Thank you, Robert Trexler, for filling in for me here the past few weeks while I have been touring the West Coast, moving my family for the second time in three months, settling into a new routine, unpacking the library, and waiting – and waiting – for the home computer to go on-line. I have a bunch of thank-you notes to write tonight and tomorrow to my friends at Biola, Pepperdine, Church of the Mediator, and points East, West, North, and South before I can put up some Dante notes here and re-open Deathly Hallows for discussion. I am very flattered that folks have been writing regularly in my absence and am grateful to Bob for freshening the page with something new every few days when I couldn’t post. It’s great to be back.
I am putting together a list of 20 Questions this week that, in my dreams at least, I hope someday to ask Ms. Rowling. I cannot afford the time or the ticket to see her at Radio City Music Hall, but, on the off-chance that her house-elves surf Harry Potter fan sites (and that they haven’t given up on this one!), I want to post here the literary questions from serious readers that reporters won’t ask her and fans consumed by ‘shipping and their concerns about Ron’s future employment neglect. Please feel free to join me in putting together this list!
I doubt I would open with this question, but here’s a sample of what I’m looking for:
Question 1: The last three Harry Potter novels feature the deaths of characters named, sequentially, ‘Black’ (Sirius), ‘White’ (Albus Dumbledore), and ‘Red’ (fRed Weasley). The stages of the alchemical work are often distinguished by colors, which, sequentially, are black, white, and red. You commented in 1998 that you’d read a “ridiculous amount” of alchemy before writing this series and that alchemy set the “magical parameters” and “internal logic” of the books. Should we as readers play close attention to the colors you use in the Harry Potter novels with the attendant alchemical meanings of these colors?
Okay. Your turn. More tomorrow from me on other subjects, God willing.
Grateful John, delighted to be back with the HogPro All-Pros
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