Another Steve Donoghue Q&A got posted: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

I find these Q&As good fun to watch from beginning to end, but since this is my blog, I'll highlight my question:

The "is Dumbledore really gay?" controversy. Or, in other words, can authors add in extra details about their characters in interviews and announcements, or do the authors have to put it in the actual books for it to be canonical?

Steve answers my question at 13:13:

Steve says, "You must know where I stand on this subject," and indeed, I was 90% sure what his answer would be.

Personally though, I find the question a bit more interesting.  To me, it feels like a convention to say that the author has no authority in the interpretation of her books.  I can easily imagine another culture in which the convention is to treat the author's announcements as authoritative.

To me, this question is further complicated when the author is still living, and the books in question are a series.  J.K. Rowling could easily write another Harry Potter book.  (I know she's said she won't, but she could easily go back on that.)  So since she has the power to write anything she wants to into future books, we've got to at least take notice of her pronouncements, right?

I didn't mention this in the question, but in my mind I was also thinking about some of the discussion about Pale Fire.  Via Wikipedia:

 In an interview, Nabokov later claimed that Kinbote killed himself after finishing the book.^[14] The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it",^[15]

...I don't know.  Again, the concept of "authorial trespassing" feels like a convention, doesn't it? Like it's something all the smart literary people have agreed upon, but I feel like you could just as easily say the author has broader authority.

On a different note, on the subject of Harry Potter, Youtuber Shaun published a video essay earlier this week examining the series from a number of different angles.  I found it to be a really interesting discussion.  Check it out:

For my thoughts on everything Harry Potter related, see HERE.  

For my other forays into Steve Donoghue's Q&As (the ones I've blogged about anyway), see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE , HERE, HERE and HERE.