John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 104

A Tolkienian Prayer

So, thanks to Janice for spotting and sharing with me the following link to a prayer-of-the-day feature on the BBC Radio 4 site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08891x8

I thought this piece (by a Dundee chaplain, Rev. Duncan MacLaren) quite nice. Though if allowed one niggle I'd point out that Niggle isn't painting a preexisting Platonic tree. In Tolkien's theology of creativity, Niggle's tree did not exist until he started to paint it.

Still, this, the one-man play currently touring England and Scotland, and the recent publication of LBN as a stand-alone booklet for the first time have all between them raised the profile of Tolkien's little parable: a Good Thing.

--John R.

Happy Tolkien Day

So, today is Tolkien's birthday.*

Which makes this a good occasion to share the following list of all-time best selling fantasy / science fiction / horror authors. Top honors go to J. K. Rowling and Stephen King, but JRRT is close behind in third place, and the list's compiler notes that Tolkien's total sales might be much higher than the numbers reported (350,000,000 copies).** Here's the link to the piece:


https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-sff-all-time-sales-list.html


And here's the relevant paragraph about Tolkien:



3) JRR Tolkien (c. 350 million)Tolkien's sales are likewise incalculable: 100,000 copies of a pirated version of The Lord of the Rings were sold in the United States alone in under a year, so the figures for unauthorised versions of the book in other countries are completely unguessable. What remains certain is that The Lord of the Rings is the biggest-selling single genre novel of all time, and possibly the best-selling single novel of all time. More than 50 million copies of the book have been sold since 2001 alone. The 100+ million sales of The Hobbit alone have also been bolstered significantly by the new Peter Jackson movies. If anything, the above figure may well be the most conservative on the list and Tolkien's sales may be vastly more than King's.


It's unclear to me whether a three-volume set of THE LORD OF THE RINGS wd be counted as one book or three, but "possibly the best-selling . . .  novel of all time" has a nice ring to it. And it's interesting to note that had Tolkien written only THE HOBBIT, its sales alone wd be enough to make him tie with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke, and Suzanne Collins for 7th/8th/9th place.***

As an old-time TSR employee, I was interested to see that shared-world authors get more respect here than they used to get from some bookstores and libraries back in the day: Bob Salvatore comes in at #28 (30,000,000 books) for his FORGOTTEN REALMS Drizzt books)**** and Hickman & Weis tie for #42/43 (22,000,0000) for the DRAGONLANCE Chronicles. And I'm happy to see that my friend Jim Lowder appears at #283 for an impressive half-a-million books.

TSR authors aside, I'm glad to see that some of the greats like Pratchett (#11; 85,000,000+) and Adams (#17; 50,000,000+) made it. Seeing all these names in a list like this calls out a lot of oddities: that Phillip Pullman's sales for THE GOLDEN COMPASS series are roughly double those of Rbt E. Howards' CONAN books; that Ursula Le Guin and Fritz Leiber are down in the four-million range (#122 & 113, respectively), roughly half their estimate for Ray Bradbury (#87), while Neil Gaiman has 40,000,000+ to his credit (#22; three quarters of this are the graphic novels).

Less easy to spot are the absences: I cd find no mention of Dunsany, or Eddison, or Hughart, or Morris, or McKillop. Which goes to show that some seminal authors sell in great numbers (e.g. Tolkien) while others are vastly influential but that's not reflected in their sales (e.g. Dunsany).

All in all, pretty impressive, given that the original print run for THE HOBBIT was, I think, 1250 copies. The seeds of authors like Tolkien have grown into some pretty impressive trees.

Congrats to all the authors who made the list, and to the many many good authors who didn't.

--JDR
current reading: THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGAR (moral: don't sell fake antiques to the Koch brothers; they're not the forgiving type)


* (125th, but who's counting?)
**for which thanks to Janice
***I'm sorry to see that BORED OF THE RINGS clocked in at #226, having sold more than a million copies; THE SODDIT (#320) accounts for another 150,000
****Ed Greenwood, creator of the Realms, comes in at #149 for around three million books.

Good News (SIr Ray)

So, 2016 was a year that had its ups and down but whose downs are much more vivid in my memory: the unexpected entry into hospice and shortly thereafter death of one of my Tolkien friends, who I'd enjoyed seeing yearly for a quarter-century; various family crises; a health scare that turned out to be just a false positive but nonetheless threw me for a while there; the appalling results of the election; a publication that came back so many times with requests for changes that when the final printed copy finally arrived I cdn't bring myself to look at it; the death, in the final days of the year, of the man I considered the greatest living fantasist.*

Distinct from this, but still a factor, there's the in-for-the-long-haul feeling in that I'm at the mid-point of two long projects that, while I'm v. excited about and enjoying working on both, still see that there's a lot of work done and a lot of work ahead to bring each to a satisfying conclusion.

The turn of the new year seems a good time to try to shake off the malaise.

So, turning instead to some good news for a change, the queen's Honours List this year included a knighthood for Ray Davies, frontman for The Kinks, one of the quirkiest and longest-lived of the British Invasion groups. There were plenty of one-shot wonders in those days, but The Kinks had two: "You Really Got Me" and "All Day & All of the Night". Then a half-decade later they reappeared with "Lola", a more complex song than their early  hits. And about a decade after that they had a final burst of glory (if you can call it that) with the schmaltzy "Come Dancing" (my least favorite of their songs).

While never stars of the caliber of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or The Who, the Kinks were much admired by their peers, said admiration manifesting itself in somewhat odd ways. The Doors, for example, flat-out plagiarized "All Day & All of the Night", lifting its hook whole for their own "Hello I Love You". And Jimmy Page, renowned as a session musician for years before becoming legend as the founder of Led Zeppelin, used to like to let it drop that he'd been the guitar player on "You Really Got Me"-- something which he now admits was not the case: it was all Dave Davies (Ray's brother and partner in the band).

Sad to say, while I like (some of) their music, the only Kinks album I own is an old cassette of STATE OF CONFUSION which has seen better days, plus a smattering of songs on old tapes dating back to my Fayetteville days, with only a single song on I-tunes ("Around the Dial").  Accordingly, today I visited I-tunes and added several favorites so I can listen to them on the laptop and i-Pod: "You Really Got Me" and "All Day & All of the Night" for their early hits, "Lola" plus the wicked little "Top of the Pops" and wistful "Ape Man" for their middle period, rounded out by "State of Confusion" and "Around the Dial" for their defiant latter days.

So, I've been giving the speakers a good work-out today, as the cats can testify, enjoying some good music I hadn't listened to in a while. Nice to be able to celebrate Davies' contribution to rock music and know he's getting some once-in-a-lifetime recognition.

--John R.
current reading: THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGAR: THE MYSTERY OF THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE BOTTLE OF WINE by Benj. Wallace (2008)
in process: THE CANTOS by Ezra Pound (forty cantos in so far).



*Richard Adams, author of WATERSHIP DOWN, the first post-Tolkien fantasy I read and enjoyed.

teeny tiny type

So, 2016 was the year I became aware of what I'd suspected for some time: that someone has been sneaking into our place and replacing all my books with duplicates that looked exactly the same on the outside but have much smaller type.

Or, to put it another way: thank god for high magnification low-impact glasses for those of us for whom "near sided" doesn't begin to cover it. And for the 200% Zoom function on my laptop, and the enlarge function on Kindle.

--John R.

Abstaining

Who would have thought the boldest thing Obama would do in his eight years in office wd be to abstain on one vote?
--John R. 

Propaganda as History

So, earlier this week I was startled to come across a piece on Talking Points Memo claiming that it was now well-known that the fault for bringing about World War I was all Germany's.

here's the link.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-history-you-know-is-wrong

And here's a string of quotes that more or less sum up the author's thesis:



"our collective understanding of what happened during the so-called 'July Crisis' of 1914* is basically wrong"
far from being "a ruinous war that none of the powers actually wanted but were unable to avoid", Marshall claims that "World War I was engineered deliberately by Germany"
"the actual war . . . happened because Germany wanted to go to war"
a little later he muddles his point somewhat by claiming of the Germans that 
"they did not want a war with Great Britain [but] were willing to risk it"

This seems to me demented. I'm not a WWI scholar, but I have read a good deal of material relating to the war (or as they used to call it, The War) over the years -- the kind of things everyone with a Ph.D. in twentieth century British literature shd know as the general background to the period and a specific major element in the lives of many of the writers of the period, such as Ford Maddox Ford, Hemingway, Dunsany, and of course Tolkien.**

Contemporary propaganda presented it as a war to end all wars (a concept Tolkien personally scoffed at) or a war to save democracy from Der Kaiser (a rationale seriously compromised by England's alliance with Czarist Russia, the most repressive Great Power of its time).

As far back as the mid 1930s, revisionist history was swinging round to the idea that England had played a large, if not the largest, role in seizing upon the crisis and deliberately turning it into a war.
There is ample evidence that the British Empire (which we shd remember was the largest, most powerful country in the world at the time) saw in Imperial Germany a rival who had to be destroyed while there was still time (exactly the motives Marshall ascribes in his post to Germany). So widespread was this notion that there was a thriving sub-genre of literature in England of England-conquered-by-Germany stories in the years just before the outbreak of the war (for a famous example, see Saki's WHEN WILLIAM CAME). Combine this with the thesis presented by George Dangerfield in his seminal 1935 work THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND -- that Britain seized upon the continental crisis as a way out of an internal crisis -- and a v. strong case can be made for England's being in exactly the position Marshall claims for Germany.

