Hallmarked Man's Three 'Whose My Daddy?' Set-Ups to Shock Readers in Strikes 9 and 10
lundi 15 septembre 2025 • Durée 01:15:58
Nick Jeffery and John Granger opened the Orthodox New Year with a conversation about, you guessed it, Rowling-Galbraith’s Hallmarked Man. Both of them confessed that they were struggling with the most complex and carefully integrated novel in the author’s oeuvre, with five different candidates for the body in the silver vault, a cast of characters for each candidate, all of them spun together with the Strike-Ellacott cum Murphy-Bijou ‘shipping madness as it unfolded. Neither of them was ready to talk about the book’s structure in any detail.
They chose instead to discuss the most obvious and most neglected of Rowling’s Seven Shed tools, the signature writing elements she uses to craft the inspiration from her Lake springs and from her touchstone Golden Threads into the stories that fascinate her admirers around the world. That tool is her ‘Big Twist’ finish, the surprise ending that shocks the reader caught in Rowling’s narrative misdirection, the story clues sprinkled throughout a story to foster believing something that isn’t true. Every Rowling reader knows this is what she is doing, but very few are conscious of the set-up until the narrative trap is sprung.
One thing that readers can be looking for, consequently, are the ‘pushes’ Rowling puts into her story to have us accept as facts that we have some reason based on textual evidence (and Tools, Springs, and Golden Threads) to think may not be true. Whence John’s prediction post Running Grave that Robin was sterile. Whence Nick’s theories that Charlotte was murdered and that Cormoran and Robin will forever be best mates, not husband and wife.
The ‘pushes’ in Hallmarked Man that John felt were positioning of a Strike-Ellacott reader for a judo move in Strike 9? There are five, three of which turn on paternity):
* Per Ed Shardlow, that Murphy is not a good guy deserving of Robin’s sympathy but a very bad man, in fact the man behind the gorilla mask (and if his surname has any mythological weight, the likely murderer of Castor and Pollux in Strike 10);
* That “proper man,” Edward ‘Uncle Ted’ Nancarrow, is Cormoran Strike’s biological father consequent to an incestuous union with his much younger sister, Margaret (aka ‘Peggy,’ aka ‘Leda Strike’);
* That Cormoran Strike is the biological father of Bijou Watkins, Esq.’s daughter, Ottolie, and that he was risibly reckless in his DNA testing for paternity;
* That Jonny Rokeby was fooled by Peggy-Leda and Ted’s management of his positive paternity test the way that Cormoran was hoodwinked by Bijou’s sleight of hand with his negative result; and
* Peggy-Leda told her older brother that she was going to tell Whittaker that Rokeby wasn’t Cormoran’s father, which led to her execution staged as a suicide.
On to Week Three of Hallmarked Man! Next week we’ll discuss Rowling’s consolation tweet to Strike and Robin fans in “extreme trauma” from Strike 8’s last chapter, a message that included a Cupid and Psyche painting, in addition to conversation about the importance (and difficulty!) of getting the surface story straight before diving beneath it
Three Cheers for The Hallmarked Man! Thoughts After the First Reading
lundi 8 septembre 2025 • Durée 01:43:34
Spoilers Warning! If you haven’t finished reading the 900 pages of The Hallmarked Man and don’t want to hear details from the novel, you will not enjoy this conversation about Strike8.
John read the latest Strike-Ellacott novel by Thursday morning using the pre-publication head start, the Robert Glenister audiobook dropped early Tuesday morning, a bootleg epub version on his wife’s iPad, and the codex hardcover that arrived at 5:00 on the day of release. Nick didn’t finish until early Saturday but was already half-way through his second reading via audiobook by Sunday night.
John didn’t especially enjoy reading the book as fast as he did; Nick was frustrated that he could not read it faster than he did. Both were delighted by Rowling’s work and are looking forward to the coming weeks of re-reading and ‘Tools, Springs, and Threads’ analysis of its artistry and meaning.
In this week’s conversation, they touch on fandom disappointment with the new book before discussing how three predictions they’d made about Hallmarked Man played out, the three Real World targets of Rowling’s wrath in her current work, John’s preliminary work on the novel’s epigraphs (and the Aurora Leigh-esque forgotten tome of epic poetry that may be Strike8’s Rosmersholm or Faerie Queene), and what’s next in their reading of Cormoran Strike.
As is their wont, Nick and John refer to ideas and to people that Serious Readers will want to check up on or learn more about. Here are a selection of links to many of these subjects with their apology for those they’ve missed and their invitation to share counter-sources or requests for other links.
They thank everyone who listens to these Lake and Shed conversations, those who join in the discussions in the comment thread below (how was your first reading of Hallmarked Man?), and especially for our paid subscribers who were polled for their questions and concerns last week for our consideration before we put our notes together.
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How Are You Going to Read 'Hallmarked Man'?
lundi 1 septembre 2025 • Durée 01:21:39
What can you say about Hallmarked Man that doesn’t include anything beyond epigraph authors from the latest pre-publication drops from the leak-ing ship of Rowling, Inc.?
Nick and John elect to discuss their respective plans for reading the latest Cormoran Strike-Robin Ellacott murder mystery cum Modern Romance. Enjoy that conversation in the hours left before the books arrive — and tune in here this time next week for our first thoughts on another epic-length novel from the world’s most popular author!
We’re counting down the days until the publication of The Hallmarked Man! Nick Jeffery and John Granger take perhaps the last look at Rowling’s most recent postings before they dive into discussion about the meaning and artistry of Strike8.
In today’s conversation, they review Rowling’s relationship with Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, a New York Times feature article ‘The Wizard’s Everlasting Spell’ about the growth of Potter fan fiction with a romantic twist, and Rowling’s acerbic review of Nikola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly. Nick and John discuss along the way the initial response of cultural gatekeepers to the quality of the writing in Harry Potter, the history of Rowling’s relationship with the writers of romantic fan fiction using her characters in light of Fifty Shades of Gray, and Hogwarts Professor’s role in making ‘Rowling Studies’ legitimate and the culture-wide acceptance of Rowling as a writer of merit “something we’ve always known” rather than a controversial assertion.
And what does all that have to do with the imminent release of Hallmarked Man? Nick and John share their more-than-tentative plans for reading Strike8 and the best way — not the only way, of course, but a much better way than, say, cataloging predictions everyone will forget by mid-September — to prepare for our first reading of an epic Rowling-Galbraith title.
We hope you are as excited as we are to the advent of Hallmarked Man and that you’re looking forward to exploration of its breadth and depth beneath the surface plot with us in the coming month!
Links To Subjects Discussed Above:
The Wizard’s Everlasting SpellWhy Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere: Romantasy is propping up the fiction market. Thanks to a generation that grew up reading about a boy wizard. (The New York Times, 20 August 2025, Alexandra Alter)
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Rowling Links "Subconscious" Lake Inspiration to "Universal Psyche," Etc.
mercredi 20 août 2025 • Durée 01:14:52
Nick has been reading his way through Anthony Powell’s twelve volume Dance to the Music of Time because Rowling mentioned it in a 2017 tweet and he thought there were interesting connections between that Roman Fleuve and Rowling-Galbraith’s series-writing. And it turns out he was right! Rowling tweeted about her favorite book in Dance and her favorite character in the epic (see links below).
Two weeks ago, Rowling tweeted at some length about her ‘Lake and Shed’ writing process. Nick and John dive into those messages that muddied the water considerably about what exactly she means by her ‘Lake’ and the possible meanings of ‘Universal Psyche,’ a phrase new to Rowling’s descriptions of her writing process, not to mention of her core beliefs. Jung? Coleridge? Anaxagoras? St Maximos the Confessor? Again, see the links below.
Nick and John then share their reading lists for the short time remaining before the publication of Hallmarked Man and talk about three options for how we will read the book here at Hogwarts Professor. Those options in thumbnail sketches are:
* Read It Like Everybody Else — Straight Through — and Write a Review
* Read It As If It Were a Dickens Novel Release, One Part at a Time
* Read It Straight Through and then Read It As If It Were a Dickens Novel
Nick and John discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each and decide to post a poll inside this post for readers to voice their preference (please share your thinking in the comment boxes and place your vote in the poll below!).
Next time out, we’ll be (1) trying headsets to improve the audio quality, (2) discussing the results of the poll with comments as well as our tentative plans for the release, and (3) the most important tools to have in hand (in mind?) when reading a Rowling-Galbraith novel for the first time.
Until then, thank you for listening and for your support!
Links To Subjects Discussed Above:
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Alternative Explanations for The Lost Child Golden Thread in the Work of J. K. Rowling (Spoilers for Hallmarked Man!)
The most credible but entirely speculative possibility was that Rowling had had an induced abortion during her relationship with ‘Michael,’ her off-and-on for seven years boyfriend from Exeter. On Rowling’s birthday, we discussed the value this possibility has for interpreting her work, specifically in understanding the Harry Potter novels; most notably, the hypothesis would explain why every book features the exteriorization of something dangerous or deadly within and its beneficent elimination. In brief, the Hogwarts Saga, when read through this unresolved issue of Rowling’s unconscious mind, seems to have been inspired and written as a defense for the intentional death of her child.
In addition to explaining how this view of induced abortion as simultaneously necessary for women and the murder of an innocent, defenseless, and voiceless human being is the view of contrarian feminists such as Germaine Greer and , we offered the Induced Abortion Hypothesis as the most obvious explanation for the Lost Child Golden Thread and demonstrated its potential critical value, if true. We asked repeatedly for listeners to share their objections to the hypothesis as well as alternative explanations for the Lost Child Golden Thread.
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The Kanreki Series Q&A
mardi 5 août 2025 • Durée 51:06
We collected all the questions and comments posted last month beneath our daily Kanreki Lake and Shed videos and sat down to answer them live with paid subscribers sitting in on the conversation.
That discussion drew the Kanreki celebration-marathon to a close (Phew!) and opened the door to our next efforts. We’ll be writing weekly posts about Rowling’s life and work, filming video conversations about those posts, and beginning a series of classes about Lake ‘springs’ and Shed ‘tools’ that will, when finished, by presented as an online course for serious readers of Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, and the various stand-alone stories. Paid subscribers will be able to participate in the video conversations and watch the classes as they come out.
Thank you to everyone who watched (or is watching) the Kanreki series and thank you in advance for joining us in our new ventures here at Hogwarts Professor!
Happy 60th Birthday, J. K. Rowling! Opening the Gift of the Biggest Secret in Her Lake of Inspiration?
jeudi 31 juillet 2025 • Durée 01:40:08
Happy 60th Birthday, Joanne Rowling Murray! Thank you for close to thirty years of challenging, even edifying fiction, for the joys of community your serious readers enjoy in discussing your work, and for your philanthropic efforts on behalf of women and children everywhere. The faculty at HogwartsProfessor all wish you many, many years.
As a birthday gift of sorts, Nick and John close off their month-long celebration of Rowling-Galbraith’s life and work with a follow-up look at yesterday’s review of the ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread that runs through her stories. After cataloging the almost forty ‘for instances’ taken from the opera omnia in the penultimate entry in this series, Nick and John ask, “So What?” How does the possibility that Rowling had an induced abortion and is sufficiently unsettled by it that it inspires many even most of her books at least in part make any difference in understanding their artistry and meaning?
John’s answer is that, if read through the induced abortion lens, one can see shades of character reflecting Rowling’s thought on this subject. More importantly, each Harry Potter novel can be read as a defense of induced abortion, i.e., that each features something evil within a person having to be exteriorized and eliminated, a process that readers celebrate as a ‘win.’
A Kanreki celebration is a time when friends and family recognize the ending of a cycle and the beginning of a new life to the 60 year old celebrant. Here’s hoping Rowling Studies, as with Rowling herself, will enter another era with this idea, one that the author can confirm, deny, or ignore. Regardless of her answer, Serious Readers are left with the mysteries of the Pregnancy Trap and Lost Child Golden Threads for them to ponder.
Please do share your thoughts and questions in the comment boxes below. Nick and John hope to put together a Q&A post to answer the questions listeners have asked this month that they haven’t answered and new ones sent in by Monday. Paid subscribers will be invited to join them live for that discussion.
New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:
On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: .
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A Lake and Shed Look at the Lost Child 'Golden Thread' in J. K. Rowling's Work
mercredi 30 juillet 2025 • Durée 02:12:24
It’s the Day Before Rowling’s 60th birthday so Nick and John tackle by reader request the never before discussed subject of the Lost Child theme in the author’s more than twenty published works. They re-introduce the Golden Threads idea — see their Pregnancy Trap podcast or the two Kanreki series on this subject (here and here) — then they do a deep dive into the crowded waters of Lost Children in her work, and then they go out out on a high-wire to speculate about what specific spring in her Lake subconscious mind is responsible for this recurrent inspiration. Enjoy!
New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:
On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.
Tomorrow? John and Nick pull out all the stops on Rowling’s 60th birthday to challenge the status quo of Rowling Studies with a reading of her work in light of a possible inspiration for the ubiquitous ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread in her work. Stay tuned!
Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:
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A Lake and Shed Reading of 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard'
mardi 29 juillet 2025 • Durée 53:26
Two Days and a Wake-Up until Joanne Rowling Murray’s 60th Birthday. In their home stretch conversation, Nick and John fulfill a reader request to discuss the book inside Deathly Hallows (one of three actually…), ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard,’ a text that Albus Dumbledore leaves Hermione in his will for her to read and apply to the Horcrux Hunt. Nick tells the story of Rowling’s creation of six hand-written copies as six-of-a-kind gifts for those who brought Harry Potter to life. John dives into the center story of the five tales, ‘The Hairy Heart,’ and tells the meaning of Harry’s heart to draw out what Rowling meant by describing Beedle as “the distillation” of the Hogwarts Saga. Enjoy!
New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:
On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.
Tomorrow? In the Day Before the Big Day, Nick and John do a deep dive into the Golden Thread of ‘The Lost Child,’ a plot point occurring (by one count!) forty times in Rowling-Galbraith’s twenty one books. Stay tuned!
Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:
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Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu
Découvrez des podcasts liées à Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
I found out that this is actually the statue of Anteros—not Eros as it is popularly called. Anteros is the subject of the Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus, London, where he symbolizes the selfless philanthropic love of the Earl of Shaftesbury for the poor. The memorial is sometimes given the name The Angel of Christian Charity and is popularly mistaken for Eros, cf., Lloyd & Mitchinson (2006) The Book of General Ignorance “Because of the bow and the nudity… everybody assumed it was Eros, the Greek god of love.”
Robin and Cormoran, even if you want to include Sam Barclay, are not a soul exteriorization akin to Harry, Hermione, and Ron. The psychomachia of the Strike novels is built on the Shakespearean soul-Spirit romantic model rather than the Platonic-Patristic body-mind-spirit soul triptych of ancient, Medieval, and contemporary film and written fiction. In this model, the man and woman lede players take the part of soul and spirit, Coomaraswamy’s duo sunt in homine human and divine aspects, either as fixed roles as in Othello and The Tempest or in relation to the other, each being soul and embracing the other as supra-natural as in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra (see Lings and Pogson for that). Rowling’s embedded models for this exteriorized drama of human sanctification are the myths of ‘Leda and the Swan‘ and ‘Psyche and Cupid‘ and the psychomachia spiritual allegories of Eros and Anteros, true and false Cupid, within Spenser’s Faerie Queen, the Redcrosse Knight and Una as well as Britomart and Artegell.
Valentine Longcaster is a hilarious cryptonym for Cupid, for whom Valentine is a second name (see the post on Valentine’s Day in the Psyche and Eros post) and ‘Longcaster’ is a reference to his weapon of choice, the bow and arrow of the god of love. He pricks Strike at the direction of Venus-Charlotte, in some myths his mother, in others a lover and cousin or brother (murky waters!), and sets in motion the long-range plan of the envious ex to destroy Robin and Cormoran’s budding relationship.
Add ‘Valentine Longcaster’ to the pile of evidence for this particular backdrop and let’s continue to look for parallels and links Rowling has playfully embedded in the psycho-spiritual, neo-mythological allegory of the soul’s journey to perfection, and specifically the souls of women.
‘Charlotte’ mentioned twice as often in Strike 8 as ‘Cormoran’ and Valentine Longcaster’s interview with Robin Ellacott has a major ‘tell’ at its finish (cf. p 451, ch 62).
Max Hastings referred to Johnson's public image as a "façade resembling that of P. G. Wodehouse's Gussie Fink-Nottle, allied to wit, charm, brilliance and startling flashes of instability",[4] while political scientist Andrew Crines stated Johnson displayed "the character of a likable and trustworthy individual with strong intellectual capital".[5]Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has defined him as "Beano Boris" due to his perceived comical nature, saying: "He's our Berlusconi ... He's the only feel-good politician we have, everyone else is too busy being responsible."[6] To the journalist Dave Hill, Johnson was "a unique figure in British politics, an unprecedented blend of comedian, conman, faux subversive showman and populist media confection".
Institute for Social Policy Research (UK) An independent, data-driven social-policy research institute focusing on UK political affairs.
We therefore conclude that consistent with widespread public perceptions, whilst available evidence is not exhaustive, the mean rate derived from four of the most comprehensive studies available to date on share of CSEGG crimes by ethnicity does affirm the picture that Asians and Blacks are overrepresented in such crimes. Curiously, with much of the attention devoted to “Asians” (predominantly Pakistani gangs), it is notable that Blacks are similarly overrepresented, with our weighted rate providing limited evidence of even greater over-representation than Asians.
Please note, however —
For the CEOP study that ISPR use, footnote 1 shows the selection criteria, excluding all abuse initiated in a familial or fraternal (house based) relationship:
"Where “localised-grooming” is defined as: “a form of sexual exploitation – previously referred to as ‘on street grooming’ in the media - where children have been groomed and sexually exploited by an offender, having initially met in a location outside their home. this location is usually in public, such as a park, cinema, on the street or at a friend’s house. Offenders often act together, establishing a relationship with a child or children before sexually exploiting them. some victims of ‘street grooming’ may believe that the offender is in fact an older ‘boyfriend’; these victims introduce their peers to the offender group who might then go on to be sexually exploited as well. abuse may occur at a number of locations within a region and on several occasions. ‘Localised grooming’ was the term used by CEOP in the intelligence requests issued to police forces and other service agencies in order to define the data we wished to receive.” (footnote 1, p. 7)"
They also exclude the 39% of cases where race was not included in the data. It would be sensible to assume that ethnicity was not recorded when the ethnicity of both perpetrators and the victim were the UK default.
To say that the only reason the police were complacent when it came to the grooming gangs of Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford, and elsewhere was because (some of) these men were Pakistani Muslim, is madness. The ethnicity and religion of these men is relevant, but not in the way the racists would have us believe. It is relevant because it was seen as a phenomena perpetrated because of ethnicity as opposed to male violence towards females. Look at it any other way betrays the vast majority of girls that fall prey to these men.
The Epigraph Authors — and a hidden Book Behind the Book?
The new version of the [‘Dramione’ Potter fan fiction] story that so captivated Ms. Stallone will soon be released as “Alchemised,” and the novel’s publisher, Del Rey, is betting that the feverish devotion to its fanfiction predecessor will translate into blockbuster sales. Del Rey has ordered a first printing of 750,000 copies for the novel’s release in late September; translations are lined up in 21 languages.
Besides appealing to hordes of existing fans, “Alchemised” has another advantage: It taps into the raging appetite for romantasy, a subgenre that blends fantasy elements like magic, fairies and dragons with love, yearning and explicit sex.
In a way, the romantasy explosion — driven by the success of blockbuster authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, whose series have sold millions upon millions of copies — stems from the legacy of popular young adult series like “Twilight” and “Harry Potter.” Those books molded generations of young readers who have grown up but still crave big fantasy novels — now with a dose of erotica.
“They grew up with the characters, and the stories ended, but there’s still such a huge appetite,” said Leah Hultenschmidt, publisher of the romance imprint Forever. “They’re still hungry for that magical world building, an epic cast of characters and heroism, and maybe they just want it a little spicier.”
Publishers are frantically searching for the next breakout romantasy series. Last year, romantasy sales topped more than 32 million copies in print alone, a 47 percent jump over the previous year, according to Circana Bookscan. Five of the 10 best-selling adult fiction titles this year are romantasies. At the same time, adult fiction sales overall have stagnated.
The kind of romance that’s selling like crazy now — erotically charged genre mash-ups — first took off in fanfiction before publishers recognized there was an appetite for it.
“For a long time, you had to go to fanfiction to find that,” said Anne Jamison, a professor of English at the University of Utah who has studied fanfiction. “Romantasy basically is what fanfiction made.”
I know I’m stating the obvious, and I’ll probably be one of countless reviewers making the same point, but it’s impossible to read Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir without remembering the smash hit fictional franchise, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. For those who don’t know (ie, everyone who wasn’t a tween or teenage girl, or living with one, 2005-2015), Twilight was massively popular for roughly a decade, each new book or film being greeted adoringly by its devoted fans. [opening paragraph)
* Kathryn Kent: “I write fantasy with a twist… It’s fantasy slash erotica really, but quite literary” (416) “She makes Dorcus Pengelly look like Iris Murdoch” (232)
* Dorcus Pengelly: “She writes pornography dressed up as historical romance” (225)
* Elizabeth Tassel: All Shed, No Lake (per Strike)
You told Quine that Bombyx Mori sounded brilliant, that it would be the best thing he’d ever done, that it was going to be a massive success, but that he ought to keep the contents very, very quiet in case of legal action, and to make a bigger splash when it was unveiled.
And all the time you were writing your own version. You had plenty of time to get it right, didn’t you, Elizabeth? Twenty-six years of empty evenings, you could have written plenty of books by now, with your first from Oxford… but what would you write about? You haven’t exactly lived a full life, have you?… (442)
Did it feel good, raping and killing your way through everyone you knew, Elizabeth? One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself as the unacclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life, a more satisfying — (440)
* Michael Fancourt about women writers (298):
I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.
* Hobart’s Sin, Owen Quine’s first and best novel, the “Key” to Tassel’s Bombyx Mori, the “book within a book:” “The plot of Hobart’s Sin turns on Hobart, who’s both male and female, having to choose between parenthood and abandoning his aspirations as a writer: aborting his baby, or abandoning his brainchild” (229)
* “It’s all about a hermaphrodite who’s pregnant and gets an abortion because a kid would interfere with his literary ambitions” (242)
Actually, the plot for Silkworm predated the plot for Cuckoo’s Calling. I’d had the idea for that plot, the book within the book, for seven or eight years before I wrote it. That often happens with me, I have an idea and I keep it and sit on it. But I keep it and I play with it like a Rubik’s cube and there’ll come a point where everything clicks and it’s ready to be written. I have a lot of notebooks filled with these kinds of things. Silkworm was like that. I sat on that plot for a long time before using it.
* Rowling belief in “permanent soul” (El Pais, 2008)
Q: You said that you saw your soul as something undeniable.
A: Yes, that’s true. But I also have said that I have many doubts regarding religion. I feel very attracted by religion, but at the same time I feel a lot of uncertainty. I live in a state of spiritual flux. I believe in a permanent soul. And that is reflected in the last book....
Do you see death as the end of everything?No. I lead an intensely spiritual life, and even though I don’t have a terribly clear and structured idea about it, I do believe that after you die some part of you stays alive some way or other. I belief (sic) in something as the indestructible soul. But for that subject we should reserve about six hours: It’s something I struggle with a lot.
The listeners who had followed us through the thirty-one Kanreki Lake and Shed conversations voiced in the comments beneath those posts both their discomfort with the idea and their admiration for the sober way we presented it. There were three challenging responses, as well, to our request for alternative explanations to the Lost Child Golden Thread: an argument from the biological make-up and consequent concerns of women everywhere, the point that “exteriorization of an evil within for elimination” is at least as easily read allegorically for the Christian doctrines of original sin and grace, and a find that the Gloria Conti story, the only explicit abortion narrative in Rowling’s work, was lifted straight from The Godfather, Part 2. [See below for links to the sources of these three alternatives.]
We discuss these three alternative ideas in the video above, their strengths and weaknesses, and applaud the one listener who shored up[ the weakest part of the Induced Abortion Hypothesis reading of Harry Potter, namely, how Prisoner of Azkaban fits the ‘exteriorization for elimination’ pattern in that series. We close with thoughts about the imminent arrival of Hallmarked Man and our first thoughts of how we will be reading it at Hogwarts Professor — the subject of our next conversation in addition to our thoughts about the first releases and conflicting synopses for Strike8 that are in circulation.
Please share your thoughts about alternative theories for the Lost Child Golden Thread and your ideas about how you would like us to cover Hallmarked Man. Thank you, as always, for joining us and for your support!
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Links to Alternative Explanations for the Lost Child Golden Thread
Nikolaus Wandinger, Christoph Drexler, and Teresa Peter: The Christian Alternative Theory to the Induced Abortion Hypothesis (June 2004)
* Whether or not Rowling herself has had an abortion, I think it makes sense she’d want to comment on the topic given her golden threads about violence against women & girls, pregnancy traps, and mothers’ love.
* It occurred to me after writing that comment: I don’t think a woman has to have personally experienced an abortion to have spent most of her life thinking about the subject… I reckon a big part of the female psyche, from the time one is a girl, is a strange combination of awe and terror at the fact that falling pregnant is a power we have, but not necessarily one we can guarantee will always be in our control.
* In my country, a 2023 landmark study showed 1/3 girls are victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse. But much more mundane than sexual and domestic abuse, I’ve known straight friends to fall pregnant by accident, even while using contraception.
* I think it’s a very unique issue in a girl or a woman’s psyche because, on the one hand it is one of the worst possible consequences of rape, and therefore is part of women’s (as Mad Eye would say) constant vigilance about the threat and reality of male-pattern violence. But on the other hand, and however an individual woman feels about children, it is something both inspiring and grave. As Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben said, “with great power comes great responsibility!”.
* In re Gloria Conti’s abortion that Margo arranged for her: You will recall that Gloria Conti became interested in what seemed to her to be the “glamourous” Mafioso lifestyle by seeing the film The Godfather (1972). It may be worth noting that at the end of the film The Godfather: Part II (1974) Michael Corleone believes that his wife, Kay Corleone, has had a miscarriage and that her sorrow over that miscarriage is what has made her depressed. In an angry rant Kay tells him instead that she had an abortion, aborting what would have been his son, because she does not want his crime family to go on and she wants out. So – We have two (fictional) women, each seeking to limit or escape their involvement with a mobster and using the same means to do it. Even if Gloria Conti did not see The Godfather: Part II it’s perfectly possible – perhaps even likely – that JKR did and so may have borrowed a bit of the plot.
* "Strike paid in pain for the walk through the woods at Chiswell House the next morning. So little did he fancy getting up out of bed and heading downstairs to work on a Sunday that he was forced to remind himself that, like the character of Hyman Rothin one of his favourite films, he had chosen this business freely. If, like the Mafia, private detection made demands beyond the ordinary, certain concomitants had to be accepted along with the rewards." Lethal White ch 45
* Hi ladies and gents, I've been on holiday and just catching up on the end of the Kanreki series. I see that Snake Wood wasn't the big reveal because you were saving that for the final chapter!
* Even the penultimate episode enumerating all the lost children and speculating on that theme's lake origins didn't dilute the impact of seeing how the classic Rowling themes of coercive relationships, motherly love, pregnancy traps, the protection of family and so on, not only come together in that one golden thread, but how it does indeed illuminate the whole HP series.
* It certainly has the ring of truth for me. It certainly explains why morality and mortality are the crucial core to its meaning. The last episode was definitely one of those lightbulb-moment experiences for me. Love it!
* I feel like there may be more abortion analogies in Azkaban... Perhaps the wolf inside Remus? I think there's something quite uterine about the shrieking shack... And maybe something obstetric? There's also the execution of the innocent Buckbeak. And the Dementors taking the souls of their victims, against whom the remedy is a reassuring and inspiring Patronus. Perhaps that's the embodiment of the good dad, saving the innocents under their guardianship.
* This thread also offers another interpretation of The Christmas Pig - the traumatically obliterated DP, forever consigned to the land of the lost, and the replacement CP, carrying the love of his lost brother.
Tomorrow? The hope is that, after sleeping in for the first time in a month, that we can put together for easy reference an Index post that has links to every Lake and Shed post we’ve sent out this month — and news of our plans for August and beyond. Stay tuned!
