John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 124

Tolkien & Lewis on BOOK-TV

So, I was surprised on Saturday to turn on Book TV and find them airing a discussion of a new book on Tolkien, Lewis, and the Great War. I came in near the end and cdn't stay to hear out the Q&A period that followed, but I heard enough to make me curious about the rest. So tonight I hunted it down and watched it from beginning to end.

First off, the author is Joseph Loconte, whose name I'd not heard before. This is simple enough of explanation: he's not a Tolkien scholar nor a Lewis scholar but mainly writes books on Xianity and history, which are outside my field. His book's full title is A HOBBIT, A WARDROBE, & A GREAT WAR: HOW J. R. R. TOLKIEN AND C. S. LEWIS REDISCOVERED FAITH,  FRIENDSHIP, AND HEROISM IN THE CATACLYSM OF 1914-1918. It just came out June 30th, the same day as this presentation was filmed.

As for the piece itself, it dealt as much with the aftermath of the War as the war itself, and argued roughly that the experience of heroism on the Front enabled JRRT and CSL to avoid the cynicism of the postwar period. The presentation was pretty good, and if the topic appeals you might want to check out the accompanying link (see below).  But be warned that the whole thesis has a whiff of rearranging biographical events to better suit the author's purpose --Tolkien didn't find or lose his faith in the War, nor did Lewis: that'd come much earlier for Tolkien (when he was twelve) and came much later for CSL (when he was thirtyish). More troubling is that Chuck Colson is mentioned* but not John Garth, which in a presentation on Tolkien and the Great War just seems wrong. But perhaps that's redressed in the book itself.

Here's the link:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?326885-1/book-discussion-hobbit-wardrobe-great-war

The best thing about this, from my point of view, is that Tolkien and Lewis now have a high enough profile that a book about them merits more than an hour on C-SPAN. More evidence of the mainstreaming of Tolkien (and also Lewis) in a way that'd have been unimaginable back in the day.

--John R.


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today's quote: "Why shd I whistle when the caged birds sing? (The Soul Cages)




 *to be fair, in a comment from the floor, not as part of the speaker's presentation) 

I'm Back

So, it's been a while since I posted last, having been wholly wrapped up in finalizing my Charles Williams piece (the-project-that-wd-not-end), turning my draft tailored for oral presentation into a finished essay, complete with bibliography and, this being me, quite a lot of notes. I originally overwrote, but with Janice's help managed to cut the piece by about a third, greatly improving its structure and, I think, making clearer the relation of the parts to the whole. Much of this deleted material has been moved to the appendices, where those who are interested can read more about specific points without their interfering in the presentation of the main theme.

Anyway, it's now done and off and provisionally accepted, barring my adding a few more necessary details to the bibliography, which I hope I'll be able to take care of with a quick trip to the Wade next month.  Now on to the next project -- or rather projects, since there are several jostling for attention: a piece I submitted that the editors want me to make some changes on, getting in a proposal for next year's Kalamazoo, and of course the festschrift among them.

For now, though, it's good to be putting a big project behind me and moving on to something else; what I call that new project feel.  Plus, it was high time to put all those Wms and Wms-related books I had piled around the desk, ready at hand to consult, back on the shelves.

--JDR


current reading: IDYLLS OF THE KING, THE METAL MONSTER, ROCHESTER
current anime: DRAGONBALL Z (yes, really), THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA.

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today's quote: "It don't look like they're here to deliver the mail" (Powderfinger)

The Watermelon Ninja

So, still working on the Mythcon report -- but in the meantime thought I'd share some pictures Janice took on Saturday to celebrate our having gotten to the Kent Farmer's Market early and snagged ourselves a real watermelon, with seeds. And a good-sized one too. Decided it deserved dispatch with the sword Janice got me a few years back. Janice decided to record the results, and here they are:







--More later.current reading: MALICE IN THE PALACE (the latest in the Royal Spyness series)THE DWELLER IN THE MOON POOL by A. Merritt (The Book That Wd Not End)current anime: STARSHIP OPERATORS (re-watching)

Dunsany Praised

So, the query regarding Hemingway and Dunsany, it occurred to me that the extent to which American writers admired the Irish lord's work deserved being highlighted in a post of its own rather than just the comments on a post devoted to a different topic.  Accordingly, here's a paragraph from my dissertation* that summarizes the tremendous splash Dunsany had over here during his brief vogue just after the War.


*BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW: THE SHORT STORIES OF LORD DUNSANY, Chapter Two: THE BOOKS OF WONDER, section (ix) Lionization, pages 123-124:

"It is hard now to convey just how popular Dunsany was in the decade centering around 1919-1920. Mencken considered it a coup to get his stories for THE SMART SET and to be the one to introduce him to the American public. New York theaters fought over the right to put on his newest play. Film studios in Germany, England, and America tried to negotiate contracts to make movies out of his plays or to have him write scripts for them. F. Scott Fitzgerald includes a scene in his first novel where his young hero goes through a 'Dunsany period' at college (immediately after his PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY stage), when he and a friend take turns reading Dunsany's poetry back and forth to each other.  Ernest Hemingway took his tales along with him on a camping trip and read them aloud to his friends at night around the campfire; in typical laconic fashion, Hemingway contributes the briefest evaluation of Dunsany on records ("He's great").  James Thurber starred in a college production of A NIGHT AT AN INN which was apparently a great success. When J. B. Pond lured Dunsany over on a lecture tour from October 1919 through January 1920 he was feted and lionized, ranked with top authors of the day like Spanish novelist Blasco Ibanez (THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE) and recent Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck (THE BLUE BIRD). Between engagements he spent his time socializing with the Maeterlincks and ex-President Roosevelt's family, and meeting Kahlil Gibran (THE PROPHET), Mencken, and, as he casually remarks on one occasion, "all the poets in America." Everywhere he was deluged by reporters, who wanted his opinions on every topic imaginable. His lectures were packed; they were so successful that Pond made plans for him to tour the West as well as the East. At a lecture in Boston he so impressed one writer in the audience, H. P. Lovecraft, that Lovecraft devoted the next seven years to writing imitation Dunsany. On all sides Dunsany was treated as one of the greatest living writers, by public and intelligentsia alike.
   On the one hand he reveled in it, and on the other it made him uneasy . . . "


--and this does not include things like Joyce's interest in Dunsany's play A NIGHT AT AN INN, nor Yeats' role in launching Dunsany's career as a playwright (Yeats also edited the first anthology of Dunsany's work).

--JDR, 1990.

Back from Mythcon

So, we had a great time at Mythcon and are back safely, and even have been forgiven by the cats. I'll see what I can do in the way of writing up a Mythcon report over the next few days.

--John R.

The Return of The Cat Report (W.8/4-15)

Thanks to all for covering me when I was out last week. The convention went great. The week before that I'd arrived at the cat-room to find a black cat (Pepper), a black cat (Gemini), a black cat (Kon-Tiki), a black cat (Bean), a black cat (Okra), and Dobby (who I'd never mistake for any other cat). With Tiki's adoption, Peaches' return, Eddie's adoption and then un-adoption, the arrival of purrbox Fruity Pebbles, and (temporary we hope) departure of both CHESSA and EDDIE both back at the clinic over health issues, we're back at six cats: Mr. PEPPER, GEMINI ("Mr. Jimmy"), bonded pair BEAN & OKRA, and beautiful gentle FRUITY PEBBLES (a semi-senior cat) and PRINCESS PEACH (Peaches).
Since Mr. Pepper's been in such a foul mood, I decided to see if special treatment would improve his mood. It did. First I let him out first thing when I arrived and let him have the whole room to himself, putting a short cat-stand in front of his cage and petting him then and there. He enjoyed this so much that I put him on the leash and took him out for a long walk. He was nervous at first but then got interested and explored. He even made the discovery that those bags on the shelves were full of food and put a row of them to the smell-test, one by one. When we got back inside we had a game, again just one-on-one, and he loved it. Hadn't known he's v. fond of the string game. I also petted him some more, gave him catnip, and combed my fingers through his fur; the loose fur came off in surprising quantities (shedding for summer, I assume). He even let me rub him down with a wet cloth to get more of that loose fur off.
Once I started letting other cats out his mood changed. He moved from the short cat-stand by his cage to the tall one near the cabinet, and here he showed his other side: objecting with hisses and swats at any cat trying to get up, or down, or pass by his spot on the mid-level of that cat-stand. He also swatted at me any time I went to get some cat dirt or cat food. It's a territory thing, I think. Had a hard time getting him back in his cage at 12.30, only to have him beg to go out again as I was finishing up. I did, and again he was on his best behavior. Although he got spooked shortly after we went out he behaved while out and also upon coming in and (reluctantly) going back into his cage.
My cat Parker was like this: the switch between wanting to be petted and hissing, swatting, or nipping was split-second. The only thing to do was to be watchful, and not to escalate things (since then he'd get really worked up, and angry rather than just briefly annoyed). Think once Mr. Pepper's in his own house he'll settle down a lot.

The other walker today was GEMINI (Mr. Jimmy), our current Boss Cat (luckily he has a sunny disposition). He played all morning, sometimes with a piece of string (which he'd catch in his mouth and reel in, sometimes carrying it off) and sometimes with feathers-on-a-stick. He's a great cat. I was particularly amused by the way he announced himself with a little mrr! whenever he arrived, whether jumping up onto the cage-tops or down from the cage-tops onto the cat-stands or bench. At once point several people (employees) gathered for a discussion about something outside the door to the cat room, and he went over and started talking to them (mrr! mrr! mrr!) from our side of the door, clearly asking to go out and join the conversation. He had a long walk and loved it. He also really enjoyed the catnip I distributed all round after he came back in (as did they all, but esp. Pepper and Jimmy).

Little BEAN followed him around like a little brother and played whatever game Gemini was playing. Glad to see Bean overcome his shyness: he likes being petted but would prefer to be played with. All the cats enjoyed playing w. the feathers and the string, but Mr. Jimmy and little Bean were the most enthused (I'd say those two played Advanced String Game 101). He was out pretty much all morning, while his sister OKRA stayed in, then came out, then went back in, all morning long. She's much the shyer of the two but is starting to gain some confidence; she came out whenever she saw what she thought was a good game going on and retreated when things got hissy from Mr. Pepper.  
PEACHES, a truly beautiful cat, with long fluffy fur like dark-streaked orange marble, decided to go high as her strategy to avoid conflict, spending much of the morning among the blankets in the top level inside the cabinet. She liked it there so much, in fact, that after leaving that spot she returned to it later, climbing over a startled Pepper and launching herself into the cabinet -- only to fail to get a grip on smooth metal shelves and come tumbling right back out again. Luckily she didn't seem hurt, only chagrinned, so I lifted her up and put her where she wanted to go, where she stayed for over an hour until deciding to come out, getting herself hissed at some more (poor Peaches). She ended the morning in a box on the cagetops, which she found restful and a hiss-free zone. 
FRUITY PEBBLES was a little more low-key; she tried several places high and low (inside the basket, atop the cages, under a cat-stand) but didn't seem to find a spot she really liked. Offered her some lap time several times but she wasn't in the mood. I'll have to make sure she gets some one-on-one time and special attention next week. I wonder how she'd do on a walk.
And that's pretty much it. Several visitors, but none who seemed serious prospects for adopters. 
--John R.

Pegana Colorado

So, yesterday was a travel day, first to fly to Denver and then to drive down to Colorado Springs, site of this weekend's MYTHCON (at the Hotel Elegante). The evening yesterday was devoted to unpacking and settling in. Wanting to be well-rested for the con, we made an early night of it,  which turned out to be a good choice.

Today we went out and about, visiting what sounded like the thing we'd most regret missing if we didn't go by & see it while in the area: THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.

These are spectacular pillars and columns of brick-red sandstone, deeply eroded. I was expecting something somewhat like the Hoo-doos of Yellowstone,* something like the eroded ridges of Frenchman's Coulee,** but despite a few similarities here and there this was really different. If you like this kind of thing at all, you really should make the trip out; it's spectacular, it's easy to get to and easy to walk around in once there. I was particularly struck by the wildlife: at one point there was a deer feeding perhaps twenty feel away from us, sheltered by a row of wild sunflowers. I saw a magpie (or at least some sort of unfamiliar jay) on the way there and several more unfamiliar birds while there, but was most taken with the swifts, who nest atop the rocks and were disturbed by climbers getting too near their nests.

Given the recent cave-in of the ice-caves at Big Four Mt, which we visited last year, JC and I took the warnings about hazardous areas with high potential for falling boulders more seriously than did many of our fellow visitors: there were lots of kids among those posing beneath a crumbling cliff with some rocks half-fallen and at this point only being held up by other rocks. Luckily, today Fate refused to be tempted.

And of course we saw the dinosaur -- a single skull, discovered more than a century before, which is the only piece of this particular kind of dinosaur that has ever come to light; a good reminder of how happenstance our evidence of the long-ago can be.

In the end, I thought that rather than 'The Garden of the Gods', a better name for the place would be PEGANA. One can easily imagine those tall, eroded, sometimes tumbly red rocks in the background for one of Sime's pictures for Dunsany's first two books (e.g., 'The King That Was Not'). But that's probably just me. A classicist wd almost certainly see the heads of Titans and their hands reaching up out of the soil; anyone acquainted w. the Mythos wd recall the carven crags in the Dreamlands; a Tolkienist wd recall the Argonath; and any Eddist wd immediately recognize this as Troll country.

There are plenty of interesting things to see and do in this area, from the modern-day reconstruction of cliff-dwellings and a chance to feed giraffes at the local zoo to the Arkansas River riverwalk down in Pueblo, But I think Janice was right to give this one the nod as 'if you only have time to do one touristy thing in this area, this is the one'.

And now, off to do some final small preparations for the con.

--John R.
current reading: POETRY AT PRESENT by Charles Williams [1930]
THE MOON POOL by A. Merritt [1919]


*which were really memorable, despite being perched on the edge of any acrophobist's nightmare. worth the terror.

**for an inadequate description thereof, see http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2014/08/we-take-stay-cation-on-road-wind-farms.html

Today I'm Drinking . . .

. . . Ernest Hemingway's tea.
And that's "Ernest Hemingway" with a circle-r following it.

Saw this in World Market a few weeks back and was bemused enough to buy it. Turns out to be ordinary Assam they've put Hemingway's name and picture on as a selling point. How very odd. I did buy some "C. S. Lewis Blend" a good while back via mail-order from a tea shop in Austin, but then Lewis was famous as a tea-drinker -- cf the quote that starts off Hooper's Preface to CSL's essay collection ON STORIES:

'You can't get a cup of tea large enough of a book long enough to suit me' 
Whereas if Hemingway drank tea that fact has eluded my admittedly somewhat slim knowledge of his biography (derived mostly from reading his autobiography and Carpenter's GENIUSES TOGETHER). 
Still, it's odd how some thing stick to an author's 'myth'. In Hemingway's case it's polydactyl cats, yes; tea-drinking, no; living in Cuba, yes; dying in Idaho, no. 
And there's this to consider: Hemingway was a fan of Dunsany's early work, which is just about as different from Hemingway's own as it's possible for two writers to get. So I think I'll have a cup of tea and think kindly thoughts for that about a writer who, though v. good, is not exactly my cup of tea.
--John R. 

The Game of Opposites

So, I came up with an odd sort of word game while I was finishing up my Wms paper.*

Here's the challenge: what word least describes an Inkling?


For Williams, the one who got me started on this slightly odd line of thought, I'd opt for 'sincere' or 'sincerity', or perhaps 'straightforward': to read his letters is to get a sense that he was always playing a role, always assuming a persona.

Applying the same technique to CSL, the word I would choose that least describes C. S. Lewis would be "vain" or "vanity". Lewis was famously free of vanity when it came to personal appearance, once describing himself as "bald and fat" and dressing in shabby clothes. And despite his extraordinary gifts (not many students get a triple first) as a writer and scholar, he seems never to have thought his talent makes him entitled to any special treatment (Janie M. still made him walk the dog and take out the trash).

For Tolkien, it's harder. "Stolid, staid" are somewhere in the right territory but inadequate. Descriptions of him make it clear there was something elusive, mercurial, almost bird-like about him, but 'dapper' needs to go in there somewhere as well.


At any rate, that's what I came up with on a first attempt. I'd be interested what descriptors others would find appropriate.  Might make a good discussion topic over a meal at Mythcon.

--John R.
current watching: STARSHIP OPERATORS

*which is now done, and revised, and rehearsed. whew.  It ran to twenty pages but with Janice's help I've cut it down to fourteen, which is more like what'll fit into the available programming space. Though I'm sorry to see those various sections go.

"Fails the Most Elementary Test of Historical Possibility"

So, in the last few days I found praise for my work in a place I wdn't have expected it: a discussion of a Hugo ballet. And I found criticism of my work ("fails the most elementary test of historical possibility") in a somewhat more likely place, a book on Tolkien (we Tolkienists being a fractious lot).



First the Good: here's the link to David Bratman's recent blog post explaining his votes in this year's contentious election for the Hugo Awards:


http://kalimac.livejournal.com/817600.html

The part where I'm referred to occurs under the heading of Best Fan Writer, entry #3:


Best Fan Writer
3. Jeffro Johnson. If we were going to honor someone who writes about classic fantasy in an RPG context, we should have given a Hugo years ago to John D. Rateliff. Still, Johnson is a good writer, if somewhat condescending towards his topics, and though of crabby social views, he does not spend his time whining about SJWs, which sets him apart from the rest of this category.


This must be a reference to my CLASSICS OF FANTASY articles (which ran to nineteen installments). I'd still like to revisit and revive that series some day: there are any number of interesting writers yet to cover (e.g. Cabell, Howard, Vance, Carroll, not to mention newer writers like Jonathan Howard and Susanna Clarke). In any case, glad to see they're not altogether forgotten, and nice of David to say nice things about them.




And, just to keep things balanced, here's the bad: there's criticism of my HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT in the new faux-biography of Tolkien, just out:  J. R. R. TOLKIEN: CODEMAKER, SPY-MASTER, HERO: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY by "Elansea", with Alex Lewis and Elizabeth Currie as "consultants".

The full quote referencing my work reads thusly:

. . . Tolkien is not inventing, but using places
that he had seen firsthand to fashion his own
fictional backcloth for the settings of his stories.
 J. D. Rateliff's attempt to deny this in his
History of the Hobbit fails the most elementary
 test of historical possibility . . . Taking each of
his points, Tolkien would not have visited the
sites of the Swiss Lake Villages during the 1911
trip; he was not interested in them until the 1930s
and he was a junior member of the party, not the
one setting the itinerary (and Lake Town resembles
them only in principle, not any specific detail).
Tolkien did not need to visit Lydney whilst writing
the 'Note on the name Nodens'; that was pure
philological work on the name of a deity, not a
place whose setting might be relevant. And Tolkien
could not have visited Sutton Hoo whilst writing
about the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings; that
was during the Second World War when 'tourism'
was impossible in Britain -- and to put the tin lid
on it, Sutton Hoo had been taken over by the military
as a tank training ground! Not that Tolkien needed it
as visual inspiration; it's only a barrow-field, and
there are plenty of those much nearer Oxford.

So Rateliff's counter-examples fail, and the basic
principle that Tolkien was writing about real
landscapes stands. (p. 114-115).

--all this in response for my agreeing w. Carpenter that Tolkien tended not to feel a need to visit in person places that inspired his writing -- unlike some authors, who find a bit of fieldwork inspirational.


At this point I've only skimmed Elansea's book, so take the following as just provisional.

Basically it's a 'What If?' biography.
What if JRRT secretly spent WW II as a British codebreaker?
What it his father, Arthur Tolkien, had been spying on the Boers for the Empire?
What it Joseph Wright were a spymaster who recruited young John Ronald as a likely lad for espionage work?
 What if, all that time Tolkien was supposed to be 'in hospital' he was actually just using that as a cover story while off on a secret mission behind enemy lines (somewhere in the Ottoman Empire, I think*)?
 What if strings were being pulled behind the scenes to rig the election to his Oxford professorship in his favor?
 What if all those times he was away 'grading as an external examiner', or any time he claimed to be stalled in his writing, he was really engaged on undercover work?
What if he because a spymaster and recruiter himself in time?

That's a lot of ifs, but the major one that comes to mind is this: What if none of this is true and they just made it all up?  So far as I can tell, they don't supply any evidence for any of their speculations: it's all in the realm of what CSL called the supposal.


In essence this is the first fictional biography of Tolkien. If someone wants to film a movie "inspired" by the life of JRRT but in no way restricted by the facts, this book could  provide a template. 
To say that 'Elansea' is the new Giddings and Holland is to do the late Elizabeth Holland's memory a disservice.

--John R.

current reading: POETRY AT PRESENT by Charles Wms [1930]
THE MOON POOL by A. Merritt (second reading)


*their 'evidence' for this is that Tolkien once made a slighting reference to Athenian democracy, which they claim cd only be possible if he had first-hand knowledge of the place. (p. 187)