What is Rowling worth? Like most things to do with dough there is what you are told and then there’s the truth. Rumour has it that she earns 100 million quid every eight months. Whatever the actual figure you can take it that a lorryload of fivers is delivered to her door every month. That being the case why didn’t she settle with the family of the late Adrian Jacobs, whose work she stole, when she had the chance, before the whole shamozzle got out of hand? It is said Neil Gaiman who supplied the mere physical attributes of the hero and nothing else was paid a figure of 10 million quid. He denies it of course. Hard to prove one way or another but Rowling and her boys seem to be able to prove anything. How wonderful it must be to be able to lay claim to absolute truth on anything and have nearly everybody believe you too. The pope doesn’t get that! Idiots believe them too which is rather depressing we have to say. Jacobs’ case is “unsubstantiated, unfounded and untrue,” they tell you. We are in the land of heroic couplets with this sort of drivel. Rowling’s lawyers, Blair/Schillings, wrote the script. Bloomsbury came out with exact same cant when they were asked for a comment in the WTW London High Court case. Clever boys?

Adrian Jacobs’ family may even get a hearing if the Home Office doesn’t get in on the act and remind the judge that he is in bat for England as well as the law… and her image abroad… and all that. Students of the Widgery trial, that is now proven to be a sham after the recent apology by England for Bloody Sunday, will know what we mean.  What would the neighbours think if the canonized Rowling had feet of clay after all?

If we take leave to examine these words one by one we can see they amount to so much hot air, and we, The Bogside Artists, have heard them before and from the same source.

“UNSUBSTANTIATED”:  Means “unsupported”, “unverified”, “not factually proven.” (Encarta)
The Willy the Wizard people claim otherwise and have set up the actual writ they served on Scholastic Inc, New York for all to read. You can access it here;

http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/07/harry-potter-willy-wizard.html

Seems to be a lot of substantiation there if you ask us!

“UNFOUNDED”:  Means  “Not supported by evidence”, “not established” (Encarta). More of the same don’t you think? Were it established it would be all over wouldn’t it? It seems clear that the Willy the Wizard people are seeking to establish their claims and will hopefully get their chance to do so in a court of law. This is begging the question isn’t it?  Begging the question means assuming  as already proven what you have set out to prove. People do that… lawyers mostly.

“UNTRUE”: A tricky one this. What is truth asked pilot of its Personification? He got no reply. In law you have to prove something to be true on the basis of evidence. Fair enough, even if many things are true for which there is no evidence and can be no evidence. This is also begging the question since if the claims were proven to be true there would be no ‘claims’ as such since the truth would already have been substantiated, proven and true.

What we are doing here is called thinking for oneself incidentally, a preoccupation much frowned upon by Harry Potter fans and fast becoming as obsolete as harpsichord recitals. Our conclusion? Rowling’s lawyers need a new script, one not designed to convince the gullible they have mastery of words and their usages when it is patently clear they do not. All three words amount to the same thing…  simply “unproven”. Proving is exactly what the WTW are trying to do and what Rowling’s wordsmiths are trying to prevent.

We are also totally convinced that the claims of made by the Willy the Wizard team are verifiably true. That means that Rowling and Little are lying in their teeth and this in turn raises the question… why didn’t they settle much earlier on when they had the chance? Then they would have had only us to deal with. And who is going to listen to us whistling in the dark when the very mountains tremble at the sound of Schillings and Blair? The answer to that is quite simple too. They are arrogant and stupid little people who have a blind faith in their ability to con whoever they want, whenever they want, however they want, as they have been doing for years.

We take this opportunity to make it public that our hat is in the arena with Willy the Wizard and its much sinned-against author Adrian Jacobs because we KNOW beyond any shadow of a doubt these men are telling the truth. We say this because we KNOW the true source of the story. As artists standing for freedom of expression we have no option but to tell the truth as it is known to us.  Not to do so is to lie by omission.

POTTER … OF LIES, DAMN LIES AND ‘PRECEDENTS’.

What is truly astonishing to us is the sight of supposedly ‘intelligent’ people such as editors, journalists, broadcasting people in general accepting unquestioningly the promotional pabulum dished out by Rowling’s media friends, bloggers et al. They have no problem whatever with that revolting hooey about “an idea on a train” or the carefully crafted myth of St. Rowling suffering for her art in the lonely streets of Edinburgh despite the fact that she had written nothing we know of and published nothing prior to Potter and, by her own admission, was no more interested in fantasy writing as a genre than Little her agent (who wrote to Will to tell him there was “no money in children’s fiction”) was in publishing it. You have to wonder who put who up to what?

            People, especially the English, WANT to believe it all. She’s their baby… hands off! That’s the problem. So, they swallow the bait, hook and all… and get to keep it. Nobody dare doubt that The Chosen One was born to the task. Who could? Nobody, that is, except us who know better.

            And if this article succeeds in any purpose may it be to make it abundantly clear to you the total contempt we have for the moral redundancy of Rowling-Little and all who support them, paid and unpaid. The mindset behind it is that of The Gadarene Swine not J.R.Tolkien.

             When news broke of the impending case of Willy The Wizard, Rowling’s bloggers and article peddlers got up an argument of ‘precedents’ that was distributed widely. Young people especially warmed to it as it put the cause within their reach and eased their consciences about copying eachother’s homework. The disseminators have since cooled off, perhaps because this blog made short work of it. The fact that they tried it on in the first place spells GUILT all by itself. A big mistake.

Ask yourself….why would you need to cite precedents if  your work is so genuinely original? What need would you have to convince anyone? Who would need to argue from Mozart’s Mass to precedents in Bach or Hayden by way vindicating that great work? Does it need vindicating? Mozart’s Mass stands by itself and is taken on its own merits. To put forward an argument of precedents in support of what you want people to believe to be simultaneously original creation, in defense of which you have brought many fellow ‘precedent harvesters’ to court is subterfuge and hypocrisy.

            Precedents are all very well if you arguing from the GIVEN. But Potter is NOT the GIVEN and never was. HE IS THE RIP-OFF. You can no more argue ‘precedents’ for him than you can argue ‘precedents’ for Sir Christopher Wren’s cathedral when it is common knowledge (now, that is) that he replicated the dome of St. Paul’s from Donato Bramante’s model for St. Peter’s in Rome. He thought he was safe because travel in the 1670s was difficult and for the well-heeled and Rome was way over there somewhere and London was way over here. Who would get to know? Wren basked in his ‘borrowed’ glory.

             Conversely, would anyone cite precedents in support of Van Meegeren’s delectable forgeries of Vermeer? They certainly would if they were sure you knew nothing of the existence of Vermeer’s paintings and they wanted you to believe their man Van Meegeren was the soul and brains of Vermeer - that unknown ‘also-ran’ he had, without scruple or conscience, forged.

            Now, at least, you know why precedents were hastily put forward in support of the central thrust of the Potter campaign viz; to reinforce the forger as the original creator, to make of Rowling what she never was and indeed never could be or could have been. The cap does not fit. Where did she get it from anyway? And I am not referring to the cap that she allegedly plagiarised with the rest. And if you are a journalist who has fallen for it all you might consider another profession where you will have the luxury of thinking for yourself and where you will be allowed to question consensus beliefs.

            Great works of art do not come from mere “ideas”, however wonderful: publishers’ slush piles are teeming with ‘wonderful ideas’. They come from an artist’s intellectual and spiritual confrontation with the reality and needs of his times. From the “Eroica” to “The Gulag Archipelago” this is the case and will always be the case. No amount of grafting ‘spiritual depth’ onto Rowling is going to convince anybody with half a brain that she was in the fray of the spiritual-politico maelstrom of the nineties that alone could have given birth to the series. She was in a flat in peaceful Clapham (we are told) and further from the action than the ducks in Clapham pond. By the time she was born, the sixties with their world-changing spiritual focus, were half-way to finishing.

             From the start then, what the Rowling team knew they had to do therefore was convince us all that such spiritual grapplings, frought with neglect and hardship, constituted her pre-Potter life. With the myth already established, this is much easier for them these days. But they are still at it. Lately, they have had to tweak it a little, show a fervent political bent on the part of the esteemed authoress. Rowling, of late, supports the Labour Party and makes profoundly informed political speeches in support of the poor one-parented Muggles who did not quite make it to the winner’s enclosure. It all helps. Later on, they may have to dole out some inventive romantic lore about her political engagement and ardent passion for justice while a humble college student, or anything else you can think of that nobody can prove ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. A mandatory stop at Africa maybe? There’d be ‘depth’ a là Jolie for sure, to authenticate her moral mission at Amnesty. Or maybe, she was just happy to find a job there? We pause to bite our tongues. 

           Indeed, we  shouldn’t put it beyond them to consult this blog to tell them what to do next. Why stop now? They may even dig out ideas from the preface of Travels with Li Po if they have not already done so. The mystical marriage maybe? Look out for them to appear in the next Potter movie. Our mentioning it or not mentioning it is not going to stop them by the way. So, tediously, it goes on. But the dough keeps trundling in.. and that is all that really matters and all it was ever about. The court cases surrounding the fiasco should tell you that much at least!

The truth is… Vermeer will go on being Vermeer and Ven Meegeren…..? Who is he? It will be interesting to see how long Rowling will get to go on being whoever she claims to be.

Bewitchment in the Service of Power and Deceit.

We have not forgotten the humiliation dished out to us by Rowling’s lawyers in 2008. It damaged us and was meant to do so. As a small charity constantly in need of help just to survive we find the attempt by Schillings to discredit us beneath contempt. What we said we know to be true and the Derry News, although it is free to apologize all it wants, is certainly not speaking for us with this ‘apology’ and most certainly not on our behalf.

First of all The Bogside Artists have not and will not apologize to Rowling for what they have said. The Derry News had to, and did, much to their eternal shame. To understand the following “apology” to appease J.K. Rowling’s lawyers you have to accept that the Derry News believed they were facing ruin if they did not comply. Shocking! The text of the actual apology is here reproduced in full (in italics) as it was printed in Dec/2008 and possibly dictated to them by Schillings.  

Text in red is our commentary on the text of the ‘apology’ to “put the record straight”.

“Last Monday’s front and third page article, ‘Harry Potter and the Bogside Artists’ suggested that author JK Rowling’s lawyers had complained to the Bogside Artists about a book called ‘Travels with Li Po’. We accept that this is not true.

Well, wasn’t exactly Rowling’s lawyers per se. It was Neil Blair lawyer to Rowling’s literary agency known as Christopher Little’s (‘discoverer’ of Rowling) who was clearly acting on Rowling’s behalf.

We have been asked to point out by Ms Rowling’s lawyers that William Kelly of the Bogside Artists had alleged in a letter that this book had been plagiarised by Ms Rowling in her Harry Potter novels.

These we hold to be indubitably true…. on both counts! The letter referred too was a private letter to a third party not mentioned by Schillings and which was obviously delivered to them, directly or indirectly, by her.

Ms Rowling’s literary agency wrote to Mr. Kelly refuting his claims and warning him that alleging that Ms Rowling had copied his work was defamatory and potentially actionable, and that he should desist from making such allegations. 

What they mean by “Ms Rowling’s literary agency” (how clever!)  is Neil Blair a lawyer and partner of the agency who was referred to in the Lexicon trial by Rowling herself as “MY LAWYER”. He wrote to us. We have Mr. Blair’s letter in front of us marked Private and Confidential with a suggestion that a copy be given to our lawyer as if that would somehow legitimize the nonsense it contained. Mr. Kelly has not desisted and will not be gagged by Mr. Blair or a legion of the same. Is Blair like his partner Little also avoiding scrutiny? Why didn’t Schillings name him as the one who contacted us?

Ms Rowling’s lawyers say that no complaint has been made about his book and Ms Rowling has never read Mr. Kelly’s work, let alone plagiarised it.

 A complete lie of course as William knows full well she read his ‘work’ and so does she. And he has made this statement in no uncertain terms on a blog for all to see. www.travelswithlipo.com and it has been there for many months!

In addition we accept that no-one on behalf of Ms Rowling has claimed that the term ‘philosopher’s stone’ is owned by Warner Bros.

 Really? Anybody reading Blair’s letter would come to the same conclusion. A lawyer indeed whom we showed it to came to same conclusion as we viz; Warner Bros had copyright of the phrase “the philosopher’s stone”. We have written on several occasions to Warner Bros asking if they considered themselves to have copyright on the phrase “the philosopher’s stone” and have received no reply.

We apologize for publishing false allegations and for not contacting Ms Rowling beforehand so that we might inform us of the true position.

Why should the Derry News have contacted Rowling? Why should Rowling’s word take automatic precedence over William Kelly’s or anybody else’s for that matter? What is the “true position”? That’s easy… the ‘true’ position is what Schillings and/or Rowling together with Blair and Little tell you, the gullible and deluded public, what the ‘true’ position is. A position that we have here confidently proved to be chicanery, sophistry or whatever other word you prefer to allude to willful deception.

We are happy to set the record straight.”

No. Schillings can set whatever record they want. We, The Bogside Artists, are happy to have set the record straight.

To summarize:

If we may digress for a moment into the philosophical consideration of words and their usages the above article is a classic example of “bewitching” or befuddlement and the diabolical use of language to achieve a spurious goal viz; to protect the interests of an author who feels it is not incumbent on her to prove any claim she has made or intends to make about ‘her’ alleged work. Their attitude can be summed up;

What was actually meant by the statements we made in the Derry News article is clearly secondary to whatever self-serving ‘meaning’ Schillings decided to attribute to the words we used. In   other words, the position they take and a clearly deceptive one at that, is quite simply;

“Our interpretation of what you might have said is more acceptable, more true and right than what you really meant. Indeed, we know full well what you meant but we find it quite irrelevant to our purposes; so we take leave by ignoring your own words, to decide what could be construed from what you meant as that better serves our purpose to discredit you. We fully expect you, the editor of The Derry News to agree with what we have decided The Bogside Artists meant by their statements and to bend to our will to discredit them at home and abroad in deference to our client Ms Rowling’s reputation.”