Fantastic Beasts and Other Unwritten Big, Fat Books

Some thoughts on the eve of one of the most ambivalent, if not pre-hated, movie releases in recent memory. Revised with a couple of elaborating paragraphs inserted on May 3, 2022.

The biggest problem with the Fantastic Beasts film franchise, and it has been the biggest problem from the start, is that the films lack big, fat J.K. Rowling books to precede each film.*

Who's the Greatest Artist Alive Today? Meet Arne the Android!

I've written elsewhere on the death of drawing; suffice it to say, over the course of my lifetime, I've watched hand drawing go from just about its midcentury peak in Western Civiliation to its virtual extinction in the twenty-first century. Hand drawing (and its offshoot, painting) once appeared in and on everything including newspapers, magazines, hardcover dustjackets, paperback, editorial illustration, advertising, album covers, billboards, signs on the sides buildings, and everywhere else. Except for a few specialty purposes like children's books, comics, and The New Yorker, imagery of the hand has almost completely disappeared as photography and digital technologies have conquered every realm.