John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 169

Poke-'em-with-a-Stick Wednesday

So, what if the folks who stage protests outside abortion clinics were to picket the NRA as well?
Wdn't that save a lot of children's lives?
--John R.

The HOBBIT movie (first impressions)

So, got to see THE HOBBIT today (twice). The first time was with Janice and friend Stan*, the second time with just Janice and myself.

*author of THE LITTLEST SHOGGOTH, currently featured in its own Kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sgg/the-littlest-shoggoth-a-holiday-tale-of-the-cthulh/posts/369581?ref=email&show_token=0fc15be0708ad28e
 Hi, Stan!

Since I spent most of the day preparing for the movie, seeing the movie, driving to the other place where they were showing the movie, seeing the movie again, having a movie-themed dinner at Denny's, and reading other folks' responses to the movie, I haven't had time to write a full review yet. In the meantime, thought I'd share my first impressions, as posted to the MythSoc list earlier tonight:



Wow. What a great movie.   Martin Freeman is great as Bilbo; McKellan is great as Gandalf, and it's great to see the familiar faces of returning stars like Galadriel, Gollum, Saruman, et al.   This is a Peter Jackson Tolkien movie, so you know what to expect going in. Many changes from the original but v. impressive results overall. Quite a few scenes strongly reminiscent of specific scenes in Jackson's LotR.   Noticed in the closing credits that David Salo once again helped with languages and saw that our v. own Janet B. Croft had a credit simply as "Tolkien Scholar"; congr, Janet. This is also the first time I've ever seen a credit for horse make-up.   I'd say the standout scenes were the Unexpected Party (the film devotes a lot of time to this crucial scene) and the encounter with Gollum. I also enjoyed the White Council and (somewhat to my surprise) Radagast -- I think because in both cases these were invented scenes where I didn't have Tolkien's dialogue dueling with Jackson's in my head. Oddly enough, the dwarf Bilbo's closest with is Bofur.   Having seen it twice today -- regular and 3-D -- I'd say skip the 3-D unless you're particularly fond of the format (that's a long time to wear extra glasses). May try to catch it in the enhanced frames-per-second format in a week or so.    Can say that, having seen it in two separate theatres with different people, noticed that the laughs and appreciative sounds came in the same places both times.   So, if you like the previous Jackson Tolkien, you'll like this one. If you didn't, you won't. Pretty much as simple as that.--JDR

Homeward Bound

So, as I'm writing this I'm sitting in Little Rock airport (formerly Adams Field, now The Bill And Hilary Clinton International Airport), waiting for my flight to be called.  Been on a quick trip home, got to see lots of relatives, many of whom travelled some distance for our get-together, which was gratifying. Also, got older. According to the age-porportional ratios on Wikipedia re. human and cat, Feanor and I are now the same respective ages.

More soon, and a link to my Five Seconds of Fame (thanks to Janice for the link), once I'm back in Kent.

--John R.

A Happy Ending for Mr. Pitt

So, Wednesday came the good news that Mr. Pitt has been adopted. Janice and I had each been checked every few days on the Purrfect Pals website* to see if he was still at the pet store in Mt Vernon, and on Monday the 3rd Janice noticed that he was no longer listed at their adoption room. Tuesday I sent in a query, and now we know he's not been transferred elsewhere** but went home with his new owner (who, incidently, is also named Janice) on Thursday the 29th.

I'm sorry not to have had the chance to see him again -- if he'd been nearer I'd have tried to go by whatever adoption room he was in about once a week to help keep up his spirits -- but I'm delighted to know that he's now in a home of his own. He's a great cat, and deserves a happy ending. I hope he and his new owner enjoy each other's company for years and years to come.

So, goodbye Mr. Pitts. Glad to have known you, even if only for a short while. Good luck in the new life.

--JDR, currently back in Arkansas


*click here to see the ten cats currently in the cat-room where I volunteer once a week:

http://www.purrfectpals.org/CatsByLocation.asp?fid=51


**(as sometimes happens, to expose a cat that's been at a particular place for a while to new potential cat-owners elsewhere).

And a Shire Sausage on the side . . .

So, last time Peter Jackson did Tolkien movies, the restaurant tie-in was with Burger King, unfortunately -- little lit-from-below goblets, each with a different LotR character on the side. Thanks to Janice's going above and beyond on iffy burgers, we managed to get a set of all four.* This time around, our luck is better: it's Denny's that has the movie / restaurant tie-in**
Instead of knick-knacks or "collectables", Denny's has taken a v. different approach: rename some menu items after Tolkienian people or places, and possibly adding a few new items as well (not being that familiar with the standard Denny's menu, hard for me to tell).
Some of these items seem entirely appropriate -- e.g., "Shire sausage" and "Hobbit Hole Breakfast (which includes the bacon and eggs Bilbo kept dreaming about).
Others seem a bit odd -- Seed Cake French Toast?  Radagast Red Velvet Pancake Puppies (red velvet cake flavored pancakes shaped like doughnut holes, apparently)?  Bilbo's Berry Smoothie (which most unhobbitlike is made from nonfat yogurt)?
And of course many are simply fairly standard items with Tolkienesque names attached, like The Ring Burger (so named for its onion rings), the Dwarves Turkey and Dressing Dinner (rather confusing the Old World/New World bit there), or Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet (with taters!). 
Passing over the Shire Sausage Skillet, which actually sounds pretty good, the Gandalf's Gobble Melt (Gandalf shd neither sputter nor gobble), and the Lonely Mountain Treasure (bite-sized Seed Cake French Toast with cream cheese icing/dipping sauce on the side), we come to the one item that's seriously  'unclear on the concept': the Lone-Lands Campfire Cookie Milk Shake. Not that it sounds at all bad, if you like that sort of thing,*** but that I suspect vanilla ice cream (the prime ingredient) is hard to come by when camping out in the Wild. Maybe the dwarves brought a hand-cranked ice-cream maker with them on the journey, along with the harps and viols and clarinets -- but I rather doubt it.
That said, all in all, compared with other Tolkien-themed menus I've seen (such as the one for "Bilbo's" in Kalamazoo, Michigan), this one's not bad. I know I'll be stopping by Denny's between now and when the promotion ends, and sampling an item or two from this menu. 
--JDRcurrent audiobook: THE HOBBIT (Mind's Eye Theatre)current book: THE WORLD OF THE HOBBITS by Paddy Kempshall (movie tie-in #5)

*Strider, Gandalf, Arwen, and Frodo. Surprisingly enough, eleven years later the batteries still work on all four (if fitfully on Gandalf's).
**thanks to Janna S., from whom I learned this back in late October.
***cookies in ice cream, ugh.

The New Arrivals

So, as the movie release date nears, books ordered months ago are now being released and joining the throng at the doorstep or mailbox. With the result that books continue to arrive, now at the rate of one every other day, with another three reaching me last week.


Monday's arrival:  LIGHT: C. S. LEWIS'S FIRST AND FINAL SHORT STORY by Charlie Starr.

This is a 180-page edition of a four-page short story, which I think puts even my HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT (a thousand-page edition of a three hundred page book) to shame.

The story in question is "The Man Born Blind", first published in the posthumous collection THE DARK TOWER AND OTHER STORIES [1977]. Starr chronicles the discovery of a second, later manuscript, representing a revised version of the story (now at Taylor University, in Indiana). The authenticity of the piece, in its earlier form, had been challenged by the late K. Lindskoog; much of Starr's history of the story is devoted to laying those objections to rest. The main thing I'll be interested in when reading it will be whether the ideas about Light CSL expresses here have any affinities with (or show the influence of) JRRT's 'splintered light'.


Wednesday's arrival:  BILBO'S JOURNEY: DISCOVERING THE HIDDEN MEANING OF THE HOBBIT by Joseph Pearce

This is Pearce's third book on Tolkien: the first was as editor of an important collection of essays focusing attention on Tolkien's Catholicism (a much neglected topic at the time) and the second a book that opened with a useful summary of the whole 'author of the century' flap.

This time he's focusing on THE HOBBIT, which he views as a sort of homily on the text "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6.21). I suspect fewer would quarrel with his description of THE HOBBIT as "a pilgrimage of grace", the goal of which is "growth in wisdom and virtue" (a "Christian bildungsroman") than with his insistence that "It is in this way . . . that we are meant to read THE HOBBIT" (emphasis mine). To suggest an interpretation is one thing; to discount all other interpretations is another. Still, Pearce writes well and I'm looking forward to seeing how well his approach works as it follows through the story chapter by chapter.


Friday's arrival:  TOLKIEN AND WELSH: ESSAYS ON J. R. R. TOLKIEN'S USE OF WELSH IN HIS LEGENDARIUM by Mark T. Hooker

This is the third (or fourth, depending on how you're counting) book by Hooker devoted to exploring Tolkien's nomenclature and its possible link and associations with real-world names of people and places. If you liked his previous collections, it's likely you'll like this one as well, and the reverse is also very much the case. With this new book, my attention was drawn to his piece on "Esgaroth", which he glosses as purely Celtic: es (river/lake) + garth (protected enclosure); I'd sought, not altogether successfully, to render it in Elvish (Noldorin) terms. He concludes that the Lake-men must therefore have been Celtic in culture, like the later Bree-folk. I see he also returns to consider the hobbit name "Puddifoot", which he now concludes Tolkien deliberately got wrong.


And this week? To quote The Who's TOMMY, "There's more at the door". But for that we'll need a separate post.

--John R.

Me, at Marquette

So, two months ago today I was at Marquette, talking to Dr. Machan's Tolkien class* there in the morning ("how to become a Tolkien Scholar") and giving a talk at the Library in the afternoon about how THE HOBBIT manuscript wound up in Milwaukee, of all places, including an anecdotal account of what little is known about JRRT's planned trip there.** We had a good turn-out for the latter talk, which they recorded on video. And now they've gone through and put together a ten-minute representative excerpt from the Q-and-A session at the end. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFY534kSm90&feature=youtu.be

It was great to see a lot of old friends there: members of the book group I helped found back in my Marquette days, which is still going strong (The Burrahobbits); a fellow former TA from my time there; a fellow student from that era who also later became a fellow ex-TSR survivor; a professor who arrived towards the end of my time in the department,*** etc.  I usually pace when I talk, and Janice says it wd have made a good drinking game to see me go back and forth; apparently I wd have made a good metranome.

So far as I cd tell, the talk went really well. I was delighted that one story I related -- based only on my memories of what a since deceased department stalwart**** told me almost thirty years ago, of events that'd taken place some twenty years before that -- got first-hand confirmation from a member of the audience,***** who turned out to have been present at those events in the early/mid 1950s: she was even able to add details I hadn't heard before.

So, a most satisfactory and enjoyable day. When I first arrived at Marquette back in August 1981, I was told by my graduate student advisor in the department that he "didn't want to catch me working on Tolkien while I was a member of [this] department".   I cd never have guessed that one day I'd be invited back to Marquette to meet with a class and give a talk sponsored by the Library and Archives.

--John R.
current reading: WAITING FOR GODOT by Beckett (re-reading)
current audiobook: TOLKIEN IN LOVE, and the Mind's Eye HOBBIT


*a bright bunch, whom I deeply envy; I'd have loved to have taken a Tolkien class in my time at Marquette, or indeed to have taken Dr. Machan's course on Old Norse and the Eddas (he having arrived after I'd already completed my coursework and was A.B.D.).
**in-between, I spent a few hours in the Archives, working on various odds and ends (mainly the Boorman script).
***really got a sense of time's passage with the discovery that there are now only six members of the faculty who were there when I was, all of whom came while I was there, plus five more who are emeritus (and who either predate me or, in one case, arrived the same time I did.
****Dr. Joseph Schwartz*****Mrs. McCabe, widow of the late, wonderful John McCabe, who was department head during my first few years there.

Palestine

So, this week Palestine became a nation in the eyes of the international community.

Better sixty-five years late than never . . .

Tolkien and Westminster

So, the news about C. S. Lewis's having a memorial in his honor put up in Westminster Abbey next year, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death, makes me wonder: what are the chances that J. R. R. Tolkien will one day also be so honored? And, if so, when?

At first I thought Tolkien would probably be passed over because the Abbey is, after all, an Anglican institution and Tolkien was Catholic. But then I looked at the online list of who's buried there and all the others who have memorials (a far greater number), and saw that Hopkins, Pope, and Wilde are there, so being Catholic is apparently no bar to membership in this particular v. exclusive club.**

There's also the fact that Tolkien wrote fantasy, which has historically not gotten much respect as a genre -- but Lewis's entry, which seems largely due to the Narnia books, seems an indicator that has changed (Lewis Carroll also got a memorial there, as recently as 1982; Edward Lear is also there). And remember this is a country which recently knighted a man explicitly for writing fantasy (Sir Terry Pratchett).

I suspect the main reason might simply be time. Lewis is being added a year from now, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death, while Tolkien only died thirty-nine years ago. True, Ted Hughes got added last year, only thirteen years after his death, but then he was Poet Laureate, which probably expedites such things. So, I suspect Tolkien's time will come, but not for another dozen years or so.

I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

--John R.


*albeit added a century or two after their deaths: Hopkins in 1975, Pope in 1994, and the notorious Wilde in 1995
**I also noted the presence of several atheists, so apparently Xianity isn't even required

The Cat Report (W. Nov. 28th, 2012)

Today found us with eleven cats in ten cages, just like last week; it's even the same eleven cats. Sorry to hear the kittens' adoption fell through, but v. pleased to see the note about Marie's pending adoption tonight. Finally got to see her special blanket too, which was great -- maybe someone can take a picture of it before it goes home with her?
Although it was the same cats, the room felt v. different when I arrived, because the cats were already all out of their cages and in a mellow and happy mood -- Eva had dropped by to pick something up and, unable to resist their appeals (piteous mews, paws reaching out of cages, &c), let them out and watched them till I arrived. Ashwyn in particular was effusively affectionate, standing up with his paws on your chest or shoulder so he could rub your face. Poor little Claire with her nose also wanted much affection. 
Since pretty much everyone was out except Jane, Niko, and Tarah, we forwent the walks this morning, though later on I did offer Mr. Brothers a brief walk just outside the room (he accepted, then quickly changed his mind). Little Claire decided late in the morning that a walk was no less than her due and insisted upon the point; she eventually got her way and was much admired, though to her displeasure she had to stay next to the cat-room, since the others were still out. 
When I arrived, Edna and Niko were in their cages. Little Clarie was on the half-stand by the door and Tarah beneath.  Ashwyn was on cat-stand #1, demanding love and affection and attention RIGHT NOW. Lemura and Marie were beneath and on the lower level of the cat-stand by the cabinet, with Mr. Brothers on the highest rung. Goblynn was atop the cabinet. As for Samurai and Ninja, their battle-cry was "We're kittens and we're out!" as they tore around with glee up in cagetop land. Once the hanging steps were in place they could come, and go, and just hang out on them to their great satisfaction (not universally shared by the shyer cats in the vicinity). 
Goblynn spent the whole morning sacked out blissfully on my coat atop the cabinet. Marie was here and there, including inside the cabinet. Lemura wanted to see each cat's food and water as it was being emptied out. The two of them get along fairly well, and kept winding up ignoring each other in close proximity (e.g., middle and top levels of the same cat-stand). 

Games: we may not have had satisfactory walks, but we did great on the games front. First there was laser tag atop the cages with Ashwyn and the kittens. Ashwyn really threw himself into the game w. great vigor. By this time he was up in cagetopland, enjoying the box and the catnip therein. We also had a most satisfactory string game, to which we had to add a second string for Mr. Brothers, Lemura, and Goblynn. Later still Mr. Brothers came down and wanted a string game all to himself, but was thrown off by the kittens' rushing in and taking over. Finally I had to put the two kittens into the cage (which was most unpopular; entreaties to my better nature were heartfelt but unavailing) so Brothers cd have a game all his own, wh. he enjoyed w. great satisfaction. Eventually Lady Clarie and the semi-team of Lemura and Marie got interested as well. Marie had a bit of a gopher game, and Tarah a little bit of string game all her own. So on the whole think we more than made up for the walks.


Health Concerns: poor little Claire's nose needs time to heal but should be okay; think it'll probably leave a scar, though. Easy to see how she cd have gotten it; Mr. Ashwyn went for her not once but twice when they were on adjacent cat-stands, even though he had to go out of his way to try to get at her (think he's finally found a cat in the room he can bully; he was also mean to Tarah later on). Mr. Niko had some dried throw-up in his food dish; looked like it was just saliva.    Not a major concern, but something we'll need to think about: Both Claire's ear and a paw were kind of dirty, and Tarah has dandruff -- do we need to be thinking about trying to wash them? I cleaned up the ear and paw with just a wet cloth, but that won't solve Tarah's impending problem. Not a big deal now, but may become a problem over time. 
And that's about it for this week.--John R.