John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 177

Lynyrd Skynyrd and the ship of Theseus

So, I was surprised to see an advertisement on the big flashing billboard next to the ShoWare center in downtown Kent that Lynyrd Skynyrd are performing there on Sept. 27th. I'm old enough to remember the night their plane crashed (we were spending hours in a bus on a band trip, as I recall) back in '77, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and putting an end to the group (several of whom were badly injured and years in healing). They were already fading as a group at the time, but the tragedy bestowed a 'legendary' status on them, as it so often does (cf. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jim Croce, et al.)
I knew about the Rossington-Collins band the survivors had briefly formed (circa '79-80), which was pleasant enough but not memorable: their instrumental version of "Freebird", for example, felt meandering and unfocused. It turned out, as is so often the case, that the singer/songwriter lead vocalist is the one member a band can't do without.* And I was vaguely aware that more recently some (not all) of the survivors had re-formed years later for some special event, with Van Zant's little brother standing in as their vocalist. But I guess I hadn't realized they'd stayed together after the tribute was over.** A little checking online revealed that of the six band members who'd been alive after the crash (guitarists Rossington, Collins, and King; pianist extraordinaire Powell, drummer Pyle, and bassist Wilkeson), only three are living now (it has been thirty-five years ago, after all, and the southern rock lifestyle does not encourage longevity): Rossington, King, and Pyle. And of those three, only one is still in the group (Rossington).
Which raises the question: is a band with only one original member still the same band? At what point does it become "those people touring the local casinos as 'Lynyrd Skynyrd' " rather than the real thing?*** How big a role does continuity play (e.g., the Rolling Stones only has three of its original members; the newly reformed Beach Boys only two, Pink Floyd only one****)?

It turns out there's a classical precedent for this, the so-called paradox of 'the Ship of Theseus', which goes something like this:
Plutarch writes that even in his day (1st century AD) the Athenians still had on display the original ship Theseus used (presumably in his famous voyage to and from Crete some twelve hundred years before, the one that ended badly when he forgot to swap-out his black sails). But it'd needed maintenance over the centuries, with rotting timbers replaced by new ones as needed, until there was actually no piece left of the original ship. The question: is it still the same ship, or not?
In the philosophical conundrum, it depends on whether you value the whole or the parts, the ideal or the material, the continuity or a particular moment in time (and, if so, which).
In the case of the band, I think the announcement that Lynyrd Skynyrd is scheduled to play the Republican national convention later this month answers that question: I don't think the band that wrote and recorded "Things Going On", not to mention the denunciation of Wallace and Nixon in "Sweet Home Alabama", their most famous song, wd be a good fit for the gathering in Tampa. Which leads me to think, in this case at least, the answer is No: Not the Same.
--John R.
P.S.: Thanks to my sister, who gave me a copy of Skynyrd's SECOND HELPING just before I moved to Fayetteville, telling me it was so I'd listen to something else besides the music I usually listened to (Captain & Tennille, the Beatles). I still have that album, and still listen to it once in a while (though more often to the version on Itunes). At Fayetteville I added SILVER AND GOLD (which I think had been recommended by my friend Franklin; I know I got it at the Record Exchange, where he was working at the time) and a cassette of their first album (which also, amazingly enough, still plays just fine, over thirty years later). Music and Memories: how well they go together.

* cd. INXS for a more recent example.
**which apparently violated an agreement they'd all made with the widows of two members killed in the crash, that the survivors wdn't use, and thus cheapen, the name 'Lynyrd Skynyrd'.
***a question people used to ask about Jefferson Starship, with its endless shifting line-up.
****although in the later two cases one of the 'replacements' has been with the group since very early on (mid-to-late sixties)

I Talk to a Reporter

So, this morning I had a phone conversation with a reporter who's writing a piece on JRRT and THE HOBBIT and said she'd been told I knew a lot about that topic. It was a good talk; she had clearly done her due diligence, reading several books on JRRT (e.g., Carpenter, Shippey, Letters) to get a solid footing. I hope I was able to provide her with information she can use, and look forward to eventual publication of her piece. More about this down the line, when her article appears.
--JDR

