Rowling Impersonator, Doppelganger — and the Mysterious Michael at Exeter?

August 12, 2024 by Leave a Comment

This is a grab-bag post with only the weakest of a connecting thread, namely, all three pieces have something to do with J. K. Rowling.

The first is the evidence Andy Ngo uncovered in April 2023 that radical leftist Talia Lavin had decided to impersonate J. K. Rowling on the Twitter social media platform in order to put “trans-phobic” words in the author’s mouth. If you check out the Lavin wikipedia page, you’ll see this wasn’t her first offense with respect to irresponsible behavior online.

The second is a Ukrainian woman living in the Donbass region who appears to be Rowling’s body-double or doppelganger. As you can see from the picture, she’s a dead ringer for The Presence, say, in 2005, and, at 5’2,” not far off in height, even allowing that it is a much younger Rowling that she resembles. Life in Ukraine, especially in the Donbass, is unimaginably difficult today because of the proxy war being fought between the United States and the Russian Federation there; perhaps Rowling, Inc., could find a job for ‘Oksana, Age 43‘ as a Rowling stand-in for engagements she is obliged to show her face and do little else? I think she belongs on these lists of ‘Nine Regular People Who Look Like Celebrities‘ or ‘Twenty-Two Celebrity Doppelgangers.’

And, third and last, I searched and searched online for digital versions of the photographs of Rowling as a college student at the University of Exeter that are in Sean Smith’s J. K. Rowling: A Biography. I had no luck with that and, sadly, the book has no photo credits or exact dates so the pictures cannot be searched in that fashion. This is a real shame, because two of the pictures are of Rowling out on the town with three friends, two young women and one man. These are the only pictures we have of Rowling at UExeter outside of graduation — and they feature a guy, perhaps even the mysterious boyfriend?

I’m fairly confident that this man is either the “Michael” boyfriend of seven years, the break-up with whom after she lived with him in Manchester 1990-1991, inspired her decision to leave the UK for Portugal, or, much more likely, that he knows the real “Michael’s” surname. He looks like an accountant, rugby player, and, alas, not especially bright, which is to say, he could be the inspiration for Matt Cunliffe.  To be fair, of course, who looks their best in candid pictures taken in a bar, frat, or club?

Regardless, if you’ve seen this man or recognize him, please write to me at john at HogwartsProfessor dot com. I have tried for matches with him at TinEye.com (zero matches) and SocialCatfish.com (twenty-seven matches for $6.87 I don’t have); why not unleash the power of our readership to find the man? Happy Surfing!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

‘All Along the Watchtower’ Comment by Rowling Suggests Her Real Reason for Going to Portugal in 1991

August 11, 2024 by Leave a Comment

I think literary history and personal experience both tell us that everyone has a critical juncture in their lives, call it a nigredo if you want, perhaps ‘chrysalis’ is better,  in which everything falls apart and a new person emerges, one shaped by that crisis or series of calamities. For writers, Dickens is the prototypical example; each critical biography of the greatest English novelist I own — and I have a shelf — focuses on his time as a young man when he worked in a boot black factory while his father and family were in debtors prison. The wickipedia summary of that experience:

To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he wondered “how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age”.

I counted up in Harry Potter’s Bookshelf how many of Dickens’ novels featured suffering children. The final tally?

15 novels, 16 leading role characters without surviving parents or parents known to them, 2 novels feature title characters with only one parent, and only Dickens’ first book, an ad hoc collection of stories, does not feature an orphan or a neglected and estranged child.

If there was a creature in Dickens’ Lake of inspiration, it came to life in Warren’s Blacking Warehouse. I don’t think he was unusual in this, if the severity of his experience was remarkable; similar cases could be made for Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis among artists, and, lacking such dramatic events, what Freud called the “family romance” of every child is as formative (that is always ‘there’ in everyone’s psyche).

Our task here at Hogwarts Professor is to begin the ‘Fourth Generation’ of Rowling Studies, the one in which we shift from Shed focused literary interpretation exclusive of Lake concerns to one that includes Rowling formative experiences. Which means identifying as much as possible both her “family romance” and the life-and-mind pivotal moments that inform as inspiration her imaginative work.

The death of Rowling’s mother Anne in late December 1990 is almost without exception (and rightly) referred to in the very few biographies of the writer available today as a defining moment in her life as a writer. She described it as a “depth charge” that blew up her life, the nadir of her “year of misery,” and the primary impetus of her November 1991 departure from the UK to teach English in Portugal. That led, of course, to her meeting, marrying, having a child with, and divorcing Jorge Arantes, another formative relationship that is the foundation of her depression and latent PTSD.

Last week in my post about the latest internet meme meant to defame J. K. Rowling, ‘It’s the Mold!’ Rowling Twixter Cameo Shots Launch Bizarro Theories, I used a picture taken in September 2020 of The Presence in her home library. I used its relatively clear image of the back wall to explain that the “mold” supposedly growing floor to ceiling in her library is almost certainly very tasteful wallpaper with a Japanese block print image on it.

That picture came from a 2020 interview on the Version’s ‘Tracks of My Years” show; celebrities on this popular program are asked to share “tracks” in the “song” sense of that word and explain the meaning it has for them. If you follow that link to read Rowling’s answers and song selections, you find what I described in that post as a potential “key to unlocking the central mystery of Rowling’s life.” Find out what I’m guessing that is after the jump. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Oliver Anthony: Is He a Member of Generation Hex?

August 10, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Rowling was asked on her 2007 Open Book Tour of North America if she had any advice for her readers, young and old. She responded promptly and in the affirmative: “Don’t trust the press or the government.”

The years since have only confirmed the wisdom of that pointed advice, especially during the Covid, Trans, and Ukraine hysterias.

If postmodernity as a historical period per the angry Algerians of literary criticism is characterized by its collective “incredulity toward the metanarrative,” that is as true for those who grew up reading Harry Potter. This is true, I think, even though almost all of that fandom’s leadership were sucked into the Orwellian nightmares from the political left of the last fifteen years.

I thought of the skepticism about everything we are told by the media and government that is prevalent and growing today — “How many times can we be duped into changing our status flags on Facebook before we catch on?” seems a commonplace feeling — when I read that Anthony Oliver’s ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ marked its first anniversary in the public square.

Here is that unforgettable song of raging against the machine as sung by its remarkable writer:

And here are Oliver’s reflections on the year that has passed by, his gratitude to his supporters, his determination not to be pigeon-holed by media or political partisans, and his commitment to working to help others have a life with roots in the land, not their ‘Smart’ phones.

No, I have no idea if Oliver Anthony read Harry Potter as a boy. He seems to be a cross between Wendell Berry, the free-wheelin’ Bob Dylan, and abolitionist John Brown (it’s the beard).

I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if he did read it all. There’s a magical touch and Gryffindor quality to him.

What if her were a character in the Saga? Where would he be sorted? Whom does he resemble?

The Sorting Hat might put him in Hufflepuff to be guided by Professor Sprout but he shows shades of Ravenclaw insight; I think, though, if you gave the young Albus Dumbledore some time in the mountains with a pick and a banjo, that he might have been singing songs like ‘Rich Men North of Richmond.’

Tomorrow, ‘Rowling, Jimi Hendrix, and the Defining Decision of Her Life.’ Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

‘It’s the Mold!’ Rowling Twixter Cameo Shots Launch Bizarro Theories

August 9, 2024 by Leave a Comment

I have posted here through the years an irregular feature called ‘Shared Text.’ Those posts were inevitably inspired by someone, somewhere — anywhere, everywhere — using a reference to Harry Potter to make a point. It could be to Snape or Hermione, too often it is to Voldemort (everybody thinks the other guy is the Dark Lord’s minion), more often than not, it’s just a ‘Hogwarts’ call-out. My favorite, the ‘own-goal’ of the Covid unvaccinated, to which group I belong, deciding to promote that status by pushing #PureBloods on Twitter. If you want to scroll through all those Shared Text posts for a taste of the variety, click here.

I am fairly frequently reminded not only of the Harry Potter books being the ‘Shared Text’ of our times but just the enormity of Rowling’s celebrity in the place where I work to pay my bills and student loans. It’s a grocery store and just small enough that almost everyone there knows me and about my ‘Dean of Harry Potter scholars’ Walter Mitty existence. At least once a month, sometimes once a week, an acquaintance there will walk up to me with their ‘smart’ phone saying, “John, have you seen this latest bit about Rowling?” And hold up their phone so I can read the story.

Last Sunday it was my beloved tattooed man in the Produce department. “I suppose you’ve heard that Rowling has black mold in her house? And they’re saying that it’s taken over her mind?” I thought he was kidding, but he showed me the story. You can read here the whole sequence of events about the first tweets on the subject, how it grew into a meme, and the pictures from 2022 that showed the same “mold” growing on her walls.

The take-away? People who hate Rowling because of her resistance to what Elon Musk has called “Woke Mind Virus,” especially with respect to Gender Theory Extremists and ‘transgender’ over-reach into women’s safe spaces, are really on the look-out for avenues to insult and demean her. The first tweet on the subject from @mushycrouton reads:  “Sorry but is that black mould growing up the walls of her house? Is that why she’s the way she is?”

“The way she is” means, of course, “not onboard like all my followers are with everything LGNTQ+” and the mold reference becomes his explanation for her being so outlandishly wrong. The black mold, you see, has taken over mind… The internet ball rolled from there. You can read more about this at Rowling-despising sites here, here, and here. The time you spend reviewing that, though, cannot be reclaimed, alas.

The bizarre thing to me about the whole attack-meme charade was that it isn’t hard to see what this mold is.  Join me after the jump if you’re at all interested in that. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Shared Text, Twitter

The Rowling Library #92: ‘What Will the Wizarding Archive Contain?’

August 8, 2024 by 1 Comment

One of the best days in every moment is the one in which The Rowling Library (TRL!) e-zine arrives in my inbox. This month’s issue had, as always,  one story that I flipped to first, either because the subject was of special interest or the author was someone I know is going to challenge and inform me about something I know little about. The August issue’s cover story is one with both those qualities.

The Writer Who Goes By ‘Ibid’ for reasons not known by me (why remain anonymous when you are the global subject matter expert for a given topic?) shares his or her comprehensive knowledge about Rowling manuscript history and canon. Here it is about the Pottermore digital material and its several presentations for sale, a discussion of the re-packaging of that Hogwarts encyclopedia in ebook form later this month.

It’s first rate, as everything the Writer Who Goes by ‘Ibid’ has written that I’ve read on TRL and elsewhere has been. The review of the Pottermore materials history, the sober but still very interesting list of the possible chapters to be included in each of the new ‘Wizarding Archive’ volumes, and the Parthian shot to Rowling, Inc., that it would really be more than okay to publish codex editions of this Hogwarts Saga backstory stuffing. (I was especially grateful for that last, as I was thinking it again and again while reading this excellent summary of what is known about the new collection and what can be reasonably assumed about its two tables of content.)

To read the August issue of The Rowling Library and its cover story, ‘What Will the Wizarding Archive Contain,’ just click here. To download the whole shebang as a pdf, touch here.

Enjoy! HogPro Hats are doffed once again to the writers and editors for TRL for another wonderfully professional presented magazine and diverse set of articles.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes