WHAT MAKES THE REVELATION FASCINATING IS HER HOMOPHOBIA:

Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on Definitions of ‘Is’ and ‘Gay’ (EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, October 29, 2007, NY Times)

[I]t is possible that Ms. Rowling may be mistaken about her own character. She may have invented Hogwarts and all the wizards within it, she may have created the most influential fantasy books since J. R. R. Tolkien, and she may have woven her spell over thousands of pages and seven novels, but there seems to be no compelling reason within the books for her after-the-fact assertion. Of course it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books’ accounts certainly don’t make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should.

Yes, of course, Dumbledore acknowledges that at the bleakest moment of his life, when he was still a teenager and feeling “trapped and wasted,” the appearance of a charismatic friend “inflamed me” and lured him into fantastical dreams of power and influence. “Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession,” he recalls, resulted in “two months of insanity.” But his regrets lasted a lifetime.

What was that insanity? If it was primarily a matter of sexual attraction or sexual identity, it makes Dumbledore’s reaction less plausible. He felt there were profound betrayals latent in his behavior and his ideas during that period: He resented his troubled siblings; he took on an inflated idea of his own importance; he thought wizards superior to Muggles. These attitudes had tragic consequences that ultimately transformed his views of virtue and power and altered his ambitions. Gayness is irrelevant.

As for his later celibacy, it has the echo of a larger renunciation and a greater devotion. That is, after all, what the fantasy genre is all about. The master wizard is not a sexual being; he has shelved personal cares and embraced a higher mission. And if he indulges in sex, it marks his downfall, as it did, so legend tells us, with Merlin, the tradition’s first wizard, who is seduced by one of the Lady of the Lake’s minions.

In books marred by the failure of evil to act as any sort of attractant for the heroes, the revelation that homosexuality is the evil that Dumbledore fought against is noteworthy.

As for authors not understanding or controlling their own characters, in what was basically the first novel, Don Quixote, the first novelist, Cervantes, had to watch as the reading public turned the Don into someone quite different than he intended even as he was writing, so that the conclusion ofd the story undercuts the entire satirical intent:

Ah, sir, may God forgive you for the damage you've done to the whole rest of the world, in trying to cure the wittiest lunatic ever seen! Don't you see, my dear sir, that whatever utility there might be in curing him, it could never match the pleasure he gives with his madness? But I suspect that, despite all your cleverness, sir, you cannot possibly cure a man so far gone in madness, and, if charity did not restrain me, I would say that Don Quijote ought never to be rendered sane, because if he were he would lose, not only his witticisms, but those of Sancho Panza, his squire, any one of which has the power to turn melancholy into happiness.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2007 7:23 AM