The Presence this morning did a radio interview with Graham Norton, the celebrated BBC2 talk show host, in her Robert Galbraith persona. She talked about Lethal White. Sort of. Three quick notes —
(1) Graham Norton, the UK Oprah? I said above that Graham Norton is “celebrated” but I had not heard of him until yesterday. Fortunately the Times of London has done a lengthy profile of him this week, an article which you can read in exchange for your email address. Norton, it turns out, has been doing a celebrity talk show program for twenty plus years, likes Americans, and has written two memoirs and two novels, the latter quite good if winning prizes is any indication. This appearance by Rowling as Galbraith was the first ‘push’ the author has made for the latest Cormoran Strike novel, Lethal White, and is at least the UK equivalent of her ‘Today’ show appearance for Crimes of Grindelwald and her Lumos chat with Whoopi Goldberg.
(2) Clickbait Queen Rowling, even as Robert Galbraith her second pseudonym (‘J. K. Rowling’ being the first; she is legally and what passes for real life ‘Joanne Rowling Murray’), is internet gold. Anything she does or says is almost immediately written up for posting online as sure-thing traffic generators. Both the BBC and The Telegraph, consequently, have already posted summaries and quotations from the Graham Norton interview this morning. I have not been able to listen to the actual interview but we have some idea of what was said from these postings.
(3) Cinderella Story, Cormoran Style It seems, alas, that there was very little discussion of Lethal White, the ‘structure and style’ of crime writing and these four Strike books in particular, or about their relation to the Harry Potter books. This may be (?) a function of few people, to include Norton, having read Lethal White and being able to follow an inside-baseball conversation along those lines. As likely as that is, I fear it also reflects that we have a new ‘groove’ for Rowling interviews.
As we saw on the ‘Today’ interview, we are still obliged in an interview with Rowling about her Wizarding World projects to do a lengthy review of her single-mother-on-the-dole Cinderella story. In her Lumos talk, too, Whoopi Goldberg asked the standard question and received the set answers to how Rowling became involved with the cause of institutionalized children. Now with Norton Graham, we see the Galbraith-Cormoran-Strike interview block we have heard before and will probably be hearing again and again, namely the story of why Rowling chose to write under a different name, how she was outed, etc.
She did repeat the story about the BBC coming to her people about doing a Strike teevee adaptation before she was outed, a tale I have said previously seemed remarkably unlikely (Rowling’s Bronte Studios had just done an adaptation of Casual Vacancy for the BBC). If repetition is a sign of veracity — and of course it isn’t — then there may be something to it. If, like her several pre-outing bold-faced denials that she was writing crime fiction, saying it over and over is just her hope of being believed, so be it.
If you were able to listen to the Graham Norton interview, please do share in the comment boxes below what the click-bait articles about it missed. And even if you didn’t hear it, what do you think of the idea that Rowling now has a Cormoran Strike Interview formula to go along with her Harry Potter and Lumos schticks? Are we present at the creation of a new Rowling meme we will be reading forever after? Thanks for sharing your thoughts either way, here or on Twitter at @HogwartsProf!
Battlestar Galactica and was let down by the darker, modern interpretation, just for one example. However, I decided to give Netflix’s new take on Lost in Space a try, mainly because it looked good, and because I never cared much for the original, so I knew that it wouldn’t damage my youthful expectations. And, to be totally honest, I was just delighted by the fact that if the show becomes popular, most of my students may not look at me in bewilderment when I try to warn them off Wikipedia or Cliffnotes as sources for their essays by waving my arms and yelling, “Danger, Will Robinson!” So, I gave it a whirl. After just one episode, I am already intrigued, not just because the effects are awesome and the kids are charismatic (though really, kids, if your name is Will, and you are on a Netflix show, there is a really good chance that you will get lost someplace scary and that large chunks of the script will consist of family members yelling your name…). What excites me are the fantastic literary hints that tie this new series into some of the old texts that we love and discuss here. So fasten your safety belt, and join me after the jump to get lost in some literature! 
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