The Making of the Potterverse Read Online Free PDF Page A

happily with open copies of
Goblet
on their laps, what struck me as most extraordinary about the event was neither the lines nor the TV cameras nor the spectacle of kids going wild over a book. It was the knowledge, unprecedented in a life devoted to the solitary practice of reading, that last night and throughout this weekend, I and millions of other people, young and old, will all be reading the very same book.”
    BusinessWeek Online
reported that the success of the Harry Potter books had tripled the stock worth of British publisher Bloomsbury Publishing. “The uproar,” it was pointed out, “has created something unusual in the clubby world of British publishing: a bestseller circus that the Brits previously thought only vulgar Americans capable of perpetrating. . . .”
    To help promote
The Goblet of Fire
, J.K. Rowling took to the rails. Reported the
Washington Post
, “With two ferocious shrieks of its whistle, a scarlet steam engine pulled away from Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station this morning, carrying the world’s most popular living author, J.K. Rowling, on a journey patterned on the magical train trips she created in her Harry Potter books. Rowling will ride the train, dubbed the Hogwarts Express, for the next four days on a promotional tour.” The reason? Her gratitude to Bloomsbury Publishing for having picked up Harry Potter in the first place. The promotional tour, it should be pointed out, was more for children at each stop, members of which included contest winners who had won the right to meet with her in person.Amusingly, as reporters and photographers attempted to get close to Rowling, they were rejected with the statement that it was a “private function.”

    The Hogwarts Express terminates at Hogsmeade Station, which is played by Goathland Station in North Yorkshire, England. (Fionna Boyle)
    The
Indian Express
referred to the furor around the fourth Harry adventure as a “literary gold rush. No event in publishing history comes anywhere near matching the frenzy that has erupted over the last week in the run-up to the release of the book.”
    Surprisingly, the
Washington Post
expressed considerable skepticism regarding the movie version of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
, scheduled to begin shooting later in the year. “The prognosis is not good. ‘The people who love Harry Potter have created a HarryPotter universe in their heads,’ explains David Thomson, author of
A Biographical Dictionary of Film
. The hazard, of course, is that people will over-expect. ‘The more intensively that imaginative process has been undertaken, the more disappointing the film will be’.” They also put down the choice of Chris Columbus as director and Steve Kloves as writer, and mentioned that those directors who had been in the running were Steven Spielberg, Brad Silberling, Jonathan Demme, Tim Robbins and Mike Newell (who eventually went on to shoot the adaptation of
Goblet of Fire
).
    CNN.com offered an interview with stage actor Jim Dale regarding the fact that he had played 125 characters in the audiobook version of
Goblet of Fire
, following his reading of the first three novels. Of the experience he offered, “Whether I want to or not, I think I will be remembered for Harry Potter. How lovely to be remembered as the voice of Harry Potter. And to be perfectly honest, when you listen to the tapes, when you get to Harry, it’s just a younger-sounding voice that you’re hearing. I haven’t tried to make him different from the voice I have. So it’s nice to think my younger voice of myself is the voice that kids are hearing as Harry Potter.” He also reflected on getting the gig in the first place: “Never having heard of Harry Potter, I said I’d like to read it. Having read it, I was immersed completely in the Harry Potter world. I recognized that this was something exceptionally clever and very good and very well written, with a prospect of six more books to follow. So of course,