Salon To J.K. Rowling: Get Over Yourself

Salon‘s Farhad Manjoo offers a concise summary of J.K. Rowling‘s attempt to crush an unauthorized Potter guide, pegging the key issues involved in her lawsuit against RDR Books, the publishing company that wanted to put out a book based on Steve Vander Ark‘s “Harry Potter Lexicon” website. Manjoo identifies the Lexicon as a “reference book,” no different than “a list of the allusions in Ulysses; or a complete guide to all of the characters in William Faulkner’s fiction; or a compilation and detailed analysis of Bob Dylan’s lyrics; or a book containing the complete chronology of the events in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.”

“But the question is not whether Rowling is on solid legal ground in suing her fans,” Manjoo continues. “It’s whether she’s on solid moral ground. And the answer, obviously, is no…”:

“Rowling’s success is due in no small part to the bustling online community of Potter adherents… How many hundreds of millions has this community sent Rowling’s way? If there were no Internet, no online Harry Potter culture, how much poorer would she be right now?”

Good question; you could certainly argue that Rowling’s stories would have earned her a massive readership with or without the Internet, over time, but would she have been able to enjoy the support of her publishers long enough for that to happen, if it hadn’t happened right away? Among the things you’d have to ask: Well, did the Internet make Philip Pullman, too? Heck, did it make Meg Cabot?

“Surely,” Manjoo concludes, “she owes her fans something.” I don’t know that I’m 100 percent sold on that argument, as opposed to the “look, it’s a reference book” argument, but the issue does point back to Monday’s item on the gray market subculture keeping manga afloat, and the blurring boundaries in the relationship cultural consumers have with cultural producers… and why a cultural exchange that flourishes in Japan might have a harder time gaining traction in America.

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