John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 117

The Shadow Man

So, thanks to Janice, Magister, Jessica, Shelly, and Ed for sending me the links to various articles announcing the discovery of two new J. R. R. Tolkien poems:

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/14278587.Undiscovered_J_R_R_Tolkien_poems_found_in_1936_school_magazine/

We already knew about "The Shadow Man", since it's an earlier draft of the poem "Shadow-Bride" appearing in THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL (1962, poem #13), but I'd completely forgotten that Wayne & Christina had succeeded in tracking it down and reprinted the earlier text in their expanded/annotated edition of ATB a few years ago (2014; cf. p.235-239).

This rediscovery is of particular interest to me because I'd been one of those who'd searched for the elusive 'Abingdon Chronicle'. During my first trip to England (July-August 1981) I'd managed to track down "Firiel", the original version of ATB#16: "The Last Ship", thanks to information Doug Anderson had shared with we. It was a memorable experience visiting the convent whose nuns had printed it back in 1934 and who, after a pleasant meeting with the whole community, provided me with a photocopy,* which I was able to share with Tom Shippey in time for him to include it in the first edition of his THE ROAD TO MIDDLE-EARTH, which came out the next year.


But I had no such luck with THE ABINGDON CHRONICLE, despite my even calling up the elderly former editor of a local newspaper from that era -- the NORTH BERKS HERALD I think it was called -- who assured me that nothing of the sort had ever appeared in his paper. I remember he was bemused that anyone wd go to such lengths when it was only Tolkien, saying that he himself was a Sir Walter Scott man.

So, given that Tolkien's fans have known about "Shadow-Bride" for decades, and Tolkien scholars have known about "The Shadow Man" for quite a long time now, and actually been able to read it for the past year and a half or so, the bigger news here is the second poem: NOEL.  So far as I know this had been completely unknown -- at least, this is the first I've ever heard about it. We do have some (minor) Christmas poetry included among the FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS, but I don't think this one is among them. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy to read to compare with: while the whole text (I assume) was printed in the original announcement of the rediscovery, I see it's now vanished from the online article. Let that be a lesson to me: when I find important material on-line I shd copy it right away because sometimes it goes away suddenly.

Of course the biggest take-away from this is not the two poems themselves but the fact that the discovery of two Tolkien poems is headline news, not just for the OXFORD MAIL and CATHOLIC HERALD  but for national newspapers such as THE GUARDIAN. This was not the case when Tolkien published ATB back in '62, and it's just another example of his newfound major-author status.

--John R.


*one of the sisters told me she'd been taught by Tolkien, having attended his lectures in the early 1960s. She said he was a terrible lecturer.

They're Reading My Review in Kathmandu

So, one of the nice things about publishing with THE JOURNAL OF TOLKIEN RESEARCH (JTR), I've discovered, is the after-publication reports they send out every month or so letting authors know where their pieces have been downloaded. In this case, my review of Witte & Richards' THE HOBBIT PARTY,* it's been downloaded about 180 times (though of course not everybody who downloaded it has necessarily read it; some may have saved it for a never-to-be-gotten-to 'later'). Still, nice to know it's getting out there.

This kind of feedback is particularly welcome because authors of scholarship usually get only anecdotal evidence of what people thought of their work (people telling you in person or by email that they liked/disliked it). The usual way to know if a piece went over well or not is in the short term seeing whether anyone comments on it (for example, what kind of comments it gets from members of the audience if its been delivered at a conf, like Kalamazoo or MythCon. In the long term, it's whether it gets cited by subsequent authors working along the same lines -- for example, my piece on Tolkien and women seems to be getting cited a fair amount, which is gratifying; by contrast, there's v. little feedback on book reviews unless the reviewee takes offense (as has occasionally been the case).


Looking at the information provided to me by the Valpo folks who maintain the JTR site, it's been downloaded by fifteen institutions. Some of these might have been expected -- for example, that Valparaiso and Wheaton College are on the list, given their deep interest in JTR and all things related to the Wade Center's Seven Authors, respectively. MIT and Apple Inc. are a bit further afield, though the roots of Tolkien fandom lie deep in smart-computer-people culture.  I admit that Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz took me by surprised, but then I'm not v. plugged into the diverse and vibrant Tolkien field in Europe (aside from the UK, of course). And who wd have thought there were Tolkien fans among the USAISC (US Army Information Systems Command)?

More interesting than the institutions are the individuals (as individuals are usually more interesting than institutions). Apparently 68 downloads have been in the US (a little over one-third of the total). Not surprising the UK is next, with 31, but I was surprised that third place (17) went to Portugal, rather than France (11) or Germany (8) or Canada (6). The Netherlands and Poland tied for seventh place (5 each), followed by Denmark (4), After this we have a smattering of downloads from all over: 2 each for Austria, Switzerland, Iran, Italy, Japan, and Norway, and a single download each from Australia, Finland, Israel, India, Lithania, Luxembourg, Malta, Nepal (that's the one in Kathmandu), Pakistan, Romania, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and Taiwan. There's a similar break-down for the US, but I won't go into that, other than to note my bemusement that the most recent US download seems to have been in Redmond, Washington, which is here in the greater Seattle area only about a half hour's drive from here (depending on traffic: it's a north-east suburb while Kent is a south-central one).

So, in a few cases I think I know who a particular reader might be, but for the most part this information shows me how much of a writer's audience might differ beyond what he or she imagines, and in a really interesting way. Even though I'm a late adaptor,** this is a bit of technology I can really appreciate.

--John R.
just finished: RAISING STEAM (another late DiscWorld novel; disappointing but readable) and a short antiquarian piece by Major Hayman Rooke from 1777. resumed: LONDON FOG and the 1932 Wheeler & Wheeler report re. excavations nr Gloucestershire.



* http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/topdownloads.html

**THE WIFE SAYS: "I wouldn't be describe you so much as a late adaptor as a reluctant one"

Blurbs That Never Were (RIchard Burton on Tolkien)

So, here are a few more unexpected people writing on Tolkien for the 1966 Tolkien-themed issue of DIPLOMAT magazine:

First up, here are a few more blurbs that never were drawn from this material:


"the great mythic work of our time" (Timothy Leary)
"Tolkien is one of the great writers of our time" (Richard Burton)
"a book of great charm and poignancy" (Howard Nemerov)
"in one essential respect the work is unique as far as I know: a version of the Quest in which the object is not to get but to get rid of; not to possess, hence not to be possessed." (Howard Nemerov)


And then here are three more pieces to go with the alreadly-posted Leary, in their entirety:

Richard BurtonI consider, and have considered for some years, that Tolkien is one of the great writers of our time. Despite my love and loyalty to T. H. White's The Sword and the Stone, Professor Tolkien searches even deeper. In a different way my children enjoy his works just as much.

Senator Wm ProxmireDIPLOMAT Magazine's recognition of the unique talents of Mr. Tolkien is another sign of his growing popularity with children and adults alike. Long may his literary qualities wave.

Howard NemerovAs Mr. Auden (I think) said of The Lord of the Rings when it first came out, there's no middle way: you either love it or you somewhat coldly detest it. (Edmund Wilson, about the same time, argued the second course, though I found it hard to believe we had both read the same work.)  I've read it several times, at long intervals, and once took a closer view of it with my students: have always found it a book of great charm and poignancy in its melancholy stoicism and delicate equivocations among child, man, beast and other beings, the entrancing distance that allows it to be a political fable—the truest poetry is the most feigning!—as well as a story about growing up, or about refusing to grow up and having in consequence the best of Middle-earth, though the best be none too good. I much admire the ingenuity and consistency of the working-out, even to the historical and scholarly apparatus, and remark that in one essential respect the work is unique as far as I know: a version of the Quest in which the object is not to get but to get rid of; not to possess, hence not to be possessed.

 --of these, I'd say the Nemerov is the most thoughtful (sounds like he actually taught LotR at one point, which I hadn't known before) and Proxmire's the least (given that you can't tell if he actually read the book or not).  There are a few other pieces from misc. folk (e.g., President Johnson's older daughter), but these four are the most striking.


--JDR
recent/current reading: Pratchett's UNSEEN ACADEMICS (a dud) and RAISING STEAM (better, so far), Aaronovich's RIVERS OF LONDON, BOOK FOUR (a highly readable series; recommended), and A HISTORY OF THE VYNE by Chaloner Wm Chute (1888; facsimile reprint).

P.S.: Thanks to David Bratman for pointing out (in his comment on my previous post) that Burton was a friend of one of Tolkien's friends and fellow Inklings: Nevill Coghill.
--John R.

Blurbs That Never Were

So, here are a few more unexpected people writing on Tolkien for the 1966 Tolkien-themed issue of DIPLOMAT magazine:

First up, here are a few more blurbs that never were drawn from this material:

"the great mythic work of our time" (Timothy Leary)
"Tolkien is one of the great writers of our time" (Richard Burton)
"a book of great charm and poignancy" (Howard Nemerov)
"in one essential respect the work is unique as far as I know: a version of the Quest in which the object is not to get but to get rid of; not to possess, hence not to be possessed." (Howard Nemerov)


And then here are three more pieces to go with the alreadly-posted Leary, in their entirety:

Richard BurtonI consider, and have considered for some years, that Tolkien is one of the great writers of our time. Despite my love and loyalty to T. H. White's The Sword and the Stone, Professor Tolkien searches even deeper. In a different way my children enjoy his works just as much.

Senator Wm ProxmireDIPLOMAT Magazine's recognition of the unique talents of Mr. Tolkien is another sign of his growing popularity with children and adults alike. Long may his literary qualities wave.

Howard NemerovAs Mr. Auden (I think) said of The Lord of the Rings when it first came out, there's no middle way: you either love it or you somewhat coldly detest it. (Edmund Wilson, about the same time, argued the second course, though I found it hard to believe we had both read the same work.)  I've read it several times, at long intervals, and once took a closer view of it with my students: have always found it a book of great charm and poignancy in its melancholy stoicism and delicate equivocations among child, man, beast and other beings, the entrancing distance that allows it to be a political fable—the truest poetry is the most feigning!—as well as a story about growing up, or about refusing to grow up and having in consequence the best of Middle-earth, though the best be none too good. I much admire the ingenuity and consistency of the working-out, even to the historical and scholarly apparatus, and remark that in one essential respect the work is unique as far as I know: a version of the Quest in which the object is not to get but to get rid of; not to possess, hence not to be possessed.

 --of these, I'd say the Nemerov is the most thoughtful (sounds like he actually taught LotR at one point, which I hadn't known before) and Proxmire's the least (given that you can't tell if he actually read the book or not).  There are a few other pieces from misc. folk (e.g., President Johnson's older daughter), but these four are the most striking.


--JDR
recent/current reading: Pratchett's UNSEEN ACADEMICS (a dud) and RAISING STEAM (better, so far), Aaronovich's RIVERS OF LONDON, BOOK FOUR (a highly readable series; recommended), and A HISTORY OF THE VYNE by Chaloner Wm Chute (1888; facsimile reprint).

P.S.: Thanks to David Bratman for pointing out (in his comment on my previous post) that Burton was a friend of one of Tolkien's friends and fellow Inklings: Nevill Coghill.
--John R.

The Cat Report (W. 2/3-16)

What a change it makes to the Cat Room now that Houdin and esp. Zoe have been adopted; hope Houdin’s second adoption works out better than his first and that Miss Zoe’s new home is so good it was worth the wait.
In the absence of two such active cats, things have quieted down. FLURRY (our cream torbie fluffball) seems to have claimed seniority, despite being the youngest of our current cats, and that’s mellowed the room. The four cats tend to avoid each other but aren’t hostile to each other or to visitors (though Flurry still nips on occasion; think she needs a tennis ball to sink her teeth and claws into and bite and kick). As usual she used my shoulders as a stepping-stone from her cage to her cat-stand. Flurry even came down to floor level on her own and loved it when I later put her on the top of the cabinet: she sat up there like she was the queen of the world. I took her out for a walk — she was nervous but not panicked. So she’s expanding beyond just her cage and that one spot on that one cat-stand. I’m impressed with how much she’s come out of her shell: both last week and this one when I arrived she was buried behind her blanket, as usual, but came out at once when she heard my voice and her name and came to the front of the cage wanting to be petted through the bars, grooming my finger-tips all the while. That’s a tremendous change, and all to the good.
MIMOSA (our sleek little black-and-orange not-quite-a-calico) also had a walk, but she did more actual walking. She too was nervous but fast, exploring mostly around the little hall by the cat room and the passage that leads past the bathrooms. Later on she explored all over the cat-room, in and out of other’s cages as well as eventually putting herself back to bed in her own. She loves her catnip. Saw one bit of odd behavior: she saw a small child outside the room through the glass and hissed and hid. In fact, she acted just as if she’d seen a dog. Not at all like her usual self — triggered some bad memory, perhaps? 
Mr. TEDDY (our gentle furry so-black-he’s-kind-of-brown giant) was his usual lazy predator self — meaning that he enjoyed batting at any toys that came by, but they had to come to him; he was enjoying being all sprawled out too much to actually get up and chase them. He was mostly around the door until I shifted him to the cage-tops, which he enjoyed. Love the little fang he has sticking out on the lower left; it really gives him character. Hope he doesn’t lose it when it’s time for him to see the dentist. 
And as for Miss ELANOR (our little calico tabby), she’s sweet and shy and oh so thin. She kept going up to her food dish and then going away again without eating anything: I saw her do this six times. She did lick all the gravy off some canned food, so at least that’s something, but wish we cd find out her favorite food. 


Health concerns: mainly Elanor’s still not eating. Teddy has dander, but that’d take a good bath to fix. Think Flurry has some tangled hair on her chest but she didn’t want me to investigate further. If so, cutting those tangles out will probably be a two-person job. 
--John R. 

The Shooting in Renton

So, last week the recent spat of gun violence hit home, or very near it, when a man shot a woman in a local theatre --'local' in this case being in the next suburb over, Renton, where we lived the first year or so we were out here. It's a theater I've gone to occasionally, enough to know it's one of the newer, and nicer, in the area.

The gunman owned the gun legally and had a concealed carry permit; he claims he took it to the theatre with him because he wanted to protect himself in case of a theatre shooting, like the ones that have made so many headlines in recent years. Exactly what happened isn't clear at this point, but the end result was that he shot a random moviegoer, then left the scene. She survived, in part because of first aid provided by another moviegoer who'd had military training, but any local reading the story can tell how dangerous the wound must have been by the fact she was taken to Harborview; that's the place with the trauma unit where they take the most direly injured. Here's the link:

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/suspect-in-renton-theater-shooting-says-he-feared-random-attacks/

So, there it is: bad, but it so easily could have been worse. It highlights how intrinsically dangerous guns are (he's far less likely to have caused so much damage if he'd dropped a knife or hammer).


And since then, we've had another area shooting, this time at a homeless camp up in Seattle itself, in which two people were killed and several more injured; the attackers are still at large:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/us/shooting-in-seattle-homeless-encampment-kills-at-least-2.html?_r=0 *


Finally, just to once again drive home the lethality of guns, here's a piece that argues that more people have died from being shot than the total number of U.S. dead in all the wars we've fought from the Revolution onward -- about 1.5 million, all told.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gun-deaths-since-jfk-assassination_us_56a903c6e4b0f6b7d54485c4

One and a half million of us. That's a lot of people. And counting.


--JDR

current reading: The Rivers of London series, book three

*the most interesting part of this article to me was the Seattle mayor's straightforward acceptance of blame for not having done enough to help the homeless, despite his ongoing efforts. Rare to see a mea culpa like that.

Timothy Leary on Tolkien

So, yesterday I had to pull out an old piece of Tolkieniana: the 1966 issue of DIPLOMAT magazine dedicated to JRRT, complete with hobbit recipes, a condescending and clueless cover article, and the invaluable 'Tolkien on Tolkien' (which told us a lot of interesting things we had no other way of knowing, until LETTERS came along and reprinted it in re-arranged form).

Looking over it again after a gap of quite a few years, the thing I found most fascinating were the testimonials by figures such as Timothy Leary, Richard Burton, Senator Proxmire, and President Johnson's daughter.

Since this issue is long out of print and I don't think its contents are v. easy to access, here's what Leary had to say:

Timothy Leary
   J. R. R. Tolkien is a psychedelic writer. He "turned on" not with LSD but by immersing himself in the study of ancient languages, transcending space and time, leaving the twentieth century, and seeing himself as a pre-Chaucerian scribe. He has returned from his trip and communicated his views in the great mythic work of our time. The Lord of the Rings is a great epic in the Homeric-Joycean vein.
   Like all great mythic sagas, Tolkien's trilogy is written at many levels and has generated countless schools of interpretation, all of which seek the Message. To me, The Lord of the Rings is a morality play-magical statement of the good-evil situation. Evil is power. (Note I do not say "power is evil", a weaker game statement). Evil uses metal, fire, stone, machinery and atomic energy to control, to manipulate, to conquer good. Good for Tolkien is seed, wisdom, freedom, beauty, harmony of growing things. At a time when our planet is in danger of destruction at the hands of mechanical power, Tolkien's poetic and moral message is to cherish the wisdom and freedom which we find around us in the order and beauty of nature.

   To many of us who have followed the "yoga" of LSD, Tolkien's trilogy is vital.

--so, there it is. A bit odd, but I've read worse.

blurbs that never were:
"the great mythic work of our time" (Timothy Leary)

Doug's new blog

So, I was glad to learn of a new blog from Douglas Anderson (his fifth, if I'd keeping count correctly, all running concurrently).* Called A SHIVER IN THE ARCHIVES, it's a good venue for pieces on fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction. I'm particularly enjoying it for the Dunsany pieces, the first of which contained a real discovery: a description of THE KING OF ELFLAND'S DAUGHTER in which Dunsany mentions the story's having taken place about a thousand years ago

http://ashiverinthearchives.blogspot.com/2015/12/lord-dunsany-on-king-of-elflands.html

In all the work I did on Dunsany, I never came across this important piece of information, for the simple reason that I was working with whatever Dunsany books I cd get, and many times they were library rebounds, or latter-day print-on-demands, or found in somewhat battered condition among the shelves of any number of bookstores in Milwaukee and elsewhere. Most of these lacked dustjackets, and without checking for myself I assumed the missing dustjackets didn't have that much additional information. Doug's discovery proves just how wrong I was.

For a more amusing example of Dunsany's ability to mock his critics and himself, check out the faux-review of his own book he sent his friend and publisher, Putnam:

http://ashiverinthearchives.blogspot.com/2016/01/lord-dunsany-reviews-his-own-novel.html

I'm reminded of a passage on one of Dunsany's poems where he shows the ability to view himself from outside in slightly mocking mode. In the poem "Ode to a Dublin Critic" (in FIFTY POEMS [1929], p. 7), the second and fourth stanzas read

. . .  lesser journalists have said,
   That cannot see such things themselves,
The man is clearly off his head
  To write of things like gods and elves.


From little fountain-pens they wring
   The last wee drop of inky spite:
"We do not like the kind of thing
   That lords," they say, "most likely write."


--John R.


*Doug's other blogs are TOLKIEN AND FANTASY (http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com), WORMWOODIANA, to which he's one of several contributors (http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com), LESSER-KNOWN WRITERS (http://desturmobed.blogspot.com), BLINKS: READ AND RECOMMENDED, which is also quite new (http://blinksread.blogspot.com), and now A SHIVER IN THE ARCHIVES.

The Soundtrack in My Head

So, I was interested to read in the following piece on Brian Wilson (late of The Beach Boys)* that Wilson hears music in his head all the time. The article casually mentions that the same is true of some five percent of the population,** then goes on to treat this as if it's freakishly rare (e.g., calling it a 'rare phenomenon').

I wonder if that's true. While I don't have Wilson's talent as a performer or genius as a songwriter, certainly I hear music all the time. It's like having a soundtrack to your own life; it's always there in the background, though I can focus on it to see what song's playing at any given time.  What some people experience as 'earworms'  happens to me all the time, except without the annoyance factor; it's almost always music I like that I hear. I can deliberately choose a specific song, but when I'm not paying attention the music proceeds on its own for reasons of its own. And when I 'tune in' it can take a while for me to recognize which song is playing: it can be pretty much anything from the hook from 'Clap for the Wolfman' to 'Rhapsody in Blue' in its entirety.

So, the article's rather disappointing,*** but the subject is interesting. Here's the link:


http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/21/brian-wilson-beach-boys-musical-mind-mental-condition-beethoven-psychology-love-and-mercy

--JDR
current reading: "The Lovely Gods" and "God's Drinking Party" (Canaanite Myths from Ugarit)


*and subject of a poignant tribute by Bare Naked Ladies, simply called 'Brian Wilson' (from their first album, GORDON [1992])

**which these days is what, about a third of a billion people?

***for example, for me the music is one of three things going on in my mind at any given time, and it doesn't make any mention at all of something like that.

I Love This Headline

So, sometimes a headline tells you all you need to know about a story. Case in point: the following from The Guardian:


"Flock of sheep helps police end 90 minute car chase in New Zealand"
If you want to read the story, here's the link for that. But for me the headline, and the fact that it was a lead item on a national newspaper, was the good part: all the rest was frosting.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/22/flock-of-sheep-helps-police-end-90-minute-car-chase-in-new-zealand

--JDR
current reading: the BAAL cycle