1 августа в Нью-Йорке, в Radio City Music Hall, JKR в рамках благотворительного вечера "An evening with Harry, Carrie and Garp" читала отрывки из 6-й книги и дала совместную пресс-конференцию вместе с Джоном Ирвингом и Стивеном Кингом.
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Are there any surprises about book seven?
JKR: Surprises about book seven [thinks]. Anything I feel like sharing? I’m well into it, I’m well into the writing of it now. [Smiles] There’s so much I coiuld say. To an extent, the pressure’s off, I suppose, because it’s the last book, so I feel liberated. I can just resolve the story now, and it’s fun. It’s fun in a way that it hasn’t been before, because finally I’m doing my resolution. I think some people will loathe it, some will love it, but that’s the way it should be.
Can you speak about the charities these events will benefit?
Stephen King: I think we’er going to be able to raise at least $250,000 for thic charityk, which for three people who write books is a lot of money. When we set out to do this we decided we would do two nights, one to benefit the charity of my choice, which is the Haven Foundation, which raises money for freelance artists who find themselves after catastrophic accidents and diseases with no resources for themselves. And Jo designated Doctors Without Borders, and she can talk very cogently about that. So, one night Doctors Without Borders, one night, Haven Foundation.
All of this came out of the fact that last year, I read for John’s charity, which was Maple Street School [in Vermont], and he said he would read for me. And so while I read for a small school in Vermont, I dragged him to Radio City Music Hall, an dhe came along.
What will [Jo] miss most about the Harry Potter series?
JKR: Everything. I’ve loved writing it, and I will miss it hugely. But I always planned seven books, and I planned this particular ending, and if I get through it and do what I meant to do when I first committed to this story, then I’ll be proud. I”ll probably go through a mourning period and then have to give something else a try.
Have any of your children exhibited magical qualities?
JKR: Young witches and wizards in my book are very distractive in their early phse, and they’ve certainly got that. But otherwise, I would say probably not. My eldest daughter is very scientific, very logical, which I think is great.
Can you speak about killing your characters?
JKR: John’s killed off more than I have so I think he should go first.
JI: Because I never begin writing a novel until I know the major emotional things that happen in it, especially what happens at the end. I have a kind of casualty list of which characters make it and which characters don’t, before I write the first word. So that process of deliberation that sometimes precedes the writing of a novel by as much as a year or 18 months sometimes means that by the time I get to writing those death scenes themselves, I’ve lived through the lives and deaths of those characters for many months, sometimes several years. Therefore I’m not truly emotionally affected when it comes to writing those scenes. But I think that’s a direct result of my need to know the ending of a story before I go about imagining where it might begin.
JKR: (laughs) Um, I think that there's um, understand why an author would kill a character from a point of view of not allowing others to continue writing after the original author is dead. I don't always enjoy killing my characters. I didn't enjoy killing the character who died at the end of book six. I'm being discreet just in case any on hasn't finished the book. I really didn't enjoy doing that, but I had been planning that for years. As John says it wasn't quite as poignant as you might imagine. I'd already done my grieving when it actually came to writing it.
SK: I don’t enjoy it either. I don’t plan the books out very clearly. I’ve always thought of it as, you know, there are writers who plan and I think there are people who fire missiles the way that the United States fires missiles. I fire them the way Hezbollah fires missiles. I have a certain idea of where they’re going to land but if they get within 12 miles one way or another I’m happy.
Do the other authors have advice for Jo at the end of her series:
JKR: [looking at SK, re: Harry] kKll him!---
[laughter]
SK: I want the story to be fair. It’s what I always want. I want to read the book. I love that series. I want to read the book and I have total confidence because I read the other books. And I’m just up for it, that’s all.
JI: My fingers are crossed for Harry, that's all. I'm just hoping.
Why did JKR choose Doctors without Borders, and what was behind her 6-year absence from the US?
JKR: To answer the second part first, the person I wanted to nominate Doctors Without Borders, - I used to work for Amnesty International, and that’s when I first came across the organization. I noted that every time there was a situation, like the war in Lebanon, Doctors Without Borders were some of the first people on the ground. They were a very very effective organization, and also as the name clearly states, it doesn’t matter what your religious affiliation is, it doesn’t matter what your ethnic group is, it doesn’t matter what your circumstance is. If you are physically in need they will help you or do everything they can to help you. So I’ve always, since having money and having made money, they’ve been an organization I’ve supported, and I thought that we were doing on egreat charity that deals with a specific groupu of people, and therefore I thought it wouild be great if we did a charity that deals literally with the world.
