In light of new coverage of the ongoing legal battle between J.K. Rowling and HP Lexicon, I thought I would do a quick survey of recent Harry Potter news.
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In a provocative yet sensible thought experiment, David Foster Wallace asks if the American idea(l) is still considered worth the price of innocent lives, if “ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life” as is frequently heralded in our history for past generations. While it is always easier to consider any sacrifice in the abstract, the quick rejoinder to Wallace’s notion - that the Americans who died on 9/11 could be considered a fair trade, the martyrs for our freedoms - is to dismiss it as tasteless and disrespectful. Yet how else can we penetrate the shroud of rhetoric that surrounds the War On Terror in the inviolable tones of righteousness? With the very meaning of ‘freedom’ diluted with its repetition as the basis for exchanging civil liberties (freedoms to) in return for the promise of protection from further attacks (freedom from), Wallace invokes the Benjamin Franklin caution that, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

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With Deathly Hallows out awhile, the Harry Potter omnivore has moved on to movie news, JK Rowling pronouncements, and social commentary. These have trickled in at various times since the final book’s release, not necessarily in this order. (more…)