Here is the full transcript of the interview on BBC4 Radio.
Thanks to Veritaserum.com for the transcript.
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Tejas Thakker
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JK Rowling Interview Transcripts:
BBC Radio 4 Stephen Fry & JK Rowling Interview
December 10, 2005
Listen to the interview (MP3; 13 MB)
Stephen Fry: It was a Christmas five years ago that I had the strange experience of hearing myself on the radio all day long on Boxing Day as Radio 4 broadcast the recording of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It has been a privilege to be the voice of JK Rowling's work over 6 books, 2,764 pages, and 100 hours and 55 minutes of recordings.
The characters are familiar friends - and enemies - for me, that like millions of others, I eagerly await each new installment.
I first met Jo nearly seven years ago when she came to the studio where I was recording the first book. She remains famously reticent, and like millions of Potter fans, I am fascinated to know 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 will do when she finishes the final chapter.
So when Jo agreed to record a conversation with me, I jumped at the chance.
Jo, I suppose a good question to open with would be simply which character you find yourself identifying with most when you're writing or when you're reading what you've just written.
JK Rowling: Probably Harry, really, because I have to think myself into his head far more than any of the others, because everything is seen from his point of view. But there's a little bit of me in most of the characters, I think. They say of writers that, um, I think it's impossible not to put a little bit of yourself into any character, because you have to imagine their motivation.
SF: Did it occur to you when you were planning the books, hoping the first one would be published, that so many people who have never been inside a boarding school would relate to the very particular world of an English boarding school which Hogwarts represents?
JKR: Well, the truth is, I've never been inside one either, of course. I was comprehensive educated. But it was essential for the plot that the children could be enclosed somewhere together overnight. This could not be a day school, because the adventure would fall down every second day if they went home and spoke to their parents, and then had to break back into school every week to wander around at night, so it had to be a boarding school. Which was also logical, because where would wizards educate their children? This is a place where there were going to be lots of noises, smells, flashing lights, and you would want to contain it somewhere fairly distant so that Muggles didn't come across it all the time.
But I think that people recognize the reality of a lot of children being cloistered together, perhaps, more than they recognize the ambience of a boarding school. I'm not sure that I'm familiar with that, but I think am familiar with what children are like when they're together.
SF: The thing is, you have created a world, it's the sort of the definition of successful fiction, is to have a world that is somehow circumscribed by its own rules, its own ethics, its own culture, flavor, and smell and senses, and you've done this, and that's why it is very common to hear about children and adults dreaming that they are in Hogwarts, dreaming that they are side by side with Harry and Ron and Hermione and so on. And naturally, what comes as a result of this, too, is you get strange warning voices from people I always imagined with the steel-colored hair with a knitting needle stuck through it and a bun at the back, arguing that somehow this is dangerous...
JKR: Yes.
SF: ...for people, and, aside from the whole business of whether or not magic is dangerous for people, which I think we can ignore because...
[Both laugh]
SF: ...it seems to cover such wild chores of unreason.
JKR: It's all part of that. Young ladies, two hundred years ago, weren't allowed to read novels because it would inflame them and excite them and make them long for things that weren't real. And I remember being very distressed to read, when I was quite young, about Virginia Woolf being told she mustn'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 world that I've created is a particularly shining example of a world to which is very pleasant to escape. That beautiful image in C.S. Lewis where there are the pools - the world between worlds - and you can jump into the different pools to access the different worlds. And that, for me, was always a metaphor for a library. I know Lewis wasn't actually thinking that when he wrote it...
SF: Yeah, he was writing Christian metaphors.
JKR: Of course, but to me, that was to jump into these different pools, to enter different worlds, what a beautiful place, and that, for me, is what it literally should be. So whether you love Hogwarts or loathe it, I don't think you can criticize it for being a world that people enjoy.
SF: Precisely. That is why it exercises such a keen hold on all our imaginations.
JKR: 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 found that a very flattering comparison that also resonated with me, because when I read the Holmes stories, it is, of course, it's a world that never really existed. And yet, you can wholeheartedly believe it existed, and more importantly, you want it to have existed, don't you?
SF: Exactly right.
JKR: So that's why it's such fabulously entertaining reading.
SF: Yeah. And why Sherlock Holmes, to this day, still gets letters to 221b Baker Street.
JKR: Exactly, yeah.
SF: And of course, it is a peculiarity that you will be accused of creating both a world in which children can luxuriate in an escapist fantasy and for creating a world that is frightening...
JKR: Mmm.
SF: ...because it's so full of wickedness and danger...
JKR: Mmm.
SF: ...and that it could upset them. Now they can't both be true.
[Both laugh]
SF: But I do think it is one of the advances in children's literature that you have made with this remarkable series, is that you have not held back from the difficult and the frightening and the treacherous and the unjust and all the things that most exercise children's minds.
