Three Cheers for The Hallmarked Man! Thoughts After the First Reading

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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Anteros-Eros Distinction in Cormoran Strike
Cormoran & Robin and Odysseus & Penelope (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/cormoran-and-robin-echoes-of-homers-odysseus-and-penelope-2-joanne-gray/) (Joanne Gray, 2019)
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 (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaftesbury_Memorial) in Piccadilly Circus (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Circus) , London, where he symbolizes the selfless philanthropic love of the Earl of Shaftesbury (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Ashley-Cooper,_7th_Earl_of_Shaftesbury) for the poor. The memorial is sometimes given the name The Angel of Christian Charity (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_(virtue)) and is popularly mistaken for Eros, cf., Lloyd & Mitchinson (2006) The Book of General Ignorance (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://www.amazon.com/Book-General-Ignorance-John-Mitchinson/dp/0307394913) “Because of the bow and the nudity… everybody assumed it was Eros, the Greek god of love.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anteros (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anteros)
https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/ErosAnteros.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203725/https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/ErosAnteros.html)
Eros is the brother of Anteros and also pretty much the opposite of Eros.
Reading Rowling at Four Levels (https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/christmas-pig-3-the-quadrigal-reading/) (John Granger, 2021)
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 (https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Art-Shakespeare-Mystery-Things/dp/0892817178/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2SEI3L0O4UGA6&keywords=lings+shakespeare&qid=1640285312&s=books&sprefix=lings+shakespeare%2Cstripbooks%2C108&sr=1-4) and Pogson (https://www.amazon.com/East-Pleasure-Lies-Interpretation-Shakespeare/dp/1013998057/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XWAFGNWNNYHR&keywords=in+the+east+my+pleasure+lies+pogson&qid=...

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