• Ink Black Heart: Anomie and the Veil – A Question of Connection and Isolation

    ByJohn
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    ‘Anomie and the Veil: A Question of Connection and Isolation’ is by Shakespeare scholar Kurt Schreyer. Professor Schreyer’s last post at HogwartsProfessor was one he co-wrote with Beatrice Groves, ‘The Mystery of the Ink Black Heart.‘ His twitter posts about the Cormoran Strike novels at @Kasstl1 have been admired by Rowling-Galbraith on her twitter platform, albeit obliquely. What follows are his first thoughts about the mammoth Ink Black Heart, a brief essay that attempts to draw out the through line of Rowling’s ideas about death and life worse than death that runs through her Potter novels and Strike mysteries. 

    ‘Anomie and the Veil: A Question of Connection and Isolation’

    “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” – Sartre

    “Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself.” – W. H. Auden

    Spoiler Alert: This post contains spoilers for The Ink Black Heart.

    Since finishing The Ink Black Heart, I’ve been trying to put into words why the figure of Anomie is so ominous to me apart from his obviously hateful, violent misogyny. I find Anomie perhaps more disturbing than any of the criminals, dark wizards and witches, monsters or all-around baddies that J. K. Rowling has created, and I think I have – partially – figured out why that is: the answer lies, of all places, in the Department of Mysteries. Anomie’s radical sociopathy extends beyond the grave and should remind Harry Potter readers of the opposing views of death held by Voldemort and Dumbledore. Read More “Ink Black Heart: Anomie and the Veil – A Question of Connection and Isolation”

  • Five Predictions for JKR Q&A Today

    ByJohn
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    Yesterday I posted three questions I hoped someone would ask Rowling-Galbraith during the “interactive” question and answer session today, This morning I rush to put up five predictions of what questions she will be asked and what her answers will be. Apologies all around for not posting this earlier to encourage the Serious Strikers here to share their ideas of what The Presence will and will not say; it only occurred to me as I began reviewing and writing up my latch notes on the novel’s beginning and end.

    Prediction 1: My idea that this will be “interactive” in the sense of her engaging with readers in any back-and-forth way will be shown as ridiculously naive.

    I want to start my prognostications with an almost sure-thing and that  I was wrong yesterday to think Rowling-Galbraith would engage with fans in a meaningful way is just that. Patricio Tarantino of The Rowling Library wrote to me on the moderator channels to explain that “interactive” here most likely meant that the “pre-recorded, not live” event  involves those who tune in being asked “to vote for two questions and then they will see the video with the answer to the most voted one and so on.” He expressed disappointment in advance with this format because it suggests “there will be recorded answers that we won’t see.”

    If he is right (and, frankly, Mr Tarantino is right more often than not in a spooky Anomie kind of omniscient way with these things…), then the “interactive” Q&A will be a kind of online game akin to the Drek’s Game of Ink Black Heart, one that requires repeated visits to the site to explore its various possibilities, in this case, all the questions and answers. I have little doubt that all the information will be available to the persistent — and that Rowling-Galbraith is having a little fun here with life-imitating-art, the discussion of the book in a curious fashion reflecting the action of the book.

    More speculative guesses after the jump! Read More “Five Predictions for JKR Q&A Today”

  • Three Questions for JKR Q&A Tomorrow

    ByJohn
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    I am not sure what Rowling, Inc., means by “interactive” but it suggests there is a possibility that The Presence will be taking questions from her listening audience. If true, this would be a first-time-ever event for the Strike series and something Rowling has only done before during Potter-Mania, something she did with children readers.

    Except one event. The last time she answered questions from a live audience of adults (rather than from pre-screened cards), if memory serves, was in Carnegie Hall, the night she revealed she had always “thought of Dumbledore as gay.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the sort of publicity she’s hoping to generate for Ink Black Heart through her “interactive” Q&A.

    Given the number of Rowling Revilers in the world today, too, that would attempt an ambush of her in any “interactive” environment, I have to doubt that her handlers, being sane, would expose her to this credible danger. If it is a live Q&A, though, and you could get through to ask her one question about Ink Black Heart — and it has to be about Strike6, remember, nothing about her A-Levels reading list, protestors in Iran, or The Christmas Pig diamond earrings — what would you ask her?

    I share three ‘off-the-top-of-my-head’ questions after the jump and hope you’ll write yours in the comment boxes. Who knows? Maybe Team Rowling will choose one or two questions from Serious Strikers for a change! Read More “Three Questions for JKR Q&A Tomorrow”

  • Ink Black Heart: The Coda Latch

    ByJohn
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    I am beginning to write up the notes I jotted down in Utah earlier this month about the structure of Ink Black Heart. My premise for this work, as you’d expect, is that the sixth Strike novel is a ring composition; the first task in this sort of research, because it is the easiest of the four qualities of a ring to identify, is to see if the opening and closing chapters act as a ‘latch’ for the work as a whole. Heart’s open and close are neatly separated from the rest of the novel’s parts by being names other than ‘Parts;’ the first four chapters are its ‘Prologue’ and its last chapter or epilogue, which follows Part 5, is called the ‘Coda.’

    Before I begin the structural exegesis, though, something that will eventually include — in addition to the latch — explorations of the story turn in Part 3, parallels between Parts 1 and 2 with 4 and five, and each Part being a ring unto itself, I want to note something peculiar about Rowling’s structural choices in Strike6. She chooses to call the last piece, as noted, a ‘Coda,’ rather than, say, an ‘Epilogue,’ a first for this series or any of her novels and screenplays. I think there are at least three decent explanations for this change, which I’ll share after the jump. Read More “Ink Black Heart: The Coda Latch”

  • Ink Black Heart: The Strike Characters with Twitter Accounts

    ByJohn
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    Our last update to the Cormoran Strike characters that became active this summer, a pre-publication blitz of posts in 2022 time from ‘people’ as diverse as Pat Chauncey and Ciara Porter (not to mention Wolfgang the pet and the Office Sofa), was August 22nd. See Twitter Character Update for that, Nick Jeffery’s introduction to the phenomenon, Strike on Twitter – Sixteen Characters in Search of a Story, and Rowling’s engagement with the fun being had online before Ink Black Heart  was officially on sale.

    https://twitter.com/TheRealCCRoss/status/1562066862275497986

    Has anyone been following these accounts after the fact? Do we have evidence that they were given copies of Ink Black Heart before the public at large? Do you think it was a Rowling, Inc., publicity stunt for Serious Strikers to enjoy or a fandom effort by Zealot Tweeters who love the Rowling-Galbraith murder-romance-mysteries?

    This post is a Placeholder for discussion to which we will add information as it becomes available. To find this conversation quickly in future, click on ‘Ink Black Heart Discussion’ in the Pillar Post column at the upper left of the home page and scroll down to the ‘Twitter Characters’ link. Cheers!