Since Dickens

When I was in high school reading Great Expectations by superstar 19th Century novelist Charles Dickens for the first or second time (9th Grade + 12th), as we got wrapped up in Pip, Estrella and Miss Havisham, I remember hearing a few times about how Dickens wrote in serialized form, and in a kind of height of the printed word distribution technology, people would read the chapters as soon as they came out.

The anticipation surrounding the final chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop, and the fate of the ill-starred girl at the center of it, was unprecedented:

In January 1841, passengers arriving in New York from Europe would be greeted by anxious people on the docks. They all had the same question: "Is Little Nell dead?" Such was the hysteria created by Charles Dickens' novel The Old Curiosity Shop.

Back then, of course, consuming media meant reading, but today that activity is for the minority of media consumers. Except for this:

Copies of the final Harry Potter book have already been shipped to customers by one U.S. online retailer, U.S. publisher Scholastic said on Wednesday, and purported copies of the novel have flooded the Internet...

...Photographs have also been posted on the Internet of what is claimed to be each page of the book, but Scholastic would not comment on whether they were real. Links to the pictures quickly flooded Web sites around the world...

...Rowling fueled speculation about the ending of the last book when she said last year that at least two characters would be killed off and a third got a reprieve.

Tight security has surrounded Rowling's eagerly awaited final novel about the teenage wizard. The first six books have sold 325 million copies worldwide.

Potter fans reacted angrily to purported Internet leaks...

So many people are so passionate about a book?

Has my whole world turned upside down?

I'm reading about literary authority Harold Bloom getting his panties in a knot because kids are reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows instead of The Wind in the Willows. For his information, the latter bored both my kids, no matter how much I loved it in 1964. However, I'm up to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my 7-year-old, and we're having a grand time.

(Personal favorite character: Sirius Black, and not just because Gary "Sid Vicious" Oldman portrays him in the moveeeez.)

I'm sure I'll get spoiled by spoilers before my son and I work our way through the next two books and several thousand pages to even start this final volume but who cares, it's amazing that people are going so nuts for a plain ol' epic story, one told with style, intelligent character development, and imagination by a caring author.

Notoriously tough New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani summarizes this book and the series in her thoughtful review today:

The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal coexist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope — the same way they are in our own mortal world.

Congratulations, Ms. Rowling, on an epic achievement. Enjoy this time of glory and the loooong tail to follow.

But most of all, good luck and godspeed on your next creative adventure.