Possibility One: Personal Problems

May 3, 2019 by 1 Comment

Rowling or a loved one is sick, challenged by an addiction, or suffering from relationship issues. Maybe.

I have been thinking the last week about Rowling’s twitter silence, sixteen weeks today. While I think the reasons discussed on the subject in a variety of posts here at HogwartsProfessor are cogent and plausible, that is, one stop beyond merely possible, I have come to realize there are at least three other possibilities for her stepping away from her social media platform. They are personal reasons, legal order, and creating suspence, the last meaning only that the effect of her silence is intrigue and that it is reasonable to assume, given Rowling’s skill in manipulating readers through narrative, she may be as skilled in silence.

Today I want to discuss ‘personal reasons.’ What personal reasons could there be that would cause Rowling to retreat from her public persona into silence? What could be so serious that she would no longer retweet announcements from Lumos, the Cursed Child productions, Bronte Studios about the adaptations of her Strike novels, or Warnder Brothers about the Fantastic Beasts franchise? Three possibilities come to mind.

(1) Imminent Death: Anne Rowling, the author’s mother, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 35 and died in 1990 when only 45. MS is not a genetic disease but those with family members who suffer from the incurable illness are more likely to get the disease than those who do not as are those who smoke; Rowling was a cigarette smoker from her teen years until at least 2000 and the writing of Goblet of Fire (see all the articles that mention Rowling smoking here). If Rowling learned that she had MS or another degenerative illness, say, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, that would explain her decision to stop twittering her life away and refocus on her artistry and legacy as a story-teller. And do so privately.

At least as likely along this path is that one of Rowling’s family members, her sister Diane, her husband, her daughter Jessica from her failed first marriage or one of the two children of her second marriage is suffering from physical disease or a mental illness and in need of her attention. Rowling has been heroically protective of her family’s privacy during her second life as a global celebrity; it would be like her in this regard to step away quietly from professional commitments to include twitter in order to do the right thing, i.e., re-focus her attention on those needing her full time.

(2) Addiction and Abstinence: Rowling is an addictive personality. In addition to her history with chain smoking cigarettes, there is the record of her Minesweeper fixation, and her confession during the 2008 election that she was unable to stop reading about the American presidential primaries and the race between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Her tweeting and retweeting articles this last year until January 2019 about Brexit and the need for a second referendum show the signs, too, of compulsive reading online about these subjects. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

New Rowling Twitter Header and Cameo: Capricorn and the Battle of Hogwarts?

May 2, 2019 by 5 Comments

There were no new tweets today on J. K. Rowling’s twitter page but there was a big change. As you can see above, we have a new header for the page and a fresh cameo. Beatrice Groves, who reminded The Presence six days ago of her annual tweeted apology for the casualty-laden Battle of Hogwarts (today is the 21st anniversary of the Battle), has already identified the stars in the picture as a “close-up” of the Capricorn constellation; read about that here.

We know that Rowling is an amateur astrologer who has drawn up detailed natal charts for friends with longish interpretations. Does Capricorm have a hidden meaning in astrological lore connected with the Battle of Hogwarts? We only know of one astrological reference that Rowling is familiar with because she used it almost exclusively in the charts which have been posted online: Louis MacNeice’s Astrology (Doubleday, 1964). I own a copy but found very little in the pages dedicated to Capricorn except for MacNiece’s concern about “Capricorn’s ruler… frosty old Saturn.”  “Saturn is casting a chill or a shadow and yet he may be a liberator. If Saturn the ruler is actually in this sign [i.e., Capricorn on the natal chart], then everything is cut to the bone” (p 98).

In the discussion of the planet Saturn and its influences we find “In the Middle Ages Saturn was said to carry a scythe or a sickle because he does more execution when receding than when advancing” (p 60). It is also “much connected with magic” (p 62). Mostly, though, Saturn is bad news: melancholy, depression, illness, and death.

Which, at a stretch, is a pointer to the deaths at the Battle of Hogwarts? If you like. Saturn the planet might have been pictured rather than the Capricorn constellation if this was the message. I’m hopeful that the picture means instead what Rowling has said each of her headers reflect, what she is working on and thinking about now.

