Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
I vaguely remember posting this fan music video before but could not find it after a quick look in the archives.
It’s sufficiently catchy that I don’t mind the possibility of running it twice.
Anyone equal to creating a Cormoran Strike edition? Post your lyrics below!
The Rowling Library has compiled all of Rowling’s answers to questions, all originally posted on the Robert Galbraith Facebook page, in one very convenient YouTube package. I think I speak for all Serious Strikers in thanking them for that collation. Their transcript of these twenty questions can be found here.
After the jump, a review of what irked many listeners and my own thoughts about what made the event easily forgettable. [Read more…]
I am in the midst of writing up a Substack post on Running Grave, Part One, but wanted to note this maybe-landmark moment in Rowling Studies.
It has been known that Rowling went to see King Lear performed in London while she was a Comprehensive student, but, and I welcome correction from those who know her biography much better than I ever will, that this trip was part of her A-Levels study was not. Again, as far as I know, nothing of her A-Levels reading list has ever been revealed and it has not been for lack of digging.
[This is an error; see ‘Shepherd and Biddle: Rowling’s Favorite A-Level Teachers’ for two books Rowling has said were on her English Literature A-Level list: “Tender is the Night [Fitzgerald], Decline and Fall [Waugh].” Whether these were the only books on her A Level list or whether King Lear was also on it — or if she just traveled to see Lear with her A Levels class, as she says — I do not know. Apologies for the unforced error. John ]
I hope very much that the two Rowling Readers and Serious Strikers whom I know have searched in heroic fashion for that list for several years will one day write up their inquiries and its numerous dead-ends. The A-Levels reading course for the young Presence, despite these efforts, has remained something of a Holy Grail for those of who want to know which books were the principal focus of her secondary school capstone exam.
And why would Lear be that important, even among Shakespeare plays?
Because the hot interpretation of King Lear in 1982 was Charles Nicholl’s The Chemical Theatre, published to significant popular and academic review in 1980. No less a figure in hermetic studies than Dame Frances Yates discussed it in The New York Review of Books in 1981. I have speculated in the past (and at some length in my thesis) that, because of Rowling’s London field trip to see the play, her first exposure to literary alchemy was almost certainly via Nicholl and his hermetic interpretation of Lear as an alchemical transformation in stage-story.
Rowling’s revelation today makes that speculation that much more credible. I doubt anything else on her reading list could prove as important with respect to her future story telling tool kit, but I look forward to the day when she will agree to an interview with, say, Oxford’s Beatrice Groves or any other informed reader who will ask her about her A-Levels studies.
Back to Running Grave!
Elizabeth Baird Hardy wrote up a short piece about the death of British actor Michael Gambon yesterday.
Michael Gambon, Cinema’s Dumbledore, Passes away at Age 82.
For readers of the Hogwarts adventures, characters in our heads rarely appear the same as they do in film adaptations, but most movie-goers probably think of Sir Michael Gambon the most of the three men who have played Professor Dumbledore on screen. He certainly played the headmaster more times than Richard Harris, who passed away after portraying Albus Dumbledore in the first two film adaptations. Gambon took up the role for the subsequent six films. Jude Law has appeared as a younger Dumbledore in the Fantastic Beasts films.
Gambon, who passed away today at the age of 82, had a long and celebrated dramatic career on both stage and screen, even before coming to the role that has made him familiar to most movie-goers. He also appeared in the film adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s novel The Casual Vacancy. His Potter co-stars, Rowling, and other celebrities have paid tribute to his legacy and personality.
As new adaptations are on the horizon and theories abound about casting choices, doubtless many film fans will continue to recall Gambon as Dumbledore, just as his colleagues fondly recall his work and life.
What are your favorite Gambon-as-Dumbledore moments? Mine is the Time-Turner heist sequence in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Very sorry to hear about the passing of Michael Gambon. He was, on and off the camera, a legend. Just a little memory of Michael pic.twitter.com/4M6E6inWMy
— James Phelps (@James_Phelps) September 28, 2023
My two copies of Running Grave were delivered late this morning and I have yet to open mine. My son Zossima is almost half-way through and has confirmed that my enthusiastic judgment of the first eleven chapters, that this was the strongest start of a Rowling novel ever, was spot on. He reports that “It starts well and doesn’t let up one bit.”
I’m very excited to join him in reading Strike7, as I know all of you have been, but I need to do some house-keeping chores here at HogwartsProfessor and to prepare for my reading first. Number one on my list is putting up seven placeholder posts for Serious Strikers around the world to write up their thoughts as they read on specific subjects that are signature points of discussion on this weblog.
Why bother? [Read more…]
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