that they are at Hogwarts dream that they are next to Harry and Ron and Hermione and so on and, naturally , what arises as a result of this also is that you hear strange warning voices from people. I imagined myself with my hair still dyed and with a needle stuck in a bun in the back, arguing that this is somehow dangerous for people. apart from the whole issue of whether or not magic is dangerous to people, which I think we can ignore because the wild tasks of an unreasonable portion of those young girls 200 years ago were not allowed to read novels because it would inflame and excite them and make them long for things that weren't real and I remember being very distressed when I was very young when I read that Virginia Woolf was told she shouldn't write because it would exacerbate her mental condition, we need a place to escape to, whether as a writer or a reader and obviously the The world I've created is a particularly brilliant example of a world that is very nice to escape from - that beautiful image in CS Lewis where there are the pools of the world between worlds and you can jump to different ones. swimming pools to access the different worlds and that for me was always a metaphor for a library.

I know Lewis wasn't really thinking about that, but for me that was jumping into these different pools to enter different worlds, what a beautiful place and from there. to me it's what literature should be about, so whether you love Hogwarts or hate it, I don't think you can fault it for being a world that people enjoy, precisely, I mean, that's why it exerts such profound control over all our imagination. I read an interview with you in which I was very flattered to see that you drew a parallel between that world and the world of Sherlock Holmes and I thought it was a very flattering comparison that also resonated with me because when I read the Holmes stories it is of course, it is a well that never really existed and yet you can believe with all your heart that it existed and more importantly you want it to have existed, don't use SQL, that's why it's such a fabulous and entertaining read, yes, and why show games to this day it is still letters you want to be Baker Street and of course it is a peculiarity that you are accused of having created a world in which children can revel in an escapist fantasy and of creating a world that is terrifying because it is full of evil and danger and then you could upset them, now they can't do both, but I think one of the advances in children's literature that you have achieved with this remarkable series is that you have not held back in the face of the difficult, the scary and the treacherous and unfair and all things that exercise children's minds well.

I firmly believe that there is a movement to sanitize literature because we are trying to protect children not necessarily from the horrific facts of life but from their own imagination. I remember being in the United States a few years ago and Halloween was coming up and on three TV shows in a row we were talking about how to explain to kids that it wasn't real. Now there's a reason we create these stories and always have. stories and the reason why we've had these pagan festivals and the reason why even the church allows a certain amount of fear, we need to feel fear and we need to face it in a controlled environment, that's a very important part of growing up, I think and I would say that the child who has been protected from Dementors in fiction is much more likely to fall victim to them later in life in reality and also, what are we telling children who have frightening and disturbing thoughts?

We are saying that this is wrong and that it is not natural and it is not something intrinsic to the human condition that in some way, although it is real, it is very dangerous to say to a child and guilt is the greatest trigger of aggression that man has if people grow up thinking this peculiar by having dark thoughts or being aware of the strangest side of the world and their lives, that will make them horrible human beings, isn't that one of the jobs of writing in a sense? it is to show you that you are not alone, yes it is, and I certainly discovered that I was not alone through books, I think possibly more than through friendships in my early days because I had a fairly introverted child and it was through reading that I realized that I was not alone on every level and it is A central anxiety, if you want the reader to always confront Harry, is that there is an extraordinary closeness that he has with Voldemort, the one who must not be named but must be named, and I think that as the series progresses we feel a God, it won't be long, what's going to happen?

There is a lot of speculation. I'm not asking you to give any answers here, but there is creative speculation about how close this relationship is between the darkest wizard of them all and our hero who saved the world, the question I was asked a lot at the beginning was if he really was the father of Harry and of course that's exactly what Star Wars is and no, it's not going to turn out to be Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, they're not related in a biological sense. Not at all for him, that is a very good answer.

I think one of the most prominent current endings (I'm not sure you're aware of this as far as betting goes) is that Harry will finally defeat Voldemort at the expense of all of his own powers and end up going into the world as a muggle ending. common and ordinary. It will be a super plagiarism for about thirteen million children. This is your problem, right? You're not allowed to read anything like anyone else. the remote possibility, well, let's think about the world you've used in terms of its lore, if you like, of the little Cornish Pixies: you know the kelpies and you know the mentions of particular types of plants like man dragger etc., all of them They are real and Many children, of course, would imagine that you have taken horrible liberties with them with folklore and mythology, but that doesn't embarrass me at all, because British folklore and mythology are a totally bastard ecology.

You know, we've been invaded by people. By appropriating their gods, we took their mythical creatures and sold them all together to make what I would say is one of the richest folk laws in the world because it is so varied that I have no qualms about borrowing from it freely, but adding some things mayor, but you're right, yes, the kids, I mean, they obviously know that I didn't invent unicorns, but I've often had to explain that I didn't actually invent hippogriffs, although a hypocrite is pretty dark. I went searching because when I use a creature that I know is mythological and an entity, I like to find out as much as I can about it.

I may not use it, but to make it as consistent as I think is good for my plot. I was able to read very little about hippogriffs, whose needs here are hippogriffs, yes, exactly, they don't seem to be, as their name implies, and this brings us to your other love, which is language itself at its most basic level of words. and derivations that Hippogriff is, of course, a mixture of Griffin's dandruff and the Greek for horse's hips, which is a perfect example, as you say, of the bastardization of our English folklore, as our perfect mixture of languages , is what makes our language so rich. exactly noble and textured and I love even things like mundungus have a meaning I'm fantastic stinky tobacco that really fits exactly now buddy, are you really looking for books on weird words or weed or stuff like that or are they just things that you somehow have a good memory for words.

I really don't know the truth. They tend to be things that I have collected or that I have generally come across while reading. The exception was Gilda Roy Gilderoy Lockhart, the name Lockhart, although I know it is quite well known. He has his last name. I found it at a war memorial. He was looking for a pretty glamorous and elegant surname and Lockhart caught my eye in this war memorial and that was it. I couldn't find a first name and he was browsing through UM. Dictionary of Phrases and Fables One night I was consciously looking for things in general that might be useful and I saw Gilderoy, who was actually a highwayman and a very handsome rogue, and Gilderoy Lockhart just sounded, he's perfect, impressive and yet , in the middle is pretty empty, of course, so to get to what's really important, which is me, I was wondering if the way I've read the books has altered the way you write them.

I know I told you this before there was a time when Jessica, my My daughter, who is now 10 years old, loves tapes and there was a time when I was writing Goblet of Fire in particular, when I was sitting down to work at night and he could hear you reading from his room, which really was an amazing experience. being writing a book while listening to you reading the camera, oh man it was strange and I felt like I couldn't escape Harry Potter, there was no escape. I could hear it and I could see it and I was writing about it and I certainly have. to say without joking to be flattering that the shapes, the phrasing and the balance of sentences make books a pleasure for us to read, sometimes writers have a wonderful sense of writing for the page and the words happen in that part of the brain that does it. but reading them is terribly difficult.

I love writing dialogues. I really love writing dialogues. When I hear you read them, it gives me a new sense of pleasure because, of course, I never read my work aloud and yet I hear the spoken dialogue. and I always hear you speak it before I hear the actors speak it it's very enjoyable because I've always enjoyed writing it every time I make a new book there's a CD that the sound studio engineer produces with all the characters and it's It will always have to be a DVD next time I say I could remind myself what Lavender sounded like or what particular character sounded like Jessica wanted to know how you got Hermione's voice, she thinks you're so brilliant at playing Hermione and she doesn't understand how someone with such a voice deep can interpret a girl's voice, so I was going to ask you, which is an interesting question.

I always loved the Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter, yes I noticed it on a visit to the village. like 10, when I played a woman, I usually lowered her voice, so I try to do a kind of FAL Seto, hi, I'm Faith, and actually, for a lot of women that works well, not for the young ones but for the older ones. up women exactly, yes, I remember being there to see the album and you, you, you told me it'svery difficult to hear something without hissing, someone had hissed or something like don't do that, that's another influence you've had with Me every time I want someone to be hissing, which the snake does a lot of things, I have to check that there's actually nests there with Snape and everything around him, he is 3s, he himself is the governess of these houses and he is a Slytherin, you know this all, all the herpetic, he was all the snake, as if the job was done .

Now the question I'm sure you get asked a lot is that for generations the ideal childhood hero is Harry Potter but that didn't exist when you were a child who was the one you were going to hunt with, well he couldn't have been with her I liked the white horse heroine because she was quite simple and I was simple and most heroines are very beautiful she was freckled and had reddish hair and I identified with her a lot I Louise was a little better yes, I loved it, there were so many. I love Dena's part. It's probably still the children's writing I most identify with.

Yes, she was not very sentimental. She wasn't working and loved extravagant details. Yes, I thought she was very, very good. I think female writers are generally less sentimental about childhood, male writers are less sentimental about life. I think you're absolutely right, it's a strange thing, children's fiction, there's the children's adventure style, yeah, which you know, I guess the best example of them is Treasure Island, yeah, it's just one of the writings more immaculate but wonderful, yes, and it really has almost no women, that's right, and what you have done is write an adventure book for children, but prodigiously in itself, which is really extraordinary and you know that one is great .

We shouldn't talk too much about the idea of ​​gender and I remember that you see it in a name of Marta, I don't think it's the information with the characters that have a huge route or about this same topic, you know, they actually get up from the table because talking about us. We know that women read a book certain times and we men know the book and that it will sometimes be that way, but do you expect to receive more letters from women? We do it as girls simply because girls are the best at writing letters.

I have a theory: about 50%. each and my theory is that parents were so excited about their children reading that they supported them in writing to me in the hope that they would maintain that enthusiasm and occasionally I have received extraordinary letters from children, very, very, very moving letters from Could telling me that boys are more moving, especially when it's a letter written by someone who obviously doesn't find it very easy to write, telling me that it's the first book they've read and that they really like it, it's wonderful company, an idea extraordinary and should make you feel happy. slightly rose gold and silly, what good is a book, said Alice without pictures or conversations in one that I, which was a book, I think adults like it more than children, but it is a splendid comment in one very sophisticated.

That's why adults like Alice so much. I wondered if it was simply the expense of the first edition of her first book, Harry Potter, the Sorcerer's Stone, if the issue of illustration had come up and if it was like this was the greatest children's novel we've ever had. Have I ever posted in terms of size, yes, we are not going to increase our expenses by getting Quentin Blake. Oh, you're absolutely right, that was precisely the argument. They also felt that the illustrations could somewhat target a younger audience. of what they pointed out I think it turned out that you were absolutely right and they were right, the American edition, which is a very beautifully produced book.

I must say that they have very small line drawings at the beginning of each chapter, which I like, it's just a hint of what's to come, but it's not a full carbon age, exactly color plates, although I loved the carbon plates. color, I used to flip through them to find the book and sometimes they were scary, you knew one would come along that you didn't like for some reason. Yes, I can still remember them all, it's strange, isn't it? A Scholastic editor. I remember you telling me about your first signing queue in America and I would expect some kids to come with a scarf clumsily drawn in pencil on their forehead, but you were to blame, yes, a woman who dressed like the fat woman with a picture frame hanging around his neck, that was extraordinary and it was the closest I'll ever get to being a pop star.

I walked through this door at the back of the store and there was screaming. literally screams and flashes going off and I didn't know where I was, I was completely disoriented, I think as a defensive mechanism, when those events ended, I shut down and I think I have to shut down and think that was a very strange anomaly and then I have to go back to my office and convince myself that this is just my world, yes I find this a really difficult question to answer and I wrote the character so I don't see why I should find it any easier.

Seriously, but I'm going to ask if there are any characters you particularly identify with because of Dumbledore's easy wisdom and slightly twinkling quality. I've always had this love for the great masters, the first being a fictional character that I really identified with when I created him. he went for a radio show because he was an old dog from Cambridge. Do you remember an Archbishop of Canterbury called Ramsey, the last of the great and monumental primates of the Church of England, I don't mean the neighborhood and I remember seeing him? being interviewed by a Malcolm Muggeridge type person who said you have to be a very wise man now mm I wish I could I wonder why I did it.

You said well, Your Excellency BAPS, could you explain what you did. Wisdom is wisdom. Wisdom means wisdom. I think it's the the ability to cope is a wonderful definition, you know, I'm right, I mean, it comes as you know, it's wisdom, it's the realm of wit, it's wit, dumb wit, knowing German, knowing the axis of vision, etc., and in ingenuity. it's that and that feeling of being able to cope and it's not about how much you know and feel that it's more like Marva, the worn out, tired quality that Dumbledore has because he's experienced a lot and can cope but would almost prefer not to be. capable of that is exactly right, Dumbledore expresses his regret that he has always had to be the one who knew and had the burden of knowing and would rather not know, but of all I mean, of course, Harry Potter is the one because he is The point of The Conscience of the book Harry is the one who is under all the tests, the litmus tests and all sorts of other things and, like with any hero, you measure yourself against him and there are moments where I think he would just run away or not.

I mind waving my wand although I'm not supposed to know, my favorite comment about Harry at the time of the first book was that he was a schoolboy who was interviewed on television and asked why he liked Harry at the time. character so much and said that he doesn't seem to know what's going on most of the time and neither do I. I guess there are times when you know and I think I mentioned it to you when I first read the Phoenix order had to be so cruel to him, I mean in self defense Harry had to do it so I'm trying to say about Harry as a hero and because he is a very human hero and this is obviously a contrast between him. as a very human hero and Voldemort, who deliberately dehumanized himself and therefore Harry had to reach a point where he almost broke down and said that he didn't want to play anymore, that he didn't want to be the hero anymore and that he had lost too much and I just didn't want to lose anything else, so Phoenix was the point at which I decided that its collapse would rise and now rise from the ashes.

It strengthens, it is a primary energy, especially with children. and we lose it, I suppose at our own risk, indignation at injustice, which is one of the main driving forces of all books, is not a feeling of a 12-year-old who has been unfairly accused of the burning? feeling of indignation, you're right, we shouldn't lose that, but we adults often do, yes, no, that's right. I think what I find most extraordinary is that I don't know how many characters I have in play now, how do you do it? finding voices for them, it's not an easy thing to answer, I mean, very often they're there and I hope that generally speaking, if I haven't exactly given them the voice, they imagine it's somewhere in that area.

I mean, there are characters like Tonks who for some reason, I instinctively felt that she had that kind of burn and you know, from Jane Horrocks' accent and it seemed to fit her exactly and I think so, and I think senior, the producer He had the same idea in his head, it should be. that and yet you did it, there's no but you wouldn't, all about that kind of northern writing and it's just something that's there and I'm sure sometimes it's just as unconscious to you that you're writing a smaller character. that one uses a turn of phrase that makes me think it sounds like a company oh that's an older character oh that's a younger character because you knew Hagrid was from the west country yeah I know that's all he wanted warn you before you start. reading and my plane was delayed that was the first time we met and I got there and one of the first things you told me was that you had already done Hagrid is kind of Somerset, thank God for that because I thought if you do it Look from Glasgow, you know, I would have had to, that was the only character I felt protective of accent-wise.

What I really enjoy about your reading is that the accents are not intrusive. I don't feel that in any sense you are giving a kind of virtuoso interpretation of these are as many accents as I can do or different voices do not form a great barrier between the listener and the story I feel that that is precisely what you know what I am looking for is not to get in the way on the way The thing is so that people don't hear the voice later, you know when you're reading sometimes you lose it and you have to go back and yeah, because he's very aware of the letters and his words and then you can read. the whole chapter and not be aware of having turned a page, you know the print and the paper were not there and it should be the same with my voice when they are listening, you know the first paragraph or so, but then immediately your mind it's in the world of the Dursleys and Hogwarts and the night person and everything else and they don't realize I'm doing it and the senior producer and Hanan are very good at making sure I don't talk too much out of my voice. or imitate the men you know at something and the only other problem is the pacing, you know.

I think it's very important to refresh the page, you know, because otherwise you can get a little numb, but it's not over either. I don't think I should put too much pressure on you, but are there any scenes that you have in particular or that you can remember enjoying from the accounts? You know all the creepy things in the climax of the Order of the Phoenix that you know in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic and so on. I love the fact that it was so scary and scary and dramatic, and I loved, you know, building up the tension, etc., and there are weird glass orbs and what they would mean and then getting stuck. behind doors there are a few children who have told me that they assimilate it much better when you read it to them than when they register on the page and I think that is because with Phoenix because people had to wait three years to read it. - faster they went ahead and really ran exactly and then yeah, I thought he had to tell me that he had read it again and there's so many things, oh man, I thought it was so good, that's because I read it in about an afternoon , No?

So listening to you I think has really given them an idea of ​​where they are. Is it really true that you have everything planned? Oh yes, it's really true and yes, I know what's going to happen. It eventually happens and I occasionally get chills when someone guesses that yes, that's something that's really close and then I panic and think that's always so obvious and then someone says something that's so out of the ordinary. I don't think so, it's clearly not that out of place. I always leave myself free to take a little walk off the path, but the power of these is what I essentially follow, so much so that what happens in six relates to what happens in seven and you really slide into the end of six in a row. in seven you know it's not not it's not the discreet adventure that all the others have been, although you have to have the underlying theme of Harry versus Voldemort in each case, even more you know better than anyone that there has been an adventure. that has resolved itself yes, where is it in six, although there is an ending that could be seen as definitive in a sense, you feel very strongly that the plot is not over this time and any will continues, yes, I don't feel it for the first time.

I am very, very aware that I am finishing the film, it is a strong idea. I am, you are always right because it is a need that you have. Can you imagine you were the right thing for children? Will you write for the children who were children? The adults were your first. generation I don't know them, the truth is, I don't know, there is another one for children, but that is rotting in a closet that I quite like, which is for slightly younger children,I would say, but there are other things I would like I write too, but I think I will have to find a good pseudonym and do it all secretly because I am very afraid, can you imagine, oh, absolutely, the unbearable hype that would occur with a post-Harry book Potter and I'm not sure I look.

I'm looking forward to that with that tantalizing glimpse into Jo's future and a lingering question about whether we'll recognize her post-Potter work. We parted ways and I set off on 600 more pages of Harry I can't wait for book 7 like many fans I want to know what happens at the end but I really don't want the end to come