JKR: I feel very strongly that there is a move to sanitize literature because we're trying to protect children not from, necessarily, from the grizzly facts of life, but from their own imaginations.
I remember being in America a few years ago and Halloween was approaching, and three television programmes in a row were talking about how to explain to children it wasn't real. Now there's a reason why we create these stories, and we have always created these stories, and the reason why we have 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 confront that in an controlled environment. That's a very important part of growing up, I think. And the child that has been protected from the dementors in fiction, I would argue, is much more likely to fall prey to them later in life in reality.
And also, what are we saying to children who do have scary and disturbing thoughts? We're saying that's wrong, that's not natural, and it's not something that's intrinsic to the human condition. That they're in some way odd or ill.
SF: Exactly.
JKR: That's a very dangerous thing to tell a child.
SF: And guilt is the greatest trigger for aggression that man has. And if people grow up thinking they're peculiar for having dark thoughts or being aware of the weirder side of the world and their lives, then that's going to make them awful human beings, isn't it?
JKR: I totally agree.
SF: One of the jobs of writing, in a sense, is to show you that you're not alone.
JKR: Yes, yes, it is, and certainly, I discovered I wasn't alone through books, I think, arguably more than I did through friendships in my early days, 'cause I was quite an introverted child, and it was through reading that I realized I wasn't alone on all sorts of levels.
SF: Absolutely. And it's a central anxiety, if you'd like, that the reader is always confronted with Harry, is that there is this extraordinary closeness he has to Voldemort - the one who must not be named, but must be named. And I think that as the series progresses and we feel a "Gosh, it's not long now - what is going to happen?" There's a great deal of speculation, and I'm not asking you to come out with any answers here, but there's a great deal of speculation as to how close this relationship is between the darkest wizard of them all and our hero, who saved the world.
JKR: Well, the question I was asked a lot early on was "Was Voldemort really Harry's father?" And of course, that's a Star Wars question...
SF: Exactly.
[Both laugh]
JKR: ...really, isn't it? And, no, he is not going to turn out to be Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. He is not, in a biological sense, related to him at all.
SF: Now, that's a very good answer to have. I think that one of the current front-running endings - I'm not sure if you're aware of this - as far as the betting goes, is that Harry will finally defeat Voldemort at the expense of all his own powers, and he will end by going into the world as an ordinary Muggle.
[JKR gasps]
SF: Which is an extraordinary idea.
JKR: It's a good ending.
SF: It is a good ending! You can borrow it if you like.
JKR: And be sued for plagiarism by about 13 million children.
SF: This is your problem, isn't it? You're not allowed to read anything...
JKR [chuckling]: No.
SF: ...written by anybody else, just on the off chance. Well, let's think about the world that you've used, in terms of its tradition, if you like, from little cornish pixies to, you know, kelpies and, you know, mentions of particular types of plant, like mandrakes and so on.
JKR: Mmm.
SF: These are all real and a lot of children will, of course, imagine you made them up completely.
JKR: I've taken horrible liberties with folklore and mythology, but I'm quite unashamed about that, because British folklore and British mythology is a totally bas***d mythology. You know, we've been invaded by people, we've appropriated their gods, we've taken their mythical creatures, and we've soldered them all together to make, what I would say, is one of the richest folklores in the world, because it's so varied. So I feel no compunction about borrowing from that freely, but adding a few things of my own.
SF: Absolutely.
JKR: But you're right, yes, children, they know, obviously, they know that I didn't invent unicorns, but I've had to explain frequently that I didn't actually invent hippogriffs. Although a hippogriff is quite obscure, I went looking, because when I do use a creature that I know is a mythological entity, I like to find out as much as I can about it. I might not use it, but to make it as consistent as I feel is good for my plot. There's very little on hippogriffs. I could read...
SF: It's the map, isn't it? It's the "Here Be Hippogriffs."
JKR: Exactly. "Here Be Hippogriffs," yes.
SF: Like "Heffalumps and Woozles."
JKR: But they don't seem to have been closely observed by many medieval naturalists, so I could...
[both laugh]
SF: I presume they are, as the name would imply, and this is to bring this onto your other love, which is language itself, on its most basic level of words and derivations that hippogriff is, of course, is a mixture of the word "griffin" and Greek for horse "hippo," which is a perfect example, as you say, of the bas***dization of our English folklore, like our language.
JKR: Like our language.
SF: It's the perfect mixture.
JKR: Which is what makes our language so rich.
SF: Exactly.
JKR: Nobbily, and textured, and I love it.
SF: And even things like Mundungus have a meaning.
JKR: Mundungus.
SF: Isn't that wonderful?
JKR: Isn't that a fantastic word?
SF: And it means?
JKR: Foul-stinking tobacco, which really suits him.
SF: Exactly. Isn't it perfect?
BTW I didn't know that Mungdungus meant Foul-stinking Tobacco!!!!!
Edited by albusdumbledore - 19 years ago
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