News from Lumos-bound Professor

I emailed John Granger yesterday regarding the "missing links" on his site. His reply confirmed my suspicions that this had some to do with the new publications shown on his home page. He writes: The posts have all come down because I have revised and expanded them for publication along with a host of new stuff. The first collection is Unlocking Harry Potter: The Serious Reader's Guide to the World's Best Selling Books and it is about the four big patterns and formulas that Ms. Rowling uses to write her books. My talk at Lumos will be about her "postmodern realism" which, with literary alchemy, I think are the two big ideas to "getting" why these books are so popular -- and why both academics and culture warriors hate them. The second collection, The Pope Hates Harry Potter? Hardly: Essays on the Controversies and Christian Content of Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter Novels, pulls together much of what I've written on the Potter books as edifying literature with an FAQ and a brand new essay on Rowling and Lewis, in light of her recent attempts to distance herself from that association. God willing, I'll have TOCs, sample chapters from each book along with ordering information "up" on the site by summer's end. Firstly, thanks John for taking the time out from your "pre-Lumos scramble" to answer my email. When I read the phrase postmodern realism I knew I was in for a series of really good conversations with Merlin. He's often talked about how HP has a psychological layer that is absent in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This absence is neither negative or positive of course, but PMR serves as a succinct explanation of what is new about the HP phenomenon. Some folks who object to the books have pointed out that while LotR supposedly occurs in the ancient past and fairy stories traditional occur "once upon a time", the Potter novels take place in the here and now in a kind of parallel universe. This realism, they conclude would make kids more apt to be sucked into magic, witchcraft, etc. I don't know... if my kids want to race around the yard pointing sticks at each other and yelling stupefy" I don't see the difference between that and running around with sticks shouting "bang". And if my kids actually spend hours attempting to jinx a broom so it will fly I doubt that's a bigger waste of time that the hours a spent in 7th grade trying to beat PacMan. But I'm digressing. I know Merlin will have plenty to say on this subject of PMR. In our conversation last night we covered everything from Shakespeare to Jane Austen to M. Night Shyamalan in the space of several hours. You can't talk about anything with him, you have to talk about everything. I guess that's what you get with encyclopedia managing editors, but that's what we like about him!