Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

So, is this a childish phenomenon or an adult one? One may be arrested, as I was, by the image, during a break in the TV coverage of a cricket match, of an MCC member about a third of the way through The Order of the Phoenix (this some 12 hours after the book's publication); but the truly extraordinary thing about it is that it is not all that extraordinary. One became used, long ago, to the spectacle of adults reading JK Rowling's work in all kinds of public places, unembarrassed about being seen immersing themselves in a world of spells. It is a phenomenon that one struggles to imagine the more austere cultural critics commentating on without perplexity. What would Walter Benjamin have had to say about it? Or Karl Kraus? That its popularity was a symptom of a mass regression to infancy, perhaps? It may constitute a desire for a temporary flight from adulthood, but that isn't exactly the same thing. And besides, what highbrow critic ever dismissed Wagner because of his use of magical elements? (" Tristan is rubbish because it has a love-potion in it. Discuss.")
Still, much of the criticism levelled against Rowling does seem to fall under the heading "category error". To complain about her, shall we say, conservative imagination, her somewhat stilted dialogue, or, as one critic cruelly put it, her "mumsy and artless prose", is in a sense to miss the point. The target audience, semi-officially, is in the nine-to-12 age range, and on those terms, the books are infallible. They deliver. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix also delivers more of the same, a shade more grown up, with extra explanation of the back story. I can't imagine anyone who is already happy with Rowling's world being disappointed with its latest manifestation (quidditch has never done it for me, but the kids seem happy enough with it).
That said, the learning process throughout Potter is slow. We have lapsed behind real time now; Harry is 15, in the fifth year, while his readers have aged two extra years since his last appearance; and one may wonder at Harry's continuing amazement when an abandoned phone box turns out to be a lift leading to the Ministry of Magic, or a derelict department store turns out to be a front for the wizards' hospital, St Mungo's. (Would that, incidentally, be the Muggle St Mungo, also known as the apostle of Cumbria, or a magical Saint Mungo? And who ordains sanctity? And, while we're at it, is anyone's birth celebrated when Hogwarts celebrates Christmas? How does the carol "God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs" go on? And is this getting too picky?) Harry's amazement is Rowling's anticipation of her ideal reader's, and so as such, seems a little too voulu, a self-conscious attempt to work up our awe. It is one of the curious features of the series that Harry's speeches almost always sound stilted and gawky. There is an unavoidable element of redundancy to them, as the whole sequence is already chiefly about the processes of his mind.
The people to watch out for and relish in this novel are Harry's friends the Weasley twins and Hogwarts' headmaster, Dumbledore. The twins' appetite for practical jokes has neither diminished nor - to my surprise - become tiresome. "I think we've outgrown full-time education," says Fred, at a moment of supremely conceived anarchy in Phoenix, and only the extremely churlish would fail to be delighted at the manner of their departure from the school (as this happens near the 600th page, the churls would anyway have parted company with the book long before).
Hagrid, the half-giant who teaches "care of magical creatures", is absent for much of the novel, and it occurred to me that one of the conditions of maturity is having to leave such lovable grotesques behind. The Potter books are already stacked with Pucks and Calibans; and Dumbledore is a Prospero figure if ever I saw one. Something quite upsettingly dramatic is going to have to happen to him by the time the seventh book is over, you mark my words.
One of the matters that Rowling has to address in her novels is the establishment of first principles, as important as plot-lines in magical worlds. When you have magic in operation, and non-metaphorical magic at that, the attentive child is going to be very keen to ask: "If they can do X, then why can't they do Y?" and expect a satisfactory answer. Le Guin, Tolkien and CS Lewis all ultimately had to connive in the dismantling of their own magical worlds, but this may not be an option open to Rowling. We do, though, get good enough explanations as to why some people die and never return, and some do return, but as ghosts, and why Harry still lives with the Dursleys.
One question that had bothered me as much as anything else was whether these Muggle relatives were ever going to be granted a shred of humanity. In this book one of them is, if fleetingly; and so, interestingly, is Snape, whose cinematic incarnation in the supremely charismatic form of Alan Rickman tells against his charmlessness in the novels.
So Rowling is pacing herself very well, then, and on her own terms. She may be taking a swipe at the media with her depiction of the muck-racking Daily Prophet, but she still has time for the alternative press - Hermione's cunning manipulation of Harry's fame saves the day at one point. The pressures Rowling is under, both to deliver and not to crack up, are almost inconceivable. This may give her a sympathetic push when describing Harry's trials. (The critic Robert Winder suggested to me that one of Harry's punishments in Phoenix is strikingly reminiscent of Kafka's "In the Penal Colony". I won't spoil either story for you by saying which.) But however she's managed it, she's still on form. You have to hand it to her.