Ink Black Heart: The Gaffes

August 31, 2022 by 43 Comments

My copy of Ink Black Heart arrived at 5 PM yesterday and I have not yet penetrated its 1,012 pages (!) sufficiently to comment beyond “there are five ‘parts’ with a prologue and coda ‘latch’ which promises another seven part ring.” I’ll be looking for the murderer in disguise hiding out in plain sight somewhere in Part 3.

As promised, I’m posting “placeholders” here for the next ten days or so for Serious Strikers to share their thoughts and discoveries as they read or listen to Ink Black Heart. Here is the preliminary list of those posts in the sequence they will go up. (I will post the first three today in order to facilitate discussion here and to prevent enthusiasts from posting great ‘finds’ on the wrong threads.)

    1. Gaffes
    2. Silkworm Parallels
    3. Half-Blood Prince Parallels
    4. The Alchemical Albedo
    5. Psychomachia: Jung or Shakespeare?
    6. The Epigraphs
    7. The Tell Tale Heart
    8. Ghosts!
    9. The Scent of Narciso: the Mythic Backdrop
    10. Rowling’s “Double-Voiced” Text: A Literary Vocation vs Biology and Culture
    11. Strike Characters on Twitter

 Please let me know if there are other topics you want to include on this list. I will be posting an ‘Ink Black Heart’ link at the top of the Pillar Post Post column on the HogwartsProfessor home page beneath which you’ll be able to find and easily access all these placeholders rather than have to search the site for them once they sink below the horizon.

Today, the gaffes. Please share the continuity errors, Parker-Porter name slips, Afghanistan-Iraq misplacements, etc., that you find on the comment thread below. Rowling-Galbraith some time ago pledged (sort of) that she was hard at work fixing the mistakes her crew of editors had found, but the first pages released last week had an unforced error with respect to when the confrontation with Oakden happened in the American Bar. That mistake suggests that there is a mother-lode of Flints out there for attentive readers to find and share here with others. Have at it!

I passed my viva voce examinations yesterday. Thank you to all those who have written with their best wishes and congratulations. I have six months to write my “substantial revisions” to the thesis, a task that will compete for my attention with reading Ink Black Heart and discussing it here with you all.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

‘Your Nine Guides to Ink Black Heart’ and ‘The First Week at HogwartsProfessor’

August 30, 2022 by 1 Comment

At last we have reached the publication date of Ink Black Heart! Whether you have been enjoying the excerpt-teases provided by the publisher or puritanically abstaining (and, no, to me at least, ‘puritan’ is not necessarily pejorative), today we all enjoy Strike6 at last. Rejoice!

If you are still waiting for your copy to arrive in the mail — Amazon had by far the lowest price for the book — I offer today a list of nine things to keep in mind as you read Ink Black Heart and a description of how HogwartsProfessor.com will discuss Rowling-Galbraith’s longest novel to date in the coming week. I’ll also throw in the three best list of predictions for you to reflect on in the few hours — minutes! — before you can dive into a reading at long last. All after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Rowling Says Strike Series Ends at 10: Tells Graham Norton ‘No Covid Books’

August 28, 2022 by 12 Comments

Rowling sat down today to talk with Graham Norton about Ink Black Heart, with whom she has previously discussed both Lethal White and The Ickabog in publicity junkets pre-publication. Our friends at The Rowling Library promptly found the Virgin Radio audio and posted it at their YouTube channel. Thank you, Mr Tarantino!

The “big news” if you read about this interview, say, at The Daily Mail, was that Rowling turned down an invitation to be in the Hogwarts Reunion party teevee special. I don’t think that makes my top five take-aways from this conversation, which would be: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Salman Rushdie and Son Quiz JKR 2006

August 15, 2022 by Leave a Comment

The transcript of this public exchange courtesy of Accio-Quotes.org:

Salman and Milan Rushdie: Hello. We are Salman and Milan Rushdie (crowd applauds). Umm –

JK Rowling: I’m not that sure this is fair (crowd laughs). I think you might be better at guessing plots than most. But anyway, off you go.

Salman and Milan Rushdie: We are 9 and 59. And one of us is good at guessing plots, not me. And this is really Milan’s question and it’s kind of a follow up to the previous one.

JK Rowling: Alright. Okay.

Salman and Milan Rushdie: Until the events of Volume 6, it was always made plain that Snape might have been an unlikable fellow but he was essentially one of the good guys (crowd screams approval).

JK Rowling: I can see this is the question you all really want answered.

Salman and Milan Rushdie: Dumbledore himself – Dumbledore himself had always vouched for him.

JK Rowling: Yes.

Salman and Milan Rushdie: Now we are suddenly told that Snape is a villain and Dumbledore’s killer.

JK Rowling: Un hunh.

Salman and Milan Rushdie: We cannot, or don’t want to believe this (crowd laughs). Our theory is that Snape is in fact, still a good guy (crowd applauds). From which it follows that Dumbledore can’t really be dead and that the death is a ruse cooked up between Dumbledore and Snape to put Voldemort off his guard so that when Harry and Voldemort come face to face (crowd laughs). Harry may have more allies than he or Voldemort suspects. So, is Snape good or bad? (crowd laughs, applauds and screams and Jo chuckles). In our opinion, everything follows from it.

JK Rowling: Well, Salman, your opinion, I would say is … right. But I see that I need to be a little more explicit and say that Dumbledore is definitely … dead (crowd gasps). And I do know – I do know that there is an entire website out there that says – that’s name is DumbledoreIsNotDead.com so umm, I’d imagine they’re not pretty happy right now (crowd laughs). But I think I need – you need – all of you need to move through the five stages of grief (crowd laughs), and I’m just helping you get past denial. So, I can’t remember what’s next. It may be anger so I think we should stop it here. Thank you (crowd applauds).

I think Rowling’s immediate recognition of Salman Rushdie suggests strongly that she had met him previously, had been told he would be in the queue of ‘civilians’ asking questions (rather than on-stage with the authors; Stephen King and John Irving read that night as well), or both. My guess is “both,” and that Rowling’s acquaintance with Rushdie and his son, perhaps even her friendship with the man, is additional reason for her fears consequent to the knife attack in upstate New York — at an author event without evident security akin to the 2006 Radio City event.

Many thanks and a hat-tip to Amnon Halel, a first rank Potter Pundit and long-time friend of this weblog, for the links to the video and transcript above. 

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Podcast on ‘The Alchemical Harry Potter’

August 14, 2022 by Leave a Comment

From the podcast blurb on AudioBoom:

Emily and Katy talk with Dr. Anne Mamary (Monmouth College) about her anthology The Alchemical Harry Potter: Essays on Transfiguration in J.K. Rowling’s Novels (McFarland 2021). We talk about the power of the Potter books and films, and how they not only express alchemical themes but also work a kind of alchemical magic on readers and viewers.

Anne explains that alchemy is a way to transform not only metals but also the alchemist and our entire worldview. Although we could look at nature from a modernist perspective, requiring the neutrality of the experimenter and presuming a mechanical model of the universe, alchemy requires being open to the enchantment within nature and our deep connection to it. Not all historical alchemists were Christian, but often a notion of religious or metaphysical transformation emerges through alchemical explorations of nature. Anne explains that alchemy posits that the heavenly exists within the earthly, that the sacred can be found everywhere, and we live in an enchanted world that is not just a world of machines. She sees this approach pervading the Hogwarts curriculum and the Harry Potter novels as a whole.

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy