I am sent a good deal of link-age, most of it to very thoughtful online writing by serious readers about Harry Potter and kindred fiction. As often as not, I read the piece sent, thank you the sender, and decide not to write about it. It’s already been written well, after all, and my two bits of opinion mean what? Not so much.

I think, though, that I can do some good here for serious readers by acting on rare occasion, say ‘monthly,’ as an aggregator of sorts. Hence this Bulletin Board category to run in parallel with the Mailbag option. On to today’s six links!

(1) J. K. Rowling’s Brilliant World Building by Nathaniel Givens

The odd behavior of witches and wizards and the bizarre nature of their social institutions is not sloppy world-building. It’s brilliant world-building based on a keen observation of human nature. If a tiny cohort of humans were given incredible magical powers, this is pretty much the world that you would end up with. Parasitic, backwards, shallow, and reckless.

Givens argues cogently that what seem at first to be mistakes in world building turn out on reflection to be unavoidable effects of the demographics and powers that are the foundation of Ms. Rowling’s Wizarding World. The explanation of the disproportionate power of a group of teen wizards — relative to the British armed services! — is a keeper, for sure. Top flight thinking and writing. Hat-tip to Bruce.

(2) Should J. K. Rowling Stop Writing? by Jerry Bowyer at Forbes.com

No one sent me this url; I was notified of a ping-back that the article in question linked to this site. Jerry Bowyer is indeed an old friend and a smart one. I don’t doubt that he will be assaulted for his nuanced argument that, though Ms Rowling’s critic, a detective fiction writer who wants the elephant to leave her genre room, is Malthusian and boderline deranged, the critic also adheres to the exact sort of economic thinking that characterizes Ms Rowling’s work.

Mr Bowyer’s point and Mr Givens’ above are oddly complementary after a fashion. But I’ll let you work that out in the comment boxes.

Please note, as well, that any hope or thought that Ms Rowling will give up the mystery writing gig will have to wait until after the summer. The Cameron Strike novel, The Silkworm, will be published by Little, Brown on June 19th. Full article here, for which link, thank you, James!

Does anyone else think of Michael Jordan playing Quidditch, I mean, baseball, when reading Ms Rowling trying her hand under a pseudonym at the mystery game?

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I was not surprised or delighted by Ms Rowling’s recent comments about the Harry-Hermione pairing  in her Wonderland interview with Emma Watson (you can read my thoughts here and here). James Thomas, author of Re-Potting Harry Potter and Rowling Revisited, in contrast to my acerbic notes responded with his characteristically lighter and more engaging touch:

I have decided that my REPOTTING HARRY POTTER should now be entitled HARRY POTTER REPOTTED.  Please spread the word.  (I am also revisiting the title of ROWLING REVISITED and have tentatively decided that Dimmesdale needs to commite suicide, Mr. Darcy is arrested for spousal abuse, Daisy Buchanon swerved the car and missed Myrtle, and–even though the cow jumped over the moon–the dish ran away with the fork.)

Marybeth Davis Baggett — and, yes, that last name should be familiar to Potter Pundits of every degree (the professors Baggett are married) — is an English teacher at Liberty University. In the spirit of a balanced response to Ms Rowling’s rolling-revelation of what she really meant, I hope you will read Prof M. D. Baggett’s thoughts on the issue, which are much more charitable and edifying than my own! Her J. K. Rowling: In Praise of Imagination can be read at the Christ and Pop Culture web log.

Imagine you are getting on an elevator in a high rise apartment building. You have had a long day and you’re looking forward to the evening in your penthouse apartment, an evening you plan to spend reading the book you’ve just received in the mail, hand delivered by Bob, the courteous desk attendant in the lobby. Probably the Concise History of World Populations: A Demographic History of the Planet. Can’t wait…

But as you get on the elevator, you overhear the conversation of the two women exiting, a grandmother and granddaughter pair judging from the ages, and this exchange:

Grandmother: “I’ve never understood your fascination with Harry Potter, Delilah. What is it that you find so enthralling about these stories?”

Granddaughter: “Oh. MaMa, how I wish you would read the books — or listen to them! Where do I begin?”

As they walk off hand in arm, oblivious to all others, you think —

What do you think?

In the first of what the faculty hopes are a series of HogwartsProfessor Short Essay Contests, we ask you to write a 500-750 word composition, poem, fictional vignette, whatever in answer to the question, “When I am asked why I love the Hogwarts Saga, I answer…” We will post the top ten responses we receive in the next two weeks — please share this challenge with your friends — and the essay receiving the most votes in an Ides of March tally will earn its author two free tickets to the Warner Brothers Studio Tours, London, a $100 value.

We won’t be paying your air fare to see the famous Leavesden Studios if you’re in North America, of course, or your stay, alas. Getting there is your job. We recommend with enthusiasm, though, that you make reservations at the Park Inn Watford  hotel, which establishment has kindly provided us with these tickets for a promotional give away. Hurrah!

Entries will be accepted until the stroke of midnight, Oklahoma City time, 1 March 2014. Get to work on those compositions and send them with the subject line ‘Park Inn Watford Leavensden Ticket Contest’ to john at hogwartsProfessor dot com.

Per Pallas Athene, we have word that the Emma Watson/J. K. Rowling interview in Wonderland magazine is now available in full and can be read at Mugglenet.com in its entirety until the copyright lawyers make them bring it down (not even a link to the source?). Reading the interview as it is published rather than just from the controversial excerpts brings context to those “Ron and Hermione were a bad idea as a Couple” and confirmation of criticism made here of Ms Rowling’s asides earlier this week.

Three quick thoughts:

(1) Read the Interview online while you can. As I wrote here earlier this week, excerpts are always a distortion of the original and this is the product from which Miss Watson and Ms Rowling wish us to make our conclusions, even we are interested in such things.

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CNN’s Saeed Ahmed reports this morning in an article titled JK Rowling says Hermione should have married Harry Potter, not Ron that the Presence Herself, speaking with Emma ‘Hermione’ Watson, now regrets her most important ‘Shipping decision in the Hogwarts Saga.

The Wonderland issue doesn’t come out until Thursday. But Britain’s Sunday Times published excerpts of the interview in a front-page story, “JK admits Hermione should have wed Harry.”

“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really,” Rowling says in the interview.

“For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” she adds. “I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

And what did the fictional Mrs. [Ron] Weasley have to say about all this? She agrees!

“I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy,” Watson says in the interview.

Three quick notes after the jump:

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