It was at Christmas eleven years ago that I had the strange experience of hearing [a:Stephen Fry|10917|Stephen Fry|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1400162446p2/10917.jpg]on the radio all day long on Boxing Day as Radio4 broadcast the recording of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. That sentence is almost an exact duplicate of Stephen Fry's introduction to "Living with Harry Potter", a radio documentary broadcast five years after the reading, on the same station. Fry said that "It has been a privilege to be the voice of JK Rowling's work over 6 books, 2,764 pages, and 100 hours and 55 minutes of recordings", and I can only assume that the final instalment of the series went down as well.
But, back to me. Christmas, 2000. I was a teenager, just. I don't remember much about the holiday season; in fact I remember very little about the inanities of that period in my life. I do remember this reading. It was my first foray into Harry Potter.
There was nothing special about the name "Harry Potter" to me at that age. Not yet, at any rate. The thing that drew me to listen was the unprecedented nature of the medium: this was radio 4 - Broadcasting since 1967, the second most popular British domestic radio station, , where timing is sacrosanct and running over the hour except in special circumstances is unheard of. And yet they were going to take over eight and a half hours of a schedule that's remained fixed, or at least recognisable for thirty-three years, and completely throw it out the window. For eight and a half hours!
Only someone who'd grown up with Radio 4's rigorous scheduling and amazing precision might truly appreciate the impact of this event on my life. You're always more impressionable as a teen, and this made an impression, no mistake. I believe there was a dramatised version of [a:Penelope Lively|9738|Penelope Lively|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1224211733p2/9738.jpg]'s [b:The Ghost of Thomas Kempe|470062|The Ghost of Thomas Kempe|Penelope Lively|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348346774s/470062.jpg|1693048] on before the reading began; I was settling into my bedroom with a luncheon of sandwiches at the time and warning my grandmother in no uncertain terms that I should not be bothered until I surfaced. I always spent the weekends at my grandmothers and eventually I was to live there: at this point in time, I'd be returned to my parental home of a sunday evening, only to attend school and spend the majority of Monday evening back with her. But, I digress. Kempe finished, I don't even believe the news came on, though I can't sware to it, and then...
"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
What a voice. The tone, the precision, the velvet - "My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses." I have that attributed to the man himself and even if he didn't say it, it's very true.I cannot but help that think that Stephen Fry has the perfect voice to read these books.
Now we all prefer one version of something over another, often, the first one we heard. I prefer Marty Wilde singing A Teenager in Love, Westlife singing Total Eclipse of the Heart... and Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter, it's that simple. to say I have Rowling on my side is immaterial (I do, so there - but that's neither here nor there). A British friend (and former flame) was stateside when she first got into the books, and is a true Jim Dale fan, so it's not just the weird denizens over the Atlantic that haven't got the Fry bug.
I was so young, first hearing this, so swept up and bowled over, that I cannot say what impacted me more; Rowling's pros or Fry's interpretation. Looking back, I see them as a gestalt, to me they're almost symbiotic, one severely diluted without the presence of the other. Not to say that her writing or his persona cannot stand alone; that's pathetic. I've read many of Fry's works, seen him on stage, heard him on the radio - equally I've read (usually rereadings, occasionally firsts) Rowling's books without Fry in my ear. But both together, one breathing life into the other? That's the real magic.
That first reading is full of moments. Flashes. The cat on the wall right near the beginning heralded something interesting. The crisp packets in the fire in the hut on the rock made me hungry. hagrid, bursting in and frying sausages and revealing harry's history gave me a great thrill. The train ride to Hogwarts, Ron, Harry's "I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself" to Malfoy. The ghosts and the castle and the magic and the teachers - Snape's opening lecture, Harry, catching Neville's Remembrall...
As the book progressed, the mirror of Erised added emotional depth. The Quiddich commentary was astounding, and along with Norbert, added light relief. I remember starting to get a twinge of - not boredom, but a hunger for a little pace,, just as Harry, Hermione, Neville and Draco head into the Forbidden Forest.
and then, in what seems no time at all, Hermione's playing the flute and harry's dropping through the trapdoor in the third-floor corridor. My adrenaline got pumping through this entire chapter: Ron's "What's this stuff?" Harry's desperate "start a fire!" Hermione's "there's no wood!" and Ron's "Have you gone mad? Are you a witch, or not!" still echo in my mind to this day, in Fry's unassailable tones.
and then, it's over, back to the normal, Muggle world for another summer. I'd moved only once to use the bathroom that whole afternoon; needless to say that the door had been left open and the volume increased so I wouldn't miss a word. The only time an "are you Alright, do you want anything?" wafted up the stairs, I hurriedly roared "yes, no," and got back to it, having heard the key was "looking very" ... something... "twice." I later concluded it had been caught, and that it was probably bent or ruffled or rumpled or something and tried not to let the fact that I'd missed only eight words of the entire book bother me too much.
