The Three Things about J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike Novels Every Harry Potter Fan Should Know

May 31, 2019 by 19 Comments

Rowling as Robert Galbraith is writing a playful, intertextual re-visiting of Harry’s adventures in the Hogwarts Saga inside the Cormoran Strike mysteries.

Why is Harry Potter fandom, a global population numbering in the hundreds of millions, so indifferent to the current series of detective novels written by J. K. Rowling?

It’s a mystery more puzzling than any of the murders solved by Holmes, Poirot, or Cormoran Strike. I’ve written about this before — see ‘Five Reasons Harry Potter fans are not Interested in Cormoran Strike — Yet’ — and many of the reasons offered in that post are still valid; the whole continued Galbraith pseudonym, for example, is not helping, right?

I haven’t written about this since the publication of Lethal White, however, and I think some facts about the series that the fourth book largely nailed down may interest the uber Potter-phile. Here, then, is my list of three things about the Cormoran Strike novels that might encourage the most hesitant Rowling-reader and Wizarding World fan to give them a try.

(1) The Cormoran Strike Series is a Seven Book Series, y’know, like Harry Potter:

In the news article run in the London Times that broke the story of Rowling writing under a pseudonym, a source at her publishers told the reporter that it was going to be a seven book series. Rowling and the publishers were as eager to deny this as they were to express their disappointment that her cover had been blown. Rowling went on to say in interviews that there would be a whole bunch of Strike novels, as many as fourteen (“twelve more” after the second one), that they weren’t really a series, and it was open-ended rather than a closed set like Harry’s adventures.

Rowling has since allowed in an interview about her BBC adaptations of the mysteries that the books are obviously a series. There may turn out to be more than seven. The four books we have, though, in their structure and relationship one to another, are almost certainly a seven book set that may or may not run on from there.

The evidence we have for that is based on Rowling’s structural near-fetish, namely, ring composition. A seven book series written in this fashion as we know from her Potter series and the story axis connecting Stone-Goblet-and Hallows, will have its story turn in book four with a bevy of parallel story points linking it with the first book. Lethal White has an overload of pointers to and echoes of Cuckoo’s Calling in it; see ‘Cuckoo’s Calling: 25+ Lethal White Finds’ and ‘Lethal White: Add Seven Cuckoo’s Echoes.’

If that weren’t sufficient evidence, Rowling/Galbraith inserts a page at the half-way point of Lethal White that reads ‘Part Two.’ That book, however, does not have a page in either its hard cover or paperback editions that says ‘Part One.’ As if to confirm that this is the second part of the series rather than just this novel, i.e., “we are half way through the seven books,” the story line in Letal White that begins in Part Two is a repetition of the opening chapters of Cuckoo’s Calling, i.e., Cormoran accepting a case from a berieved relation of the deceased who does not believe that the death was a suicide. See  ‘Lethal White: The Missing Page Mystery‘ and ‘Lethal White: Missing Page Mystery 2’ for more on that.

Why should a Potter fan care if there are seven, nine, or a hundred Strike novels? Beyond the bizarre curiosity of the author of their favorite seven book series writing another seven book series? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Guest Post: The Reason behind the Flood of Harry Potter Themed Weddings

May 30, 2019 by Leave a Comment

A Guest Post from David Martin!

As we enter June, the traditional month for weddings, let’s take a moment to consider Harry Potter themed weddings and what their popularity may indicate.

First of all, Harry Potter themed weddings are really popular.  To get an idea of their popularity, try the following search into Google: “Harry Potter themed wedding” (Please note that the quote marks are necessary so that we get only hits that use exactly those four words in exactly that order.) 

I did that search just now and got 657,000 hits.  That’s a lot.  I’ve been impressed by some of the hits.  Here are a few of my favorites:

So, why are such weddings so popular?  A few reasons are obvious. 

  • Most of the people getting married just now are part of the Harry Potter generation.  They were raised on Harry Potter books and films. 
  • Further, in some of these cases, a shared love of the Harry Potter books was one of the things that drew the couple together in their courtship.  (See examples 1, 2, and 3 above.) 
  • Also, though it is easy to miss while we’re looking at things such as the hero’s journey and ring structure, there are several good love stories in the Harry Potter novels: Hermione and Ron, Ginny and Harry, Bill and Fleur, and the failed love of Snape and Lily. 
  • Finally, a wedding, especially a reception, is a party.  We always bring to a party the things we love: friends, cake, wine, music, and perhaps reminders of our favorite books.

But I suspect that there is another deeper, unspoken and perhaps unrecognized reason beyond these obvious reasons, that may apply for some couples.  If we review examples 1 through 6 above, there is something missing: In none of these weddings was the officiant a clergy person.  (True, the officiant in example #3 calls herself “Reverend D” but a quick look at her website shows that the only license she has is from the city of New York as a wedding officiant.)  None of these weddings was done in a church, a synagogue, or a temple.  In particular:

  • In example #1, the couple had a civil wedding.
  • In example #2, the officiant was a friend.
  • In example #3, as just noted, the officiant was an NYC wedding officiant.
  • In example #4, the couple had what they called “a humanistic wedding.”
  • In example #5, I can find no mention of an officiant, even after searching through other news stories about this wedding.
  • In example #6, the officiant was a friend of the bride.

These couples appear not to be particularly religious or to be currently affiliated with a house of worship. (Yes, I chose these examples deliberately to make a point.  There are also Harry Potter themed weddings that are in a church and where the officiant is a clergyman.  See, for example, https://honeyteller.com/my-christian-harry-potter-wedding-an-introduction/ .)

If we look at how couples use themes from Harry Potter in their ceremonies, it’s not all chocolate frogs and flying letters.  These couples are serious.  Some couples clasp hands, and then, while the officiant holds a wand over their joined hands, the couple makes an unbreakable vow. 

For some couples, in response to the officiant’s traditional wedding question that begins with “Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live …” they answer not with the traditional “I will” but with the single, potent word “Always.”  And sometimes at the end the officiant declares the couple “bonded for life.”  These are serious weddings.

I believe what we have here is an example of John Granger’s Eliade hypothesis, as captured in the quote from Mircea Eliade: “Reading [in a secular culture] serves a mythological function.”  I believe that these couples involve Harry Potter in their weddings because they sense that they are involved in something sacred, something mythological, and, not being actively involved with a traditional religion, the Harry Potter novels are their strongest experience with the transcendent.

I’m a member of a church on a main highway in a “nice” suburb of Philadelphia.  We regularly get inquiries from people who ask about using our church for weddings and funerals.  Also, sometimes, about baptisms.  Those seem to be the three ties which are the last to break as people pull away from the church: baptisms, weddings, and funerals.  When confronting the wonder of new life, the ecstasy of love, and the mystery of death, people sense that they are dealing with the numinous.  Then they sometimes want the support of faith.  So in the context of what I have written above, this raises an obvious question: Are people involving Harry Potter in those other big events, birth and death?  Actually, they are.

The use of Harry Potter to celebrate new life is easiest to document.  Just search for “Harry Potter”   “birth announcement” (Again, for best results, place the quote marks as shown.)  When I did that search just now I got 5,380,000 hits.  There are more millions of hits if we change that search slightly and look for “pregnancy announcement” or “baby shower.”  Clearly many people are involving Harry Potter in the celebration of the birth of a child.

Funerals are a very different matter.  People don’t often have “themed” funerals.  Yet, remarkably, I found three funerals that are described exactly that way: Harry Potter themed funerals.

More often, however, Harry Potter shows up in connection with funerals indirectly.  The web site Legacy.com collects obituary notices from many different newspapers.  Doing this Google search “Harry Potter” site:Legacy.com searches Legacy.com for all occurrences of the words “Harry Potter.”  Doing that search just now, I got 3,800 hits.  The obituaries found by this search report, for example, that the deceased loved the Harry Potter novels, or that perhaps the deceased took the grandchildren to one of the Harry Potter theme parks.  Apparently someone thought that this was an important thing to have recorded about the deceased.  I also suspect that some of the well-known quotes about death from the Harry Potter novels (e.g., “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?”) show up in a lot of eulogies. 

Just children’s books?  Not really.  But we knew that already.

We human beings are intrinsically religious creatures, with a spiritual nature that will, sooner or later, express itself.  May we have the imagination to recognize it when it appears.

[All pictures used in this post can be found with many others at ’30 Awesome Harry Potter Wedding Ideas’ at WeddingoMania.com.]

 

Filed Under: Guest Posts

Whatever Happened to Suzanne Collins?

May 29, 2019 by 1 Comment

Last week, after posting my disappointment about the Hunger Games Theme Park in China, I was reminded that it was not only a Panem-Capitol destination but a disneyland-esque for Twilight fans to gather. I had asked just a few days earlier Whatever Happened to Stephenie Meyer? and I guess the Chinese theme park had to be considered a partial answer to that question, if one has to doubt they are consulting the authors of the original novels for the workings of what are in essence CGI-infused amusement park rides.

That association of posts, though, made me wonder. Rowling has all but disappeared from public view; she has left her twitter platform and life as celebrity author for what we hope is the daily, focused grunt work necessary to complete a novel or screenplay. Meyer has continued to write and to be active in film production but few care; again, her latest novel, The Chemist, does not even have a dedicated wikipedia page more than two years after its publication, a roll-out that included 500,000 copies.

And Suzanne Collins? What is she up to? Is she living the private life a la Rowling, dedicating her focus to family and craft? Or is she working hard on projects few people care about?

In what is something like a draft of the HogwartsProfessor Pillar Post for The Hunger Games (Sort Of!), you can see how seriously I take Collins’ work. She’s that good. But it’s been more than ten years since the debut of Games. What is she working on?

Turns out, nobody knows, or, if they know, they aren’t talking about it online. All I found were a few internet pages that went up to mark the tenth anniversary in 2018.

Back in 2013, Suzanne revealed at a book expo that she was working on a much anticipated new series. But that was nearly five years ago, and she’s had no new publications.

She has no social media and hasn’t been the subject of very many articles for years. She’s revealed hardly anything about her personal life, only that she is married to actor Cap Pryor and lives in Connecticut with him and their two children.

