The new ‘Fantastic Beasts’ book makes you long for the novel (if only Rowling had written one)

In 2001, Potterheads were in for a treat when Bloomsbury published the Muggle editions of two bestselling books from the wizarding world: Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworth Whisp (WhizzHard Books) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by noted British Magizoologist Newt Scamander (Obscurus Books). The latter was greatly valued by fans, since Bloomsbury had managed to acquire a facsimile of Harry Potter’s personal copy of Fantastic Beasts, which was priceless for its marginalia.

For instance, next to the entry on Puffskeins (M.O.M. Classification: XX), the following dialogue is immortalised in Ron and Harry’s hands (Hermione was, presumably, paying attention in class at the time):

I had one of these once
What happened to it?
Fred used it for Bludger practice

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the book (as opposed to the bound movie script), with its enlightening Foreword by Albus Dumbledore and a fairly comprehensive Introduction by Newt Scamander (Order of Merlin, Second Class) is a charming mini-encyclopaedia. It is chatty – even occasionally humorous – in its entries about all manner and kind of fantastic beasts, and an educative experience even for those who do not have to take end-of-the-year examinations in Care of Magical Creatures.

A unique crossover

It is, thus, entirely appropriate that this fascinating magi-zoological material that JK Rowling had developed for the novels (collected in Scamander’s book) would find its use in another series set several decades before the birth of The Boy Who Lived – or for that matter, even his parents did.

There is also something refreshing about an encyclopaedia being adapted into a film. I mean, we all know of novels and short stories getting their moment in the sun, journals and assorted non-fiction, even collections of poems – but an encyclopaedia? That’s surely a first. (I am still waiting for Bollywood to adapt the Natyashastra, another encyclopaedia that is crying out for a celluloid version, but enough about pipe dreams.)

Newt Scamander crosses the Atlantic

It is 1926, pre-Depression New York. Twenty-nine-year-old Newt Scamander (played by multiple award winning British actor Eddy Redmayne) has just arrived in New York. And he is carrying a battered briefcase.

Scamander, always more alive to animals than wizarding folk, has come to America almost at the fag-end of his mammoth journey “from darkest jungle to brightest desert, from mountain peak to marshy bog”, poking in “lairs, burrows and nests across five continents” in pursuit of a magnum opus manuscript (commissioned by Mr Augustus Worme of Obscurus Books in 1918) that would be the one-stop compendium of magical creatures from around the world. Odd things are happening in New York. Brownstones are collapsing, people are injured, a right wing church called The Second Salemers is demanding a literal witch hunt – and the magic community is investigating all this without much success. There are rumours of Gellert Grindelwald’s involvement, but the Magical Congress of the United States of America or MACUSA is floundering, without any clear leads.

Scamander gets unwittingly involved in all this when the creatures he keeps hidden in his battered suitcase (a tribute to Hermione’s beaded bag) escape into New York City, adding to the mayhem. Into the mix of fantastic beasts – from the familiar Nifflers, Grindylows and Bowtruckles to the Occamy, the Nundu and the deeply sinister Obscurus – appears an intriguing cast of characters: Jacob Kowalski, a war veteran-turned factory worker with aspirations of baking for a living, who happens to be a “No-Maj’ (the American name for Muggles); Propentina “Tina” Goldstein, an Auror who has been demoted to a desk job because of something she did; Queenie Goldstein, Tina’s sexier, quirkier sister who is an extraordinary Legilimens; Mary Lou Barebone, a viciously anti-magic Christian fundamentalist; Mary Lou’s adopted son, Credence, a young boy with a dark secret; and Percival Graves, MACUSA’s leading Auror, who seems to know a great deal more than he lets on to his bosses.

Rowling has announced that she has plotted at least four subsequent stories, set over nineteen years, and so the franchise is all set to rake in the moolah with its rather brilliant if scatty protagonist, Scamander. It is a reasonable guess that Gellert Grindelwald (a cameo in the movie by Johnny Depp) is to emerge as the grand nemesis. And the best news is that Jo Rowling is writing the scripts herself. Super for film buffs.

But for Jo Rowling’s readers?

That is a question which merits some discussion.

MinaLima – and other reasons to sigh

Make no mistake, this gorgeously produced, hard-bound original screenplay, published as a book by Little Brown in the UK, is quite the collector’s item. There is superb artwork by MinaLima, the award-winning design studio founded by Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, graphic designers for all eight Harry Potter films. The cover and the illustrations of the fantastic creatures are inspired by 1920s trends in book art; and I had a lovely day, turning the not-too-thick, not-too-thin, just right, pages softly, over multiple cups of tea with chocolate biscuits.

But Jo Rowling the scriptwriter is not Jo Rowling the novelist.

And Jo Rowling, when she’s writing a script for a big budget Hollywood film, must conform to the nuances of the craft of screenwriting.

Anyone who has a rudimentary knowledge of screenplay writing will tell you that Hollywood scripts are deeply formulaic in structure. It is the equivalent of the kissy-kissy-titty-titty-pussy school of lovemaking (to reference a dialogue from Julie Delphy and Ethan Hawke’s memorable Before Midnight). So you don’t watch big budget Hollywood fantasy films for originality in craft or structure; you watch them for special effects and CGI and good-looking people and noir settings.

Therefore, in the very breath that you acknowledge Rowling has written a very successful screenplay, you also must acknowledge that, at least for a vast majority, reading it is the lesser experience of the two that are being offered.

I would argue the opposite for Cursed Child. Since provisionality is at the heart of the theatrical experience (no two performances are ever the same), and structurally, successful drama has ranged from wildly experimental to experimental to formulaic, the playscript of Cursed Child (though not written by Rowling) made for, in my opinion, a much more interesting reading experience.

That said, I do realise that there are those fans of Jo Rowling’s work who will buy every single thing with her name on it (I am one, and I am currently considering the purchase of the illustrated Chamber of Secrets ostensibly for my nephew but really for myself). It will look lovely on the shelf with all her other books. It will be cheaper to buy the book than watch the movie in a theatre near you if you have a large family. And god knows, the publishing industry needs the good cheer of hundreds of thousands of copies of a big book sold towards the end of the year.

But if you are someone who, once upon a time, used to spend twenty waking hours at a stretch over the Potter novels, you will allow yourself to idly wonder how it would have been if she had chosen to write about Newt Scamander and Jacob Kowalksi in the form of a novel, a nice, fat novel, and someone else, a lesser genius perhaps, a few years down the line, turned it into screenplays and shot breakups and whatever else Hollywood hotshots measure their lives in.

You wonder that and drink tea – and wind up reading your favourite Harry Potter novel again.

Devapriya Roy is the author of two novels, one long-dragged-out-and-nearly-abandoned PhD thesis on the Natyashastra, and most recently of The Heat and Dust Project: The Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat, which she co-wrote with husband Saurav Jha.