The Astrological Hidden Key to Harry Potter?

February 15, 2010 by 12 Comments

I have been neglecting my Harry Potter studies of late with only occasional posts here, for which I hope you will forgive me. Except for talks with my friends the Potter Pundits — James Thomas and Travis Prinzi — for Leaky Cauldron’s Potter Cast, the usual correspondence with readers, and weekly trips to the Hog’s Head Tavern for a Taddy Porter, I’ve been neck deep in Twilight work (talks and interviews to get the word out about my new book, Spotlight) and reading books recommended to me by friends here, most notably, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. So, as you know if you’ve been stopping by of late, there hasn’t been much going on at Hogwarts Professor.

I don’t usually post just to post so gaps in action here are okay but I do have one regret about my distraction from Potter matters. Last December I was sent an intriguing idea that may join two of the more interesting qualities of the Hogwarts Saga, namely, the alchemical scaffolding and the chiastic structure of the story circle (a-b-c-d-c-b-a). The idea also solves something of a mystery about the books: the astrological symbolism that I haven’t heard anyone make much sense of. Erin Sweeney, though, may have pulled it off. After too long a time in my “to post” file, here is her theory after a short introduction about why she shared it with me: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Literary Alchemy

Who is the Mockingjay? The Hidden Key to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy

February 13, 2010 by 86 Comments

[This post on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games was written in Fenruary, 2010. A lot of discussion and theorizing has happened here since then — and I hope you’ll join that free-for-all where it is now rather than back here in February! Please check out this Round-Up post (and the Pearl Plot 2.0) so you can see what’s been written in one convenient list with links. Thanks for joining us at HogwartsProgessor, where serious readers discuss the meaning and artistry of The Hunger Games.]

A few weeks ago, two HogPro All-Pros wrote to me both asking me if I thought Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games books were written with intentional alchemical artistry. Forgive me, but I doubt I would have purchased the books, Hunger Games and Catching Fire, as promptly as I did except that I ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss, and except for the facts that both these writers are very serious readers, both praised the books without qualification, and they both came up with the alchemical reading independently of the other.

I bought and have read the two books in the trilogy now in print (the finale wil be published 24 August this year). I’ve even read them twice and made a lot of notes. The alchemy question is a good one, if the story scaffolding owe at least as much to television 3 act story templating and Dante as they might to Shakespearean drama. Now that I’ve read them and loved them, I hope you will read the Hunger Games books, too, and join me in conversation about them here. If you are a Harry Potter reader, I’m confident these books will challenge and delight you — and, in being a series-not-yet-finished, will draw you into speculation about what will happen in the next book based on patterns and events in the first two.

Yesterday we learned that the title of the Hungers Games trilogy finale will be Mockingjay and saw the cover of the Scholastic edition (US). Today I want to discuss what I think will be the surprise revelation of the finale and a key to opening up the meaning of the series. If you haven’t read the first two books, of course, or if you don’t care for speculative writing about novels not yet published, this would be the best place for you to stop reading. (Hey, a spoilers warning; doesn’t that feel like old times?) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hunger Games

Talk about “Shared Text”…

February 10, 2010 by 1 Comment

How about this book-length review of Pres. Obama’s first autobiography: America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s “Story of Race and Inheritance”?

Two notes: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Why Reading Matters: Climacus Conference

February 9, 2010 by 3 Comments

There isn’t that much Harry Potter in the talk I gave at the Climacus Conference last weekend and there are two helpings of Coleridge and St. Maximos the Confessor, so I understand this isn’t for everyone here. Those of you who are interested in why human beings read, though, and who suspect that reading novels and poetry makes us more human may find it interesting.

Your comments and corrections, of course, are coveted.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

J. D. Salinger: Requiescat in Pace

January 29, 2010 by 7 Comments

Author J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, is dead at age 91.

I confess that I never liked Holden Caulfield, if I am a Salinger fan. A young co-ed at the University of Chicago told me during my Orientation Week freshman year that I was the living image of Salinger’s angst ridden, clever anti-hero. I would have preferred to have been likened to Woody Allen (and I wouldn’t have enjoyed that, either, frankly). But Salinger’s artistry was undeniable.

It wasn’t until I was a teacher at Valley Forge Military Academy, where Salinger went to school and supposedly used as a model for Pencey Prep, that I learned anything of interest about this author-recluse. It turns out that he was a loyal alumnus to ‘the Forge’ who had only fond memories of the place (he attended alumni gatherings there well after his retreat to his hermitage in New Hampshire). I suspect it was because the military skills he learned there — and Valley Forge really was a military school in the 1930’s when he was a student, including classes in how to fire a machine gun, etc. — helped him get through the Normandy invasion and drive to the Rhine as admirably as he did.

Two questions for you, in Salinger’s memory:

Do you remember your first reading of Catcher in the Rye?

And in what ways, if any, do you think Ms. Rowling’s Harry Potter and all boy-novel protagonists inevitably are shades of Holden Caulfield, Salinger’s signature contribution to letters?

Filed Under: Uncategorized