On Deadline

So, thanks to a weekend spent mostly at the desk, I've now finished over 5800 words of my current project, which must come in at no less than 6000 and no more than 7000 words. Still have two sections (out of seven) and the concluding paragraph to go, so it'll be a hard squeeze to get it all in. When I reach the end, there may be a need for going back and inflicting some judicious trimming. I hope not. We'll see.
The one good thing is that I still have a little time before it's due (end of September), but then I'll be busy for most of that month with our trip to England right in the middle of it. Plus I need to go through and make sure the format fits the one prescribed by the publisher before it'll be ready for turnover.
Still, it's better to be plugging away and nearing the end six weeks out than to be doing the same two or three days before the deadline. So there's that.
Here's hoping I can finish it up in the next few days.
--JDR
current reading: just finished MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY (saint be praised!). [#II.3017]beginning on Wilson's third, and thankfully last, mini-novel: THE HIGHER JAZZ.
audiobook: just finished a re-listen of an old Borges tape (regretfully, not read by the great man himself)current audiobook: Dylan Thomas declaiming some of his poems (a gift long ago from my friends Peter & Mary, back in Milwaukee days).

And the Winner Is . . .

. . . Carl Phelpstead, for TOLKIEN AND WALES, which has just* been awarded the Mythopoeic Award for the year's best work in Inklings Scholarship.
Congr. to Dr. Phelpstead and also to all the finalists.**
This is an interesting book, and I hope winning the award brings it to the attention of a wider audience, especially over here (given that it's a University of Wales Press book). It carries on a theme of renewed attention to Tolkien's Celtic sources and influences that began with Verlyn Flieger's INTERRUPTED MUSIC and Marjorie Burns' PERILOUS REALMS, then was developed by Dimitra Fimi's TOLKIEN, RACE, & CULTURE; now the focus narrows in specifically on Welsh. We've learned a lot about Tolkien's 'Celtic Library' in recent years, and it's been illuminating. And Phelpstead's book carries on that tradition.
So, well done, and congratulations.
--JDR



*actually, I think the winner was announced last Sunday night, but for some reason the news seens slow to perculate out.
**disclosure alert: I was a contributor to one of the other finalists, the Jason Fisher edited volume TOLKIEN & THE STUDY OF HIS SOURCES

More on Arndis Thorbjarnardottir

So, thanks to Morgan Thomas's providing some links in his response to my last post (and thanks also to JL for the google-translated version of the full piece), here's a translation/synopsis that originally appeared on Svanur Gisli Thorkelsson's blog back in 2010; it makes for an interesting read:
http://svanurg.blog.is/blog/svanurg/entry/1065767/
Obviously, this is full of interesting information. To note just a few high points:
(1) the part about "The house they had just bought" (=20 Northmoor Road) and going over next door (=#22) to dig up flowers they'd left behind (hope they cleared that with the new owners first!) confirms the date as 1930.
(2) the "Mrs. Gro" Arndis mentions is clearly 'Aunt' Jennie Grove, Edith's elderly cousin who was a sort of honorary grandmother to the Tolkien children.
(3) this is perhaps the most negative view of Edith Tolkien I've ever seen, and contrasts sharply with descriptions of her from Walter Hooper (who met her late in life and liked her v. much). Though I must say the part about her not playing the piano is odd. I wonder if she had arthritis -- my own grandmother had a piano in her house, but during the years we lived with her I never heard her play it but once (beautifully, though apparently not up to her own standard).
(4) the part that interest me most of all (of course, it wd) is the statement about THE HOBBIT "(which he started writing at the time she was working for him)", and again "Tolkien had started writing THE HOBBIT while I was there". That's pretty definite, and agrees with timeline I reconstructed for MR. BAGGINS. So while not conclusive, it's nice to have another little bit of collaborating evidence to add into the mix.

MT also sent a link to an online discussion of this story from back in 2008. For the relevant entries, see the post by "Lalaith" and the reply by "Findegil", about three-fifths of the way through the thread (scroll down to see the posts for Sept 5th & 6th)
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=228692&PID=6824787



If all this were not enough, last night spoke to a friend who's been in touch with someone in Iceland who (a) confirms the authenticity of the original article -- that is, this interview really did run in the 1999 issue of that paper -- and (b) thinks he can put me in touch with someone who can provide a full translation. That'd be great; if we can manage it, I'll post news of it here.

I know that if I were in Iceland right now I'd be trying to track down those letters . . .
--JDRcurrent reading: MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY (still! gah!)

An Icelandic au pair?

So, not long ago Nancy Marie Brown had an interesting piece on her blog ("Bilbo's Ride through Iceland"*) about Tolkien, Morris, and Iceland. In the comments that followed, one reader included a link to a newspaper clipping from Feb. 28th 1999 that, as summarized in NMB's follow-up post, is a profile of a very old lady (89) named Arndis THorjarnardottir who said that she'd once been an au pair girl in the Tolkien household. What's more, she claimed to have told the Tolkien children stories drawn from Icelandic folklore about trolls turning to stone in daylight which thus, by implication, provided Tolkien's source for that distinctive motif in THE HOBBIT. As I said, I can't read Icelandic, but looking at dates in the piece her stay with the Tolkiens seems to be dated to 1930. Here's the link to the clipping:
http://timarit.is/view_page_init.jsp?issId=131485&pageId=1928715&lang=is&q=Tolkien
and here's Nancy Marie Brown's follow-up post about it:
http://nancymariebrown.blogspot.dk/2012/08/tolkiens-icelandic-trolls.html
Two observations:
(1) I'd be very interested in learning more about this story. Best of all would be a translation of the whole thing into English; if anyone knows of one, I'd appreciate being pointed in its direction.
(2) Tolkien had already had the chance to learn all about Icelandic folktales of trolls turning to stone at the first touch of sunlight from Helen Buckhurst's 1926 lecture; see THE ANNOTATED HOBBIT p. 80-82 and H.o.H. rev. ed. p. 110. The stories Buckhurst relates are very much of a piece with the ones NMB retells, confirming that such tales were v. likely Tolkien's source, however he first learned of them.
Finally, a nice bit of collaboration comes in the two photos reprinted in the 1999 newspaper article. One is identical with that published on p. 55 of THE TOLKIEN FAMILY ALBUM (Tolkien and toddler Priscilla), while the other was obviously taken at the same time as the picture on the facing page of the FAMILY ALBUM, except that the Icelandic newpaper's picture has Edith, all four children, and another woman (presumably Arndis), while the FAMILY ALBUM version has Edith, the children, and JRRT. The two photos, though not identical, were obviously taken at the same occasion (check the white tea-pot as a confirming detail). I conclude it's v. likely JRRT took the version appearing in the newpaper and Arndis the FAMILY ALBUM one. The FAMILY ALBUM photo of JRRT and Priscilla is dated there "Summer 1930", while the group shot is captioned "Family party, 20 Northmoor Road, March 1930" -- that is, mere months before the likely start date of JRRT's work on THE HOBBIT.
All in all, an interesting discovery.
--John R.
*http://nancymariebrown.blogspot.dk/2012/07/bilbos-ride-through-iceland.html--check the seventh comment for the link to the 1999 piece.

Wheaton College and Rachel Maddow

So, had the tv on Monday watching the Rachel Maddow show* and just as I was turning it off as our D&D playtest group was arriving, saw that the next story was something about Wheaton College. That got my curiosity up, and I wondered if it was the same Wheaton College, home of the Wade Collection, wh. I've been visiting once a year or so since about '83, or the Wheaton College in Massachusetts where Michael Drout teaches, or some other Wheaton College altogether.
A little poking around yesterday reveals that yes indeed, it is the Wheaton in Wheaton, Illinois. Here's the clip from Maddow's show that I just missed:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/48541314#48541314


And here's a somewhat more tempered reporting of the story that offers a little more background into how this came about.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/wheaton-college-birth-control_n_1734919.html

The saddest part comes at the end, where a representative of the group managing the lawsuit suggests the college just drop all health care for everyone who works there. I hope that this doesn't happen. And, if that does come to pass, the group steps forward to provide free health care to all those Wheaton employees.
--JDR
*which we'd gotten out of the habit of when it got too self-indulgent and are recently dipping back into now and again

F. Scott Fitzsgerald on Dunsany

While I'm doing a bit of Dunsany spotting, seems like a good time to revisit the mention of Ld D. in F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE [1920], written just when Dunsany's reputation was at its height. I drew attention to this in passing in my dissertation, but in context with Wilson's passing reference it might take on a little added significance. In any case, I think it bears repeating.
The passage comes in Book I: The Romantic Egotist, [Chapter] II: Spires and Gargoyles, which deals with the main character's college days. In one of several reading lists* dealing with what Amory Blaine is devouring at different times in his life. Amory's college reading includes, most significantly, his discovery of Oscar Wilde, whom he'd only known previously as the person said to have inspired a character in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera PATIENCE [1881]. So taken is he with THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY that he practices epigrams in the mirror and one of his friends takes to calling him "Dorian". Here's the list:

"So he found 'Dorian Gray' and the 'Mystic and Somber Dolores' and the 'Belle Dame sans Merci'; for a month was keen on naught else. The world became pale and interesting, and he tried hard to look at Princeton through the satiated eyes of Oscar Wilde and Swinburne -- or 'Fingal O'Flaherty' and 'Algernon Charles', as he called them in precieuse jest. He read enormously every night -- Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats, Synge, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Keats, Sudermann, Robert Hugh Benson, the Savoy Operas -- just a heterogeneous mixture, for he suddenly discovered that he had read nothing for years."

[Penguin Classics edition (1996), p.

Then, after a bit more about Wilde, comes the exchange that most interests me:

One day Tom and Amory tried reciting their own and Lord Dunsany's poems to the music of Kerry's graphophone.

'Chant!' cried Tom. 'Don't recite! Chant!'

Amory, who was performing, looked annoyed, and claimed that he needed a record with less piano in it. Kerry thereupon rolled on the floor in stifled laughter.

'Put on "Hearts and Flowers"!' he howled. 'Oh, my Lord, I'm going to cast a kitten.'

'Shut off the damn graphophone', Amory cried, rather red in the face. 'I'm not giving an exhibition'.

[ibid, p. 48]

--It's interesting, to me at least, that Fitzgerald singles out Dunsany's poems (of which no collection was issued until 1929) rather than his short stories (which work very well indeed read aloud) or his plays (which tend to be short and 'poetic' but not metrical). The idea of reciting to phonograph accompaniment made me wonder if this was a carryover from the silent movies of the day, which were always accompanied by music (anything from a house orchestra to a piano player, depending on how grand or otherwise the theatre).

Also interesting, but not in a good way, is the editor's decision about which of these authors to identify in the notes he provides in the back of the book. Thus Patrick O'Donnell, the editor, glosses Wilde, Keats, Chesterton, Yeats, Synge, Dowson, and Symons [p. 263], having already glossed Shaw from an earlier mention; Barrie gets glossed on a later appearance over a hundred pages later. The rest-- Pinero, Sudermann, Benson, Gilbert & Sullivan ("Wasn't the comic opera, 'Patience', written about him?")--go unidentified, as does Dunsany. O'Donnell may have felt that Pinero and Gilbert & Sullivan were well-known enough to need no identification, but that seems unlikely, since he identifies the far more well known Keats, Yeats, and Shaw. Or he may have felt these five were unimportant, though in that case his selection criterion seems off to me. Personally, I'd say it's the less well known figures, like Sudermann (once a well-known playwright whose reputation has since faded) who need the gloss more than a Nobel Prize winner like Yeats. To fail to identify Dunsany means that whatever point Fitzgerald was making by making his hero an enthusiast for Ld D. at one time in his life is lost.

Alas.

--John R.

*Fitzgerald was fond of these, apparently; cf. the lists of books he drew up for Sheilah Graham to education herself by reading, since published in COLLEGE OF ONE [1967]

Three Films

So, it seems the rumors (or is that 'rumours'?) were true: Peter Jackson announced yesterday that, having just concluded principal photography on the two HOBBIT movies, he's now decided to go ahead and make it THREE films instead.
Obviously, this will involve new filming, new scripting, new everything. There's much speculation about where he cd break Bilbo's story into three pieces, but I don't think that's what they'll do. Consider: it's only four and a half months until the release date of the first film. Given all the special effects, scoring, editing, &c. they'll have to do, it's too late to change that one much. Besides which it's clear from hints Jackson has been dropping for a while that he really wants to film material from the Appendices (which for all events and purposes means Appendix B, supplemented by Appendix A). So I think the two HOBBIT films will remain pretty much as they are, and that the third film will be a 'bridge' spanning events from the years between Bilbo's return home and the Long-Expected party sixty years later. We know a lot about the events in these years, but since Tolkien chose not to write that story, any movie based on these materials will obviously contain less Tolkien, and more Jackson, than any of the other five. We'll see what they come up with.
Four and a half months to go . . .
--John R.current reading: WHERE THEY STAND and MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY

Another Dunsany Spotting (and Cabell too)

So, continuing my slow slog through Edmund Wilson's fiction* I came across an unexpected mention of Dunsany and Cabell that I thought I'd share.
The passage in question comes in Edmund Wilson's 1929 novel I Thought of Daisy, a dismal roman a clef about life in Greenwich Village featuring characters based on EW's friend John Dos Passos, the love of his life Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wilson himself, and an idealized flapper who is the girl of his dreams. In one scene the point-of-view Wilsonian narrator finds himself in an unfamiliar flat and, characteristically, checks out the bookshelves:

". . . on the shallow mantlepiece, a plaster cast of the Winged Victory; and between two narrow windows, which looked down on the Thirty-fourth Street car tracks, a book case containing, I noted, volumes of D. H. Lawrence, Cabell, Dunsany, and Shaw; George Moore's Memoirs of My Dead Life; Freud's Interpretation of Dreams; Frank Harris's Oscar Wilde; several volumes of Levy's Nietzsche and a whole shelf's array of Dostoevsky."

[1995 paperback edition, page 103]

It's not entirely clear (to me, at any rate) what Wilson means by this assemblage, who seem merely to be popular authors of the time, representing what was fashionable to read in the previous decade. It may be intended as characterization of the apartment owners, the Micklers', but this seems somewhat unlikely: we never do meet Mrs. Mick, who's locked herself in the bathroom, while her husband Larry turns out to be drunken lout, given to waving a pistol around and taking pot-shots at things (like the aforesaid Winged Victory).

More likely, it's simply local color: these are the sort of books you'd find on the shelves of a typical apartment belonging to the sort of folks Wilson hung out with back in the day, a detail transcribed from his notebooks for verisimilitude (of which his 'novel' is full).

Of the nine authors mentioned, Lawrence, Shaw, and Wilde are now firmly ensconced in the canon --which was not necessarily the case when Wilson wrote this passage. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Freud had already come into their own as major thinkers. George Moore is lesser know today but secure in the second tier (authors you hear about when studying for a degree but probably never actually read).

That just leaves Cabell, whose vogue peaked in 1917 with the banning of JURGEN but whose stock remained high throughout the twenties, and Dunsany, who became famous during the war years as a playwright and who reached the height of his renown around 1919-1920 at the time of his U. S. tour. Interestingly enough, a latter-day sign of their lingering cachet can be found in the fact that the volumes of Cabell and Dunsany in C. S. Lewis's library, the remnants of which are now at the Wade, are American editions formerly belonging to Joy Gresham, who was a native-born New Yorker of the next generation (she wd have been in her early teens about the time Wilson's book on Greenwich Village appeared).

Next up: Dunsany and Fitzgerald.

--John R.

*my advice to anyone thinking of reading I Thought of Daisy? Don't.