Re: being absent from the US for six years
I absolutely love coming here, and I absolutely love coming to New York. I’ts one of my favorite cities, but during that six years, I’ve been pregnant twice and I’ve had small children and that’s really why we weren’t doing the long flights and the tours. They’re old enough to travel now. So it’s great to be back.
Why did Dumbledore have to die [asked by TIME for Kids representative]
I did an interview last year in which I was asked this question. In the genre in which I’m writing, you usually find that the hero has to go on alone. There comes a point when his support falls away and to be truly heroic he has to act alone. Harry is not completely alone, he still has his two faithful sidekicks. This was summarized for me by the person who asked the question with, you mean the old wizard always gets it, and that fundamentally, that is what I was saying. I was as trying to dress it up a little better than that. So that's why. In these sort of epic sagas, the hero eventually has to fight alone.
Is book seven going to be different than the others?
JKR: It is different to an extent. The essential plot is what i always planned when working toward the end I’ve planned toward the beginning. But a couple of characters I expected to survive have died and one character got a reprieve, so there have been som f airly major changes I suppose.
Are the authors comfortable reading their own work?
JI: My only discomfort with what I’m reading tonight is it 's from something relatively old, something I’ve not read or been in touch with for a numer of years, but Steve and I have talked about what we wanted to read and we recognize that we see ourselves as warmup dance for Jo, and we see, we imagine that there’s going to be mostly her audience theree, and I don’t think that Stephen King and John Irving generally write material that’s terribly suitable for younger people. So Steve and I had to go looking for those occasionally more innocent moments in our earlier work, so to speak. So, um, I would say in the case of this reading, I love the idea of reading with Steve and Jo and this wonderful space, but I’m a little intimidated by the age of the audience, it’s not my usual audience.
JKR: I feel like I’ve just been told the Beatles and the Stones are warming up for me.
To tell you the truth I’m not that comfortable reading my work, and that’s why I’m going to be doing a shorter reading tonight and taking some questions, and I do think that the people who are coming to hear me read would probably rather ask questions than hear me do a long reading, I would like to think, because I’m not very comfortable doing it. I don’t think I’m particularly good at reading.
How does JKR feel when her readers call her a sadist, and how does she feel about wrapping up the series?
When fans accuse me of sadism, which doesn’t happen that often, I feel I'm toughening them up to go on and read John and Stephen's books. They've got to be toughened up somehow. It’s a cruel literary world out there, so I'm doing them a favor.
How do I feel about the series ending? On the one hand, I feel I am going to feel sad. Harry’s been an enormous part of my life and it’s been quite a turbulent phase of my life as well…so there will be a sense of bereavement, but there will also be a sense of liberation, because there are pressures involved in writing something this popular, wonderful though it’s been. I think that there will also be a certain freedom in escaping that particular part of writing Harry Potter.
What’s next for Jo?
I have a shorter (mercifully) book for children that’s kind of half written, so I think I’ll probably go to that next.
Апдейт. TLC с Магглнетом рассказали о том, как проходили сами чтения.
Сначала показали видеоклип, в котором Джо была дома, в обнимку с желтой папкой. В ней, по словам JKR, находится последняя глава 7-й книги. "Я боюсь, что камера увидит все через папку, если подъедет поближе", - ехидничала она.
Затем JKR вышла на сцену под бурные, продолжительные аплодисменты публики. Маленькая деталь: на ее босоножках на высокой платформе сзади была нарисована змея.
JKR читала американское издание ГПиПП в мягкой обложке - главу, в которой Дамби берет Гарри с собой в приют к Тому Реддлу.
После чтения Джо ответила на пять или шесть вопросов от аудитории.
На вопрос "Что Гермиона увидит в Зеркале Еиналеж?" она сказала, что та, вероятно, увидит мертвого Волди и то, как они с Роном счастливо живут после войны.
Ну и, по ее словам, то, что произошло с Драко после того, как он оказался не способен убить Дамби, мы узнаем в 7-й книге.
Кроме того, она сказала, что в 7-й книге мы больше узнаем о зельях и о связи между волшебником и его палочкой.
Она также сказала, что онлайновые шипперские войны (между шипперами ГП/ГГ и РУ/ГГ) были настоящими кибервойнами.