Having just finished The Silkworm, I think we can see represented below in this token sample of interviews from Ms Rowling’s past the struggling, prematurely aging, red-headed writer named Kath Kent, the blonde Robin coming to terms with her discovery of who she is, and the several literary celebrities whose self-importance is lampooned cover to cover. The Silkworm all but demands this kind of “personal; heresy” interpretation, as touched on yesterday, and which I’ll explain in greater detail next week. Until then, enjoy the remarkable transfiguration of Jo via this YouTube time capsule opening.
The Silkworm: First Thoughts on Rowling’s Latest
June 21, 2014 by 3 Comments
True confessions time! I have not yet finished reading The Silkworm. Nonetheless, I have some thoughts I want to share about the book after only reading the first 28 chapters, what I think of as the first half of the book. This preemptive posting is not standard operating procedure at HogwartsProfessor, so let me explain why I’m commenting at significant length before having read all the way through.
First, it’s a promise I made to myself after reading Casual Vacancy and again after finishing Cuckoo’s Calling. I made a commitment not to read straight through future Rowling efforts but to make notes on each chapter as I went along. I pledged to do this out of frustration and hope. The frustration was that I found it very difficult to stop and take notes through the whole book on my first second-pass because I was in speed-read mode rather than the mental framework for close-reading. I still haven’t finished the outlining of Vacancy or Calling the way I want.
My hope was to slow it down, consequently, and savor the ride and all the clues and back references being made through the Silkworm mystery. Of course, I also wanted to be as sensitive as I could be to the structural clues and Rowling signatures we know from her Hogwarts Saga and previous post Potter publications. By which I mean principally “Ring Composition” and “Literary Alchemy.”
So far, so good. I’m 28 chapters in and I have made notes on each chapter, with thoughts about what the story seems to be about. Right now, I’m thinking it’s not unlike Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban in several ways. More on that in a minute.
If you’re interested in what I think Ms Rowling is doing even though you’re well aware that I haven’t finished the book, take the leap over ‘the jump.’ This is almost as much fun, for me at least, as guessing the elements and plot points of the Harry Potter novels as they came out. Here, though, if I hit any bull’s eyes, readers will naturally be skeptical that I peeked at the finish or read some reviews. I’ll risk that — and the much more likely possibility that I will be miles off and embarrassed tomorrow when I try to finish my close reading.
There are spoilers below, too, but only for plot points of the first half of the book and my guesses about the end! You’ve been told, pro forma.
Shared Text: Colbert says Amazon lead by Lord Bezos-mort
June 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Colbert gets his biggest laugh when he calls Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “Lord Bezos-Mort.” To risk explaining the obvious, is there any other character in fiction ever whose name could be so altered and no one would struggle to get the joke? Well, okay, the visual helped, but you get my point.
Full disclosure (or is it TMI?) — I have some skin in this game. My books are published by four different companies: Penguin, Tyndale, Zossima Press, and Unlocking Press, the last of which is my adventure in self-publishing. Though these titles are available at bricks-and-mortar stores, especially Barnes & Noble, the great majority of their sales are through Amazon.com, as paperbacks or e-books.
Here’s the thing. Amazon, unlike Barnes & Noble online, no longer offers discounts for any of my books, and, for titles from Zossima Press, books that are printed by Lightning Source rather than Amazon’s Create Space, the books are only available “In Two to Four Weeks” or, as with Deathly Hallows Lectures, they are listed as “Temporarily Out of Stock.”
Why? Because Amazon wants to crush Lightning Source publishers and create a ‘Create Space’ monopoly that closes off all space at their online platform for writers at LSource not willing to agree to Amazon’s much less generous terms. The absence of discounts on backlist items that sell consistently drive Amazon Marketplace used book sales from which Amazon takes a cut without having to order or move any books. Authors and publishers, of course, receive no money from used book sales on Amazon or anywhere, for that matter.
I recently learned that more than 100,000 copies of my books have been sold online and in retail outlets in the last ten years. I’ll never know how many have been purchased as gifts and never read, of course, or how many readers have shared copies with friends. I get a decent amount of mail each week and there are always notes from those who borrowed the book in question from a friend or the library. C’est la vie.
I’m with Mr Colbert, though, in lamenting that I can be confident I am losing royalty money every day because of Amazon’s discount policies and biggest-gorilla-in-the-room tactics to strong arm publishers into submission. I do not want government intervention or even your sympathy, truth be told. The market is what it is. What I’d like to see is American publishers creating an alternative online venture with which Amazon would have to compete, something more user-friendly than BN.com. Please let me know if you’re aware of a venue of this kind that already exists!
Tomorrow, first thoughts on The Silkworm —
More Colbert and Links to articles about this story and to book pages after the jump:
[Read more…]
Jennifer Lawrence: Loved Then “Outgrew” Harry Potter
June 19, 2014 by 4 Comments
Why do we care about the life histories of actors and actresses? This would have been an embarrassing conversation for all involved if you overheard it at a High School reunion or singles bar. That the audience laughs hysterically and applauds her most demeaning stories is common fare, I know, but it’s still eerily reminiscent of Caesar Flickerman’s annual Q&A with tributes morituri before the Capitol crowds, no?
File this, though, under “Shared Text.” The ‘face of Katniss Everdeen forever and ever’ talks about having read Harry Potter “three times” and, though she “outgrew” the series, about “screaming” when she first met “Harry Potter,” meaning, I assume, Daniel Radcliffe, the ‘face forever and ever of The Boy Who Lived.’
I’m guessing Mr Radcliffe, for all his failings, would not refer to Miss Lawrence as “Katniss Everdeen.” Like Peeta, he’s better than Katniss/JLawr at this kind of exchange. Life imitating art, again?
JKR: Some Scots for Independence ‘Death Eaterish’
June 18, 2014 by 2 Comments
Ms Rowling entered into the Scottish Independence fray last week with another million pounds sterling donation to ‘Better Together’ and comments about the natives who think she is insufficiently Scot — about 25% through her Franco-Scot mother — to be offering guidance on this question. From the Christian Science Monitor article:
Rowling writes that “there is a fringe of nationalists who like to demonise anyone who is not blindly and unquestionably pro-independence and … they might judge me ‘insufficiently Scottish’ to have a valid view.” But she says that “when people try to make this debate about the purity of your lineage, things start getting a little Death Eaterish for my taste.” And she adds that “by residence, marriage, and out of gratitude for what this country has given me, my allegiance is wholly to Scotland.”
She goes on to explain her rationale for a “yes” vote: “My hesitance at embracing independence has nothing to do with lack of belief in Scotland’s remarkable people or its achievements,” she writes. “The simple truth is that Scotland is subject to the same 21st century pressures as the rest of the world. It must compete in the same global markets, defend itself from the same threats, and navigate what still feels like a fragile economic recovery.”
This kind of donation from a literary celebrity and the ancillary poisonous dismissal of the inevitably ‘lunatic fringe’ (which colors all those not of her camp with the Wizarding World equivalent of “Nazi pure-blood fanatic’) excited the Fleet Street minions and Muggle Rita Skeeters as clearly Ms Rowling knew the size of her donation and choice of words would.
If you doubt that, consider the likelihood that the author of the ‘Hermione-manipulates-Skeeter’ scenes in Order of the Phoenix does not calculate effects when giving away $1.67 million dollars. I’d put the odds of that at about zero.
Anyway, I was called by Justin Parkinson, a BBC reporter, for my thoughts and we talked about the meaning of ‘Death Eaterish’ to Harry Potter fandom, about the China-Japan invocation of Lord Voldemort in a recent dispute, and the Shared Text quality of the Hogwarts Saga — all of which points made it into his article. BBC Radio in Ulster called me while I was out for a bike ride for a drive time interview over there. Imagine me with goofy helmet sitting on an OKC side road’s curb talking via cell phone with Northern Ireland commuters about the ins and outs of UK politics and Rowling Studies.
Links after the jump. [Read more…]
Recent Conversation