I was asked today by a very kind reporter to summarize the way I think about books and Harry Potter especially. Here, well, below the jump, is my flash response as a rushed email note, posted for your comment, amendment, and correction:
Let ‘The Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour’ Begin! Ring Composition Book Now Available Online
October 18, 2010 by 12 Comments
In celebration of the release of the first Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie on 19 November, I begin my Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour today. With stops as far west as Moline, Illinois, north as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, east as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and south as Columbia, South Carolina, the next four weeks promise great fun that will literally be all over the map!
I’m excited about this trip because of the number and variety of venues, of course, but also because I’ll be sharing for the first time with a larger audience the mind-blowing discovery that Ms. Rowling, as her name suggests, is a Ring Writer. Not only is her series a seven book cycle conforming to the four traditional markers of Ring Composition that we find in ancient, biblical, medieval, and modern works, but all seven books, to include every one of the 198 chapters and epilogue, are shaped by ring formula.
Below the jump you’ll find a list of the twenty stops I’ll be making in the next four weeks and the several topics I’ll be addressing. I hope to see you at one or more! If you cannot make it, say, because you live well west of the Mississippi, I have put together a Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle special limited edition book for this tour that is available either as a paperback book or pdf file to download. It’s an expanded version of my talk to TGTSNBN earlier this month and it will only be available until the much longer version is published early next year. It’s not as much fun as a talk — but it does have all the diagrams and charts detailing Ms. Rowling’s remarkable ring artistry.
Read on for details about The Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour and a brand new Potter pundits publication!
‘Spotlight’ on Twilight a Hit — Overseas!
October 18, 2010 by 6 Comments
Two years post publication, Deathly Hallows Lectures continues to sell better than any of my books, to include those published by major houses and distributed in book stores. Given the several challenging chapters in that book on literary alchemy, Dante, and eye symbolism, this is really quite remarkable — and reassuring to me as I set out on my month long ‘Deathly Hallows Tour’ (see above). The continued sales of Lectures tell me that readers really do want and appreciate a thoughtful and prolonged look at their favorite books.
Perhaps I should say Harry Potter readers? Sales of my Twilight Saga opus, Spotlight: An Up-Close Look at the Artistry and Meaning of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, have never taken off, though readers like James Thomas at Pepperdine have told me it is the best thing I’ve written. Most of the mail I receive about it, though, comes from overseas.
‘Shared Text’ Spotting: Election Edition
October 13, 2010 by 3 Comments
Can you top this?
Barack Obama and the Chamber of Secrets
No one not familiar with the Hogwarts Saga will ‘get’ that headline. I doubt anyone at the Denver Post worried that this would confuse many readers.
Pictures from Ring Talk in NYC: TGTSNBN!
October 11, 2010 by 4 Comments
I look a little crazy in these photographs, but, in my defense, it was an exciting night; the combination of a phenomenal venue (check out the Samsung Experience wall-screen), perhaps the most knowledgeable Harry Potter fan group of significant size — The Group That Shall Not Be Named, NYC’s Rowling Society, and a mind-blowing topic overwhelmed me at times. Seeing two rows of beautiful readers wearing red bow ties in the front of the audience may have contributed to the madness, too.
I promised TGTSNBN that, if they listened closely, they would never think of any of the Potter books or the series the same way again — that they would now be tempted to read the books from the middle out rather than front to back and that the Deathly Hallows symbol, Moody’s trunk, and Harry’s round glasses would have entirely new meaning to them. Jonathon Rosenthal, the Group’s leader, wrote today that I didn’t over-promise, as hard as that may be to believe:
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