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To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (910)	9/23/2002 11:32:56 AM
From: Original Mad Dog	Respond to of 7689

September 19, 2002 MEDIA & MARKETING Rowling Says She's Polishing Fifth 'Harry Potter' Adventure By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Don't worry -- the next Harry Potter is just around the corner. Author J.K. Rowling said in an interview that she has completed the bones of her long-awaited fifth book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," and is in the process of tweaking and polishing. She said she is satisfied with the work she has produced and has written a beginning, middle and ending. Ms. Rowling attributed the delay on this latest book to exhaustion from her last book, the distractions of fame, the length of the manuscript and changes in her personal life. The best-selling author, who remarried last December and has a nine-year-old daughter, added that she is four months pregnant. Ms. Rowling declined to set a date when she will submit the manuscript to her publishers, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC in Britain and Scholastic Inc. in the U.S., but she didn't contradict a suggestion that the work could be submitted within three to six months. "When will I hand it in? I don't want to say, but it won't be very long," she said. Once the manuscript is submitted and thoroughly edited, Ms. Rowling's publishers could issue a finished book in as little as 2½ months. One reason delivery hasn't been faster: The manuscript is very long -- as long as the 734-page volume that preceded it. "Book five is frankly huge," said Ms. Rowling, 37 years old. "I said when I published 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' that I needed to take a bit of time out. When I got halfway through, I found a mammoth hole, and I had to go back to the beginning and rewrite. And because we had set July 8th [2000] as the publication date, I needed to get it done. But it half killed me." The timetable for the next Harry Potter is of interest not only to millions of readers but also to a giant business infrastructure dependent on the franchise. Bloomsbury and Scholastic are publicly traded companies, and the fortunes -- and stock prices -- of each have been bouyed by Potter-related revenue. AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. film unit, which is releasing its second Harry Potter movie in November and has the rights to the other two books and options on future titles, also has a stake in the series' continuation. Ms. Rowling's four published titles have sold an estimated 175 million copies world-wide in hard and soft cover, and the books have been published in at least 43 languages. Partly because the first four Potter books were published every summer starting in 1997, there has been speculation that the fifth book is late. But Ms. Rowling said she never set a publication date for the latest book. She also dismissed speculation that she has suffered from writer's block, describing that as so much fantasy. "I needed to step off the one-book-a-year treadmill," she said. "I knew people would say that she's lost it. But that's the price you pay for doing what you need to do -- do good work and maintain quality. I was so tired, not of Harry but of everything that goes with publishing a Harry Potter book. I felt that if I didn't take some time and step back and write in a more leisurely way, I might not be able to produce book five. I felt like a hamster running in a wheel." Ms. Rowling added that she has written some other, non-Harry fiction, but she declined to be more specific. "Writing is a compulsion," she said. "I don't get blocked, and that's the truth of the matter. I might have plot difficulties, but I work them through." The author, who has kept a low profile lately, said she decided to give an interview for several reasons. Earlier this week, she, Scholastic and Warner Bros. received a summary judgment that she hadn't copied any material from -- or infringed on any trademarks of -- children's author Nancy Stouffer. The court imposed $50,000 in sanctions on Ms. Stouffer, as well as a portion of the attorneys' fees and costs Ms. Rowling, Scholastic and Warner Bros. incurred. Ms. Stouffer had alleged the Muggles characters in the Harry Potter series infringed on characters she had created in her book, "The Legend of Rah and the Muggles." Ms. Stouffer used the word Muggles to refer to human beings who survived a nuclear war. In the "Harry Potter" series, Muggles are nonwizard types, or ordinary humans. "People who aren't involved in a court case only see the tip of the iceberg," said Ms. Rowling. "It's a very draining process. Every time I typed the word Muggles I got up and walked away. I knew I was telling the complete truth, but as more and more things came up, I kept thinking some of this would stick." Ms. Rowling added that the court case was a factor in slowing down her work on the fifth book. "It didn't help," she said. Another factor has been the amount of mail she receives, an estimated 1,000 pieces every week from readers in the United Kingdom alone. She once devoted one day a month to answering her correspondence, but now it requires one day a week. She said she feels compelled to answer some letters herself because they have been sent by sick children or other needy readers who require an answer. "You have a moral obligation to do certain things," she said. Some have speculated that Ms. Rowling's publishers are disappointed not to have a new Harry Potter title to tie into the second movie, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." But Judy Corman, a Scholastic spokeswoman, disputed that. "We have the book that the movie is based on," Ms. Corman said. The company is publishing a mass-market version of it priced at $6.99, with a new cover aimed at older kids and adults. In addition, Scholastic is readying yet another Harry Potter onslaught for the coming holiday season. The company will issue a deluxe, leatherbound edition of "Chamber" priced at $75, a boxed set of the four previously published hardcovers for $85, and a boxed set of the four volumes in paperback priced at $31. "We're covered," she said. Ms. Rowling said that she is satisfied with her current publishers in the U.S. and the U.K. and doesn't contemplate any changes. She added that she still intends to complete a seven-book cycle. Still, Ms. Rowling said the demand for the next book is so great, she sometimes feels guilty, feelings exacerbated when young children come up to her in the street and ask when the next book will be ready. "Mostly I cope by ignoring the pressure," she said. "You'd go slightly strange if you focused on the size of this. I need to live in a certain amount of denial. I need to think this is my private world, and all that matters at the end of the day is I'm happy with what I've written. If I sat down and thought that there are 17 million kids anxiously scanning Amazon, I'd freeze. I couldn't do it."

