『ハリポタ』最終作公開を前に加熱する英米紙

シリーズ最終作である『ハリー・ポッターと死の秘宝　ＰＡＲＴ２』の世界同時公開が7月15日に迫り、熱狂的ファンが別れを惜しんでいます。

それも、一部のファンタジー・ファンばかりではなく、Financial TimesやThe New York Timesの論説委員まで「ハリー・ポッターは、永遠だ！」と叫んでいるのですから、恐ろしい。記録しておきましょう。FTの記事、The NY Timesの社説の順です。

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July 8, 2011 8:02 pm
Person in the news: J.K. Rowling
By Peter Aspden
J.K. Rowling, the world’s best-selling author, has got the publishing industry quaking with her first-of-a-kind Pottermore internet venture

Farewells can skirt across tricky emotional territory, and so it proved over the past few rainy days in central London. The premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the final film in the franchise based on J.K. Rowling’s groundbreaking books, turned Trafalgar Square into an urban quagmire that was pitched somewhere between an adolescent summer camp and a requiem.

Ms Rowling’s last book was published four years ago, but as long as the films remained, the legend could be kept alive. But this was surely the end. Fans wept and whooped. A sodden red carpet did its best to brighten the mood. The actors duly arrived and spoke tremblingly to their audience. “The story doesn’t end here,” said Daniel Radcliffe, the outgrown portrayer of the title role. “We’ll take Harry Potter with us forever.”

Those words would certainly not have been lost on Ms Rowling. The mind that conjured up Muggles and quidditch has recently been preoccupied with more businesslike matters. After selling 450m books and amassing a fortune of £530m she has been busily preparing for life after Harry. The fantasist is turning her attentions to brand management.

A flurry of activities has marked the change. Last month, amid the extravagant surrounds of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Ms Rowling announced the launch of Pottermore, a wizarding website that will exclusively distribute Harry Potter audiobooks and e-books. The site promises an enhanced experience for fans: an interactive train journey on the Hogwarts Express, or the chance to receive a special wand by answering cryptic questions.

In a video clip on the website, Ms Rowling nestles comfortably on a leather sofa and talks of sharing all the additional information she has been “hoarding for years about the world of Harry Potter”. Her manner couldn’t be more homely, her intentions more wholesome.

But it is the world of publishing that is quaking in reaction to the news of Pottermore’s launch in October. The decision to exclude online stores such as Amazon and Apple from selling her e-books has the industry wondering if Pottermore heralds a retailing revolution. “You can’t hold back progress,” said the author at her press conference, as if powerless to stop the relentless forces of change. But in truth, she shows every sign of being in control of Potter’s, and her own, fortunes.

As if to prove the point, Ms Rowling last week announced her severance from her agent Christopher Little, who had acted for her from the start of the Potter adventure 14 years ago. She is to be represented by Neil Blair, a lawyer who joined Little’s agency a decade ago and has now set up his own agency.

The parting was not amicable. “This was a painful decision, especially as Ms Rowling had actively sought a different outcome for some weeks,” said her press statement. “However, it was not taken without good reason and it finally became unavoidable.” History, and possibly the courts, will reveal the wrangling that lay behind that clumsy double negative, but the symbolism is compelling.

It was Mr Little whose talents helped clinch Ms Rowling’s first deal, and who has profited handsomely as a result; but it is the legal expertise of Mr Blair that will be crucial in the Potter afterlife. The fledgling imperatives of e-commerce dance to a different tune to that of the traditional literary world.

Nevertheless the publishing world, along with Mr Little, were shocked by the move, even if it was also retrospectively seen as logical. “It isn’t rocket science,” said one London literary agent. “She is the kind of person who needs her own dedicated full-time staff. Christopher is widely perceived as an old-school agent who doesn’t necessarily engage with the new technological developments in a creative way. It doesn’t reflect badly on her.”

Many observers are sceptical of the significance of Ms Rowling’s latest manoeuvres for the industry at large. Her case is sui generis. Harry Potter is a unique phenomenon, like Beatlemania. Cultural hegemons write their own rules. Authors will continue to need the marketing clout of agents, publishers and retailers.

Even so, Ms Rowling’s move into e-publishing is not the reluctant acknowledgement of changing times. Instead, it is a masterfully timed piece of 360-degree brand development. The author says there are no more Harry Potters inside her imagination. She did tell Oprah Winfrey last year that she could “definitely write an eighth, ninth, 10th” Harry Potter novel, but it sounded no more than hypothesis. “I feel I am done,” she finally told her American host.

She has stuck faithfully to the character that has so dominated our cultural lives. The end of the film cycle needed to be accompanied by a bump-start to the Harry Potter story: hence Pottermore. Without the movies to help spur book sales, Ms Rowling needed to find new ground to enrapture her fans all over again. So she has made herself the sole gatekeeper of a universe that she will further embellish, at her own time and pace.

This is not a new strategy. The work of J.R.R. Tolkien was similarly enhanced when his son Christopher supervised the publication of The Silmarillion, a compilation of writings providing background to the Lord of the Rings books, after his father’s death. But it took 20-odd years to turn Tolkien into box office magic. Such time-spans are now ancient history. Today myths unravel at the click of a mouse.

Put to one side her brilliant fable-making: it is her commercial acumen, in having withheld digital rights from her publishers, that has given her the richest reward.

In filling out the Harry Potter story for both hardy fans and a new generation of computer-literate children, her magnificent obsession is turning into her ever-evolving, interactive legacy. She has shown that technological wizardry, far from trivialising content as so many people attest, enriches it. And makes it last. Harry Potter has no end. He really will be with us forever.

July 9, 2011
Long Live Harry PotterBy VERLYN KLINKENBORG

“All was well.” Those are the final words in the last of the Harry Potter books. Since 2007 — when the seventh and final volume was published — we’ve known how the series ends. This Friday, legions of Harry Potter fans will witness his struggle to make all well again when “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” opens across the universe.

As the curtain falls, we are left with a question. The fun of reading the books has always been pretending to belong to the wizarding world. Yet when we put them down, we find ourselves Muggles again, left to wonder what is all the wizarding for? This is a little like asking what field hockey or good manners are for. We only know that the wizards have their culture and we have ours.

After years of studying the world of Hogwarts, there comes an epistemological inequity. The wizards can live on, studying us to any extent they like. But our fate is to know only the years of wizarding contained in these books, and no more.

The series begins when Harry learns, at age 11, that he is not, by Muggle standards, normal. The beauty of the saga, in the search for a new normality, is discovering that what matters, among all the supernatural effects, are things that Muggles experience — happiness, peace, and good feeling among friends and family. J. K. Rowling’s wizardry has been to show us these truths in the most magical of places.

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タイトルだけでも訳しておきましょうか。まずは、FT。

　　ニュースのひと：J.K.ローリング
　　世界一のベストセラー作家、J.K.ローリングが、自ら立ち上げた前代未聞のインターネット事業“Pottermore”によって、出版業界に衝撃を与えた

これはいままでの電子書籍とも違う読者参加型のPottermore.comのスタートを論評するために書かれた文章ですが、ピーター・アスプデン記者の本シリーズへの愛着がとても深いことは一読すればだれにも分かります。

なお、この記事、いま現在FTの“Comment & Analysis”カテゴリーで最も読まれているのだとか。凄いです。

次に、The NY Timesの社説。

　　末永く生きよ、ハリー・ポッター

いやあ、一応映画を見ているという程度のとても本シリーズのファンとは言えない人間からすれば、この熱狂は信じられない限り。ファンの方は、15日の公開をご期待ください。