Here is an mp3 file of the talk-radio interview I did with Jerry Bowyer minutes before my talk last week at Yale’s Saybrook College. If I sound a little tight or hurried, imagine me in suit and tie, looking at my notes and the clock on the wall in the beautiful Saybrook guest suite, and trying to answer Jerry’s excellent questions with what was left of my attention…. The interview begins two or three minutes into the show so hold on or fast forward.

In the discussion of Ms. Rowling’s Veil comments on the HogPro thread below, Felicity, after Inked’s exposition of the reactions of several character to the veil as archetypal reactions to death, reviewed each from text. Besides revealing where Ms. Rowling made a gaffe worthy of candidates for political office (confusing Ron and Hermione’s reactions to the stone arch), she points out the curious ambiguity of Luna’s character. Felicity wrote:

Luna hears the voices more clearly than anyone and she also know there are “people in there” who (as we find out later in OotP) have “gone on.” But Luna is a character who believes in lots of bizarre things. As Hermione said of Luna, “Ginny’s told me all about her, apparently she’ll only believe in things as long as there’s no proof at all.” (OP13) Luna wears earrings made of dirigible plums, which we learned from Xenophilius, “enhance the ability to accept the extraordinary.” (DH20) And Luna does accept the existence of the extraordinary, even, apparently, the blatantly bogus. She has the strongest belief in an afterlife of all the students, but she also believes in the existence of Blibbering Humdingers, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, Wrackspurts, and the Rotfang Conspiracy. Is Loony Luna an example of faith alone leading to acceptance of all manner of superstition? Or is Ravenclaw Luna an admirable example of untroubled faith standing ground against the ridicule of skeptics? Both?

In a nutshell, Luna can be read as a nutter or spiritually luminous or both. One word for this condition is ‘arationality,’ which is not to be confused with ‘irrationality.’ Her ability to answer the Ravenclaw Common Room Door’s metaphysical chestnut [Read more…]

From Melissa Anelli’s weBlog, an excerpt from her new book, Harry, a History:

JKR: Everyone wanted to go beyond the veil.

MA: This is very canon-based, but there are some things that as a fan, there are things I just gotta know. A lot of fans see the veil as that separation –

JKR: It’s the divide between life and death. I tried to do a nod to that in the Tale of Three Brothers – she was separate from them as though through a veil. You can’t go back if you pass through that veil, you cannot come back. Or you can’t come back in any form that will make either person happy anyway. [Read more…]

What a wonderful week of Daily Prophet watching we have had courtesy of the nomination by Sen. McCain of Gov. Palin as the Republican Party candidate for Vice President! Because of the compression of time post-Olympics and pre-election for the party conventions to play out the last two weeks, it has been a veritable feeding ground for Rita Skeeters, Cornelius Fudges, and Dolores Umbridges on both sides of the aisle to attack and smear political candidates, especially Gov. Palin and her family, and, in this madness, to bring the American political process out into the open for what it is. I waver between seeing it as “hilarious,” “glorious,” “shameful,” and Jefferson’s figurative fertilizer, the “blood of liberty,” but it never comes quite into focus so I keep looking.

If nothing else, the white heat of Presidential politics in Denver and St. Paul has filled my inbox with e-owl inquiries about what I’m up to these days and if I knew that Gov. Palin had tried to have Harry Potter banned from the Wasilla library when she was mayor of this small town in Alaska — and that she fired the librarian when her request was refused. [Read more…]

Thee best part of a Harry Potter movie release is the run-up to the event and the anticipation everyone feels as the day approaches. Warner Brothers announced today that they are moving the Half-Blood Prince movie premiere from 21 November 2008 to 17 July 2009 (the day before the HPEF Conference Azkatraz 2009 opens in San Francisco). Their reasoning? They can make more money. Nice of them to be upfront like that.

Rejoice! We get more than six extra months to think about this… (HT to David!)

UPDATE: And Harry/Daniel to appear in the buff in Half-Blood Prince! Who knew Equus was a warm-up?