Hogwarts Professor

I’m a big fan of both Robert Galbraith and J. K. Rowling but, like Aristotle’s ‘Great Souled Man,’ I’m proud enough that I don’t like to compete in any contest I am not likely to win or to make a respectable showing. Hence my decision not to watch Crimes of Grindelwald today or to participate in the feverish and global frenzy about it until I have a copy of the screenplay and have seen the film, probably next week. I’ll continue to do my “voice in the wilderness” schtick and post daily about Lethal White — and put up interesting guest posts about the new Fantastic Beasts franchise entry as they arrive by owl in the coming days.

Today’s Lethal White post is about mistakes in the story, both what Harry Potter fans used to call ‘Flints’ after the Slytherin student who played an eighth year at Quidditch because of auctorial nodding and editorial oversight, and a few head-scratchers as well, things which seem bizarre enough to be mistakes but might be clues. I’ve limited my list to seven, that magical number, and hope that you’ll share the gaffes and oddities that struck you in your reading and re-reading via the comment boxes after the post. See you after the jump! [Read more…]

I mentioned in my most recent Lethal White post that I was re-reading the first Cormoran Strike mystery, Cuckoo’s Calling, to see if there were Lethal White pointers and echoes I had missed. I promised to share those I had not already discussed in ‘Lethal White: Cuckoo’s Calling Retold?‘ or in ‘Lethal White: Add Seven Cuckoo Echoes.’ Before I list them, I am obliged to explain why the echoes and correspondence between Books 1 and 4 of the Cormoran Strike series are important.

Close reading of the first four books has revealed that they are written in parallel to and perhaps even as commentary on their equivalent number in the Harry Potter series, e.g., Lethal White features a ‘Minister of Culture’ who is murdered by his psychopathic son very reminiscent of the Bartimaeus Crouch storyline in Goblet of Fire (see ‘Does Lethal White echo Goblet of Fire?’ for much more on this).

This strongly suggests that the series is structured in the same way as the Hogwarts Saga, which is to say, as a seven-part ring cycle or composition (for that structure, see Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle). While we have been able to chart each book’s structure as they come out to see if they are rings (they are; see ‘Lethal White: The Ring Structure’ for the diagrams and explanations), we have had to wait for the fourth book in the series to see if, as with Philosopher’s Stone and Goblet of Fire, there were strong references and parallels between the first and middle books that will play out in the seventh. A proper ring has a story-turn which reflects the story origin and points to the finale,which pivot creates a story axis.

These parallels between Books 1 and 4, because they would confirm the ‘Series in Parallel’ theory, are especially interesting, too, because Rowling in person and her spokespeople have repeatedly denied that the Cormoran Strike books are a seven book series. As she repeatedly denied that she was writing murder mysteries before she was outed as ‘Robert Galbraith,’ however, makes her and allies in the game known perjurers and hence unreliable witnesses. We have to trust the texts.

Which brings us back to Cuckoo’s Calling, the series starting point, and the search for any pointers to or echoes in Lethal White. There are many more than those we have discussed here already in the posts mentioned above. “Many more” as in “more than twenty-five”! [Read more…]