J. K. Rowling made a much longer than usual tweet on Monday in which she responded to a seemingly serious claim that “Gender identity is real, layered, and deserves a more thoughtful approach” than the un-nuanced assertion that “transgender women” are mentally ill men.

Here is the original claim with Rowling’s three paragraph response immediately after:

The first response to this was a question about Rowling being tested for chromosomes, the twixter assuming that Rowling had been asserting that the question “What is a woman?” can only be answered in terms of XX or XY chromosomes. Rowling replied with her answer to the question “What is a woman?”  (specifically, “How can I know I am a woman without a chromosome test?”) and a chart outlining the various genetic possibilities for men and women. [Read more…]

Robert Coover, one of a legion of postmodern writers with whose works a well-educated reader is supposed to be conversant, died on 5 October 2024 of undisclosed causes. I’m guessing at age 92 it matters less than it might otherwise for us to know.

The Washington Post’s obituary, ‘Robert Coover, Master of Postmodern Fiction, Dead at 92,’ was well done and the Wikipedia page devoted to him and his work is a helpful introduction and overview.

Reading the frequently anthologized Coover short story ‘The Babysitter‘ this afternoon, I thought of what Robert Frost is supposed to have said about writing in free verse: “I would rather play tennis with the net down.” Postmodern fiction, as ridiculously self-conscious as it can be about the rules of writing (and how all of them must be broken or challenged more or less simultaneously), too often makes me think that these are verbal artists who want only to play in the net, with the net, without rackets or tennis balls.

As noted in The Post obituary, however: “When Coover’s stories don’t work, which is about half the time … they’re dreadful — arid experiments that are the equivalent of lighting the wrong end of a filtered cigarette,” New York Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote in 2018. “But when they work,” he went on to say, “oh my.”

Indeed. When I’d finished ‘The Babysitter’ today, I realized the story — if you want to call its paragraph story facets that — would haunt me forever. It is the ‘break all the rules, the fourth and fifth walls coming down’ kind of writing you find in George Saunders’ ‘The Semplica-Girls Diaries‘ and Nabokov’s ‘The Vane Sisters‘ that years later roll into one’s thinking, unsolicited and seemingly without connection,  while standing in a queue at the beach or when taking a break from routine but hot and sweaty work at a job. Appearances which add the dimension to perspective and awareness that are the singular contribution of this writing. The “oh my” of Garner’s review.

I recommend those three stories, one, two, or the set, for anyone wanting to remember the remarkable Coover at his passing or for Rowling Readers, Potter Pundits, and Serious Strikers, who wish to remind themselves of the too-oft forgot truism that Mrs Murray is a postmodern writer writing on postmodern themes for a postmodern audience.

Foster that “incredulity toward the metanarrative”! “Innovate, innovate, innovate!” Etc.

I have hastily searched for a transcript to this interview and come up empty. I will do my best to rectify that.

Why? Because 2012 is an important year in Rowling Studies; it was the year Casual Vacancy was published, her first novel explicitly for adults and first publication post Potter, and we know now that she was neck deep in the planning and writing of the Strike-Ellacott books, the first of which would be published in April 2013. And The Ickabog and Christmas Pig, too? If memory serves, Nick Jeffery used the bread crumbs Rowling dropped in this interview about her current efforts and he predicted the existence of Pig well before that project was made public. Regardless, 2012 was a pivotal year and we need a transcript and annotated version.

If you want to read what Potter Pundits of the time thought were the most interesting and important Rowling droppings rather than listen to the fifty minute ‘virtual’ interview, check out the SnitchSeeker.com contemporaneous coverage of Rowling’s 2012 Potter Q&A. ‘Harry Potter Wiki’ has a page devoted to the event, too, one largely derived from SnitchSeeker’s summary.

More tomorrow!

Variety reported in April that Rowling’s best stand-alone work, The Christmas Pig, was being adapted for film. “Variety understands the project is in a very early stage of development in-house [by Bronte Studios] and a production company has not yet been attached.”

There hasn’t been any news since that I know of. Variety hinted in April that the adaptation would be an animated film rather than live-action: “The Christmas Pig was first published in 2021 with illustrations by Jim Field. At the time of publication, Swift Films made a series of promotional videos for the project.” It makes sense that it would be a cartoon, except I cannot recall a Bronte Studios animated project; I think the Variety hint is that Bronte Studios will “develop” the adaptation and then out-source it to Swift Films.

I confess to scratching my head about Bronte Studios being involved with even just a supervisory role in Christmas Pig’s adaptation to a movie when they have taken on the job of re-inventing the Hogwarts Saga for the television screen.

I confess, too, both to real excitement about the world having an alternative to the usual annual Christmas specials, be it the variety shows, parades, or animated films, an option with some real heft to it — and to real disappointment that the adaptation is being made. I have been looking forward very much to reading this book to my grandchildren; the delight I had with their parents when I read the Harry Potter novels aloud to them for the first time and saw the story unfolding in the wonder-filled imaginations may be a pleasure I do not have with the grandkids if they watch the cartoon version first.

Oh, well! I’m looking forward to news about this project, even if I elect in the end not to watch the movie myself. Let me know if you’ve heard about any developments!