So . . . what are we going to read now?

I was one of the people who got their copy of the last Harry Potter book at midnight on Saturday. The Borders on State and Randolph was packed with people of all ages, including quite a few that I would have placed in their early twenties. The bookstore had had a few hours of events leading up to the sale, so there were a lot of employees and little kids dressed in various costumes based on characters in the books. We were classed according to whether we'd pre-ordered a copy and how early we'd gotten to the store and given colored wristbands to assign our places in line. There was the usual amount of pushing and jostling that happens when you get a lot of people in one place, but in general the mood was pretty amiable. I was in the green wristband group, the second last, but the actual distribution of books was handled pretty efficiently. I got out of there about 12:45, jogged home, and cracked it open.

I'd been thinking about a blog entry I'd read a few days ago, written by a woman who describes herself as a Harry Potter skeptic. She doesn't understand the fuss, she says; the series may be entertaining to read, but it's not exactly full of literary merit, and J.K. Rowling needed a much better editor. It wasn't the first time that I'd heard that sort of thing from people, but it had me thinking as I was picking up the new tome two nights ago.

Specifically, I was thinking of something I'd read in a commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost by Samuel Johnson:

But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.

And there are probably a lot of Milton scholars, and Milton readers, who would find this judgment excessively harsh. But I read it, when I was reading PL in a class a year ago (and taking a break to read some criticism, never a good thing), thinking, right on, Johnson. I found it a cold book, difficult to really get into.

So I'm going to commit some philological heresy here and compare PL and HP. Is Paradise Lost better written? Philologically denser? Will it endure longer than HP? Yes, of course it is and it will. I don't think the HP books are great literary works or deserving of hero worship. I like them because they remind me what wonderful chemistry certain books can have, how they make you care deeply about the characters and what happens to them. I admired Milton's epic, but I wouldn't have stayed up in the small hours of the morning, fortified by a pot of coffee and the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips, to finish it. And I certainly didn't feel sad when I was finished with it, like I used to feel on December 26th when I was a little kid and knew that all that nice fuzzy anticipation was over.

As for what I thought of it - and I'm going to be really vague here, in case you haven't read the book yet - I'm not really sure yet. I think I'm going to have to read it again, just to pick up some of the smaller details. The first time through, the plot struck me a pretty unwieldy. That is sort of understandable, given that there were so many compelling characters and plot lines that needed resolution, but it felt a little rushed, as all sorts of elements from the first six books got dusted off for one last hurrah. There are also a few really talky passages at the end as lingering mysteries are revealed, and they're placed a little awkwardly, right in the middle of the last showdown.

But there were also parts I really liked, moments that I found really touching. So, we'll see the second reading feels like.

And one last thing. There was one authorial decision that pretty much everyone thought J.K. Rowling was going to have to make, and I thought that she sort of tried to have her cake and eat it too. I was a little annoyed by it. On the other hand, as I was falling asleep at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, it occured to me that this part of the book might - at least on some level - have been the author's last thumbing of her nose to the Christian fundamentalists who have made such a fuss about Harry promoting Satanism and witchcraft.

In which case, Ms. Rowling, I am so in your corner.

The wait is almost over. Can we stand it?

I figured out last night that the whole Harry Potter thing is bringing out my inner spaz. My sister, reading an article on the New York Times Online about the pages from the last book that have leaked, quoted the article as saying that the final page, despite having been quickly and crudely scanned, was legible. At which I instantly plugged my ears, hunched my shoulders protectively, and shouted, "Don't tell me! I don't want to know!"

Seriously, though, I don't understand the principle of spoilers (which the NYT of course didn't print, so my sister wouldn't have seen the last page, even if she'd wanted to. I kind of wasn't thinking at the time). Why would you want to spoil the ending for yourself?

Maybe to stop anyone else from spoiling it for you? A friend of mine in Berlin lives in a heavily Turkish area, but she's planning to pick up her English copy from a bookstore Friday night, go straight home, and stay in media blackout until she finishes it - no T.V., no radio, no riding the subway or even going outside, in case other people have finished it ahead of her. When we were talking about it, we agreed that the chances of the last one, at least, happening weren't all that great, although it's not impossible that a gang of young Turkish men will go wandering around her neighborhood, weeping and keening, "He's dead! He's dead!"

I'm a little nervous about going to the bookstore to pick up my family's copy, since there's always a chance that someone with grab their book, turn to the last page, and announce the ending. Maybe earplugs are in order. Hey, there are idiots everywhere.

I'm interested in what's going to happen after we know the ending. I figure there are definitely going to be people who are unhappy, no matter what happens. And the New Yorker will probably print a snarky review of it. My guess is that Harry dies, just as a principle of narrative closure - what's Harry going to do without Voldemort, who presumably also has to die? I'll also be disappointed if Snape proves to be ultimately evil. But it'll be interesting to see. Oh, golly.

Note from the home front

Apart from the fact that the name of this blog is now obsolete, not much has changed here in Chicago since I left. People have been asking me if it feels weird to be back, and I have to say that it doesn't. It's like when I came home from school - you can pick up where you left off, give or take a few piles of junk in your room.

One thing I have been noticing. People in Germany who'd been to the U.S. invariably mentioned how much bigger everything is here. I always assumed that was just a veiled way of saying how fat Americans are, but it's true in other respects as well; I don't think I walked among any skyscrapers when I was abroad. And, writing from my sister's new Mac, I guess I'm getting reused to the American keyboard. The German one is just different enough to be annoying (or, as I originally wrote the word as I would have on a German keyboard that transposes the "y" and the "z," annozing).

It's been an uneventful few days. I've been doing nice little things, like taking walks in the sunshine, visiting the library, and renewing my acquaintance with House, M.D. That sort of thing - along with doing some badly needed Latin and Greek review - will probably take up the remainder of the month I have here in Chicago, since there's really no point in trying to find a summer job, and none of my friends are here for the summer. Tomorrow I'm going with my sister to some sort of indie rock music festival extravaganza. I haven't seen the new HP movie yet, but I think that'll be sometime early next week, when the crowds may have died down a bit.

And I feel like I just got home.

Because I did! And I'm really tired now.

The last bit of Europe

It's one of those days where you get up really early and so feel like you've been up for ages when it's only 1 in the afternoon. I was up at 3:30 this morning to catch my 6:40 flight from Dublin back to Berlin, and already it feels like days ago that I was creeping around the dark hostel room, trying not to wake the other eleven people as I packed my nightclothes and toothbrush.

And I only got about three hours of sleep last night, so I hope you'll excuse me from writing an extensive entry about the Ireland trip. I had a really good time - I split the nine days between Dublin and Galway, and took a few day trips out into the countryside and one to the Aran Islands. I crossed the country in a bus (twice) and saw a lot of sheep that had a recently-sheared look. I met some friendly people in the hostel in Galway and drank a few pints with them. And I did a lot of walking. I wish that I'd been able to stay longer and see more of the country, but I don't regret staying so long in either city - I'd much rather stay a few days in one place and get the lay of the land than dash around somewhere new every day. And it was nice to have moments of just sitting by the water or walking through a field.

The problem with overstaying my visa that I'd been worried about did not materialize - the woman at passport control at the aiport was more concered with the beaten-up look of my passport than my legal status (when I travel, I keep my passport and spare cash and cash cards in one of those money belts you wear under your clothes. It's more secure than carrying it in my purse, but after a week and a half of being toted through hostels, planes, trains, etc., it does start to look a little wrinkled). I have a few more things to take care of this afternoon, and then tonight I'm meeting a few friends for a last-hurrah dinner. And then tomorrow - hours and hours on a plane, and then home.

Update

Ireland is very green. And has very good bread. And beer. And cheese.

But then, you knew that.

I'm also eating a lot of Cadbury chocolate, but that's an import from England, so I think it doesn't count.

There's no home for you here, girl, go away. There's no home for you here.

Oh, dear, we now come to the big summing-up post that I've been dreading for a while. I'll start with a story about yesterday. My supervising teacher, Mr. Q., had talked to me on Tuesday and asked when I was going to be at school on Thursday. I told him, and he said, "Good, we'll say good-bye on Thursday then."

Yesterday, while the class I was with was doing some group work, their teacher came up to me and said that Mr. Q. wasn't there that day. I asked if he was sick, and she said no, he'd taken the day off, and had only remembered that morning that it was my last day. He'd called this other teacher and told her to let me know.

It was such an appropriate ending to my dealings with him, where he's generally been well-intentioned, but absent-minded, that I had to laugh. I wrote him a note to say goodbye and thank you, and after an awkward and mercifully brief farewell with the other teachers, I left.

Oh, what to say about this year. I wouldn't call it a waste of time, even though there were a lot of moments when I felt really frustrated about doing so little work. Because I have learned a lot here, even if they weren't always the sort of things I expected. For example, I thought about signing up for an evening German class when I first got here, but decided against it, thinking that it would be better to improve my German by speaking it with the natives, instead of with other foreigners. And by the end of the year, the times when I spoke German the most were with a group of foreigners who got together once a week to go to a bar and speak a common foreign language with each other, and I met lots of nice people in that group. And I didn't make German friends, like I'd hoped I would, or ever really feel welcome among the Germans I had to deal with, but I guess I got used to not feeling welcome, and trying to handle that feeling like an adult. I thought I would come here and never want to leave, and instead, the longer I stay, the more I miss about the U.S. (Isn't that such a cliche? Going abroad only to figure out how American you are? I'm ashamed of myself).

I filled in an end-of-year report from Fulbright, and it's currently sitting in my draft box, waiting to see if I want to modify the language at all. It's not that bad - I really just said that, if I had friends who were thinking of applying for a Fulbright TAship - and I do, and have said this - I would tell them not to. If you want to spend a year abroad, go for it, but look for a job that includes real responsibilities, and a real salary, and optimally health insurance.

I'll be a little sad about leaving Berlin, but hopefully I won't have the sort of crippling reverse culture shock that hit me when I came back from Rome and saw about six weeks of me moping, crying, and wishing I were anywhere else but boring old grey Chicago. I don't think so - I'm actually really looking forward to getting back, seeing my family, eating some bagels, and then heading out to California for the next phase of my life. I'll miss the quality European coffee and baked goods, but, y'know. No country on earth has it all. If it did, there'd be no reason to travel. (And speaking of traveling - not that I'll have the money anytime soon - I think my next trip will be beyond Europe. I'd love to go to Japan, or Australia).

Well, I'm rambling here, and I need to go pack and clean my room, so I should probably close. Hope that everyone's summer is going well, and that I'll see some of you in Chicago when I get home!