You Say Tomato

In Which I Plagiarize Myself

In the tradition of Gert, I’m going to turn something I wrote in someone’s comments box into a blog posting. (It's leveraging, not laziness.)

The magnificent The Minor Fall, The Major Lift linked to Michael Bronski’s Boston Pheonix story about queer content in the Harry Potter books, to which I responded:

The "Harry Potter books as coming out stories" theory has been around for a while (I first saw it articulated by Tony Scott in Slate back in 1999), but judging the latest book by its cover, I think Bronski's missing something. The back cover of my edition (Canadian, "adult" cover) shows Rowling in the typical library porn pose. Among the books on her shelves are The Well of Loneliness and The Ladies of Llangollen. It isn't any of the kids that are going to be coming out, it's Professor McGonagal. (I can't think why I didn't see this coming years ago, what with all that tweed and tartan in her wardrobe.)

Of course, I suppose Rowling might have posed in front of someone else's books ...