[the_old_crowd] John the Baptist?

[Aberforth's Goat]

Penny!

It's great to see you online - and thanks for the article!

Penny pondered,

> Mike, I would be well and truly *fascinated* to read your 
> article.  Can you let us know how we might get a copy?  :--)

Why sure! Here's the website of the magazine that published it:

http://www.ideaschweiz.ch/artikel.php3?artikelid=2082

Now if that's *English* you were wanting it in ... <g> BTW, I only had
one page, so it's not like the article is any kind of a magnum opus -
though I'm more or less satisfied with what I did, considering the space
and readership. If you're really, really curious, I could translate it.
(Which certainly wouldn't hurt the article. I'm dead boring in German.)

> Re: John Granger.  [....]
> alchemy --- this was the subject of his talk at Nimbus, and 
> it got him a standing ovation.  I'd be interested to hear 
> more details about why your eyebrows stretched so skeptically 
> at the alchemy angle, Mike, since I thought it all made 
> perfect sense 

Hmm. I'll have to reread the article. The idea was certainly neat - he
was suggesting that one can interpret the macro-structure of the entire
HP canon according to a set of alchemic criteria - but my gut reaction
as an exegete was to wonder whether he wasn't getting a little
overwrought. 

(Biblical exegetes use the term 'chiasmania' to insult other exegetes
who can't seem to open the New Testamenta without finding a chiasm
somewhere. Say, the entire gospel of Matthew. After a while you begin to
get the suspicion that you can probably wedge almost any text, the phone
book included, into almost any formal criterion imaginable, inculding
the rhyming scheme of an Elizabethan sonnet - provided you're clever
enough, have an excitable disposition and need to get your paper done
quickly.)

But again: I only skimmed the article. So before I go on insulting
someone who sounds like a terrific guy, I'd better shut up, and
apologize, and pay closer attention.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) 
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, 
so that may not have been bravery...."