The Croissantnoisseur hops on the bandwagon: The Cuckoo's Calling

I. couldn't. resist.

A new book? By JK Rowling? Under a pseudonym? Yes please!

Listen to an interview about the analysis of the text that uncovered the truth about the author!

Word broke this week that there was a new book in publication by JK Rowling, but we just hadn't been aware about it. It turns out that the Harry Potter author decided to duck out of the limelight and publish again, but under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The book, entitled The Cuckoo's Calling, has been receiving praise for a well written mystery, without the baggage associated with the name "JK Rowling." For Rowling, this must have been refreshing - unbiased reviews, no press tours, and a chance to write for the joy of writing again.

There were two news items I came across that grabbed my interest and prompted me to cave in (along with the masses) and purchase Rowling's new book. The first was this radio interview with Oxford Linguistics expert, Peter Millican, who analyzed the text and found it aligned very closely with the writing style in the Harry Potter series. I thought this was really interesting, and the interview is worth listening to. The second item, was a Globe and Mail article which explores the benefit of writing under a pseudonym following an initial publication success. I'm not quite sure the author of the Globe article can quite relate to the same degree as JK Rowling, who is about as celebrity-status as it comes in the world of living authors. Nevertheless, I agree with his main point - that anonymity offers a fresh place for authors who have met literary fame, and allows for creative freedom that isn't always permitted while under public scrutiny.

I haven't finished The Cuckoo's Calling yet, but given that it's summer, the time is ripe for lying on the beach with a good mystery novel. Now if there were only a few more beaches in Saskatoon...

Croissant and a Book: A Moveable Feast

Maybe it was watching Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby a few months ago, but I think I have caught the jazz-era fever that seems to be so fashionable these days. I first read "The Great American Novel" in twelfth grade english class and I remember how it captured my imagination at that time, and also coincided with the last movie release of the book staring Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino. In any case, I've been feeding this fever (after all, my mum always said, "Feed a fever, starve a cold") with more jazz-era inspired work including "Midnight in Paris," and Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.

My favourite movie of 2011!

A Moveable Feast was akin to reading Hemingway's diary from his time in 1920's Paris. From my research about the writing of the novel, Hemingway actually wrote it from journals and letters that he had stored away and forgotten about, only to come across them years later. He was inspired to shape the writing into a story, and I really got the sense that it represented his "glory days". The movie Midnight in Paris touches on nostalgia, and I think Hemingway was nostalgic for those days in his later life. Unlike Gill, in Woody Allen's movie, who longs to live in a different decade entirely, Hemingway realized that he was living in a golden era, although there is a clear sentiment that he didn't realize it at that time. This aspect resonated with me, as someone who suffers from what I call "chronic nostalgia." 

One of the other more contentious issues regarding the book is that it was published post-humously, and there will always be unanswered questions about how Hemingway truly wanted to the novel to be published. In particular, the content that explored his feelings for his first wife and the dissolution of their marriage was thought to be altered by his fourth wife, who edited the final manuscript. Despite any possible editorial changes, I think Hemingway wanted it to very clearly express regret and apology to his first wife, and this still comes through to some degree. Hemingway and his first wife separated when it came to light that he was having an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, an editor working for Vanity Fair and Vogue, who does not come across well in the published version that I read. A revised version of A Moveable Feast was published in 2009, which was said to include portions that Mary Hemingway (Wife #4) excluded, but I have also heard that it made fewer references to Pfeiffer. There was a great interview about the new publication on the CBC Radio Program Q several years ago (unfortunately the archives for the podcast only go back to the beginning of this year), but this article summarizes some of the controversy nicely, albeit from one side of the story. 

TIME

This book gets five out of five literary pugs recommending it for a read...