J. K. Rowling swears she never saw it coming. In her wildest dreams, she didn't think her Harry Potter books would appeal to more than a handful of readers. "I never expected a lot of people to like them," she insisted in a recent interview. "Well, it turned out I was very wrong, obviously. It strikes a chord with an enormous number of people." That's putting it mildly. With 35 million copies in print, in 35 languages, the first three Harry Potter books have earned a conservatively estimated $480 million in three years. And that was just the warm-up. With a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders topping 1.8 million, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth installment of the series, promises to break every bookselling record. Jack Morrissey, 12, plainly speaks for a generation of readers when he says, "The Harry Potter books are like life, but better."
J. K. 罗琳发誓，她从未预见到这一切。即使在最狂野的梦想里，她也没想到自己的《哈利·波特》系列会吸引不止寥寥几个读者。她在最近一次采访中坚持说：“我从没想到会有这么多人喜欢这些书。显然事实证明我大错特错了，它引起了无数人的共鸣。”这还只是轻描淡写。前三部《哈利·波特》已用35种语言出版，发行3500万册，三年内的收入保守估计达4.8亿美元，而这仅仅是热身。系列第四部《哈利·波特与火焰杯》首印530万册，预订超过180万册，有望打破所有图书销售纪录。12岁的杰克·莫里西代表一代读者说：“《哈利·波特》就像生活，但比生活更精彩。”
Amazingly, Rowling keeps her several plotlines clear of each other until the end, when she deftly brings everything together in a cataclysmic conclusion. For pure narrative power, this is the best Potter book yet.
令人惊叹的是，罗琳让几条情节线始终清晰独立，直到结尾才娴熟地将一切汇聚到一个惊天动地的结局。单论叙事力量，这是迄今最好的一部《哈利·波特》。
When the book finally went on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, thousands of children in Britain and North America rushed to claim their copies. Bookstores hosted pajama parties, hired magicians, and served cookies and punch, but nobody needed to lift the spirits of these crowds. In one case, customers made such a big, happy noise that neighbors called the cops. At a Borders in Charlotte, N.C., Erin Rankin, 12, quickly thumbed to the back as soon as she got her copy. "I heard that a major character dies, and I really want to find out who," she said. But minutes later she gave up. "I just can't do it. I can't read the end first."
星期六凌晨零点零一分，图书终于开售，英国和北美成千上万的孩子冲去领取自己的那一本。书店举办睡衣派对、请来魔术师，还供应饼干和果汁饮料，但这些兴高采烈的人群根本不需要别人助兴。有一家店的顾客欢呼声太大，邻居甚至报了警。在北卡罗来纳州夏洛特的一家博德斯书店，12岁的艾琳·兰金一拿到书就飞快翻到后面。她说：“我听说有个重要人物死了，真想知道是谁。”但几分钟后她放弃了：“我做不到，我不能先看结尾。”
The only sour note in all the songs of joy over this phenomenon has come from some parents and conservative religious leaders who say Rowling advocates witchcraft. Reading of the books has been challenged in 25 school districts in at least 17 states, and the books have been banned in schools in Kansas and Colorado. But that's nothing new, says Michael Patrick Hearn, a children's book scholar and editor of The Annotated Wizard of Oz. "Any kind of magic is considered evil by some people," he says. "The Wizard of Oz was attacked by fundamentalists in the mid-1980s."
围绕这一现象的欢歌中，唯一不和谐的声音来自一些家长和保守宗教领袖，他们声称罗琳在鼓吹巫术。至少17个州的25个学区曾对阅读这些书提出异议，堪萨斯州和科罗拉多州的学校甚至禁止它们。不过，儿童文学学者、《绿野仙踪注释本》编辑迈克尔·帕特里克·赫恩说，这并不新鲜。“有些人把任何魔法都视为邪恶。20世纪80年代中期，《绿野仙踪》也曾遭到原教旨主义者抨击。”
But perhaps the most curious thing about the Potter phenomenon, especially given that it is all about books, is that almost no one has taken the time to say how good—or bad—these books are. The other day my 11-year-old daughter asked me if I thought Harry Potter was a classic. I gave her, I'm afraid, one of those very adult-sounding answers when I said, "Time will tell." This was not an outright lie. There's no telling which books will survive from one generation to the next. But the fact is, I was hedging. What my daughter really wanted to know was how well J. K. Rowling stacks up against the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson or Madeleine L'Engle.
然而，“波特现象”最奇怪的地方，也许是它明明围绕图书展开，却几乎没人认真评价这些书究竟有多好或多差。前几天，我11岁的女儿问我是否认为《哈利·波特》是经典。我恐怕给了她一个很有大人口吻的答案：“时间会证明一切。”这不完全是假话，因为没人知道哪些书能代代流传。但事实上，我是在回避问题。女儿真正想知道的是，J. K. 罗琳与罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森或马德琳·英格尔这样的作家相比究竟如何。
I could have told her that I thought they were beautifully crafted works of entertainment, the literary equivalent of Steven Spielberg. I could also have told her I thought the Potter books were derivative. They share so many elements with so many children's classics that sometimes it seems as though Rowling had assembled her novels from a kit. However, these novels amount to much more than just the sum of their parts. The crucial aspect of their appeal is that they can be read by children and adults with equal pleasure. Only the best authors—and they can be as different as Dr. Seuss and Philip Pullman and, yes, J. K. Rowling—can pull that off.
