Guest Post: Who is Jonny Rokeby? Pt 2

February 11, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Who is Jonny Rokeby? Part 2: The Icarus Theme (For Part 1, click here)

By ChrisC

I am operating under the assumption that J.K. Rowling means us to see Jonny Rokeby, rock star and father of Cormoran Strike, as an analogue of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.  To understand my reasoning for this, please consult two previous essays, which can be found here and here.

There are at least three more facets to the character in relation to Marlowe’s text.  Exploring these facets could help gain an understanding both of how Rowling might portray Rokeby and how we are meant to see him when he first walks onstage.  Join me after the jump as we examine a trait that Papa Rock might share with a boy who couldn’t fly.

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts

‘Living Through Death With Harry Potter’

February 10, 2018 by Leave a Comment

From The Atlantic, 23 January 2018:

Living Through Death With Harry Potter

Trauma and tragedy play a role in a lot of children’s literature. But it was J.K. Rowling’s series that helped me cope with almost dying.

By Alice Lesperance

Like many people who grew up in the ’90s and early aughts, my youth was indelibly shaped by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series—by attending midnight-release parties, getting my hands on the latest books, and lining up to watch the new films. To a generation of fans, Harry can sometimes feel more like a childhood companion than a fictional character. Starting in 1997, Rowling followed the boy wizard and his friends through their teenage years, paying as close attention to the mundane (crushes, school dances, exams) as to the magical (potion-making, Quidditch, house elves). But, crucially, the series was unafraid to grow darker and more serious as it wore on. The later books, especially from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onward, show what it’s like to carry the weight of awful things; they go further than most children’s literature, doubling down on the guilt, fear, violence, and, ultimately, death that the young heroes face.

Revisiting the series is always a joy, but although I tend to speed through the first three books, I instinctively start slowing down at Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I feel a bit of apprehension, knowing what lies ahead. As someone who suffered a traumatic event at a young age it hurts even 10 years later to read the inner thoughts of a teenaged Harry as he starts losing more of his friends and loved ones.

I almost died once. At age 16, I was sitting in the hallway of my high school in southern Alabama when a tornado…

Read the Whole Thing.

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Hog Pro Notes

Guest Post: Who is Jonny Rokeby? Pt 1

February 10, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Who is Jonny Rokeby? Marlowe’s Faustus and the Cormoran Strike Mysteries

A HogwartsProfessor Guest Post by ChrisC, Part 1 of 5

In a previous HogwartsProfessor guest post, I pointed out how Rowling left little textual clues as to the nature of detective Cormoran Strike’s supposed biological father, rock star Jonny Rokeby, lead singer of The Deadbeats.  What I didn’t consider was that in addition to a hidden symbolism behind the trio of Duke Ellington, Robert Plant, and William Blake, there was in fact a fourth level of significance to the scene where Strike ponders a photo of his dear old dad in a booth of the Albion Restaurant (The Silkworm, p 213/303)

The name of this unseen fourth symbol is Christopher Marlowe, and what I now realize is the exact literary echo Rowling leaves behind in the scene between Strike and the picture of his dad.  I’d like to suggest that once we dig up this hidden fourth symbol, and explore its thematic importance, we will have a final clue to exact nature of Jonny Rokeby, as well as a major clue as to how may be portrayed when he makes his onstage debut within the series.

Join me after the jump, won’t you, as we unpack the hidden message of “The Fourth Man.”

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts

Imagination vs Interactive Technology: The End of the Potter Saga’s Magic?

February 9, 2018 by 3 Comments

In the last month three significant interactive technology ‘opportunities’ have been rolled out for the legions of Harry Potter fans.

I’m not going to do more than mention Globus Mundi the rumored travel agency for both Wizards with Gringotts accounts and Muggles with cash.

I think it’s safe to say that this new wave of virtual technologies and “immersive experiences,” especially the Hogwarts Mystery and Beasts Virtual Reality games, represents the fourth step away from authentic, actually imagined story experience via text. Here is my quick list of the experiences currently available for purchase and their relationship with the Hogwarts Saga in descending order of quality, which is to say, the greater and greater separation from the reader-author imaginative experience and that story immersion’s capacity for transforming us into people of greater understanding and love.

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Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Harry Potter Book Sales Top 500 Million? Rowling, Inc., Fandom, and Fake News

February 8, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Bloomsbury announced last week that sales of Harry Potter books had crossed the 500 million copies sold threshhold.

Bloomsbury announced that 500 million copies of the Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide since the 1997 release of J.K. Rowling’s first installment, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in 80 languages. The milestone comes on the day of the annual Harry Potter Book Night across the UK, and two days before the same event in the United States. 

I don’t know if you follow these things. Part of me hopes very much that you don’t. And wishes that I didn’t have to.

Why not? Because news like this is to the mind what refined sugar and flour are to the body, i.e., not just ’empty calories,’ but anti-nutrients, food-like substances that require more energy and nutrients to digest than they provide. See Rolf Dobelli.

Most of the click-bait from Rowling, Inc., sadly has this quality. Rowling herself last week, in response to the substance free fire storm over the revelation that Dumbledore’s sexual identity would not be an “explicit” subject in ‘Crimes of Grindelwald,’ remarked on her Twitter feed that “believing every bit of Potter clickbait? Foolish. Just saying.”

The “500 million books sold” announcement is an excellent case in point.

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Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes