Friend of this blog and author of Thought Prison: The Fundamental Nature of Political Correctness, Bruce Charlton, has written perhaps the most damning critique of Ms. Rowling’s self-importance and agenda as a writer since Orson Scott Card let her have it with both barrels over the Copyright law suit years ago. Mr. Charlton thinks we need to have a ‘Emperor Wearing No Clothes’ moment in the wake of Casual Vacancy’s transparent screed against everyone not celebrating Redistribution of Wealth. You can read it in a piece he’s titled ‘Case study of Leftist resentment, moral inversion and the corrosion of character: J.K Rowling.’

Mr. Charlton errs on the side of the right, perhaps, in his hyperbole but it seems like a small breeze of fresh air and something of a counter balance from the excess Jo adoration we are accustomed to from the political left (can you say ‘Harry Potter Alliance‘? I can). Reading Ms. Rowling’s recent ‘By the Book’ interview in the New York Times , you’d have to be numb not to be struck by the author’s pretense and desire to be admired and respected by the cognoscenti. As a UK correspondent of no little reading penetration and literary accomplishment wrote me, “Reading the article made me feel dumb.  And boring.  And provincial, in the worst sense. Oh yes, and unsophisticated, too.”

This is a shame. As we’ve noted here many times over the years, Ms. Rowling’s charitable efforts and personal restraint in the Public Square have been remarkable and laudable given her unprecedented celebrity and the speed she traveled to it from total obscurity.  Her behavior has seemed wonderfully unnatural in her remaining balanced and not as pre-occupied with herself in public as fame encourages, even demands. It seems of late she is sadly human after all and, if Mr. Charlton is correct, her fame and wealth and power have left their mark.

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Hat tip to Keith at MuggleNet!

I confess that last week I needed a little ‘mental floss’ after reading and re-visiting J. K. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy, the promotion and the substance of which turned on the author’s self-importance and reflection more than most fictions, perhaps inevitably. How many authors do we know as well, for better or worse, than we know Jo Rowling?

By a happy providence, I received a reader’s copy of T. M. Doran‘s latest book, Terrapin, at just the moment I really needed a good read. I enjoyed and was challenged meaningfully by Vacancy, as I’ve written at some length. I wanted, nonetheless, to have a good bath after being immersed in Ms. Rowling’s Equus moment and many interviews for as long as I had been.

Terrapin was just what I needed.

Curiously, it has a seven part/day structure, not unlike Casual Vacancy, and, as with Ms. Rowling after her Harry Potter fantasy debut and success, so T. M. Doran’s latest book represents a chasm leaping departure from his first novel, Toward the Gleam (read the HogPro interview with Prof Doran about that book here). The book’s plot is described this way at www.terrapinmystery.com and at T.M. Doran’s  Author Page at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorTMDoran:

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