(a.k.a. Why Rowling’s “Outing” is a Literary Crime.)

Umberto Eco wrote that authors should die when their novels are complete, so as not to “trouble the path of the text”—advice Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling has clearly chosen to ignore. Not only has she thus far refused to die, but last October she stirred the cauldron of Potter fandom with the revelation that kindly old Dumbledore is gay as a fruitbasket (old hat, I know, but indulge me). Everyone forgot about the war for a while and tongues wagged excitedly on both sides of the Atlantic. The religious right was uncharacteristically silent, having already written Harry Potter off on account of the big W, but hearty applause was heard from some quarters of the left and the queer community, and a thoughtful New York Times piece by Edward Rothstein commented on the radical heroism of Rowling’s outcasts.

Dumbledore (art by Sadie Smith)
Dumbledore (art by Sadie Smith)

No one, however, seemed disturbed by the literary implications of Ms. Rowling’s remarks. I’m troubled by the idea that Ms. Rowling thinks she can still control her characters, though the final book has already been written. If Vladimir Nabokov called a press conference from beyond the grave to announce that Lolita is a closeted lesbian who seduces Humbert in order to repress her deep Sapphic desires, would we take his word for it? I think we wouldn’t, so I’m puzzled that we seem willing to cede that much authority to a second-tier fantasy writer (here comes the hate mail).

Inside the wholly imaginary experience of her book, an author has a certain amount of power; she gets to select the information that the reader will be interpreting. But outside the book, the author’s opinion carries no more weight than that of any ordinary schmuck who happens to read it. If I decide that Dumbledore’s “deviance” includes nightly rendezvous with a unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, then Ms. Rowling has no special right to contradict me, other than to point out, as anyone can, that the text doesn’t support such an interpretation. As I understand it—and right here, right now, I own up to never having read a word of any Harry Potter book after the first one—there’s a bit about a wand and some kind of orgasmic spewing of white handkerchiefs, and generally some pretty suggestive language to the effect that Dumbledore…plays Quidditch for the other team? If he’s gay, or straight, or bestial, it’s because it’s in the text, not because Ms. Rowling said so at Carnegie Hall. This is the real world, Ms. Rowling. You have no power here. Now begone, before somebody drops a house on you!

Ms. Rowling may well be a victim of her own success. Perhaps she has come to think that her characters are as real as the action figures that so ubiquitously represent them. With a series as ruthlessly merchandized as the Potter books, it’s hard to say where the world of the book ends. Characters, places and props have intruded on the physical world as human actors, stripy scarves, and fish-flavored jellybeans. Perhaps a less successful series would end and that would be that, but with two movies left to go and untold adventures in commodification still ahead, Rowling may be having trouble separating Harry Potter from reality. Dumbledore is gay? No; Dumbledore is imaginary.

And another thing: why should we have to out essentially asexual characters? Why was everyone so damn surprised? Try this, as an intellectual exercise: the next time you read a book, if a character isn’t obviously heterosexual, just assume that he’s gay. Allow yourself to imagine him strolling along to a midnight showing of The Celluloid Closet at the Castro Theater, dressed, if you like, in lederhosen. It’s hard work, and it all seems a little ridiculous. And yet we thoughtlessly fabricate heterosexual backgrounds for people, real or fictional, all the time, when we have no reason to do so, other than a deeply ingrained belief in the normalcy of heterosexuality and the aberrant nature of homosexuality. I need hardly say this, but if Rowling had announced that Dumbledore was straight and had witch-lovers, she would have merely confirmed what most readers were comfortable assuming to begin with.

Wizards, being enlightened beings, have of course realized that sexuality is a fluid continuum. At their meetings, which take place in an alternate dimension where imaginary characters gather (where Bert and Ernie still live together and Tinky-Winky powders his nose), they sit around and make fun of our normative muggle labeling. Lord, what fools these mortals be.