我本可以告诉她，我认为这些书是制作精美的娱乐作品，堪称文学界的斯蒂文·斯皮尔伯格。我也可以说，我觉得“波特”系列带有模仿痕迹。它与许多儿童经典共享太多元素，有时仿佛罗琳是用一套现成零件组装出小说。然而，这些小说远不只是各部分的简单相加。它们魅力的关键在于，儿童和成人都能获得同样的阅读乐趣。只有最优秀的作者才能做到这一点——无论是风格迥异的苏斯博士、菲利普·普尔曼，还是J. K. 罗琳。
P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, put it best when she wrote, "You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for—if you are honest—you have, in fact, no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one." There is plenty for children and adults to enjoy in Rowling's books, starting with their language. Her prose may be unadorned, but her way with naming people and things reveals a quirky and original talent.
《欢乐满人间》系列的作者P. L. 特拉弗斯说得最好：“你不能从自己的想象力中切下一块，专门做成一本给儿童的书，因为——如果你诚实的话——你其实根本不知道童年在哪里结束，成年又从哪里开始。它无穷无尽，浑然一体。”罗琳的书中有许多可供儿童和成人共同欣赏的东西，首先就是语言。她的散文也许并不华丽，但为人物和事物命名的方式展现出奇特而原创的才华。
The best writers remember what it is like to be a child with astonishing intensity. Time and again, Rowling articulates just how defenseless even the bravest children often feel. Near the end of the second book Dumbledore, the wise and protective headmaster, is banished from Hogwarts. This terrifies Harry and his schoolmates—"With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before"—and it terrified me. And in all of Rowling's books there runs an undercurrent of sadness and loss. In the first book the orphaned Harry stares into the Mirror of Erised, which shows the viewer his or her utmost desires. Harry sees his dead parents. "Not until I'd reread what I'd written did I realize that that had been taken entirely—entirely—from how I felt about my mother's death," Rowling said. "In fact, death and bereavement and what death means, I would say, is one of the central themes in all seven books." Do young readers pick up on all this deep intellectualism? Consciously, perhaps not. But I don't think the books would have their broad appeal if they were only exciting tales of magical adventure, and I know adults would not find them so enticing.
最优秀的作家能以惊人的强度记住做孩子是什么感受。罗琳一次次准确表达出：即使最勇敢的孩子也常常觉得自己毫无防御能力。第二部接近结尾时，睿智而保护学生的校长邓布利多被逐出霍格沃茨。这让哈利和同学们惊恐不已——“邓布利多一走，恐惧以前所未有的方式蔓延”——也让我感到害怕。罗琳所有作品中还潜藏着悲伤与失落。第一部里，孤儿哈利凝视能显示观看者最深愿望的厄里斯魔镜，看见了去世的父母。罗琳说：“直到重读自己写的内容，我才意识到那完全——完完全全——来自我对母亲去世的感受。事实上，死亡、丧亲以及死亡的意义，是七部书的核心主题之一。”年轻读者能领会这些深层思想吗？也许不会有意识地领会。但如果这些书只是刺激的魔法冒险故事，就不会拥有如此广泛的吸引力，成人也不会觉得它们如此迷人。
The Harry Potter books aren't perfect. What I miss most in these novels is the presence of a great villain. And by great villain I mean an interesting villain. Long John Silver is doubly frightening because he is both evil and charming. If he were just all bad, he wouldn't frighten us half as much. Voldemort is resistible precisely because he is just bad to the bone. That said, I should add that in the new book Rowling outdoes herself with a bad guy so seductive you'll never see him coming. And he is scary.
《哈利·波特》并不完美。我在这些小说里最感遗憾的是缺少一个出色的反派，而我所谓出色，是指有趣的反派。独腿约翰·西尔弗既邪恶又迷人，因此带来双重恐惧；如果他只是彻头彻尾的坏人，恐怖程度会减半。伏地魔恰恰因为坏得纯粹，反而比较容易抗拒。不过我还得补充，在新书中罗琳超越了自己，塑造了一个极具诱惑力、让你毫无防备的坏人，而且他真的很可怕。
That quibble aside, Rowling's novels are probably the best books children have ever encountered that haven't been thrust upon them by an adult. I envy kids reading these books, because there was nothing this good when I was a boy—nothing this good, I mean, that we found on our own, the way kids are finding Harry. We affectionately remember The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but try rereading them and their charm fades away pretty quickly. Rowling may not be as magisterial as Tolkien or as quirky as Dahl, but her books introduce fledgling readers to a very high standard of entertainment. With three books left to go in the series, it's too early to pass final judgment. But considering what we've seen so far, especially in the latest volume, Harry Potter has all the earmarks of a classic.
撇开这个小小异议，罗琳的小说很可能是儿童在没有成人强塞的情况下主动遇到的最好读物。我羡慕读这些书的孩子，因为我小时候没有这么好的作品——我的意思是，没有像今天的孩子发现哈利那样，由我们自己找到的好书。我们深情怀念《哈迪男孩》和《南希·德鲁》，但重读时，它们的魅力很快就会消退。罗琳也许不如托尔金恢宏，不如达尔奇诡，但她的书让初学阅读的孩子接触到极高水准的娱乐作品。系列还剩三部，现在作最终评价为时过早；但从目前所见，尤其是最新一部来看，《哈利·波特》具备经典作品的一切标志。