Things that make you go hmmm:
Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.
[…] She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love.”
“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down.”
Dumbledore’s love, she observed, was his “great tragedy.”
Um. O-kay.
Is the next character to be outed going to be McGonagall?
I think that Rowling is re-thinking her decision to stop the Potter series and is cranking up interest in either a new installment or a “pre-quel.”
chsw
How about “Dumbledore and the Desmesne of Doom”?
So his “man love” was a greater tragedy than being responsible for his sisters death?
Odd…
While it doesn’t really matter to me if he was bumping uglies with someone, I think to call the resulting affair his greatest tragedy a very poor choice of words. Especially since he really had SO MANY tragedies and VERY poor choices in his past.
B”H Although I suppose the whole “love was his greatest tragedy” thing fits into to the greater scheme of the HP universe, I still wonder at what JKR’s motivation was for “outing” him.
BTW, I found out about this tid-bit from my HP hevruta in Meah Sha’arim. No, I’m not kidding. We make periodic hevrutah on HP, not so much anymore, now that HP 7 is finished.
Her books have really penetrated a diverse groups of communities.
Is anyone who read Deathly Hallows surprised? Shrug. It was pretty clear that he was in love with Grindelwald. And, Long Rifle, I would say that his sister’s death resulted more or less directly from his love, so yes, I think it is core to the tragedies of his life.
Poor man.
As for McGonagall, I’ve always assumed that there was a Mr. McGonagall somewhere around, probably minding the house in Scotland…
B”H I figured McGonagall was a widow (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and that we’d be surprised with one of her children in a future novel (not that there’s anything wrong with that), which we never were (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Some suggested that she was too close with Trenlawney (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but I don’t think so. McGonanagall just appreciated her “women’s only safe spaces” (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Perhaps this is all just hype for Rowling’s impending encyclopedia type book (not that there’s anything wrong with that). More people will want to buy it, if they knew that more gossip would be revealed (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Let’s hope that JKR doesn’t turn into a tabloid monger (something seriously wrong with that).
On the other hand, she can do what she wants, now that she’s a billionaire (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
“So his “man love†was a greater tragedy than being responsible for his sisters death?”
I think that she means tragedy more in the sense of the traditional Greek tragic hero. His tragic flaw was that his love for Grindelwald blinded him from his faults. Because of this flaw, his sister died.
Given JKR’s predilection for old names and myths, I think Claire’s comment about traditional Greek tragedy is probably dead on.
What’s amazing is how gratuitous this is. This is as yech-inducing as that bit with the actor who plays Harry appearing nude on the London stage.
All right, so when Dumbledore was young, he was smitten with a charismatic, brilliant and deeply flawed person, woke up from his infatuation too late and spent the rest of his life trying to repair his fatal mistake. In the end, would it have made all that much difference if he had been heterosexual and Grindelwald’s character a woman? What happened to him could have happened to anyone, male or female, gay or straight. To my mind, Dumbledore’s story is far more about the quality of his character than his sexual preference.
I suppose now the very special people who have been calling for the books to be banned because they promote witchcraft and satanism will now be pointing to the book’s benign portrayal of a gay man in charge of hundreds of children as more reason to have them pulled/burned…
“This is as yech-inducing as that bit with the actor who plays Harry appearing nude on the London stage.”
Being as the play in which that actor appeared nude was about his strong desire to have sex with a horse, I’d argue that this is significantly less yech-inducing.