This a fascinating article, an interview with Collins, that the Times contributed nothing to except for a quick edit:

In a 10th anniversary edition of the book, which hits stores this month, David Levithan, a vice president and publisher at Scholastic Press, interviewed Collins. An excerpt from that interview, including potential spoilers, is below, condensed and edited for clarity and length.

For Collins fans, this is a must read. The information she shares in the staged exchange with her editor about Just War Theory (which pretty much nails down the idea she is some flavor of Roman Catholic?), the several strands that made up the genesis of Hunger Games beyond the reality teevee programming in palimset with war footage on the news from Iraq, her sources for the Theseus nythological elements of the story — really this is a treasure chest of an interview.

But it is obviously just those questions Collins wanted to answer that matched up with what Scholastic thought she should talk about (and, my, oh, my, is she a team player about the films that were made from her stories, if she does make it clear how many hands her original screenplay went through before it was filmed and released to theaters). There is nothing about what she is working on, excited about reading, or her ideas about the legacy of her two series.

I throw this link on the page for the uber Hunger Games fan and serious reader who wants to peruse what passes as criticism today in the New Media and what they have to say about Collins’ trilogy. A clue? It isn’t Hunger Games that is shocking but the pedestrian, political, PC, and provincial posturing to be found here that doesn’t even begin to explain what made these books resonate so profoundly with readers. After reading this article of sound bites, I had to spend an hour or so with Lana Whited’s Critical Insights: The Hunger Games Trilogy as a kind of mental floss and depth freshener.

But there was nothing in the Vox piece about what Collins is up to, either.

My hope? That this departure from any kind of celebrity activity and publicity seeking is testimony to the author’s determination to avoid Gamesmaker status and to duck the seemingly unavoidable appearances as a citizen of The Capitol her status as best-selling author entitle her to. It’s possible that she has taken the money — and as the Kindle book best-seller world champion ten years on, there’s lots of money, not to mention film and theme park residuals — and done with it what she will out of the public eye and to build the necessary walls to protect her and family’s privacy.

God willing, Collins is writing and we will enjoy her new work. Whether she is or isn’t, though, isn’t her example of prudence, modesty, and retreat as admirable as Rowling’s charitable works in the public realm — and much more unusual? Perhaps Rowling has come to the same alocal place and decided finding reverse was the best gear for her, too. More power to anyone who has the courage and freedom to deny the Fame Beast its pound of soul-and-flesh.

Filed Under: Hunger Games

Cursed Child Soundtrack — On Vinyl?

May 28, 2019 by 2 Comments

We’ve been discussing all the products that the Wizarding World franchise has been putting out of late. It’s something like the order of the day as we await the rollout of the WizardingWorld.com website that has swallowed PotterMore and will charge a subscription fee for access to Gold Status members’ material. See ‘The Problem with Monetizing Harry Potter.’

Yesterday I learned that the ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ stage production company has produced a soundtrack album. And I mean ‘album.’ It’s a pair of long playing 33 1/3 vinyl records that comes in a real record-album. Check out the article on TheaterMania.com.

I love analog recordings. I have a collection my wife is currently cataloging that covers 47 shelves in our bookcases and we guesstimate includes more than 7,000 records, 33 1/3, 45, and 78s. All of it classical and opera except for the 78s. I have more records than books, and, frankly, that’s saying something. [If you want this library, all Near Mint or better, make an offer!] The resurgence of LPs, consequently, is something of a thrill to me.

But why would Rowling, Inc., decide that vinyl was the way to go for their Cursed Child soundtrack? LPs make up an increasing percentage of music sales every year; some estimate it is more than 10% of dollars paid for recorded music. Has it become such a big deal, though, that the Potter marketers decided it was worth the risk of a fail? Or does this medium mean maximizing profits on gift-purchases especially in theaters? Very few presents are as fun to hold and look over again and again as a new record album.

I have read plenty of reviews of this play-as-staged and been part of podcast discussions with Potter Pundits who are Broadway zealots and attended the productions in London and New York. Not once has anyone I can remember mentioned the music. And yet now we have a soundtrack of just that. Who has been asking for this? Is it just fodder for collectors and souvenir Nifflers? 

Let me know what you think. I’m still scratching my head over this news.

Filed Under: Cursed Child

Exorcist: Stay Away from Harry Potter

May 27, 2019 by 4 Comments

From the Women of Grace weblog post about this priest’s claims (e.g., that Rowling “went to ‘witch school’ before writing the books,” that “60 percent of the names in the Potter books are the names of demons who have been booted out of people,” that “there is something diabolic about the whole thing,” etc.):

It’s very difficult to argue with exorcists who have first-hand knowledge of the demonic. They don’t have the luxury of hiding behind the excuses that we often erect about these books, such as how “everyone else is reading them,” and how “they’re in our school library!” and how such-and-such said they’re okay. Instead, they must confront the reality of evil and can attest to the fact that demons are regularly destroying lives as a result of the trivialization of the occult in our time.

Regardless of what the prevailing culture has to say, let us humble ourselves and learn from those whom God has appointed to keep us safe from evil.

Discuss.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes