John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 179
July 14, 2012
A Brief Sad History, Revisited
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnzZhCDU_Ew
While the text of this has been available online for a long time -- I posted it here in the early days of this blog* -- the actual delivery included many asides and back-and-forths answering questions from the audience. Plus, of course, here you can see something of my show-and-tell, a part of my talk that didn't translate well into the text-only format.
Be warned that there are some technical glitches in the tape, as in a few places where the audio and visual tracks get out of sync, or a few words drop out of the audio track, but these shdn't affect anyone's watching the piece.Just to clarify one such place: early on there's a place where I talk about Arneson and Gygax that doesn't quite come across: what I said was along the lines that Dave Arneson came up with the idea (for D&D) and then Gary Gygax figured out how to make a game out of it, in the sense of writing rules so that other people could figure out how to play: some skips in the audio track at that point make the sentence a little hard to follow.
Now that we're four years closer to the event of the next Tolkien-based movie, I was interested to see how close my predictions nr the end turned out; close, but not altogether on the mark.
Other than that, I had a great time attending the con, and thoroughly enjoyed writing up the piece; I'm glad to see it made available for those who cdn't be there in Spokane on that hot summer day in 2008.
. . . .
*Here the essay itself, broken into four pieces for easier posting:(1) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs.html(2) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part-two.html(3) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part.html(4) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part-four.html
Also available is the question and answer
July 12, 2012
The Rumor
http://www.amazon.fr/Fall-Arthur-Deluxe-Edi-Hb/dp/0007489897/ref=sr_1_6?s=english-books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342094217&sr=1-6
The Fall of Arthur? Tolkien's long (almost 1,000 lines), unfinished Arthurian poem? The one with clear affinities to the fourteenth century Alliterative Morte Arthur? The one praised by E. V. Gordon, and R. W. Chambers, and C. S. Lewis? That Fall of Arthur?
Dare we hope? I remember Rayner Unwin, when I got to meet with him in 1985, telling me about this as one of the forthcoming projects already in the works, but which wdn't be coming out until some more pressing projects (like the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series, whose third volume I'd just picked up that same day).*
This is one of the unpublished Tolkien works I've most been wanting to see in print. We'll see if the rumors are just rumors, or if it's really on the way. I'd say the whole thing is wishful thinking (I know the PULP CTHULHU rulebook still gets listed on amazon and similar sites, despite never having been published), but the precision of May 13th 2013 as its release date hints that perhaps it's more than that.
We'll see.
--John R.
*I wound up giving that volume to Owen Barfield, who was interested to hear that Lewis had critiqued some of Tolkien's poetry and was curious to see those comments for himself
July 11, 2012
Christopher Tolkien interviewed in LE MONDE
http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-anneau-de-la-discorde_1729858_3246.html
I've been slowly working my way through this -- my college French being such that while I'm pretty good on the nouns and adjectives I'm often uncertain on the verbs (so many variants due to tense) -- and finding it of great interest. Now, thanks to another post on the MythSoc list (thanks, Jason), a pretty good translation is available. Given that interviews with C.T. are so rare -- the last I can think of is in the 1992 film documentary on JRRT's centenary (the Landseer video), rather than comment on this one I'd just like to help draw people's attention to it; I particularly liked the bit about Christopher Tolkien having no regrets at leaving academia behind.
http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/2012/07/was-first-felt.html
--JDRcurrent reading: A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1919) by P. G. Wodehouse
* (thinking the potential for error was high, what with them being in French)
**thanks to Vincent F, Paul W, GHC, and Romuald L.
***although this version seems to lack the reproduction of one of Tolkien's maps that apparently accompanied the original (paper version).
July 10, 2012
Beethoven flash mob
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GBaHPND2QJg
Don't know about you, but I fd this delightful -- so much so that it goes alongside P.D.Q. Bach's version of Beethoven's Fifth ("New Appreciations . . . ") as my favorite performance of a L.v.B. piece.
Of course, the Sabadell folks are luckier than the Beatles, in that they got all the way through their piece without the police showing up and shutting them down.
--John R.current reading: TWO BAD ANTS by Van Allsberg [1988]
July 8, 2012
The New Arrivals (2nd of 2)
(continued from last post)
The other item was completely different, and represents one of my rare purchases from e-bay. Lately I've been trying to find a copy of the issue of LOCUS (November 1987, I think) in which they reported the results of a poll of the all-time Best Fantasy novels. I had this at one time (twenty-five years ago) but it's long since been lost or buried. The list itself is available online
http://www.locusmag.com/1998/Books/87alltimef.html
but I recall that the original also had some information and interesting remarks about the results -- as in, the top book on the Fantasy poll (THE LORD OF THE RINGS) vastly outstripped the winner of the Science Fiction list (DUNE), being the only Fantasy book some science-fiction respondents voted for. The second-place Fantasy winner (and here's where my interest comes in) was THE HOBBIT -- which got more #1 votes for the best fantasy book ever than any other book except LotR, establishing again that Bilbo's story has fans of its own, independently of LotR. Also, that among fantasy writers Tolkien stands in a league of his own: LeGuin's A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA came in what was described as a distant third. I know they redid the poll about a decade later (1998) but haven't seen that verison of the results. I'm sure if they did it again now a number of the books ranked highly in 1987 wd have dropped a good deal or dropped off the list altogether. Which wdn't bother me that much: only three of the books I'd rank as the top ten even made it on their list, and two of those were the Tolkien).
What I did come across, in searching for that elusive 1987 issue, was the J. R. R. Tolkien memorial issue of LOCUS, dated September 14, 1973. In those days, it turns out LOCUS was not the slick magazine we know today but several sheets of greenish paper stapled together in one corner. The first three and a half of its seven pages are filled with memorial tributes by Charlie Brown (LOCUS's editor), Lester del Ray ("Something of joy and delight has gone from us"), L. Sprague de Camp (who briefly describes his meeting with Tolkien), Sterling Lanier (who mentions his dozen or so letter correspondence with Tolkien -- now that wd be interesting to see), Fritz Leiber, Frederick Pohl (who's surprised to like Tolkien as much as he did), and Roger Zelazny. Quite an unusual array to go on record in praise of Tolkien;***** hence my deciding to try to get a copy once I learned of its existence. Here are a few snips:
CHARLIE BROWN: "The world Tolkien created has always seemed too complete and real to me to actually be the work of any ordinary author. I wish I could communicate to you the feeling of wonder I had when I read the first volume in 1954 or the feelings of frustration in the eighteen months between American publication of the first and second volumes. (I couldn't go through it again and ordered the English edition of RETURN OF THE KING direct after that.) . . . I'm looking forward to reading [the forthcoming SILMARILLION], but I don't think it, or any other book can have the impact that LORD OF THE RINGS had on that teen-age introvert nearly twenty years ago."
STERLING LANIER: "His last great legacy to the world, the SILMARILLION, has been saved. He wrote me years ago, that it was done in verse! He seemed puzzled in a mild way, that at the time, no publisher seemed interested in it. I recall asking what he was doing for a comic or light element, since no Hobbits existed this early. He agreed this was a problem, but felt it could be solved. I can't wait."
FRITZ LEIBER: "Tolkien is unsurpassed in his descriptions of subtly eerie solitudes and in his delineations of a manifold variety of true loyalties and comradeships, and of reactions to evil. He gives thoughtful consideration to the reality of villainy in the sword-and-sorcery story, as Charles Williams does in the tale of supernatural terror. Creatures of his imagination such as the ents are marvellous. He casts a long, brightly-edged shadow."
FREDERICK POHL: "I rejoice that my life has been enriched by writers capable of inventing whole worlds for me to explore, and I mourn the passing of one of the greatest of them."
ROGER ZELAZNY: "I came to J. R. R. Tolkien's books at a very unusual time in my life. But then I guess that everyone who has read them and been moved by them has felt the same way. Perhaps it is because they helped to make it an unusual time. He enriched the entire field of fantastic literature with his great story. He changed many of us who passed through his world. And this is the mark of true power -- to make oneself felt so intensely, so pervasively and with such affection. While I was saddened to hear of his passing, it is good to know that his life was long, long enough for him to feel our appreciation of his work and long enough to realize that so many of us are grateful."
The other interesting news in this brief issue is an announcement about the folding of Lancer Books, who did to Rbt. E. Howard's CONAN what Ace and Ballantine together did for J. R. R. Tolkien. That, and a full-page add from T-K Graphics, including a wide array of interesting stuff: Post's ATLAS OF FANTASY and Kocher's MASTER OF MIDDLE-EARTH, Bradley's MEN, HALFLINGS, & HERO WORSHIP and Foster's GUIDE TO MIDDLE-EARTH; Le Guin's FROM ELFLAND TO POUGHKEEPSIE and Rickard's THE FANTASTIC ART OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH (which I had a copy of the latter), and more. I wonder: is there actually anyone out there who has a complete set of their little run of Tolkien monographs? I came along a little too late for that, but know others collected them avidly.
In short: an interesting snap-shot from a vanished era. Well worth the price. Now to put it in a Safe Place where I can find it again, someday when I need it . . .
--John R.
current reading
*****but then Doug Anderson did note, in his contribution to the Blackwelder volume, that it was the science fiction fans who 'got it' when Tolkien was first published and made up a solid, enthusiastic core of his earliest admirers in the U.S..
July 7, 2012
The New Arrivals (1st of 2)
So, got back from the trip to Pennsylvania* to find three new items had arrived in two packages while we were gone.
The two that came together were two of Steve Winter's little Old School adventures he's written for the North Texas PRG Con held in the Dallas/Fort Worth area each year. I found out about last year's too late to get copies (they're released in v. small print runs and apparently sold only on RPG Marketplace, where I didn't have an account**), but thanks to a head's up from Steve was luckier this time around.
The first, THE TOMB OF AMEMNES (a D&D Basic/Expert adventure) we'd played through a few months back, an Egyptian-themed adventure where the characters explore a pyramid complex (Nithian I think in Steve's original, though we pretty much ignored all that Hollow World stuff). It was a good one; when he ran it, Steve had us jumping at shadows and second-guessing ourselves into assuming the things we faced there were much more powerful than they really were, with no doubt amusing (to him) results when we wound up being caught flat-footed by the real menace. I enjoyed it thoroughly, as might have been guessed, given my love for all things Egyptian (did I mention that we swung by the Carnegie while in Pittsburgh in order to see the Egypt exhibit there? Or that we're hoping later this month to see the King Tut travelling exhibit that's here in Seattle? Or to take in the Egyptology rooms in the British Museum and, I hope, Flinders Petrie's collection in Oxford when we're in England this fall?)***
The second, THE DEATH OF TLANGESHAN, is that rarest of rpg things, an EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE adventure. Such are rare indeed: I can only think of one offhand, published by Judges' Guild; company after company keeps re-releasing the setting books for Barker's strange world,**** but adventures to play in it are vanishingly scarce. I have the original boxed set from The Dawn of Time (1975), though I only got a chance to play it a year or two ago -- where we died in droves; we were lucky that one character (mine) was a minor noble, and hence brought along so many minions that we had enough to keep replacing player characters with. Steve has told me it's inspired by a Clark Ashton Smith story (always a good thing); obviously I haven't read through this adventure yet, since I hope to play it first -- though it might be a while, given the D&D Next playtest and ongoing Cthulhu campaigns.
(continued in next post)
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*which went fine for us, but seemed cursed for various of our friends we'd gone to see, in that mechanical malfunctions kept befalling them: an airplane that cdn't take off because of a flaw in the cabin door's lock, the so-called 'land hurricane that brought on a total power failure in the DC area (bad news to those on breathing machines with a four-hour battery), and (most dramatic of all) a car catching on fire. While being driven. Makes our oven catching on fire, calling 911, and my using an extinguisher in earnest for the first time seems fairly mild in context.
**which is probably just as well, given the amazing rarities they have up for sale. Things I've only ever read about on acanum.com you can actually buy here, if you (a) have the money and (b) don't have other things you need to spend it on, like rent or a mortgage.
***"one of the greatest collections of Egyptian . . . archaeology in the world", according to their own website.
****which is odd, when you think about it, since players for the setting are practically non-existent.
****I'd hoped we might be able to make it to Lord Carnarven's house (the place where they film DOWNTON ABBEY), to see the goodies he stole from Tutankhamen's tomb that were quietly salted away for decades (as I hear the story, his secret gallery was rediscovered in the 1970s or 80s), but apparently that country estate is hard to reach via public transportation (which makes sense, being a country house).
July 2, 2012
And the Walls Come Tumbling Down . . .
So, we're grateful for the sandbags -- the city government did the right thing to put them in place and protect all of us down on the Green River Valley from what could have been a catastrophic flood. Now it's time for them to go, and it's good to see the first step underway.
Pity there's no good use for the sand (which is actually more like fine gravel): too coarse for use in sandboxes or during snow emergencies. Apparently they're going to dump it all somewhere in a great big mound: maybe it'll be near at hand if they ever have to do all this again. Which, hopefully, won't be for a long, long time.
In the meantime, it's good to see things starting to revert to normal.
--John R.
current reading: THE EXPLOITS OF THE CHEVALIER DUPIN by Michael Harrison [1968] (third reading, II.3007), plus Edgar Poe's four detective stories [1840s]
July 1, 2012
Tree Beavers
It wasn't until the next day that I took a closer look, and found that they were strips of bark, like a beaver leaves around the base of a tree it's been gnawing on. This was surprising, since there are plenty of trees I'd think wd be more appealing, not to say handier, lining the little stream that runs nearby, and a solid wooden fence some six feet high separating the path by the stream from this particular tree.
Checking more closely, I found the strips weren't from the base of the tree but higher up, some twenty or thirty feet from the ground, where I could see that a major limb was losing its bark on its top side. It can't have been struck by lightning, since its leaves are still green and unwithered. I can't think of any bird that could strip bark like that. Deer can't reach that high, and anyway wouldn't eat bark when there was fresh green grass growing all around, even if we had deer in our neighborhood, which we don't. Giraffes are right out.
So, thinking it over, I've come up with an explanation I'm going to use until I find out what really happened:
Tree beavers.
It fits the known facts, and passes the truthiness test. Now all I need is some evidence (that is, some other evidence), that tree beavers exist. In these days of Climate-Change deniers,* Creationists, and what-not, how hard can it be?
More later.
--John R.
*http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/north_carolina_sea_level_global_warming.php?ref=fpblg
June 26, 2012
An Invented Language (1954)
I refer, of course to --- Edmund Wilson.
The work in question, a play called CYPRIAN'S PRAYER, was inspired by a Frank Stockton story. It's a sort of 'sorcerer's apprentice' story, and while on the whole I think best left in its well-deserved obscurity, the passages in his invented language add an interesting touch. The main character, having made a pact with the devil, finds himself saddled with three annoying imps as assistants. From time to time, they or some of the other infernal characters speak in what Wilson describes as "their native diabolic language". Here's a sample:
The Little Devils, emboldened now, come out and
begin to jeer at him in their native diabolic language.
BONGO. Mákka-nánya oónya gígna-weésta!
STINGO. Mákka-nányi gánzi gleésta-gleésta!
SLINGO. Gánza wíddi-wíddi skímba-nímbi!
ALL (pointing and prolonging the vowels
in a final intensive insult).
Nímba-nambáyanyi-neeésta neeésta!
(They break into derisive laughter.)
and here's anotherJEZEBEL (to the Little Devils).
Gyench-gónchamyank-gónya-gyench!
and another.LUIGI (hypnotic and soothing).
Abátha amátha-náthas.
(Per-emptorily and sharply)
Jezebel, amákkin-tákkyulak knáthas!
Now, for all I know this might be a real-world language,* though I doubt it (when Wilson tells us in a stage direction that the word "strúmpstharso" should be stressed on the syllable "strúmpsth" that seems to be pretty clearly a slightly garbled version of 'strumpet' (particularly since the line's addressed to Jezebel). Similarly, "Zoop-zoop!" as a scornful dismissal sounds suspect to me. And it might be a pre-existent artificial language, though again I doubt it. I suspect it's simply highly detailed gibberish, which Wilson has gone to some pains to spell as phonetically as possible.
So, any created-language linguists out there interested in taking on the challenge of deciphering Wilson's 'diabolic' speech?**
--John R.
*according to the Poe Principle, as set down in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the very fact that it sounds like language helps confirm that it is gibberish.
**of which there are several more examples in dialogue.
June 24, 2012
Riddle Me This
Answer: When the firemen get back in their truck and leave, it's time.
More later.
--John R.
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