To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (910)	9/23/2002 11:34:33 AM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7689

September 23, 2002 COMMENTARY How to Be Happy By DIGBY ANDERSON Liberalism-leftism is a collection of complaints, denunciations, promises and exhortations. It complains that the poor, the Southern hemisphere, and all sorts of minorities are made miserable, excluded and discriminated against. It denounces their rich, powerful, white Western capitalist-racist-patriarchal-homophobic oppressors. It promises a better, just and diverse society and exhorts everyone to join in the march of progress to that society. Among the promises, there is one which is half-concealed. It is only half-concealed because it is the most attractive promise of all. But it is half-concealed for too close a scrutiny might reveal it to be the emptiest. Liberal-leftists promise, by implication, happiness for all. They do it most obviously in their promise to rid the world of the misery they complain about. Less obviously, the wealth and the power they promise to redistribute is not an end in itself but a means to happiness. They claim, albeit rather circumspectly, to know how to make people happy. They do not, however, do any actual empirical work to back their promise and find out what makes people happy. One of the few to do such work died earlier this month. As far as I know, Michael Argyle, the Oxford-based psychologist, was not a leftist. He promised nothing. But for the last 20 years of his life he systematically questioned people as to what made them happy. It is a pity he did not apply his findings to the liberal-left project because they are most applicable. He found that women are happier than men, which makes the whole radical feminist enterprise rather a waste of time. What's the point of ladies struggling, fighting and suffering in sisterly solidarity to have all the things which chaps have, if those things will make them miserable? He found that the single institution which produced the most happiness is a good marriage. The promotion of marriage has not exactly been top item on the progressive agenda. Indeed they have done their best to destroy it. How much unhappiness has their destructive effort resulted in? But it gets worse -- for the progressives: Going to church comes shortly after a good marriage. Not a bad start as a trio: be born a woman, have a good marriage and go to church. There's a crumb of comfort for lefties on money. A little more money does make you a little happier but the very rich are not necessarily supremely happy. Happiness may relate more to the comparisons people make between their own and other people's earnings, and some rather poor people are quite happy with their lot. But worst of all for lefties is Argyle's own recommendation. He favored the source of happiness which is within our power to do something about. This is a leisure or charitable pursuit which we devote ourselves to fairly thoroughly, such as golf or the Rotary Club. The best source of happiness among these, he finds consistently, is country dancing: "Workers of the world, oppressed and damned of the earth, join your partners, here we go." I am not totally persuaded by the methods of psychology, but the overall message that simplistic happiness recipes -- redistribute wealth to make the lower-income groups healthier and happier -- are not reliable is worth attention. Even more, Argyle should be thanked for bringing the happiness issue into the open. All those politicos, and not just liberals, that trade on it by implication can only be embarrassed by that. He did not, however, go far enough. There is a traditional wisdom on happiness. It teaches several lessons which we can all recognize in our own life, and these are even more embarrassing for leftists. There are times when we feel neither especially happy nor unhappy, which, later, we see as times of great happiness. That is, our own impressions of our own happiness are not reliable even as judged by ourselves. Looking back on these times, we say, as it were, "I was wrong then not to be happy, I can now see it as a time of great happiness." Indeed, we recollect as happy some times when we were compelled by someone else to do something we did not want to do: "I am so glad my parents forced me to persist with my music lessons, knowing and playing music has given me more happiness than anything else in the world." Even worse, for the progressive agenda, suffering can bring happiness. Suddenly becoming poor, for instance, can teach one who one's friends are and nurture those friendships. It can show one the things which really matter. It can bring forth strengths of character previously smothered by wealth, strengths which make one a better and happier person. Traditional wisdom's most profound insight into happiness is that it is a by-product. Seek happiness and it is elusive. And this goes -- for the leftists' benefit -- whether it be sought for oneself or on someone else's behalf: the poor, the oppressed, the discriminated against. The founding documents of the U.S. are wise to promise a right, not to happiness, but to pursue happiness. But it's a right best not much used. Pursuing happiness often does not bring it. Pursuing other goals -- truth, wisdom and the virtuous life -- or just getting on with the duties and chores of daily life at work and home, often does bring happiness as a by-product. If we can't manipulate our own happiness, it is certain that the schemes of the liberal-left can't do it on our behalf. Either they are offering to make people happy, in which case they are frauds. Or they are not, in which case they should point out that the sort of justice they promise may well not make people happier at all.