Of course, it's extremely unlikely it was a simple either/or (good England/bad Germany OR good Germany/bad England). The truth is probably something resembling Geoffrey Wawro's well-argued thesis for both combatants in the Franco-Prussian war a generation before: that both Napoleon III's empire and the rising Prussian state had excellent internal motivations for going to war with each other -- to divert attention away from a failing imperial state in France's case, and to bring independent small German states (Bavarians, Hessians, Saxons, etc) into the fold in Prussia's case -- and were seeking pretexts to trigger that war. Add in France's desire to take back some border provinces annexed by the Germans in 1871, Russia's longterm plan to control the Balkans, Austria's fighting back against what they saw as state-sponsored terrorism on the behalf of Serbia, and you have a case where most of the combatants wanted the war either as a milestone on long-range plans or as offering an opportunity to seize some immediate benefit. None of them had any idea what they were doing, how many millions upon millions they were sending to their deaths. And I'm not sure that knowledge would have stopped them if they had.

Still, it's a fascinating and complex issue, and I'd be interested in hearing what others thought of the It-Was-All-Germany's-Fault thesis.

--John R.


THE WIFE SAYS:
WorldWar I: "It was a group effort".



*i.e., Tuchman's thesis that an interlocking system of alliances more or less inexorably propelled the various nations into war

**not to mention its biggest impact, the death in the trenches of writers like the great poet Edward Thomas, short story writer H. H. Munro ("Saki"), fantasist Wm Hope Hodgson, and too many others to mention

My Latest Publication (on THE FALL OF ARTHUR)

So, yesterday brought in the mail my contributor's copy (plus one extra) of TOLKIEN STUDIES Volume XIII, which includes my essay " 'That Seems to Me Fatal': Pagan and Christian in The Fall of Arthur". This is a piece I presented a part from at Kalamazoo two years back (or was it three?), and a somewhat some substantial excerpt at a symposium later that year; I also read the whole thing out at last year's MythCon in Colorado Springs, not as a main presentation (that was devoted to my guest-0f-honor speech re. Charles Williams' Arthuriad) but as a side-presentation suitable to the Arthurian theme of that conference.

My basic thesis is simple: that a passage in Tolkien's Letter to Waldman sets down succinctly Tolkien's reasons for rejecting the Arthurian mythos as the basis of his own 'Mythology for England'.  It's an idea I've had in mind to do for years, and the long-delayed publication of THE FALL OF ARTHUR finally gave me the opportunity.

This piece is dedicated to the memory of my friend Jim Pietrusz, Arthurian extraordinaire. I wish I'd been able to write this essay a year or two earlier: I'd have loved to have found out what he thought of it.


I also make one other appearance in this year's volume, in that my contribution to the Shippey festschrift (my essay 'Inside Literature: Tolkien's Exploration of Medieval Genres") gets mentioned in the essay-by-essay review of the book, including the following passage:


. . . with seven pages of notes and bibliography,his scholarship clearly suggests an impressivedepth lurking beneath. Rateliff earns severalscholar points by venturing into other languagesto explore the Tolkien apocrypha, valuablematerial, though some of it is unfinishedand all is far less explored than the novels.

I love the idea of racking up some 'scholar points', and think I'll have to figure out a way to put that on a button.

Obviously I haven't had a chance to do more than skim the contents, but thanks to the good folks at the Tolkien Society the full table of contents of the issue can be seen here:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2016/06/contents-of-tolkien-studies-volume-13-announced/

--John R.
current reading: SUMMER OF LOVE: THE MAKING OF SGT PEPPER by George Martin.

The Cat Report (W.12/21-16)

With Lillith’s untimely return to Arlington* and the arrival of three new cats, yesterday morning we had a total of four cats in the Renton cat-room: all-black SHEENA OPRIA (at 12 one of our two senior cats, though she doesn’t look it),  Old Man HANK (long lean and very orange; he’s 14 and looks it), lively MARIO (less than a year ald and might best be described as a grey tuxedo cat), and 3-yr-old HELENA (a beatiful little brown tabby who distrusts the other cats and prefers they keep their distance).
Sheena came out right away and spent the morning in her favorite place, on the blanket atop the bins in the back of the room. She was pleased to get some attention (petting) but not interested in any games and definitely wanting to keep her distance from the other cats. She got worked up when Helena jumped in her cage and made herself at home, keeping a wary eye on things until I got Helena to move and All Was Well.
Helena was just as wary if not more so but happily perched atop the little cat-stand when it was placed outside her open cage. She hissed at the other cats if they got what she considered too near, but she didn’t swat or slap at anybody: just a little hiss now and then when she considered it called for. Later in the shift I picked her up and put her atop the tall cat-stand in the outer room, where I was glad to see her settle right down and welcome an array of games: the stick game, the feather-duster game (which she treated as if it’d been a captured bird), the bootlace game, and especially the bug-on-a-stick (‘Da Bug’). She’s quite the little predator, so I was surprised when a woman came in with her two sons and Helena let them all pet her. I conclude that she likes attention, it just has to be the right kind of attention. 
Hank is quite the gentleman, greeting all visitors and welcoming all attention. He has real charisma, and I’m sorry to hear he’s been taken back to the clinic today over some concern re. his teeth. He loved the box I brought in, and was in and out of it repeatedly. But he liked the box-top just as well (it made a nice noisy surface for the bug-on-a-stick to land on and skitter over). Best of all, he thought, was the paper bag. He liked this so much I left it behind for him (folded up and on one of the top shelves). He had a good walk outside: a bit nervous but not panicky. Surprisingly, while he wanted people to pet him inside the room he avoided people when encountering them outside the cat-room. Given how much he loves to explore when in the cat-room I did let him take a peek into the bench when I was putting my bag away: thirty seconds was all he wanted to hop in, sniff the place, and hop back out again. Thereafter he ignored it, in a been-there, done-that sort of way. He does love to play, especially the bootlace game and the bug-on-a-stick. I got one or two tangles out of his tail-fur, but he said he’d prefer someone with a gentler touch to do any more of that that might need doing. Towards the end of my shift he got interested in what was going on outside the cat-room, watching the people outside. He enjoyed being out of his cage, and was unhappy with me for making him go back inside it at the end of my shift. He’s a great cat w. a sad back-story;** hope he finds a good home soon. 
Little Mario is full of bounce. He and Hank are not buddies but tolerate each other remarkably well: Hank didn’t mind Mario playing near him so long but preferred he keep at least a foot away. Mario also had a walk and as jumpy at first, settling down some as the walk progressed. Found out that he’s quite a smart cat: anywhere I took him, he knew exactly where he was in the store as soon as I set him down again, and remembered each area he’d visited before and how they all linked up. He wanted to play all shift, enjoying just about any game he could get. He got a lot of attention from visitors, as did Hank, simply by being outgoing and friendly, greeting every visitor. Not surprised that there was already a hold on him from potential adopters; hope they come back for him soon.  

We had lost of visitors today, including a few who expressed an interest in volunteering; think we’ll definitely be hearing from at least one of these.  
One visitor said she’d adopted a cat from here named Nebb about five years ago; does that strike a cord with anyone?
No health issues aside from those potential ones noted by others.
—John R. 

*Hope her potential adopter isn’t put off by the delay and this adoption does go through later this week).    Also hope Mr. Hank gets a clean bill of health and is soon back with us.

**for pictures of all the cats, and a brief bio of what is known about each, cf.  http://purrfectpals.org/adopt/browse-...

Tollers and Jack

So, about a month ago I posted a bit about a stageplay in the works that was to center on the friendship between J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.



Since then I've been in contact with the playwright for the project, who confirms that the project is indeed ongoing. They now have a workable draft (albeit one that will still get some tweaking) and plan to stage the piece -- provisionally called TOLLERS AND JACK -- as part of their 2017/2018 season at Vancouver's Pacific Theatre.

I'll post more as I find out more: all I know for sure at this point is that whenever it does reach the stage we'll try to make one of our rare visits up to Vancouver to see it.

--John R.

current reading: A FIELD GUIDE TO DINOSAURS (Henry Gee) and dipping into EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI (Jung Chang)

current anime: TENCHI

It's Lemon Cupcake Day

Today was lemon cupcake day. Janice and I and the cats enjoyed a quiet day together: she made scones for breakfast, I made soup for supper. The four inches of snow they predicted didn't come off, so we made one excursion: to the Renton Coin Shop, where I picked up the last remaining Presidential Dollar to complete my collection, the Reagan coin. It's been out for a while, but I'd been putting off getting it. I have what I think is the world's only circulated set of these coins: I carry each around with me till the next one comes out, whereupon the old one goes into the coin album. I find I've been reluctant to stop carrying my favorites, while I've been equally reluctant to start in on this or that dastard (Hoover, Nixon, now Reagan). Since US law forbids putting a living person on a coin, we won't be getting Carter, Bush, Clinton, W.Bush, or Obama.

So ends the latest of a string of four failed attempts to revive the dollar coin. I'll be curious to see what the fifth will be.

And now for a quiet evening by the fireplace reading DINOSAURS OF DARKNESS (which I picked up and started reading back in 2004 but only read a few pages in then; now I've restarted from the beginning and am enjoying the whole thing) alternating with watching some old-school anime (TENCHI).  And, later, more cupcakes.

--John R.