John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 150

LEGENDS FROM THE ANCIENT NORTH (Penguin)

So, Thursday I got interviewed for a podcast (more on this later, in another post), after which I took advantage of being downtown to make a side-trip, heading up Capitol Hill for a rare visit to Elliott Bay Books (which I've only visited a handful of times since they moved away from their more accessible but higher-rent spot near Elliott Bay). After looking around a bit, pledging yet again to pick up those interesting-looking new books on Neanderthals and on Stonehenge next time I was here, I headed over to work on the laptop in their cafe, where I got in a good session on my latest project, A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT (more on that one soon too) before it was time to head south if I was to avoid the traffic.

The most interesting new discovery from this visit, on a display table about mid-way between the Stonehenge/Neanderthal et al. shelf and the cafe, was a new edition of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT from Penguin. I already have several copies of SGGK, various editions and translations, but stopped to have a look-see about whether this particular edition had any Tolkien relevance, as some of them do. To my surprise, there was a sticker on the front cover, a little orange rondel about an inch wide that reads

Classics thatinspiredJ. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
After a little more investigation, I found that there are five books in the series, all of which Elliott Bay had on the shelves (is this a great bookstore or what?):


SIR GAWAIN & THE GREEN KNIGHT , tr Bernard O'DonoghueBEOWULF, tr Michael AlexanderTHE ELDER EDDA , Andrew OrchardTHE WANDERER: ELEGIES, EPICS, RIDDLES , tr Michael AlexanderTHE VOLSUNGA SAGA , tr Jesse Byock.

Nor was this little sticker something that the bookstore had come up with;* the back cover copy of each of these five books stressed the Tolkien connection:

"Our Legends of the Ancient North are five classics of Norse literature that inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's epic vision in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Reading them brings us as close as we will ever get to the magical worlds of the Vikings and the origins of their twentieth-century counterpart: Tolkien's Middle Earth."

Note: this cover copy may vary some from volume to volume -- I took the above from the Penguin website, but what I'd written down in my pocket notebook is the phrase "bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of Tolkien's Middle Earth".

Here's the link.

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/classics/penguinlegends.html

I don't know who at Penguin came up with this idea or was responsible for the selection, but I'd say they made a pretty good collection (it wd have been nice if they'd been able to add Heidrek's Saga or Hrolf Kraki, but I can see the argument for keeping things focused).

What's really jaw-dropping about this is to see its validation of what we all knew already: for decades now, Tolkien has been the entry point of choice for most medievalists. Most people who read BEOWULF or SIR GAWAIN do so because of the Tolkien connection, and a significant number of them get hooked on the weird and wonderful world that is medieval literature. To see that bluntly stated, and adopted as a selling point by a major publisher in the field, shows yet again how far we've come from the early days, when academia still gave Tolkien a cold shoulder and 'serious' medievalists kept their copies of LotR and H off their office shelves. My, how times change.

--John R.

current audiobook: DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS by Ray Bradbury [1985]
current reading: THE KING'S GRAVE: THE DISCOVERY OF RICHARD III'S LOST BURIAL PLACE AND THE CLUES IT HOLDS, by Philippa Landgley and Michael Jones [2013]
also: THE LAST UNICORN, by Peter S. Beagle [1968] (re-reading)


*I now see it appears on each copy in the top row under the following link, though not in the images of the individual volumes beneath

The Cat Report (W. 2/12-14)

All four cats got walks this morning, and all four gave voice during it. Some (Danali) calmed down after a while and got quieter, others (Sequoia) did not.  My pal Kaboodles and Mr. Danali did the best. 

I brought a small box with some catnip in the bottom, placing it at the bottom of and behind the cat-stand by the door.
SCRUFFS immediately claimed the box as soon as it was put out. Later he shifted over to the top of the cat-stand by the door, where he played the gopher game. Later yet he enjoyed laser tag in the area around the door (Danali watched but did not join in). He's still grumpy. Went in early, of his own accord.
KABOODLE has resumed his old game of burrowing down behind the blankets in his cage, from which he readily emerges when you enter the room. Finding the box occupied, he went into the small stand on the bench that he likes so much, then later inherited the box after Mr. Scruffs had moved on. He objected to going in, as usual, but doesn't hold a grudge.
SEQUOIA went straight for the blankets in the cupboard, her favorite place in the room. She only emerged when made to, at the end of my shift. Sweet and gentle.
DANALI remains calm and collected. He likes laying on the floor best, somewhere around the middle of the room. He asked if he could get into the box, and Kaboddle declined to make it available; later, after K. had moved on, he helped himself -- somewhat to Scruff's dismay, it turned out; apparently Mr. Scruffs thought he held a veto over who cd and cd not get in that box. 
All in all a quiet morning. A number of visitors, but no potential adopters. 
After my shift was done, the new cats arrived, so I got to meet them briefly. BONFILIA is small and sweet, RAM a gentle giant. Both are fairly young cats. So we're now up to six cats (four male, two female). We also got a new donations box.

health concerns: there was dried throw-up (catfood) in the bonded pair's cage. Also, felt to me like Scruffy's getting pretty tubby -- do we need to switch him to a diet catfood as well?

--John R.
POSTSCRIPT: In the delay before I got this posted, our seventh cat has arrived: FAYE, a white calico whom I've not yet met. 

Reading STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

So, as part of my current effort to go back and read some of the classics of science fiction which I'd somehow never gotten around to reading (e.g., RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and currently A PRINCESS OF MARS), I just finished listening to an audiobook of Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. It's hard to describe the experience of what reading this book is like without getting scatological. Let's just say it feels like I've been sold a bill of goods. It's as if I've long been told that a certain pond was a great place to swim in, the only debate being whether it's best to swim directly across the short way or the long way from end-to-end.* I'd long been put off by the fact that the pond in question looked drab and muddy, decidedly unappealing, but decided to give it a try -- only, when half-way across, to discover it was actually a cesspool.

I know there are people who love this book. I'm not among their number. I thought it had a pretty good idea (a human raised by Martians) which was buried, first under the poorly written slang used in the opening chapters that hoped to be hip, jive, and with-it, and wasn't. Then once the main story got launched it was continually derailed by the endless blovating of a Heinlein-figure who can't stop talking, and talking, and talking. R.A.H. clearly enjoyed having a mouthpiece through which to air his tendentious views on every matter imaginable (at one point the action stops so the Heinlein figure can deliver a lecture on Rodin's bronzes), but having to listen to all this guff is a bit much. I know there's debate over which is better: the version of the book that was famous in the 1960s, or the significantly longer version released after Heinlein's death. Having persevered through the latter, I can only say that the shorter this book was, the better -- I can't imagine its not being improved by being cut.

And all this is quite apart from the book's plot, or the content of said tendentiousness, some of which is pretty vile (e.g., Heinlein's comments about rape).

It's not all bad, just about 95%. The bits set in heaven, obviously inspired by Twain's** CAPTAIN STORMFIELD with a touch of Cabell's JURGEN, were amusing, but only a v. minor element. The parts about someone thinking in Martian and trying to embrace new concepts for which his language has no word were by far the best part of the book -- but the story soon left that behind for its solipsistic Plato. Too bad. Heinlein cd write a good book, but this isn't it.

So, there's an experience I don't need to repeat again, and a book I don't need to take seriously.

--John R.






*e.g., the original edition or the posthumous unedited text, which is significantly longer
**not someone we associate w. Heinlein; it's easy to forget he was a fellow Missourian

JOHN CARTER (OF MARS)

So, I've now finished reading Michael D. Sellers' book JOHN CARTER AND THE GODS OF HOLLYWOOD,* an account of the making of the disastrous 2012 film JOHN CARTER (a.k.a., unofficially, "John Carter of Mars"). It's an interesting read, though for it to have it's full effect you have to agree with Sellers on several points:
(1) Burroughs was the most awesomest author ever.
(2) A PRINCESS OF MARS is the most awesomely awesomest of all Burroughs' awesome books.
(3) the JOHN CARTER movie was a great film that shd have established its own 'franchise'. In particular, there shd have been at least two sequels (he devotes a section towards the end laying out a blueprint of how even at this late date a package cd be put together to fund said sequels).
(4) the whole project was sabotaged by internal politics and ineptitude at Disney, who didn't bother to promote the film, having written it off as a failure before it was even released.
The first problem with this is that Disney did promote the film, spending $100,000,000 on it. It's hard to reconcile a hundred million dollars spent on ads with the theme that the studio abandoned it. And this was above and beyond the $250,000,000 the director spent making the movie.

The second problem is that Sellars has a tendency of overstating claims. For example, he says that

"In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs gave us the gift of modern science fiction" 
What, you may ask, of Verne and Wells? Apparently they're either not influential enough or not "modern" by his reckoning. His belief that Star Wars was heavily influenced by Barsoom seems valid but overstated; the claim that Flash Gordon was created as a Barsoom clone seems improbable.**

The part that interested me most was his discussion about whether or not this was a faithful adaptation of Burrough's original book. You'd think, given that he self-identifies as a lifelong Burroughs fans who's longed for decades to finally see A PRINCESS OF MARS put on screen, that the issue wd be an important one and that he'd devote a significant portion of his book to discussing it. Such is not the case. He does acknowledge in passing that some people had objections to the scriptwriter (Michael Chabon) and director's complete re-writing of Carter's character,*** but downplays this, apparently in an attempt to unite the Burroughs-fan community behind this film and its potential sequels. Thus he lets pass with little or no comment what seem to me red-button warning signs in the form of the following quotes from various people associated with the film:

"pleasing the core fan group was not high on the list of priorities"
"Be respectful, yes. Let them dictate the treatment of the story, no."
"the fans of the books are always the hardest to please"
The third of these is simply a truism, the first two shd make chills run up the spine of anyone who is a fan of a book being adapted.


One thing I'd hoped he wd spend more time on was exploring the thought processes behind the idiots who were responsible for the film's title.  Apparently the logic went something like this:

(1) You can't use the word 'Princess' in the title, because then no guys will go to see it.

(2) You can't use the word 'Mars' in the title, because then no women will go to see it.

(2a) Besides, movies with 'Mars' in the title don't do well at the box office (a dubious maxim showing post hoc propter hoc because Disney had just released a flop called MARS WANTS MOMS)

(3) The target audience is 10 to 14 yr old boys.

Hence A PRINCESS OF MARS became JOHN CARTER OF MARS which became just JOHN CARTER -- as neutral and unevocative as they cd have come up with. Pity they didn't go w. Burroughs' original title, UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS.

In the end it all came down to the expectations games: a movie that cost this much cd only be judged a success by Hollywood accounting if it made back double its costs. This one made a boatload of money -- $280,000,000 gross -- but they'd spent so much making and promoting the movie that this wasn't even enough to break even, leaving them at least $70 million in the hole. The studio cut their loses and announced a $200,000,000 'write down' just days after the movie debued. The general impression seems to be that the Powers That Be at Disney had a bad feeling about this one from early on but cd neither bring themselves to intervene and fix the problem nor to pull the plug, instead deciding to hope they were wrong and it might be a surprise hit. It wasn't.

But hey, it wasn't a total loss. I loved the use of the old Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" in the trailer -- in fact, that's the main reason I decided to see the movie (in a typically wrongfooted move, it was left out of the actual film itself). Lynn Collins, who played the Princess of what shd have been the title, does a great Gemma Arterton impersonation. And she has the one good line in the film, when she spots her doppleganger making a break for it: "Stop me! I'm getting away!" But that's a pretty slim return on two hours plus of movie.

--John R.

*a play on the title of one of Burroughs' books, THE GODS OF MARS, second in the John Carter/Barsoom series.
**as Sellars tells the story, Burroughs was in negotiations to launch a Barsoom comic strip when the publishers he was dickering with pulled out and launch a John-Carter clone called "Flash Gordon" instead. The problems with this are (a) Flash Gordon is space opera and bears v. little resemblance to the John Carter books and (b) Flash Gordon's obvious template was Buck Rogers (making this a rare case where the imitation is better than the original), which again is space opera w. little resemblance to Barsoom.

***like Jackson's Aragorn, they made the movie John Carter a man filled with self-doubt who hesitates to commit himself, not the confident and self-assured figure of Burrough's book.

The Cat Report (W. 2/5-14)

Now that poor Sophie Dori has gone back to Arlington, that leaves us with four cats: KABOODLES, SCRUFFS, DANALI, and SEQUOIA.   Hope Sophie Dori has better luck settling in to the next adoption room -- she's a friendly enough cat when something doesn't set her off, but she just cd not abide sharing a room with four other cats. 

KABOODLES greeted me with enthusiasm, rubbing and purring and generally signaling that he and I are pals. Quite a change from his extreme shyness those first few weeks. After his talky walk he went up to enjoy the cagetops. We got along great until it was time for him to go back in at noon. By now he was in the short stand on the bench and made clear he had no intention of coming out, so I picked the whole thing up and held it in his cage upside-down till he climbed out, much put out at me for the indignity. Hopefully he'll forgive me by next week.
MR SCRUFF was equally vocal on his walk, until he got deeply interested in the great big pet-beds along the back wall of the store. He jumped up on one of these and claimed it, then wanted to explore behind it. That last was a no-go, sez I, but he remained much taken with the big cushion, like the one Moreo used to enjoy. Back inside the cat room he settled near the door, as usual. Although he enjoyed chasing the laser pointer's wicked little red dot, the things he likes most are (1) the paper bag, (2) the rather gimpy ping-pong ball I brought in for him, and especially (3) the ping-pong ball IN the paper bag. We played with me sending the ping-pong ball skipping in his direction and him swatting it back my way, like some sort of low-tech pinball. 
SEQUOIA had a brief walk (mostly carried), just to start getting her used to the idea. Thereafter she enjoyed some petting but quickly made her wishes known. Using me as a human stepping stone, she once more got up among the blankets in the top shelf of the cabinet, and stayed there there next two+ hours, snug as a bug in a rug (to quote Ben Franklin). She came down with reluctance but went into her cage quietly, having declined petting in a lap. Good to see her much more relaxed and at-home in the cat room.
DANALI got the last of the walks, and I think will do pretty well once he's got a map of the store in his head; right now he's lost out there outside the room and unhappy about it. Once back in he claimed the floor in the middle of the room, from which he could preside over everything. He played a string game at one point (with Scruffs on the other end). He enjoyed being petted, and catnip, and having a box. I think his ears need cleaning, but he wasn't in the mood for me to do much with them, so that'll have to wait till another day.
All four cats seem healthy. All were v. vocal on the walks. None of them have any interest in canned catfood, though one of the other guy-cats (Scruffs?) was interested in Kaboodle's food, and vice versa. Two of them (Mr. Scruff and Danali) went back into their cages on their own at mid-morning, but eventually came out again. 
Three out of four cats surveyed agree: catnip in a box is a Good Thing.
And that's about it for this week. I took a load of cat-blankets home to wash up and bring back tomorrow or Friday. And we might need a new broom; the old one seems to have gone missing (worn out)? 
--John R.

Movies, Films, Adaptations

So, a few weeks ago my friend Jeff Grubb used an interesting way to differentiate between movies, films, and adaptations. I forget his exact words, but it went something like this:

--A movie gets enjoyed --A film gets watched --An adaptation gets analyzed 
Of course, these categories often overlap. Among things Janice and I have gone to lately, I'd put down THOR: THE DARK WORLD as a movie -- entertaining fun, so long as you don't make the mistake of trying to take it seriously. Which is easy enough, given that I'd say no synapses fired at any point during the making of this film. But you cd also look at it as an adaptation, given that it's based on the Marvel comics character.

THE BUTLER is clearly intended to be a film, self-conscious awards-bait where all the emphasis is on character and contentious issues and the weight of historical events. Too bad its earnestness made it come off as drab and depressing; I cdn't help comparing it with the old tv miniseries of three black servants' lifelong service at the White House (whose name I forget) did a better job.

An example of a really good adaptation would be THE HUNGER GAMES, where the original author of the books it's based on served as one of the three screen writers, as well as one of the producers (giving her economic clout). It's not a point-by-point transfer from book to screen, but an extremely faithful adaptation that re-creates the same story in a new medium.
Contrast this with the recent JACK RYAN movie, SHADOW RECRUIT, where the project was a year into development when it first occurred to them to make it a Jack Ryan movie. So, far from being an adaptation of one of Clancy's novels, the whole idea of its being an adaptation is just an add-on.

So far as the adaptations I care the most about, I'd say the HOBBIT trilogy so far has produced mixed results.  The first movie, AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, is both an adaptation and an action movie, in roughly equal parts. For the second movie, THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, there's a  shift to heavy emphasis on action movie -- and a good one at that, but I'd have rather they have more adaptation, not less. Thus the best moments, for me, are the remaining bits of adaptation: Bilbo left behind by barrels, Bilbo w. Smaug, Bilbo's butterflies moment, et al. Now to wait to see which way the third and final movie leans. If the LORD OF THE RINGS film trilogy is any guide to go by, the first film will be both the best and the most faithful, the second will depart most widely from the source material, and the third will fall somewhere between the two. In the case of the LotR middle film, the wide departures from the original hurt the story but the film as a whole was redeemed by outstanding performances by Bernard Hill, Miranda Otto, and the ever-amazing Andy Serkis. That hasn't been the case with the middle HOBBIT movie -- which means that even more is riding on the third and final film to pull the whole thing together. Come this December we'll know; for now, here's hoping.
--JDR
current audiobook: STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Rbt A. Heinlein
current reading: HEIR APPARENT, a life of Edward VIIth.

Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Semi-Expired Copyright

So, recently Tolkien scholar Paul Thomas posted an interesting piece on his blog,"A Holmes for the World", that looked at the most recent developments in an ongoing case to decide whether Sherlock Homes is or is not out of copyright. Here's the link:


http://www.fredlaw.com/news__media/2014/01/30/536/a_holmes_for_the_world/

The point of contention is that the Holmes/Watson stories published before 1923 are now in the public domain, but the Doyle Estate still has control over the last ten stories published after that date (in THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES [1927]). That means anyone who wants to can write a Holmes or Watson or Holmes-and-Watson story drawing on any of the material in the four novels and first forty-six short stories, but would have to get permission from the Doyle Estate to use any detail drawn from those final few stories. The Doyles argue that you can't divvy up a literary character this way: either he or she or it should be copyright-protected or not: all or nothing. The other side points out that copyright law doesn't work this way: it protects specific works, published on specific dates, not elements that spread as intangibles across a body of work. The judge ruled against the Doyles, who have appealed to a higher court, so it now moves up to the Circuit Court.

On the one hand, it's easy to empathize with the Doyle Estate's position: there's something bizarre in the idea of having simultaneously a public-domain version of Holmes and an Estate-controlled version of the same character. Tolkien himself said once that myth was "alive at once and in all its parts and dies before it can be dissected". Most of us now think of the Holmes series in a more general than specific way, a composite image drawn out of multiple works rather than distinctly story-by-story. For Holmes to be 5/6ths in the public domain sounds distinctly odd to most of us.

On the other hand, if you could extend copyright indefinitely by authorizing additions to a series, that'd defeat the whole point of public domain: to eventually let works be absorbed into common culture. The Doyles have been making money off Holmes for a hundred and twenty-seven years, and counting, not just through Doyle's long life (he having died in 1930) but the entire lifetime of all his children as well. How long is enough?
Then too, I think there's danger that the Doyle Estate's argument could turn against them. If the world of 221B Baker Street has to be either all-in or all-out, wholly in the public domain or entirely in the control of the Estate, couldn't you make the argument that the five/sixths in the public domain outweigh the one/sixth still in copyright?

Of course, all this has applications far beyond just Holmes and Doyle. There are plenty of great characters who are partly in and partly out of copyright, like Bertie Wooster and Jeeves (mostly in), Allan Quatermain (almost entirely out), Agatha Christie's Poirot (almost all in), and The Insidious Doctor Fu-Manchu (evenly split).

The ideal of split rights to a set of stories also has resonance in Tolkien studies. Famously, the Peter Jackson films are limited to drawing only on THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and can't use any information from, say, Tolkien's LETTERS or UNFINISHED TALES or any of the various Silmarillion texts. It's also easy to see how works in the legendarium cd have slipped into a protected/unprotected split, like the Holmes stories, had Tolkien's copyright for THE HOBBIT and LotR, been thrown into the public domain by the negligence of his publishers -- which almost happened (the so-called Ace Books crisis), and remained unresolved from 1965 to 1993, when a judge finally definitely ruled that the copyright was secure. What kind of pickle wd we all be in if those two works were public domain, yet all the minor works published in the sixties (OFS, LBN, SWM, RGEO, ATB) and all the posthumous works so superbly edited by Christopher Tolkien were all copyright-protected and under the Tolkien Estate's control. That'd be a right mess. Luckily for us all, that's not the case.

I'm also grateful that, while Tolkien created many of his iconic characters before the 1923 deadline (Earendel, Feanor, Beren, Luthian, Turin), he did not publish any of them until much later. So Tolkien's copyrights shd be secure until at least seventy years after his death -- i.e., in 2043, still thirty years away.



Returning to the Holmes canon, here are two earlier postings by Paul, which fill in more of the detail behind the case

http://www.fredlaw.com/news__media/2013/08/09/423/get_sherlock/

http://www.fredlaw.com/news__media/2013/09/17/426/the_soul_of_sherlock_holmes/


And here's a web-site giving regular updates on the case from the guy who filed the lawsuit (the one advocating that the Doyles have benefitted from Holmes long enough, and it's time to give the rest of us a turn):

http://free-sherlock.com/

--John R.
current reading: THE HEIR APPARENT: A LIFE OF EDWARD VII, THE PLAYBOY PRINCE [2013] by Jane Ridley

The Cat Report (W.1/29-14)

The arrival of two newcomers brings us up from just three cats to five, half a room full. Four out of the five get along fine, but the fifth more than makes up for it.
I'd stopped by on Friday to return clean blankets and found KABOODLES had decided I was okay in his book: he purred, rubbed up against my leg, and was quite casual about using my shoulder as a half-way point when leaping up between the cat-stands and the cagetops.
Wednesday morning it seemed like a real breakthrough to find Kaboodle was not hiding, instead sitting on top of his little stand, rather than hiding under the blankets as he had been doing. Nice to see him come out of his shell and reveal himself to be sociable, gentle, and a skilled leaper. He's also v. affectionate, reaching through the cage doors to paw my hat when I first arrived to let me know he wanted to come out and be agreeable.
SCRUFFS does not like walks, he informed me: by giving voice during my Friday morning attempt and by squirming when I offered again Wednesday. What he does like is crouching by the door, enjoying the breeze. And what he likes even better is a brown paper bag placed near the door that he can go inside of and claim as a paper cave all his own. He likes the laser pointer but wants it placed where he can swat at it without leaving his paper cave. He went back into his cage early to avoid Dori.
DORI hates everyone. She has a big impact for such a little, young cat. She refused to come out of her cage, so that I had to clean it around her. Later she did jump out, and made it her business to locate, and hiss and growl at, every other cat in the room. She found Kaboodles minding his own business in the basket-stand on the bench and attacked him, trapping him in there. Scruffs went back into his own cage early to get away from her. Sequoia hid, but Danali stood his ground and Dori kept her distance from him, just growling and hissing instead of attacking. 
I eventually had to scoop her up and put her back in her cage for a time out. Surprisingly, this seemed to be what she wanted: the growls soon subsided and she calmed down. Think it helped that I covered her cage-front with a blanket, giving her some privacy and it seems security as well. Something's wrong with her fight-or-flight response. I'd come in Friday to put a calming collar on her (one of the pheromone kind), but doesn't seem to have had much effect yet.
Next time I think I'll take Dori out first, put her up on the cage-tops, and play with her in hopes of tiring her out a little and getting some of that aggression out. I looked at her history and saw its reference to her brother and wondered if part of her problem isn't being separated from another cat she'd spent all her life with.



As for the newcomers, DANALI is a good fellow who's calmly getting to know the room and the other cats in it. He placed himself near Scruffs, and when there was no growling on either side moved on. Later he investigated Kaboodle's hiding place and again moved along without incident on either side. So the room's three boy cats are all willing to be on good terms with each other: doesn't look like any territorial battles there. 
While Dori was having her Time Out, both the new cats/bonded pair came out. SEQUOIA was interested in the cabinet, so I put her up among the blankets, which she loved. She's still shy but looks to be a cat who loves petting. Thanks to Sharon for posting their picture: Danali is the all-white one and Sequoia the dilute-calico point mostly white one.
--no walks, aside from quick out-and-back-ins.
--no one among our current cats likes wet food.
--no health issues I noticed. I bought a little thing of cat grass at the registers as I was coming in and let the room cats all have a go at smelling it. None nibbled on it, which rather surprised me.

Very sorry to hear the news about poor Milo. I hope all those who worked so hard to save him can take comfort in knowing they did all they could to find and rescue him.
--John R.

Voynich Revisited

So, a new theory has surfaced purporting to explain the much-theoried VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT.*

Again.

Here are links, first to a quick summary, then to a slightly more detailed story:

(1)
http://classic.slashdot.org/story/14/01/21/2258257

(2)
http://m.digitaljournal.com/pr/1689897


The herbalist's book theory has been raised before, the main twist this time being to shift the focus from the Old World to the New (though even that claim has some precedence; see D'Imperio pages 73-75 and 14-16).

Where this newest theory seems to break down is in the statement that

"names of various plants have been identified in Nahuatl". 

The problem with this is that it's not just the language but the script that's unknown. That is, no one knows what sounds or significance the individual letters or glyphs have (or even how many letters there are, or whether they're letters or ideograms), which has made it impossible to identify the underlying language. So anyone who claims to have identified specific words in the Voynich Manuscript needs to explain the whole decipherment process by which he or she was able to read individual words within the manuscript.

In any case, it's amusing to note that this announcement (that the Ms dates from the early 1500s) flatly contradicts the last major 'discovery' regarding the Ms (the claim that radio-carbon dating established that it dated from the early 1400s).**

For a fascinating summary of theories regarding the Ms, see M. E. D'Imperio's THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT -- AN ELEGANT ENIGMA [n.d., circa 1976]

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a facsimile edition available, but here's a wonderful site that shows scanned in images of every page, so you can see for yourself just what this weird and wonderful book looks like.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

I still stick to my own theory: it's not just an invented alphabet but also an invented language -- as if we had a book in Sindarin written in tengwar, with no other information on either Sindarin or tengwar outside that single book. That's why I doubt the Voynich Manuscript will ever be deciphered, and I suspect we wdn't learn the author's name even if it was. In the meantime, it's a wonderful canvas for people to project their theories onto.

--John R.

*with thanks to Janice for the link
**see my earlier blog post from February 2011: http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/02/voynich-manuscript.html

More Tolkien at 2014 Kalamazoo

And, sure enough, here's a few more Tolkien presentations in non-Tolkien dominated panels. Plus, I thought I'd throw the C. S. Lewis ones in as well, just for the sake of convenience.

--JDR



Friday May 9th, 10 a.m.The Real Generic Middle AgesSponsor: Tales after Tolkien Society Organizer: Helen Young, Univ. of Sydney Presider:  Helen Young“Creasing the Truth”: Dialogical Medievalisms in Kevin Crossley Holland’s Arthur TrilogyMolly Brown, Univ. of PretoriaLittle, Big: The Royal Court versus Owen Archer’s YorkCandace Robb/Emma Campion, Independent ScholarUnchurched: On the Relative Lack of Religion in Tolkienan-Tradition Fantasy LiteratureGeoffrey B. Elliott, Oklahoma State Univ.Adapting Odin: The Pagan and the Secular in Contemporary Urban FantasyKim Wilkins, Univ. of Queensland
Saturday May 10th, 3.30 p.m.In Honor of Geoffrey Richard Russom: Aspects of Early English Poetic Culture IIOrganizer: M. J. Toswell, Univ. of Western Ontario Presider: Amy N. Vines, Univ. of North Carolina–GreensboroTolkien’s ArchaismsPaul Acker, St. Louis Univ.The (Comparative) Roots of English LiteratureLesley E. Jacobs, Brown Univ.Boars and Beowulf Lindy Brady, Univ. of Mississippi Maxims III : The Aphorisms of Geoffrey Russom Susan Signe Morrison, Texas State Univ.

Friday, May 9th, 1.30 p.m.C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages ISponsor: C. S. Lewis Society, Purdue Univ.; Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis and Friends, Taylor Univ.Organizer: Joe Ricke, Taylor Univ. Presider:  Joe RickeThis Is Awkward: C. S. Lewis and the Medieval Matter of RaceHannah Oliver Depp, American Univ.Wise Beyond Their Years: Pearl, The Great Divorce, and the Medieval Dream VisionAmber Dunai, Texas A&M Univ.The Discarded Mage: Lewis’s Merlin and the Medieval MindChristopher Jensen, Florida State Univ.Dante’s Vision and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Spring Arbor Univ.

Friday, May 9th 3.30 p.m.C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages IISponsor: C. S. Lewis Society, Purdue Univ.; Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis and Friends, Taylor Univ.Organizer: Joe Ricke, Taylor Univ. Presider:  Ingrid Pierce, Purdue Univ.Getting Medieval on Matter: C. S. Lewis and “Stuff”Chris Armstrong, Bethel SeminaryMedieval Sources for the Anthropology of The Abolition of Man Laura A. Smit, Calvin CollegeThis Rough Magic: C. S. Lewis and the Medieval Dialogue about MagicEdwin Woodruff-Tait, Independent Scholar