John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 101
March 15, 2017
New Arrivals
So, last week's mail brought two new books I'd ordered: CHRIS REMEMBERED and TOLKIEN'S REQUIEM.
The first is a collection of memorial tributes to Chris Mitchell, former head of the Wade Center, who died in the summer of 2014. Hard to believe that's been almost three years ago now. A number of such tributes (including mine) were posted to the Wheaton website at the time. Those and many more have now been collected into a book, the full title of which is CHRIS -- REMEMBERED: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHRISTOPHER W. MITCHELL, complied by Julie Mitchell, his widow.
Among the many, many contributors of pieces both brief and long are Tolkien scholars such as Marjorie Burns, Verlyn Flieger, Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, and Richard West; Lewis scholars such as James Como, Bruce Edwards, Diana Pavlac Glyer, Douglas Gresham, Rolland Hein, Don King, Andrew Lazo, Colin Manlove, Peter Schakel, Michael Ward, and Walter Hooper; Inkling scholars such as David C. Downing, Sorina Higgins, as well as colleagues such as Laura Schmidt, Jerry Root, Marjorie Mead; family, friends, students, fellow teachers, and members of his local church.
My own contribution does not begin to scratch the surface. It's available on the Wade tribute site, and on pages 25-26 of this book, but I'd like to share it here as well:
I was surprised and saddened to hear of the sudden death of Chris Mitchell, former director of the Wade. I'd known Chris for going on twenty years, ever since he first came to Wheaton. I didn't see him often, usually once or twice a year -- during what had become yearly visits to do research in the Wade on various projects, and also (most years) at a yearly gathering where we would get together, along with several other like-minded folk, and exchange notes about our respective current projects.
In his public persona, Chris did a great job as Director of the Wade, shifting the earlier emphasis from collecting to making the material already there more accessible. By temperament a peacemaker, he smoothed over a long-standing feud among factions of Lewis scholars. I sometimes think that we, as Christians, put forward an unappealing face to the world: angry, intolerant, judgmental. Chris was the sort of person comfortable in his own beliefs who felt no need to attack the beliefs of others; a man who lived his religion, setting a good example to us all. He genuinely liked people and enjoyed
meeting new people. This made him a good representative for the Wade; it also made him a person people enjoyed spending time with.
Over time he grew tired of administration: being the public face of the Wade left little time for his own scholarship (he had solid background in theology, with a special interest in Jonathan Edwards, from his beloved St. Andrews) and he also wanted to return to teaching. Given that he could explain C. S. Lewis's ideas rather better than Lewis himself could, I was very much looking forward to the works he would have produced, given time. I'm glad he got the chance to make the change, and it was clear to see how much he was enjoying new life on the West Coast, closer to his beloved Pacific Northwest. I'm only sorry he didn't have more time: to enjoy teaching, to write more books on Lewis (and Lewis & Tolkien, et al), to hike and fish and enjoy the great outdoors he loved so much.
He was a good man. A born teacher. A scholar with things to say. I'm glad I got to know him. I'll miss him.
rest in peace.
--John R.
The first is a collection of memorial tributes to Chris Mitchell, former head of the Wade Center, who died in the summer of 2014. Hard to believe that's been almost three years ago now. A number of such tributes (including mine) were posted to the Wheaton website at the time. Those and many more have now been collected into a book, the full title of which is CHRIS -- REMEMBERED: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHRISTOPHER W. MITCHELL, complied by Julie Mitchell, his widow.
Among the many, many contributors of pieces both brief and long are Tolkien scholars such as Marjorie Burns, Verlyn Flieger, Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, and Richard West; Lewis scholars such as James Como, Bruce Edwards, Diana Pavlac Glyer, Douglas Gresham, Rolland Hein, Don King, Andrew Lazo, Colin Manlove, Peter Schakel, Michael Ward, and Walter Hooper; Inkling scholars such as David C. Downing, Sorina Higgins, as well as colleagues such as Laura Schmidt, Jerry Root, Marjorie Mead; family, friends, students, fellow teachers, and members of his local church.
My own contribution does not begin to scratch the surface. It's available on the Wade tribute site, and on pages 25-26 of this book, but I'd like to share it here as well:
I was surprised and saddened to hear of the sudden death of Chris Mitchell, former director of the Wade. I'd known Chris for going on twenty years, ever since he first came to Wheaton. I didn't see him often, usually once or twice a year -- during what had become yearly visits to do research in the Wade on various projects, and also (most years) at a yearly gathering where we would get together, along with several other like-minded folk, and exchange notes about our respective current projects.
In his public persona, Chris did a great job as Director of the Wade, shifting the earlier emphasis from collecting to making the material already there more accessible. By temperament a peacemaker, he smoothed over a long-standing feud among factions of Lewis scholars. I sometimes think that we, as Christians, put forward an unappealing face to the world: angry, intolerant, judgmental. Chris was the sort of person comfortable in his own beliefs who felt no need to attack the beliefs of others; a man who lived his religion, setting a good example to us all. He genuinely liked people and enjoyed
meeting new people. This made him a good representative for the Wade; it also made him a person people enjoyed spending time with.
Over time he grew tired of administration: being the public face of the Wade left little time for his own scholarship (he had solid background in theology, with a special interest in Jonathan Edwards, from his beloved St. Andrews) and he also wanted to return to teaching. Given that he could explain C. S. Lewis's ideas rather better than Lewis himself could, I was very much looking forward to the works he would have produced, given time. I'm glad he got the chance to make the change, and it was clear to see how much he was enjoying new life on the West Coast, closer to his beloved Pacific Northwest. I'm only sorry he didn't have more time: to enjoy teaching, to write more books on Lewis (and Lewis & Tolkien, et al), to hike and fish and enjoy the great outdoors he loved so much.
He was a good man. A born teacher. A scholar with things to say. I'm glad I got to know him. I'll miss him.
rest in peace.
--John R.
March 9, 2017
Return to THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS
Thanks to Paul W. for sharing with me the news that my old module RETURN TO THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS was under discussion online:
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewto...
Without going into too much detail, I can confirm the guess one of the posters made that this adventure was never intended to be set in Mystara. I did a lot of work on Mystara during my time at TSR -- e.g. WRATH OF THE IMMORTALS (ed & dev), MARK OF AMBER (edited Jeff's text, added the timeline, and created the audio-cd dialogue), HAIL THE HERO (ed), the PLAYER'S SURVIVAL KIT (wrote), Mystara MC (edited a quarter of the whole). But that game world had gone into abeyance when TSR collapsed, and its great champion, Bruce Heard, was not among those who made the transition to Wizards of the Coast. Another factor that has to be taken into account is that several drafts of the D&D movie were set in Glantri, which meant a mandated hands-off approach for the game world so far as rpg products went.
Similarly, it was not intended to be a Greyhawk adventure either. I deliberately wrote it to not be world-specific. Which made it a nasty shock when Powers That Be slapped a GREYHAWK logo on the back cover. I got a lot of grief for that from diehard Greyhawk fans at the time,* who pointed out non-Oerthian elements that made it an uneasy fit as an official World of Greyhawk release. I wdn't have been writing a GH product in any case, since there was a separate Greyhawk team among the department at WotC in charge of revitalizing that line, headed by Kij Johnson and including Roger Moore, and I think Harold Johnson during the brief time he was out in Renton; certainly Sean Reynolds, and I think Steve Miller. In any case, any official WoG product wd have come out of their team, and I wasn't a member of it .
It's also significant that when I was writing this adventure the clock had already started ticking to wind down Second Edition and ramp up to launch 3e (I was to be the co-editor, w. Julia Martin, of two of its three core books: the PH & DMG). I was deliberately eclectic and included passing allusions to a number of modules from the past: M2. Maze of the Riddling Minotaurs, L2. The Assassins Knot, B1. In Search of the Unknown, X2. Castle Amber, the Mark of Amberboxed set, B4. The Lost City, L1. The Secret of Bone Hill, et al. I even talked the art director into letting me reproduce, as a piece of pick-up art, a striking image depicting a swarm of stirges in silhouette from the original 1st edition DMG.
I added into the mix other things that came out of my own campaign. To give just one example, the spellbook full of new necromancy spells, The Book of Dead Smiles, alluded to in one room description were in fact spells written up by a PC of mine, some of which later appeared in Tome and Blood, while others saw print in Secret College of Necromancy from Green Ronin. Other allusions come from far and wide: a group of inattentive guards who are playing MtG; the punchline from a Yamara cartoon (from before Yamara got weird); a character from one of the all-time great fantasy short stories (Frank Stockton's 1887 "Bee Man of Orn"); a god's name taken from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide radio show ('Quonzar' simply being Zarquon swapped around).
I have to confess, though, that all this eclecticism was not just for its own sake. I meant what I said in that third paragraph: "one of the greatest strengths of AD&D is its endless adaptability" (Return to the Keep p. 2). There it refers to home rules, but it's equally applicable to claim a little ground back from game world loyalists. It was common practice for gamers to freely adapt modules from various game worlds into their ongoing campaign. But by the mid to late '90s players were more and more locked into pregenerated game worlds, with those who liked Greyhawk avoiding The Forgotten Realms, fans of the Known World keeping their distance from Birthright, and so forth. In what was explicitly billed as an introductory module, I wanted to establish precedent for taking and adapting published adventures to a given DMs' ongoing campaign,** and for taking interesting characters or plots or groups over from one module to another, even if the latter was not part of the same continuity. I thought that was as important in an instructional module as the scenes designed to promote role-playing (e.g., what do you do with an evil character who's not just friendly but downright helpful? Do you have enough sense to know to run away when you're in over your head?).
Finally, re. one specific point raised in the online discussion, I can lay one speculation to rest.Unfortunately, while I still have my copy of Jeff Grubb's "Warriors of the Gray Queen", I've misplaced my copy of Ed Stark's "The Displaced" and don't remember this mini-adventure well enough to recall specific details. But I can confirm that I don't have any memory of Duiran the Dwarf and am sure that he was not created by me and never figured in my adventure at any point. Ed was in my playtest of Return to the Keep, which I ran over lunchtimes at the WotC office for several weeks; perhaps Duiran was his character, though that's just speculation on my part. I assume Aseneth the necromancer was dropped as a player-character in the mini-adventure over qualms over having an evil pregen PC. 'Con' by the way is a misprint for 'Cob', the character's name in my adventure.
--John R.
*one of the reasons I've largely stayed away from forums ever since.
**This is not to say that I don't enforce strict conformity to the continuity and rules when editing a product set in a specific game world, like RAVENLOFT, SPELLJAMMER, al-QADIM, EBBERON, &c., all of which I worked on at some point. I literally have a button that reads The most rabid literary purist-- which my wife got for me after a Tolkien friend of mine concluded discussion of some point relating to Tolkien's work with the remark that 'only the most rabid literary purist' could disagree, and I promptly challenged him on the point.
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewto...
Without going into too much detail, I can confirm the guess one of the posters made that this adventure was never intended to be set in Mystara. I did a lot of work on Mystara during my time at TSR -- e.g. WRATH OF THE IMMORTALS (ed & dev), MARK OF AMBER (edited Jeff's text, added the timeline, and created the audio-cd dialogue), HAIL THE HERO (ed), the PLAYER'S SURVIVAL KIT (wrote), Mystara MC (edited a quarter of the whole). But that game world had gone into abeyance when TSR collapsed, and its great champion, Bruce Heard, was not among those who made the transition to Wizards of the Coast. Another factor that has to be taken into account is that several drafts of the D&D movie were set in Glantri, which meant a mandated hands-off approach for the game world so far as rpg products went.
Similarly, it was not intended to be a Greyhawk adventure either. I deliberately wrote it to not be world-specific. Which made it a nasty shock when Powers That Be slapped a GREYHAWK logo on the back cover. I got a lot of grief for that from diehard Greyhawk fans at the time,* who pointed out non-Oerthian elements that made it an uneasy fit as an official World of Greyhawk release. I wdn't have been writing a GH product in any case, since there was a separate Greyhawk team among the department at WotC in charge of revitalizing that line, headed by Kij Johnson and including Roger Moore, and I think Harold Johnson during the brief time he was out in Renton; certainly Sean Reynolds, and I think Steve Miller. In any case, any official WoG product wd have come out of their team, and I wasn't a member of it .
It's also significant that when I was writing this adventure the clock had already started ticking to wind down Second Edition and ramp up to launch 3e (I was to be the co-editor, w. Julia Martin, of two of its three core books: the PH & DMG). I was deliberately eclectic and included passing allusions to a number of modules from the past: M2. Maze of the Riddling Minotaurs, L2. The Assassins Knot, B1. In Search of the Unknown, X2. Castle Amber, the Mark of Amberboxed set, B4. The Lost City, L1. The Secret of Bone Hill, et al. I even talked the art director into letting me reproduce, as a piece of pick-up art, a striking image depicting a swarm of stirges in silhouette from the original 1st edition DMG.
I added into the mix other things that came out of my own campaign. To give just one example, the spellbook full of new necromancy spells, The Book of Dead Smiles, alluded to in one room description were in fact spells written up by a PC of mine, some of which later appeared in Tome and Blood, while others saw print in Secret College of Necromancy from Green Ronin. Other allusions come from far and wide: a group of inattentive guards who are playing MtG; the punchline from a Yamara cartoon (from before Yamara got weird); a character from one of the all-time great fantasy short stories (Frank Stockton's 1887 "Bee Man of Orn"); a god's name taken from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide radio show ('Quonzar' simply being Zarquon swapped around).
I have to confess, though, that all this eclecticism was not just for its own sake. I meant what I said in that third paragraph: "one of the greatest strengths of AD&D is its endless adaptability" (Return to the Keep p. 2). There it refers to home rules, but it's equally applicable to claim a little ground back from game world loyalists. It was common practice for gamers to freely adapt modules from various game worlds into their ongoing campaign. But by the mid to late '90s players were more and more locked into pregenerated game worlds, with those who liked Greyhawk avoiding The Forgotten Realms, fans of the Known World keeping their distance from Birthright, and so forth. In what was explicitly billed as an introductory module, I wanted to establish precedent for taking and adapting published adventures to a given DMs' ongoing campaign,** and for taking interesting characters or plots or groups over from one module to another, even if the latter was not part of the same continuity. I thought that was as important in an instructional module as the scenes designed to promote role-playing (e.g., what do you do with an evil character who's not just friendly but downright helpful? Do you have enough sense to know to run away when you're in over your head?).
Finally, re. one specific point raised in the online discussion, I can lay one speculation to rest.Unfortunately, while I still have my copy of Jeff Grubb's "Warriors of the Gray Queen", I've misplaced my copy of Ed Stark's "The Displaced" and don't remember this mini-adventure well enough to recall specific details. But I can confirm that I don't have any memory of Duiran the Dwarf and am sure that he was not created by me and never figured in my adventure at any point. Ed was in my playtest of Return to the Keep, which I ran over lunchtimes at the WotC office for several weeks; perhaps Duiran was his character, though that's just speculation on my part. I assume Aseneth the necromancer was dropped as a player-character in the mini-adventure over qualms over having an evil pregen PC. 'Con' by the way is a misprint for 'Cob', the character's name in my adventure.
--John R.
*one of the reasons I've largely stayed away from forums ever since.
**This is not to say that I don't enforce strict conformity to the continuity and rules when editing a product set in a specific game world, like RAVENLOFT, SPELLJAMMER, al-QADIM, EBBERON, &c., all of which I worked on at some point. I literally have a button that reads The most rabid literary purist-- which my wife got for me after a Tolkien friend of mine concluded discussion of some point relating to Tolkien's work with the remark that 'only the most rabid literary purist' could disagree, and I promptly challenged him on the point.
March 8, 2017
free to a good home: ALARMS & EXCURSIONS
So, the ongoing effort to organize stuff -- and we're talking many boxes full of stuff here -- has currently reached the rpg magazines, of which I have far too many. Some are obvious keepers -- such as my almost-complete run of DRAGON and full set of DUNGEON and of POLYHEDRON. Others need to be sorted through to see if there are any individual issues worth keeping or articles worth extracting (e.g. SHADIS and CHALLENGE). And still others can just go.
A good example of this last category are two issues of the long-lived legendary gaming apa ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS. I was never a member of this apa, but I have two stray issues that I picked up over the years, left behind when their original owners no longer wanted to keep them.
the first, issue # 219 (Oct 1993), talks a lot about GenCon '93 and OVER THE EDGE and AMBER Diceless Gaming, the latter being in vogue at about that time. Among the thirty-odd contributors are Lisa Padol, Spike Jones, Jonathan Tweet, Robin Laws, Tony Lee, and apa coordinator Lee Gold.
the second, issue #239 (June or July ?1995), includes topics like gender equality in rpg systems and EVERWAY. Among the contributors are Greg Stolze, Lisa Steele, Spike Jones, Lisa Padol, Jonathan Tweet, Rob Heinsoo, and of course Lee Gold.
Hate to just throw these out if there's anyone out there who'd like this snapshot of a highly self-selected segment of the gaming world as it was twenty-plus years ago. So, if anyone is interested, drop me a line.
--John R.current audiobook: EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXIcurrent (re)reading: HME.VI
A good example of this last category are two issues of the long-lived legendary gaming apa ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS. I was never a member of this apa, but I have two stray issues that I picked up over the years, left behind when their original owners no longer wanted to keep them.
the first, issue # 219 (Oct 1993), talks a lot about GenCon '93 and OVER THE EDGE and AMBER Diceless Gaming, the latter being in vogue at about that time. Among the thirty-odd contributors are Lisa Padol, Spike Jones, Jonathan Tweet, Robin Laws, Tony Lee, and apa coordinator Lee Gold.
the second, issue #239 (June or July ?1995), includes topics like gender equality in rpg systems and EVERWAY. Among the contributors are Greg Stolze, Lisa Steele, Spike Jones, Lisa Padol, Jonathan Tweet, Rob Heinsoo, and of course Lee Gold.
Hate to just throw these out if there's anyone out there who'd like this snapshot of a highly self-selected segment of the gaming world as it was twenty-plus years ago. So, if anyone is interested, drop me a line.
--John R.current audiobook: EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXIcurrent (re)reading: HME.VI
March 7, 2017
Wagner and Tolkien or Tolkien and Wagner?
So, I've been meaning to pick up one of the two books on connections between Wagner's RING cycle and Tolkien's LotR and been at something of a loss, since two books came out on this topic from the same publisher at about the same time: WAGNER & TOLKIEN by Renee Vink (Walking Tree, 2012) and TOLKIEN & WAGNER by Christopher MacLachlan (Walking Tree, 2012).
Any recommendation much appreciated, esp re. which of these would be better for someone who's familiar with his Tolkien but only knows Wagner second-hand through retellings and summaries.
--John R.
Any recommendation much appreciated, esp re. which of these would be better for someone who's familiar with his Tolkien but only knows Wagner second-hand through retellings and summaries.
--John R.
Wagner and Tolkien or Tolkien and Wagner
So, I've been meaning to pick up one of the two books on connections between Wagner's RING cycle and Tolkien's LotR and been at something of a loss, since two books came out on this topic from the same publisher at about the same time: WAGNER & TOLKIEN by Renee Vink (Walking Tree, 2012) and TOLKIEN & WAGNER by Christopher MacLachlan (Walking Tree, 2012).
Any recommendation much appreciated, esp re. which of these would be better for someone who's familiar with his Tolkien but only knows Wagner second-hand through retellings and summaries.
--John R.
Any recommendation much appreciated, esp re. which of these would be better for someone who's familiar with his Tolkien but only knows Wagner second-hand through retellings and summaries.
--John R.
Tolkien Sessions at Kalamazoo
So, yesterday's mail brought the program book for this year's Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo (coming up just the month after next). After going though and picking out the Tolkien content, I noticed that Anna Smol had already done so, and has the Tolkien-themed presentations listed in a minischedule on her site. What's more, she includes the session for Tolkien Day, a side-gathering being held the day before Kalamazoo itself, for those (like me) who wanted more Tolkien than was available in the official tracks.
https://annasmol.net/2017/01/28/kalamazoo-tolkien-symposium-and-icms-conference/
One interesting side-event taking place as part of the main conference is a performance of LEAF BY NIGGLE, which I've never seen staged before; hope it'll be possible to see it (nighttime events are always iffy to make it to)
I'm not presenting a piece this year (unlike nine of the ten preceding years), being tied up in the WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS project, but I'm certainly looking forward to going to other people's presentations and finding out things I didn't know yet. And of course it's always good to meet Tolk folk.
--John R.
current reading: SECRET VICE (just finished), ON THE BEACH (just read the scenes set in Seattle).
https://annasmol.net/2017/01/28/kalamazoo-tolkien-symposium-and-icms-conference/
One interesting side-event taking place as part of the main conference is a performance of LEAF BY NIGGLE, which I've never seen staged before; hope it'll be possible to see it (nighttime events are always iffy to make it to)
I'm not presenting a piece this year (unlike nine of the ten preceding years), being tied up in the WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS project, but I'm certainly looking forward to going to other people's presentations and finding out things I didn't know yet. And of course it's always good to meet Tolk folk.
--John R.
current reading: SECRET VICE (just finished), ON THE BEACH (just read the scenes set in Seattle).
February 24, 2017
What It Looks Like to be Chased by Tigers
So, yesterday came across the following footage of tigers chasing a drone. Pretty amazing stuff -- not least because I've never seen so many tigers at one time sharing the same space before. I thought they were solitary predators (unlike lions, who live in prides). Clearly they can cope with living with other tigers just fine.
Here's the link;
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39066658
--JDR
current reading: A SECRET VICE (Fimi-Higgins expanded edition
Here's the link;
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39066658
--JDR
current reading: A SECRET VICE (Fimi-Higgins expanded edition
February 20, 2017
And Another Tolkien House on Sale
Thanks to Janice, without whom I wd have missed it, but as the following link shows there's another Tolkien house currently for sale. This time it's Rock Cottage in Great Haywood, Staffordshire, where the Tolkiens lived briefly while JRRT was recovering from his complete physical breakdown in the trenches. This one is going for just 375,000 pounds and unlike the house on Sandfield Road comes with the official JRRT-lived-here blue plaque mounted on the wall. I'm glad to have a picture of what this house looked like -- for one thing, I assumed from the word 'cottage' that it was a one-story building, whereas the photo shows that it's definitely two.
--John R.
current reading, A SECRET VICE and some P. G. Wodehouse murder mystery stories.
--John R.
current reading, A SECRET VICE and some P. G. Wodehouse murder mystery stories.
Loren Eiseley on Lewis
Loren Eiseley on Lewis
So, in addition to the references to Dunsany and Tolkien, I also found that Eiseley was conversant with C. S. Lewis's work as well (specifically, his science fiction trilogy). The allusion to Lewis appears in the next-to-last essay in the second volume of COLLECTED ESSAYS ON EVOLUTIOIN, NATURE, AND THE COSMOS, Volume Two (Library of America, 2016): "The Lethal Factor", part of THE STAR THROWER (1978) —in fact, just before the essay mentioning Tolkien.
Here the topic is extinction, and the cavalier attitude some scientist have, or had, towards it (an attitude I hope has largely changed since Eiseley's day). Eiseley writes
"In one of those profound morality plays which C. S. Lewis is capable of tossing off lightly in the guise of science fiction, one of his characters remarks that in the modern era the good appears to be getting better and the evil more terrifying. . ."
Eiseley then goes on to discuss the calculations of 'technicians' over the purely military results of fall-out from nuclear war and regrets that
"Nor, in the scores of books analyzing these facts, is it easy to find a word spared to indicate concern for the falling sparrow, the ruined forest, the contaminated spring . . . "One of these technicians wrote in another connection involving the mere use of insecticides, which I here shorten and paraphrase: 'Balance of nature? An outmoded biological concept. There is no room for sentiment in modern science. We shall learn to get along without birdsif necessary. After all, the dinosaurs disappeared. Man merely makes the process go faster. Everything changes with time.' And so it does. But let us be just as realistic as the gentleman would wish. It may be we who go. I am just primitive enough to hope that somehow, somewhere, a cardinal may still be whistling on a green bush when the last man goes blind before his man-made sun . . . it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure. "To perpetrate this final act of malice seems somehow disproportionate, beyond endurance . . . "It is for this reason that Lewis's remark about the widening gap between good and evil takes on such horrifying significance in our time." (p. 424-425)
—JDRcurrent reading: JRRT, A SECRET VICE (expanded edition)current gaming: CALL OF CTHULHU (Pulp Cthulhu), D&D (Ravenloft)
So, in addition to the references to Dunsany and Tolkien, I also found that Eiseley was conversant with C. S. Lewis's work as well (specifically, his science fiction trilogy). The allusion to Lewis appears in the next-to-last essay in the second volume of COLLECTED ESSAYS ON EVOLUTIOIN, NATURE, AND THE COSMOS, Volume Two (Library of America, 2016): "The Lethal Factor", part of THE STAR THROWER (1978) —in fact, just before the essay mentioning Tolkien.
Here the topic is extinction, and the cavalier attitude some scientist have, or had, towards it (an attitude I hope has largely changed since Eiseley's day). Eiseley writes
"In one of those profound morality plays which C. S. Lewis is capable of tossing off lightly in the guise of science fiction, one of his characters remarks that in the modern era the good appears to be getting better and the evil more terrifying. . ."
Eiseley then goes on to discuss the calculations of 'technicians' over the purely military results of fall-out from nuclear war and regrets that
"Nor, in the scores of books analyzing these facts, is it easy to find a word spared to indicate concern for the falling sparrow, the ruined forest, the contaminated spring . . . "One of these technicians wrote in another connection involving the mere use of insecticides, which I here shorten and paraphrase: 'Balance of nature? An outmoded biological concept. There is no room for sentiment in modern science. We shall learn to get along without birdsif necessary. After all, the dinosaurs disappeared. Man merely makes the process go faster. Everything changes with time.' And so it does. But let us be just as realistic as the gentleman would wish. It may be we who go. I am just primitive enough to hope that somehow, somewhere, a cardinal may still be whistling on a green bush when the last man goes blind before his man-made sun . . . it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure. "To perpetrate this final act of malice seems somehow disproportionate, beyond endurance . . . "It is for this reason that Lewis's remark about the widening gap between good and evil takes on such horrifying significance in our time." (p. 424-425)
—JDRcurrent reading: JRRT, A SECRET VICE (expanded edition)current gaming: CALL OF CTHULHU (Pulp Cthulhu), D&D (Ravenloft)
February 19, 2017
Loren Eiseley on Dunsany — and Tolkien
Loren Eiseley on Dunsany — and Tolkien
So, back when I was working on my Dunsany dissertation I came across a reference to a piece that essayist and thinker Loren Eiseley, whom I knew only from his wonderful, wistful essay "The Brown Wasps", had written on Dunsany, but despite my best efforts I was never able to locate it.
Flash forward twenty-seven years, and while browsing a shelf at the local Barnes & Noble I see a two-volume set of Eiseley's collected essays, just out from Library of America. And so, checking the indexes, I find three references to Dunsany and one to Tolkien.
It turns out I was in pursuit of a bibliographic ghost, in that Eiseley seems not to have written a piece about Dunsany but instead to have referred to him occasionally to make a point. And checking those references, it immediately becomes apparent that Eiseley had a good deal of respect for Dunsany as a thinker — an aspect of Ld D's work that would have been familiar at the time of his early fame (roughly the first decade and a half of his career) but has dropped out of the collective consciousness, even among those who read Dunsany for his literary gifts. *
The first Dunsany reference comes in Chapter Eight: "The Inner Galaxy" in a 1969 book THE UNEXPECTED UNIVERSE. After describing the connection he felt with a wild bird he saw each day, and the sense of loss when one day it was gone, Eiseley notes that such feelings wd have been considered "meaningless, as the harsh Victorian Darwinists would have understood it or even, equally, those harsh modern materialists of whom Lord Dunsany once said: 'It is very seldom that the same man knows much of science, and about the things that were known before ever science came'." (Eiseley volume I page 373).
The second quote comes from THE LOST NOTEBOOKS, a posthumous 1987 collection, in notes for an unwritten essay: "[life] has to have some kind of unofficial assurance of nature's stability . . . wasps and migratory birds . . . had an old contract, an old promise, never broken** till man began to interfere with things, that nature, in degree, is steadfast and continuous . . . [Life] has nature's promise — a guarantee that has not been broken in four billion years that the universe has a queer kind of rationality and expectedness about it. Lord Dunsany says, 'If we change too much we may no longer fit into the scheme of things; but the glow-worm shows no signs of making any change.' (Patches of Sunlight, p. 25). (Eiseley volume I page 446).
The third and final Dunsany reference occurs in context with the Tolkien reference, from a piece called "The Illusion of the Two Cultures" that had appeared in Eiseley's final book THE STAR THROWER (1978) and appears here as the last essay in this two-volume set. This was, of course, a topic of great interest to Barfield, who devoted one of his most accessible books, WORLDS APART (1963), to an exploration of the 'two cultures' debate. Eiseley's piece focuses on fear of imagination, and frames the argument in terms I think Tolkien wd have been comfortable with (though JRRT uses the image of 'The Machine' rather than 'tool/ technic'):
". . . the human realm is denied in favor of the world of pure technics. Man, the tool user, grows convinced that he is himself only useful as a tool, that fertility except in the use of the scientific imagination is wasteful and without purpose, even, in some indefinable way, sinful. I was reading J. R. R. Tolkien's great symbolic trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, a few months ago, when a young scientist of my acquaintance paused and looked over my shoulder. After a little casual interchange the man departed leaving an accusing remark hovering in the air between us. 'I wouldn't waste my time with a man who writes fairy stories.' He might as well have added, 'or with a man who reads them.' As I went back to my book I wondered vaguely in what leafless landscape one grew up without Hans Christian Andersen, or Dunsany, or even Jules Verne. There lingered about the young man's words a puritanism which seemed the more remarkable because . . . it was unmotivated by any sectarian religiosity unless a total dedication to science brings to some minds a similar authoritarian desire to shackle the human imagination."
A little more poking revealed that Eiseley reviewed two of Tolkien's books: TREE & LEAF (cf. West's TOLKIEN CHECKLIST p. 45) and THE RETURN OF THE KING. The former clearly informed his comments on the latter (see below). I don't remember seeing Eiseley's LotR review, but the following excerpt from it appears as a blurb in some old paperback editions of THE HOBBIT:
"The great tale of wonder, like the great novel, is not a preoccupation of children . . . the adult mind has, if anything, greater need of fantasy than that of the child. . . . In The Lord of the Ringsa whole Secondary World is created and successfully sustained through three large volumes. These are sure to remain Tolkien's life work, and are certainly destined to outlast our time" (New York Herald Tribune Book Week)
There's also an interesting passage re. C. S. Lewis in the essay immediately preceding this one, but I'll save that for another post.
--JDR
—current reading and re-reading: the latest Rivers of London novel by Ban Aaronovitch; JRRT's A SECRET VICE (ed. Fimi & Higgins).
*which were extraordinary. As I've said often before, I rate Dunsany as the best writer of fantasy short stories in the language, the peer of Borges and Kafka — and his influence on fantasy is second only to Tolkien's.
**here I think Eiseley is right in the main but wd like to see him take into account Extinction Level Events, which have the tendency to abruptly change those rules.
So, back when I was working on my Dunsany dissertation I came across a reference to a piece that essayist and thinker Loren Eiseley, whom I knew only from his wonderful, wistful essay "The Brown Wasps", had written on Dunsany, but despite my best efforts I was never able to locate it.
Flash forward twenty-seven years, and while browsing a shelf at the local Barnes & Noble I see a two-volume set of Eiseley's collected essays, just out from Library of America. And so, checking the indexes, I find three references to Dunsany and one to Tolkien.
It turns out I was in pursuit of a bibliographic ghost, in that Eiseley seems not to have written a piece about Dunsany but instead to have referred to him occasionally to make a point. And checking those references, it immediately becomes apparent that Eiseley had a good deal of respect for Dunsany as a thinker — an aspect of Ld D's work that would have been familiar at the time of his early fame (roughly the first decade and a half of his career) but has dropped out of the collective consciousness, even among those who read Dunsany for his literary gifts. *
The first Dunsany reference comes in Chapter Eight: "The Inner Galaxy" in a 1969 book THE UNEXPECTED UNIVERSE. After describing the connection he felt with a wild bird he saw each day, and the sense of loss when one day it was gone, Eiseley notes that such feelings wd have been considered "meaningless, as the harsh Victorian Darwinists would have understood it or even, equally, those harsh modern materialists of whom Lord Dunsany once said: 'It is very seldom that the same man knows much of science, and about the things that were known before ever science came'." (Eiseley volume I page 373).
The second quote comes from THE LOST NOTEBOOKS, a posthumous 1987 collection, in notes for an unwritten essay: "[life] has to have some kind of unofficial assurance of nature's stability . . . wasps and migratory birds . . . had an old contract, an old promise, never broken** till man began to interfere with things, that nature, in degree, is steadfast and continuous . . . [Life] has nature's promise — a guarantee that has not been broken in four billion years that the universe has a queer kind of rationality and expectedness about it. Lord Dunsany says, 'If we change too much we may no longer fit into the scheme of things; but the glow-worm shows no signs of making any change.' (Patches of Sunlight, p. 25). (Eiseley volume I page 446).
The third and final Dunsany reference occurs in context with the Tolkien reference, from a piece called "The Illusion of the Two Cultures" that had appeared in Eiseley's final book THE STAR THROWER (1978) and appears here as the last essay in this two-volume set. This was, of course, a topic of great interest to Barfield, who devoted one of his most accessible books, WORLDS APART (1963), to an exploration of the 'two cultures' debate. Eiseley's piece focuses on fear of imagination, and frames the argument in terms I think Tolkien wd have been comfortable with (though JRRT uses the image of 'The Machine' rather than 'tool/ technic'):
". . . the human realm is denied in favor of the world of pure technics. Man, the tool user, grows convinced that he is himself only useful as a tool, that fertility except in the use of the scientific imagination is wasteful and without purpose, even, in some indefinable way, sinful. I was reading J. R. R. Tolkien's great symbolic trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, a few months ago, when a young scientist of my acquaintance paused and looked over my shoulder. After a little casual interchange the man departed leaving an accusing remark hovering in the air between us. 'I wouldn't waste my time with a man who writes fairy stories.' He might as well have added, 'or with a man who reads them.' As I went back to my book I wondered vaguely in what leafless landscape one grew up without Hans Christian Andersen, or Dunsany, or even Jules Verne. There lingered about the young man's words a puritanism which seemed the more remarkable because . . . it was unmotivated by any sectarian religiosity unless a total dedication to science brings to some minds a similar authoritarian desire to shackle the human imagination."
A little more poking revealed that Eiseley reviewed two of Tolkien's books: TREE & LEAF (cf. West's TOLKIEN CHECKLIST p. 45) and THE RETURN OF THE KING. The former clearly informed his comments on the latter (see below). I don't remember seeing Eiseley's LotR review, but the following excerpt from it appears as a blurb in some old paperback editions of THE HOBBIT:
"The great tale of wonder, like the great novel, is not a preoccupation of children . . . the adult mind has, if anything, greater need of fantasy than that of the child. . . . In The Lord of the Ringsa whole Secondary World is created and successfully sustained through three large volumes. These are sure to remain Tolkien's life work, and are certainly destined to outlast our time" (New York Herald Tribune Book Week)
There's also an interesting passage re. C. S. Lewis in the essay immediately preceding this one, but I'll save that for another post.
--JDR
—current reading and re-reading: the latest Rivers of London novel by Ban Aaronovitch; JRRT's A SECRET VICE (ed. Fimi & Higgins).
*which were extraordinary. As I've said often before, I rate Dunsany as the best writer of fantasy short stories in the language, the peer of Borges and Kafka — and his influence on fantasy is second only to Tolkien's.
**here I think Eiseley is right in the main but wd like to see him take into account Extinction Level Events, which have the tendency to abruptly change those rules.
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