What do you make of the new header on the J. K. Rowling twitter page? Is there astrological meaning, something we will learn about in Strike5 or Beasts3, or something else? Click on the ‘Leave a Comment’ link at the top of this post and let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Twitter

Cormoran and Robin: Echoes of Homer’s Odysseus and Penelope? (Joanne Gray)

May 1, 2019 by 3 Comments

A Guest Post from Joanne Gray

When I first looked into a possible Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ link to J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series over a year ago, I didn’t see enough to fit what I thought really fit the criteria of providing echoes between the two works. But that changed while reading John Vlahos’ article, “Homer’s ‘Odyssey’: Penelope and the Case for Early Recognition,” when I began to notice that in presenting his case, he was using Homer’s own words to show the poem’s main couple, Odysseus and Penelope, as “two-of-a-kind and a well-matched pair…possessing a special understanding which Homer described as homophrosyne, meaning of “one accord, one mind.” (p. 12)

The more I read, the more I was reminded of J. K. Rowling’s two main characters, Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. I felt I had finally found a way into the connection between the two works and I began to search the ‘Odyssey’ to hopefully find those elusive echoes between the two.

Just as Odysseus and Penelope are at the heart of Homer’s Odyssey, his epic story of a soldier’s journey home from war and his need to get home to his wife Penelope, I was reminded of the interview J. K. Rowling gave about her Cormoran Strike series and her remark about the greater plot running through it: “The larger plot is about these two characters [Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott] and what happens to them personally” and “the dynamic between them is, I think, the thing that keeps people reading. It’s certainly the thing that keeps me writing.”

Kostas Myrsiades, Professor Emeritus of Comparative and Greek Literature, edited the special ‘College Literature’ issue that also contains his poem (printed in part below) which captures this deep understanding between Odysseus and Penelope that exits at a level without the need for words…

True revolutions

are ignited by consenting minds

erupting spontaneously

whenever eye meets eye

as when Penelope before the beggar

caught Odysseus’s eye …

Their gazes touched once again
and both Odysseus and Penelope knew. (Kostas Myrsiades, 1993)

Both couples in the Odyssey and Strike series are equal in their intellects and joined to their partner in an uncanny ability to wordlessly convey meaning between each other. Just as in “Lethal White,” [Ch. 62, pg. 551] between Cormoran and Robin:

“He glanced at her. Robin had had occasion before now to deplore how easily he seemed to read her thoughts.”

Rowling shows the intuit connection earlier between Cormoran and Robin in ‘Lethal White’ (p. 25)

“Neither of them could tell who had made the first move, or whether they acted in unison. They were holding each other tightly before they knew what happened…The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years.”

There are so many more of these moments scattered throughout the four Strike books. Here is a list of the (so far) echoes between Homer’s Odyssey and J. K. Rowling’s Strike mysteries in character and story:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts

Warner Bros “Has Confidence” in Fantastic Beasts Film Franchise: Is President Trump to Blame for the Delay?

April 30, 2019 by 5 Comments

As noted in yesterday’s post about Rowling’s having forsaken her Twitter platform, the production and release of the third Fantastic Beasts film has been put off for a year. It will not be in theaters until 12 November 2021 if all goes according to plan. That’s a long, long time from now.

Three thoughts about this announcement:

(1) The Kiss of Death: Baseball fans know that the worse possible news a baseball team manager can receive is that management has announced their confidence in his leadership. The only time such pronouncements are made, of course, is when the team is losing and fans and media are clamoring for a change, usually the manager’s head on a platter and a ‘new face’ in the dugout. “We have confidence in our manager” usually means “He has ten days to fix this problem or he’s out of here.” Are we supposed to believe Warner Bros Chairman Toby Emmerich, then we he says he’s totally committed to Fantastic Beasts?

‘We are incredibly excited about and have confidence in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ series. We all believe this release date will give the filmmakers time and space to allow their artistry to truly flourish and deliver the best possible film to our fans.’

Anyone remember his saying anything like that about the Harry Potter films? Of course not. If Warner Bros were really excited and confident about Fantastic Beasts post Crimes of Grindelwald, they wouldn’t have to reassure us that they are.

(2) Why Not 2020? Of course, the delay might have a much different explanation than the obvious thoughts that there is real friction between screenwriter and producer/director about how the films are being edited or that Rowling’s planned slow narrative release over a five film cycle is just too confusing by Hollywood standards and the decision makers want a change. It could be something related to the slate of films scheduled for release in November 2020 by Warner Bros or other studios, say, a Star Wars film or Marvel Universe or DC superhero flick, with which the film-makers don’t want to compete for attention. If November-December is the optimal release date for the franchise to get butts in seats over the Christmas and New Years holidays, then November 2021 is the next best time if 2020 is already crowded.

And, let’s face it, November 2020 is already taken with respect to media saturation coverage because the biggest game in town, which is to say “in the world,” the American presidential election, will take place the first week of that month. No way Warner Bros wants to release a film in a struggling franchise into that kind of headwind. No one in America will be talking or thinking about anything in the months prior to and just after the election other than who will win the White House and why and how followed by analysis of what actually happened. Sorry, Newt, it’s 2021 for you… President Trump wins that head-to-head battle without breaking a sweat.

(3) True Confessions: I was a little disappointed that they chose Friday 12 November 2021 for the release date. Rowling features the date and time at the dead center of the Hogwarts Saga — Harry’s adventures with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest and talking with Sirius in the Gryffindor Common Room, ‘The Hungarian Horntail’ — as 22 November between 12 midnight and 1 in the morning. That signaled the story turn or half-way point in as straight forward a fashion as the return of Phineas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days on 21 December. 11/22 between 12-1, akin to the Vernian 12/21 chiasmus there-and-back-again date was a great marker.

Fantastic Beasts 3 is the story turn for the five film franchise. Couldn’t they have released it on 22 November, say, between 12 midnight and 1 AM? Just for old times sake? To mark the pivot?

Let me know if you think President Trump and American electoral politics are to blame for the delayed release of the third Beasts film or whatever you think of the announcement that we have two and a half years to figure out if Queenie is Severus Snape’s mother or role model. Just click on the ‘Post a Comment’ link up by the post title and share your thoughts in the comment boxes below!

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts, Hog Pro Notes

J. K. Rowling Says Goodbye to Twitter

April 29, 2019 by 8 Comments

I think we can assume, on the model of someone being declared ‘officially dead’ after disappearing for a sufficient period of time, that J. K. Rowling has abandoned her Twitter page and will not be returning to it. She has not posted since 10 January 2019, just shy of sixteen weeks ago today, and I think we are obliged to think this is not a vacation from the twitter wars but a turning away from the mindless, endless distraction of it all in order to return to her vocation as writer, both screenwriter and novelist.

Three thoughts on this occasion:

(1) The File: I keep an imaginary file in which to store ‘Things True Only of J. K. Rowling.’ You’ll find in it, if the file existed outside my interior ‘cloud,’ Rowling’s claim that she does not ‘see’ Daniel Radcliffe in her mind’s eye when she thinks “Harry Potter.” And that a film studio pledged its bankroll to make five blockbuster films on the pledge of a screenwriter who had not yet written a screenplay to write five stories, sight unseen. Add to this file Rowling’s walking away from 14.7 million followers on twitter, the largest social media platform for any living author. Forgive me for thinking that Warner Brothers, Harry Potter Theatrical Productions (Cursed Child), her various publishers, and Lumos cannot be thrilled by her decision to #JustWalkAway. I won’t mention the Remainer faithful and anti-anti-Semitism activists who will miss her daily, sometimes seven-times-a-day, notes for their causes. This is truly a remarkable decision, even if only temporary.

(2) She Told Us It Was Coming: As noted in previous tweets about Rowling on Twitter and her absence since 10 January, there have been signs. First there was the blowback from the online Harry Potter generation about Rowling’s being insufficiently ‘woke’ with respect to Jonny Depp, Nagini, Gay Dumbledore, etc. Rowling’s last picture that was posted on 10 January was a screenshot of a tweet that said the Rowling ‘Cinderella Story’ was a “lie.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter