Rokeby Owes Strike How Much Money?

December 30, 2020 by 9 Comments

Believe it or not, this longish post about the child-support money Jonny Rokeby owes Cormoran Strike leads to an attempt (tomorrow!) to figure out whether Leda Strike’s death was a suicide or murder and which of the five principal suspects — Leda herself, Rokeby, Whittaker, Ted Nancarrow, or Dave Polworth — killed her. I think the significant amount of money in question justifies that speculative leap. I look forward to reading what you think about the money owed in the comment boxes below!

Is it possible to calculate the “little nest egg” of money that Strike’s child support money has become between the Spring of 1993, when 18 year old Strike first makes a claim on it, and November, 2014, when he turns 40?

I guess that inquiry assumes one already has a satisfactory answer to the question, “Why would we want to know how much money Rokeby has in the bank that belongs to Strike?“

We’ll start there, which requires a review of the history of the child-support money as we learn about it in Troubled Blood.

The first we hear of it is in Strike’s tell-all conversation with Robin after bloodying her nose at The American Bar. He shares the story of his second meeting with Rokeby, Strike age 18, a brief exchange caused by Leda’s having been told that, while Rokeby will not be contributing to her son’s college fund, there is a “nest egg” at hand that will help pay for his education. He presumably goes to get it. Things don’t go as planned.

“Second time we met,” said Strike, “I made an appointment with his management. I was eighteen. Just got into Oxford. We hadn’t touched any of Rokeby’s money for years. They’d been back to court to put restrictions on what my mother could do with it, because she was a nightmare with cash, just threw it away. Anyway, unbeknownst to me, my aunt and uncle had informed Rokeby I’d got into Oxford. My mother got a letter saying he had no obligations to me now I’d turned eighteen, but reminding her I could use the money that had been accumulating in the bank account.

“I arranged to see him at his manager’s office. He was there with his long-time lawyer, Peter Gillespie. Got a smile off Rokeby this time. Well, I was off his hands financially now, but old enough to talk to the press. Oxford had clearly been a bit of a shock to him. He’d probably hoped, with a background like mine, I’d slide quietly out of sight forever.

“He congratulated me on getting into Oxford and said I had a nice little nest egg all built up now, because my mother hadn’t spent any of it for six, seven years.

“I told him,” said Strike, “to stick his fucking money up his arse and set fire to it. Then I walked out.” (723)

Strike does not explain why he explodes at hearing the money he is owed described as a “nice little nest egg,” as if it were a savings account Rokeby had been building up for his prodigal son. Anyone who has read Career of Evil and Strike’s memories of Leda Strike’s married life with Jeff Whittaker, however, a man who married her to get at her Rokeby and Fantoni money, knows why. Leda couldn’t ever convince the gold-digger guitarist and Satanist that the Rokeby-imposed restrictions meant she had no longer had any access to the rock-star’s fortune.

Rokeby was in essence admitting to Strike, bragging on it really, that he had caused Strike’s family, which to Strike means “Mum” and “Lucy,” to live hand to mouth, in squalor, and with Whittaker because Jonny and his lawyers didn’t think she was fiscally responsible. The young man already knew his “mother hadn’t spent it” because of the legal “restrictions” Rokeby had put on it — but to hear it called a “nice little nest egg”? As if the savings produced by his family’s suffering were a benefit to Strike for which Rokeby expected gratitude from his teenage son?

Cue Oedipal outrage.

Now fast forward to the timeline of Troubled Blood. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Strike Has “Two Dark Angels”? Really?

December 29, 2020 by Leave a Comment

I get the haunting aspect of Leda Strike as a ‘Dark Angel’ in Cormoran’s existence. His birth story and the exotic upbringing he had courtesy of his late mother has largely shaped who he is. And the ‘angel’ bit works because she is dead. The big-story mystery, not much advanced in Troubled Blood except for the Rokeby Valentines Day telephone call, remains if her death was really a suicide. Mom haunts the story; he even mentions feeling her presence — “the wraith of Leda seemed to drift on his cigarette smoke around him” ( p 34).

But Charlotte? She doesn’t die in Troubled Blood and Strike demonstrates that he is done with her as the touchstone of his emotional life by story’s end. In what sense can she fairly be described as a “dark angel”? She’s not dead, the only mystery not yet resolved is the baby she claimed they conceived, and he’s immune to her influence.

Is the suggestion that Charlotte is not yet done with Cormoran or Robin? That she will have some kind of supernatural vengeance as the woman-spurned? I confess to finding that possibility both credible and exciting. You?

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Nick Jeffery: Rowling Library Titles

December 28, 2020 by 3 Comments

Chris Calderon sent me the question, “How many titles can you spot in J.K. Rowling’s new color coded personal library collection?” The link goes to the Rowling tweet in April, one she made during the first Covid Lockdown in the UK. I had corresponded with Nick Jeffery and others at the time and I vaguely remembered that he was working on identifying as many titles as he could. I shared Chris’ question with Nick, he shared his remarkable findings, and I asked for and received permission to post them here.

After the jump, then, Nick Jeffery’s list of the identifiable books in the Rowling bookshelves as of her April, 2020, tweet. In addition, Nick shares his compilation of identifiable titles from the 2000 Bloomsbury Goblet of Fire Adult Edition book cover photo, a discussion we had here — with much less success – in August 2019: ‘Name That Not Quite Legible Book Title! The Mysteries on Rowling’s Bookshelf.’ The Jeffery lists do not allow us to add these authors and titles to the Literary Likes List, but they are suggestive and encouraging, believe me, for Serious Readers of Rowling-Galbraith.

Thank you, Nick! Everyone else — prepare to be astonished and delighted. Enjoy — and please do share the titles you have identified, as well! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling-Murray Wedding Anniversary 19

December 27, 2020 by 4 Comments

Yesterday was the 19th wedding anniversary of Joanne Rowling and Dr Neil Murray, who were married in a private ceremony at their recently acquired Perthshire castle on Boxing Day, 2001. If you want to send off a present, fashionably late (no flowers!), the gift, both by modern and traditional reckoning, for the 19th wedding anniversary should be in bronze.

A quick three notes to mark the occasion, none worthy of being set in bronze, alas:

(1) The Rowling-Murray marriage, if her recent comments on ‘Tracks of My Years’ are any measure, seems to be in good shape. It has, at least, its good moments.

Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers – on a moving marital moment and lockdown being a special time with her family

JK: Well I think of all the love songs written, this might be my favourite. It’s such a beautiful, simple sentiment, but I have an additional reason for choosing it, which is that it took lockdown for my husband to say to me… I was playing it in the kitchen while cooking something; he walked in, he said,  ‘This always makes me think of you when you’re down in London’ and that was a very moving marital moment so now it has an extra layer of meaning for me. [On lockdown]…. Well, I hope that all listeners have had the happy experience that I’ve had of it being quite a special time. We also have teenage kids and it’s been kind of wonderful to spend that extra time with them.

Contrast this comment with her comments about the REM song, ‘Everybody Hurts,’ on her November, 2000, appearance on the BBC program ‘Desert Island Discs.’ Go to 26:00 in the interview to hear that story.

(2) She Married Harry Potter? One reason the Potter-Murray match may have worked out is that Rowling says he has all the qualities of the man who lived in her head for twenty years, rent free, that is, The Boy Who Lived. From the MTV.com report on the Carnegie Hall event in 2007 (grateful hat-tip to Patricio at TheRowlingLibrary.com):

When asked by an 18-year-old 12th grader, “Which of the Potter characters would you marry?,” Rowling giggled. “The truth is, in my younger days, I dated Ron more than once,” she admitted, giving an inside look at why Hermione (the closest character to Rowling’s younger self) might be attracted to Harry’s best friend. “He’s fun to write, but not so much fun to date.” And once she had learned her lesson, Rowling said, “I married Harry Potter,” referring to her second husband, Neil Murray. “He’s up there [in the wings]. I just mortified him,” she laughed. “But he looks like Harry would look like, at a certain age. I married a very good person and a gutsy person. And that’s who Harry is.”

From the 2007 Interview with Rowling in Holland at Deathly Hallows‘ publication there (big thank you to Beatrice Groves):

When did you decide to draw a parallel with the Nazis? With Voldemort, who strives for the rule of the”pure blood”, and with Draco Malfoy as a young soldier who is just ?
Immediately I think. I’m not exactly sure. I think The Second World War in anchored in all our minds, right? Draco Malfoy does indeed stand for that type of boy. He wouldn’t have killed Dumbledore , he couldn’t. As long as things are imaginary, okay, but once it becomes reality, the thing becomes more difficult. No, that I gave him that light blonde hair is not because I wanted to make him into a scary Nazi. You give your characters the appearance that you find attractive; that is why I gave my hero dark hair, green eyes and glasses. I’m married to a man who looks like that.

(3) Whom Did He Marry?

I want to think he married Robin Ellacott, which is to say, (a) a brilliantly thoughtful woman (b) with PTSD from a previous marriage, (c) one who is working on her issues but who is loyal and supportive to those she loves (d) while knowing her vocation and insistent that she heed this calling. I was going to add “fearless,” but “brave” and “tenacious,” in Rowling’s case even “stubborn” are probably more accurate. I forgot “sense of humor”!

And who wouldn’t want to be married to Robin Ellacott? “Everyone loves Robin” is a refrain one hears not only in the Strike novels but from the author in interviews. She has her problems, of course, but she doesn’t have any real character flaws or “faults” I can think of off-hand.

Here’s the thing. From Dr Murray’s description of what it is like living with Jo Murray, I think the character he married wasn’t Hermione Granger or Robin Ellacott or even Sybil Trelawney, all character stand-ins for J. K. Rowling in their way. He married Cormoran Strike. From the 2012 New Yorker profile, ‘Mugglemarch:’

She also met Neil Murray, a friend of her sister’s. Rowling resisted being set up: “He was just out of a marriage himself—I just thought that would be complicated. I wasn’t up for that.” But they eventually found themselves seated next to each other at a charity event in Edinburgh. He was aware of the Harry Potter books but hadn’t read them. The couple have a son and a daughter together. A few years ago, a documentary crew travelling with Rowling recorded what seems to be Murray’s only public comment about his wife: “Jo detaches herself,” he said, in her hearing, with a smile. “When she’s very stressed, she’ll detach herself and only trust one person, and that’s herself. So everyone else gets blocked out and she becomes more and more stressed and less and less able to accept any help.”

That doesn’t sound like a lot of “sunshine,” does it? My guess, though, is that, aware as he was of the problem and, as casually as he shared this in her presence and in front of cameras, that his awareness — and frustration? — wasn’t news to her, they’ve worked on this. “That talking thing” that Robin does with Cormoran (or invites him to try after his blow-up in the American Bar)? My bet is that it was Dr. Murray who said that to her rather than Robin/Joanne who suggested this to him.

Either way, nineteen years in the global spotlight, two teenage children, and a working marriage — these are not small but significant achievements, ones worthy of at least a Bronze Medal. Congratulations, Dr. and Mrs. Murray!

 

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling Talks Tarot on 60 Minutes (1999)

December 25, 2020 by 2 Comments

“[I don’t believe in magic] in that sense. I find [magic] fascinating and I find it fun and I could read your cards for you now and I would hope we would both find it amusing but I wouldn’t want either of us to walk away believing in it.” [Grim face of determination]

We already knew  from Sean Smith’s 2001 biography of Rowling that Jo Rowling read tarot cards with her friends at the Wyedean Comprehensive where she was Head Girl as a high school student.

One [of her friends from school] recalls, ‘Jo would entertain us with her brilliant wit and colorful stories. She was very inventive and clever at reading tarot cards and palms and weaving a story around it which was pure make believe but had us alternately gripped and then laughing’ (Sean Smith, J. K. Rowling: A Biography, p 62).

She claimed fluency in this art in one of her first American television interviews in 1999, too, seventeen years after graduation. As Beatrice Groves noted in her LeakyCauldron piece about the History of Magic Exhibition, from which series of articles I first saw the video clip above, the first of the books that she discusses with Stahl is Fortune Telling by Cards. “I know a lot about foretelling the future without, I have to say, believing in it.” Troubled Blood shows that she is still more than familiar with the Wicked Pack of Cards.

Do you think she was coached before this 1999 interview to be sure she said she didn’t believe in magic? That look she gives Stahl after saying she wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about her ability to tell fortunes with tarot cards is unusual. I suspect that, if the coaches existed, they weren’t delighted she brought up divinatory cartomancy!

Here’s the thing — the clip above was never aired on television, at least not in the United States. You can read the transcript of the show that was broadcast at Accio-Quotes; there’s nothing about her not believing in magic, Fortune Telling by Cards, or her reading Lesley Stahl’s future from the tarot card deck in her purse. There is this important bit in the transcript I was delighted to find:

ROWLING: But I don’t really think of these [new stories] as sequels. I see this as one huge novel that has been divided for the reader’s convenience into seven.

But magic? And tarot cards? That part of the 60 Minutes interview had to wait for a website called HarryLatino.com to post in 2007 and Beatrice Groves’ posts with same in 2018. Where HarryLatino.com got it, who knows? And, no surprise, only Professor Groves picked up on the tarot card reference after this site put the clip up on YouTube — and that only eleven years later.

Imagine the differences in the conversations during the Potter Panic if 60 Minutes in 1999 had aired the interview with the tarot cards segment and Wikipedia had not decided in 2010 to block the posting of information about Rowling’s skills in astrology on her Wiki page. Perhaps we should just be grateful.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes