2007 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR: J.K. ROWLING (CONT.)
The result was a book that ushered readers, even her youngest ones, into a sadder, bleaker fantasy world to match the real one in which they were by then already living. The final three books are bloodier, more wrenching, and more explicit in their parallels to and reflections of the Bush/Blair landscape (book 6 even begins with the Muggle prime minister brooding while England sleeps), and more intense in their depiction of the cost of war. Given Rowling's outspoken progressivism (of which the outing of Dumbledore is only the most recent manifestation), that shift in emphasis can't have been an accident. While cultural commentators of all varieties were busy arguing about the definition of the ''post-9/11 novel,'' Rowling was putting them right under our noses. Six years on, the first generation of kids to grow up with 9/11 as just another bewildering fact of life is now entering high school. It's not a stretch to say that their ideas about war, about leadership, about the dangers of consolidation of power and of dictatorship, about the importance of dissent, and about heroism and sacrifice, have been shaped at least in part by Rowling. Not to mention their concept of freedom of speech. When her novels make their annual appearances on lists of the most frequently banned books in America, she calls it a great honor and tells the kids who visit her website of Ralph Waldo Emerson's credo ''Every burned book enlightens the world.''
None of which would be as much of an accomplishment if the books weren't also such enthralling fun. Rowling's writing is distinguished by its great and sustained generosity — toward her readers and her characters — and the books she spent so long creating are entertaining enough to satisfy anybody who reads them in order to flee the cares of the everyday world, even if what looks like a chance to disapparate ultimately lands us in a universe very much like the one we were trying to escape. As odd as it may sound, Rowling is a realist. Even when the incantations are flying (not to mention the people), she stays focused on the humanness of what she's writing about: the cost of pride and stubbornness and vanity, the toll of living in fear, the ache of loss, the search for home, the pain of holding a lifelong secret, the need to be loved, the quest to find out who you truly are. Maybe timelessness isn't such a bad word after all.
NEXT PAGE: What's next for Jo Rowling?