In the car on the way home I remember, vividly, my grandmother grumbling about how it was dark this time of year and I should be more considerate and leave her place earlier in the winter, as she was getting on and didn't like to drive in the poor light. I wasn't paying the slightest attention. "I'd like any Harry Potter tapes you can get me in please, It's Sean from New Tredegar. I'll be in sometime in the week, and I've already heard the first book," I said to the local libraries answering machine, virtually the moment I'd stepped into mum's house.
And that's the story of my first encounter with this story. Breathtaking, to me, then. It's an event that will stay with me for the rest of my life, as intended. "What we're doing is a radio experience. I would like there to be a generation of children in their Twenties who will look back and remember listening to
the radio on Boxing Day," said Helen Boaden, the controller of the radio station at the time (she now directs BBC News and earns at least £310,000 a year). whilst "a generation of children in their twenties" is hardly the sort of grammatical construct one might expect of one with a BA Hons in English Literature, I truly fit - I was, then, a child; I am, now in my twenties. And, yes. I'll "remember listening to the radio on boxing day", Helen.
Somewhat unbelievably I've written over one-thousand three-hundred words and not actually given much thought to the book. As with all the comments I write here, I do re-read a book if it's on my read shelf, rather than recycling thoughts from previous outings. I timed myself reading this one, to compare to Fry's narration, and was somewhat horrified to realise that I'd consumed it cover to cover in a hundred and fourteen minutes and six seconds. I'm serious, at exactly half an hour, Harry was looking at the book to try and curse Dudley and Hagrid was telling him not to, and at a hundred minutes, Hermione and Ron are agreeing to go with Harry to get the stone. With only thirty-seven seconds left they were "boarding the Hogwarts Express"... and I'd finished it, just like that. Our washing machine goes on longer sometimes.
I am, of course, a prolific reader. In the grand scheme of things,two hundred and something pages is less than I might get through on newsgroups and mailing lists in a typical afternoon, and certainly on the slender side for a book I'd read today. Looking back at my younger self, capturing however distantly those glorious moments, reliving the frissons that my thirteen-year-old innocent found so amazing was a very nostalgic experience.
As I've said before, I struggle to separate the writing from the reading. I am influenced not only by Rowling's canon but by numerous fan fiction titles I've read (most during the Great Divide between [b:Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire|6|Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #4)|J.K. Rowling|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1361482611s/6.jpg|3046572] and [b:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix|2|Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5)|J.K. Rowling|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387141547s/2.jpg|2809203], a span of almost three years).
To my young self, the story was well told. I've seen words like "abrupt" and "direct" used to describe Rowling's style of pros. I believe it was [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] who labelled her modus operandi quintessentially British, I can't quote exactly - but that's how I come away with it. To me, things may have been direct and rapid, but in a good, worthwhile, workable way which allowed my teen self to follow with no problems what soever. The Dursley's were an average, if unpleasant, family; the magic and sport was outlandish, but in a way the reader, through Harry, came to accept and enjoy immensely. Reflecting now, I think the boundaries are perhaps very set - Good versus Evil and nothing in between, Dumbledore is the sage wise man and Voldemort the ultimate (and generally distanced) baddy. Of course this changes, as Harry's outlook grows and as he matures, the world becomes deeper, more layered, and richer for it.
Even as a stand alone novel, there's an impressive amount of back story. Rowling foreshadows expertly, everywhere you look there's a nugget of fact and commentary that will turn out to have more to it later on than you can have imagined. I remember reading that some critics had said the ending seemed a little rushed. Reading it now, I see what they meant,, but my youth, deep immersion, Fry's pace throughout or a combination of all or any of the above, back in that first reading, meant I didn't ever feel that way myself; in fact, as I said earlier, I started to want things to pick up a little. They did, naturally.
Harry's not a stand alone, of course. There were more books to come and, by the time I'd gotten in on the act, three more had been published. I don't know if I'm going to hit two-thousand words writing about each of those. As I got older, the initial reads of each seem to have impacted me slightly less, somehow.
Still, for all that this hasn't been a book review in typical fashion, it's been helpful for me to write. It's put some history in perspective, truly made me think about it and lament, somewhat, the loss of that youthful joy just reading a book can instil. I wonder if my child will be a reader, and if he or she will have moments like I did. I certainly want to read to my children, I was never read to in person. Being blind meant I relied on Braille or audio a great deal: no-one in my family could beat Fry. Ever.
