The Rowling Library (TRL) Books announced today that they will be publishing ‘A. Ibid’s edited essay-anthology, The Phoenix or the Flame: Essays on J. K. Rowling’s Original Plans for ‘Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix, in the “fourth quarter of 2024.”
Edited by A. Ibid, who goes by the username ibid-11962, a distinguished figure in online Harry Potter communities known for his extensive knowledge of J.K. Rowling’s works and canon, The Phoenix or the Flame brings together the insights of renowned scholars including John Granger, Beatrice Groves, and Louise Freeman, among other esteemed voices. Through their expert analysis, this collection not only compares the original plans with the published novel but also explores the broader implications of these changes on the Harry Potter narrative and its legacy.
The title, The Phoenix or the Flame, which references a quote from the Harry Potter series, is a nod to the juxtaposition of Rowling’s initial vision with its final outcome. The Phoenix or the Flame is slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2024. TRL Books will soon reveal the full list of contributing authors and abstracts, the book’s synopsis, and its cover design.
I’m mentioned in that announcement so I feel I can share the story of my participation in the project — after the jump!
I was invited to contribute a chapter to this anthology last February. I accepted that invitation immediately and with real enthusiasm for a bundle of reasons:
- My admiration for and debts to Patricio Tarantino at TRL know no bounds and he’s never before asked me to do anything for or participate in a TRL project;
- ‘Ibid’ is the only manuscript and canon expert in Rowling’s work that has come to my attention (it doesn’t overlap at all with my interests, really) and he is, well, “solid” (and working him, a brilliant editor, has been both an education with respect to his area of expertise and a pleasure as he helped me fix a lot of problems with my contribution);
- I learned who else was being invited to contribute and some of the essay topics being discussed (I didn’t want to be left out!); and
- I had a pretty good idea why I was being invited and it was a role I was more than willing to play.
That role, though it was never discussed openly, was to be the contrarian who didn’t think those grids were very important at all except as an initial plotting device. I was supposed to shoot at the premise of the anthology as the SME with respect to Rowling’s chiastic structures.
My argument was going to be based on the ring structure of the book and all the parallels between Phoenix and both Prisoner of Azkaban and Philosopher’s Stone. But that was pretty old hat — I wrote about those internal and external correspondences in Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle in 2010 (and Brett Kendal and Joyce Odell had done the heavy lifting there soon after Phoenix was published in 2003!) — and I wanted to contribute something new.
And I came up with something, a structural idea that I’d tossed around since my first talk on this subject to the NYC Harry Potter Meet-Up Group at the Samsung Center, the lecture that was expanded to become the book mentioned above. I had “tossed it around” as a possibility but never done the exacting work necessary to diagram the structure of a book or an event within a book.
I made that effort and my suspicion of many years turned out to be true, which complicated structure and symbolically rich event in the fifth Harry Potter novel, I have subsequently come to believe, may be the most important and meaningful chapter set among the series’ 198 chapters and epilogue.
I probably don’t need to add that none of the structure or depth of that event, the real climax of Phoenix, is in the planning grids. That is neither a logical QED demonstration that the only planning charts Rowling has given us are worthless nor is it even a scientific method ‘conclusive argument’ weighing all possibilities. It does, however, strongly suggest that Rowling’s principal artistry and meaning is not in her architectural planning, her sketchy blueprints, as important as those are, but in the detailed finishing work of the writing and re-writing that makes her stories invite re-reading and close study.
As the announcement TRL Books made today and quoted above made clear, “TRL Books will soon reveal the full list of contributing authors and abstracts, the book’s synopsis, and its cover design.” I have already shared a chart here in another post but I’ll hold off on discussing why I was so sure this chapter set had to be a ‘ring-within-a-ring,’ per Mary Douglas until I get TRL Books and A. Ibid release the news.
I look forward to reading this anthology myself, especially the essays by people who take those charts much more seriously than I have, and to all of The Rowling Library’s publications, from their tweets and posts to their online journal and bound ‘TRL Books’ titles. No fandom group is doing more than TRL in raising the bar for the serious reading of Rowling and Galbraith. Hat’s are doffed here in Oklahoma to A. Ibid and the TRL Books team!
Back to our previously scheduled program tomorrow. See you then.
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