Lethal White: Rokeby, Jagger, and Heroin

August 23, 2018 by 4 Comments

I posted yesterday about why it is more than credible that Rowling/Galbraith’s fourth Cormoran Strike mystery, Lethal White, will involve a white horse of some kind. Today and tomorrow I want to begin my explanation of why I don’t think it will necessarily involve horses of an equine kind, however much I look forward (with Robin) to reading about Cormoran’s first horse-back ride.

To cut to the quick, I think the Lethal White ‘white horse’ that Rowling has been teasing readers with is heroin from Afghanistan rather than albino American paint horses or unicorns.

My first piece of evidence in this speculative argument is Jonny Rokeby and his resemblance to Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.

Evan Willis has argued here that he doubts Jonny Rokeby, as the Zeus figure in the Leda and the Swan mythological drama underlying the Strike mysteries, will make an appearance in the novels. That is a more than credible position considering the Aeschylus and Virgil parallels Willis cites. Karen Kebarle, though, is almost certainly closer to what’s likely in Strike 4; she said in a just recorded ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ episode about Lethal White that the great failing of the Strike series when compared with Harry Potter is the absence of a villain, a Moriarity, as much more powerful and dangerous than Cormoran as Voldemort was to the Boy Who Lived. If Willis is right and Rokeby remains just a haunting presence off-stage, Strike will only be fun detective stories.

Perhaps it is just wishful thinking on my part that this won’t be the case. Rowling has invested so much in the mysterious death of Leda Strike, though, that I think we’re fairly safe in assuming that solving this case is as large a part of the continuing drama as the relationship cum romance of Robin and Cormoran.

Moving forward, then, with the idea that Rokeby is the Voldemort/Moriarity of the Strike series,  what do we know about him and what, if anything, does he have to do with white horses?

The first thing we know about Jonny Rokeby, lead singer of the Deadbeats, is that his life runs as a fairly obvious caricature of Mick Jagger’s.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Lethal White: The White Horse Evidence

August 22, 2018 by 3 Comments

We have less than a month before the publication of Lethal White so it is time for some serious fun. Speculating about where Rowling/Galbraith is headed is a delight, especially when Strike parallels with corresponding Potter novels and Rowling’s twitter and website postings are mixed in with what we have in the first three mysteries, parallels and postings we didn’t have in the run-up to any part of the Hogwarts Saga.

To start us off, I plan on posting three pieces about the meaning of the Strike 4 title, Lethal White, especially with respect to the growing consensus that it has something to do with horses. I first want to summarize the evidence for the equestrian bent (“White Horse!”) in the writings of some Potter Pundits, then point out the many parallels between what we know about the fictional Jonny Rokeby and the real life of Mick Jagger, and conclude with a discussion of the more likely meaning of Lethal White, namely, that it is a reference to heroin from Afghanistan and to the death of Leda Strike, the over arching story of the Doom Bar Detective’s series.

So, what evidence is there that Lethal White is all about horses and white horses at that? I came up with ten suggestions, not an especially magical number but one large enough to demand serious attention. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Guest Post: Portrait of the Alchemist as Young Man – Joyce as Literary Alchemist

August 21, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Brent Seegmiller and I have been corresponding on literary achemy and related topics since 2014 but he just gave me his permission yesterday to publish his thoughts on the hermetic aspect of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I think it is important work for three reasons: (1) The alchemy in Joyce has been explored for his Ulysses and for Finnegan’s Wake but not for the eary works most students have read, i.e., Dubliners and Portrait, (2) Joyce, especially for those who have never read him, is the consensus pick for “Greatest Novelist Ever;” and (3) therefore, learning that Joyce, a la Shakespeare, Dickens, and the Inklings, used alchemical story scaffolding and symbolism, makes Rowling’s use that much more credible and, one hopes, the subject of further study. We need more Potter Pundits like Brent Seegmiller and Evan Willis, whose exposition on the hermeticism embedded in Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike I posted last week. Enjoy!

A Portrait of the Alchemist as a Young Man: Alchemy, Myth, and Metaphor in Joyce’s Work

Brent A. Seegmiller 

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has been called James Joyce’s “most personal work”1. This rings true in light of the title, Stephen’s experiences, and Joyce’s vocation as renown Irish aesthete. Both Stephen and Joyce have a complex way with words and even more complex relationship to them.

As one scholar has opined, “A Portrait illustrates a contradictory dynamic by narrating Stephen’s gradual move towards a diasporic vocation that is imagined both as a radical break with the homeland and as its symbolic renewal. Epiphany and leitmotif represent the antagonistic yet closely intertwined extremes of this development. By switching back and forth between them, Joyce creates not only a “polyrhythmic” texture previously unknown to Anglophone fiction, but also moves the time-honored novel of development. The dozens of different motifs that circulate in A Portrait gain in complexity with each and every occurrence. In a word, they develop. Their structuring logic isn’t that of the closed circle, but rather that of William Butler Yeats’s ‘widening gyre’.”2

This relationship is represented well in the epigraph from Ovid, “And he turned his mind to unknown arts”3 as well as in the final words of the novel “Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”4. These passages, which echo the sentiment of each other, imply not only invention within the arts but also within what is known as the “Royal Art” of alchemy.

As Stephen Daedalus grows so too does the narration and its complexity. Much has been made of the religious intonations, the cries of Irish Nationalism, and the philosophical underpinnings of Stephen’s aesthetic epiphanies replete throughout the novel but there is a key element of the novel which has gone underwhelming represented in the academic literature; that is the novel’s relationship to the alchemical process. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Literary Alchemy

Guest Post: Wizarding World Review

August 20, 2018 by 4 Comments

I asked Kelly Loomis, a HogPro All-Pro reader and investigator, to write up her experiences as a first time visitor to the Wizarding Word of Harry Potter in Orlando. Enjoy!

My recently college-graduated son and I headed to Florida recently to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando.  We’d been talking about going for a couple of years.  He and I are the Harry Potter fans in our household.  At first, I thought we would go to Hollywood (we live in the Pacific Northwest).  However, because Orlando has both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, we chose to go there. Plus, we could throw in  some Disney days also.

I’ve heard various opinions about these parks and was anxious to see what my reaction to it would be.  Two years ago, I was fortunate to be in London and did the Warner Brothers studio tour in Leavesdon.  I will write a post soon comparing the two experiences.  Professor John challenged me to wear my “Book Nerd” tshirt to the park.  I decided to forego his challenge!  But keep in mind, I am much more a fan of the books than any HP movie that has been produced!

The word that comes to mind upon exiting the park is MERCHANDISING!!!!  SO MUCH STUFF!  I suppose this shouldn’t have been any real surprise knowing how theme parks work – ushering you into a themed store as soon as you finish a ride.  It is the same at Universal.  However, let me go back a little first. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Guest Posts

Guest Post: Lethal White and Dorothy Sayers? Rowling, Rankin, and James

August 19, 2018 by 2 Comments

This is less a ‘Guest Post’ per se than my comments on a note from ChrisC, a long time reader and frequent post-er at this site. He makes the suggestion that Lethal White, the fourth Cormoran Strike mystery, may echo in some ways a novel by one of Rowling’s favorite writers, Dorothy Sayers. First his note, then my three observations in haste:

I have two questions regarding Ms. Rowling’s upcoming 4th Strike mystery.

For my purposes, what can be known boils down to a few simple points:

  • “We know…that (JKR) has sketched the story of an office drama in which Robin goes undercover as the Personal Assistant to the CEO of a company (web)”.
  • She has recently released a twitter statement saying she has finished Book 4.  What’s notable about this tweet (aside from the notable lack of a release date) is the photo that comes with the tweet.  The photo is a file saver stick in the shape of a white horse.  The photo and tweet can be seen here.

With all this in mind, my question boils down to whether or not Ms. Rowling is drawing inspiration (as distinguished from influence) from one of the mystery writers of the past.  Specifically, I wonder if part of the inspiration for Lethal White might be Dorothy L. Sayer’s 1933 detective novel, Murder Must Advertise.  In that book, Lord Peter Wimsey does the unthinkable for a member of the upper classes, and gets an actual paying job in an advertising firm (under the pseudonym of Death Bredon, no less).

He’s there to solve a murder of course, and other critics have noted that Sayers drew on her own personal experience as an ad employee to give a good satire of office politics, and how advertising can take advantage of the working and middle classes.  There is even a sequence where Lord Peterbilt attends an office costume party in the guise of a harlequin.  One perceptive reader had some interesting thoughts about the symbolism of the harlequin, to the point where I do have to wonder if the harlequin might be a type of the figure of Hermes.

However, what makes me believe in at least the possibility that Lethal White could draw some of its plot elements from Murder Must Advertise comes down to just three points.

  • Both novels feature a detective figure going undercover in an office space business in order to solve a crime.
  • There is a discrepancy between the gender and identity of the private eye in each book.  Wimsey is obviously not Robin.  In fact, the closest analogue to Robin Ellacott in Sayer’s novels is Harriet Vane, a character notable by her total absence in MMA, except for a passing mention by Wimsey that he has a date with Harriet, and even then, her name is never mentioned.
  • I wonder if this complete absence of Harriet in the 8th Wimsey novel might have acted as a spur to Rowling by giving her the idea to switch the situation around so that this time, Harriet (i.e. Robin) gets a chance to shine in the spotlight for once.

So, there’s my thoughts on the matter.  What do you think?  My own belief is that it’s at least one avenue of consideration that can at least be kept open as a possibility until such time as her release of LW either confirms or puts such ideas out to pasture.

[John] Here are my three thoughts on this possibility after the reveations of the book blurb and further reading in Rowling’s possibe source materials for her Cormoran Strike novels: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts