John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 195

Taum Santoski III

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

3. This world of myth, when measured against our world, is in another order of time -- what Frankfort calls "absolute time" -- the mythical past never recedes any further into the distance, as indeed it percolates through "history" from time to time, and time never brings the Golden Age any closer and all the other "Golden Ages" eventually tarnish.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

The New Arrivals

So, Tuesday brought not one, not two, but three new books into the house, all of them arriving on the doorstep.

First, there was TATTERS OF THE KING, a CALL OF CTHULHU campaign from Chaosium [2006]. I enjoy reading C.o.C. modules as well as playing them, but have to hold off reading those who others in our gaming group might run (to avoid my Investigator knowing things that wd spoil the mystery). However, I enjoy reading them after playing through them, to see what we missed and how the designer expected things to play out (often widely at variance with what our characters actually did).

In this case, Jeff Grubb (an excellent Keeper)* ran this one a few years back, and while I enjoyed it I found that I cdn't follow it at all. The overall structure of who was doing what to who and why completely escaped me, both while inside the game and afterwards. In part this might have been because of the character I was playing -- I usually play the note-taker of the group who tries to keep track of all the leads, but this time I was having fun with a Bertie-Woosterish survivor of the Great War whose brains had been a bit addled by four years of being shot at, leaving him with an obsession about personalized yacht-sized zeppelins. One of the favorite C.o.C. characters I've ever played, his point of view was not conductive to careful gathering and shifting of evidence; he simply went with the flow, always slightly at a loss and acting more on impulse than careful planning. Hence, buying the adventure now will offer me a chance to read through the whole thing carefully and see if it holds together better in print than it did in the gaming sessions.



Second, there's TOWARD THE GLEAM by T. M. Doran, a book I knew nothing about until a recent discussion on the MythSoc list -- which turned out to be follow-up comments about a book review I hadn't seen, my subscription to MYTHPRINT having apparently silently lapsed recently without my having been aware of the fact. This is the fourth (so far) in the series of recent Novels-With-JRRT-In-Them as a character, this time under the pseudonym 'Mr. Hill' (as in Frodo's 'Mr. Underhill'). Having read Downing's LOOKING FOR THE KING, Hillard's MIRKWOOD, and Michael Ridpath's WHERE THE SHADOWS LIE (of which Ridpath's was by far the best, and Hillard's by far the worst), I'm not likely to baulk at a fourth. Although it was disconcerting to find that once I bought it Amazon filled my 'recommendations' lists with books by the pope (!) -- making the bizarre assumption that people shop by publisher (in this case, Ignatius Press**) rather than author, title, or subject -- the kind of thinking that once got me listed on a conspiracy-theory website as being part of 'the Jesuit conspiracy', whatever that might be (these conspiracy-theorists being so inept they didn't realize I'm a Southern Presbyterian who attended Marquette because of the manuscripts). More on this one down the road a ways when I've had a chance to read it.



And finally, third there's BOOK GIRL AND THE CAPTIVE FOOL by Mizuki Nomura [2006] (tr. Karen McGillicuddy [2011]). This is the third in the 'Book Girl' series, the first two of which were surprisingly unflinching in their dealings with suicide, anorexia, and similar topics; a main issue in the series as a whole is survivor's guilt. I'm looking forward to this third one as well, well aware that though a quick read it'll be no walk in the park. And by the way, now that I've seen both the BOOK GIRL movie and the three 'prequel' ovas that lead up to it, I'm more impressed than ever, esp. by the movie and the one of the ovas that deals with 'Book Girl' herself (since she's not the point-of-view character of the series, that being a traumatized formerly up-and-coming young author who witnessed his best friend attempt suicide because he had more talent than the friend did. ouch.)***

So, plenty of good books still out there, despite the collapse of another major bookstore, and plenty of good reading to look ahead to. Here's hoping the new prescription for glasses I got yesterday from the eye doctor makes the struggles with reading easier. Now to pick out a good set of frames and prepare for the latest round of 'my, these are thick lens, aren't they?'

--John R.current reading:MARK TWAIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (vol 1), resumedTOLKIEN AND WALES

.........................*he's running another one on Saturday, in which I get to play my Chicago gangster, Giovanni 'Smokes' Tuscani (a.k.a. Mr. Smokes), who unexpectedly has survived not one, not two, but three Goodman Games pulp cthulhu scenarios -- largely I suspect by assuming his tommy gun won't do much against the monsters (a shoggoth, a dark young, a gnoph-keh), and turning it on the cultists instead. That, and running.

**the same people who did Downing's book. I wonder if they're going to make a habit of this.

***the other two ovas are from the point of view of the friend in question and of a girl who has a crush on the point-of-view character (of which he is entirely unaware).

Taum Santoski II

'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'

2. The events in Tolkien's mythos are located in a world related to but not identical with the present physical world. Nor is Middle-earth a mirror-image world reflecting back the common [>ordinary], but contains its own reality, its own flow of events, its own languages, customs and patterns of behavior, which impinge very efectively, but with a newness and nowness, upon our world.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum Santoski (I)

1. The work of Tolkien is aetiological, in that it attempts to make comprehensible the human situation of doubt, fear, and hope. Men and Elves attempt to come to terms with their environment (in two distinct ways) and with the contradiction of their opposing natures in the same environment.

--Taum Santoski, circa 1984

Taum: Twenty Years

And of course August is another anniversary for us, being that August 19th will mark the twentieth anniversary of Taum Santoski's death. Janice and I saw Taum virtually every day during the two long years between the time he was diagnoses as terminally ill and the end, and I think it was his death that really taught me the lesson that a friend is irreplaceable. You can, and will, make new friends, but the memories of time you've shared with those who are gone gets oddly cut off, almost self-contained, once you're the only one to remember it. It was the same with my friend Franklin, who died just within the past year; even though I'd only seen him once since graduate school, it feels v. odd to have so many vivid memories that no one else now remembers. Just one of the things about growing old, but it came as a shock with Taum, who was the same age I was (literally, having been born exactly one month earlier).

Not quite knowing how to commemorate his death, I thought I'd start posting a piece he wrote that's never been published. Back in '83-84 I started reading and thinking seriously about the history of fantasy as a genre and Tolkien's place in it. In the course of our many conversations on this topic, Taum at one point started setting down his own ideas about fantasy. But rather than an essay (the form the opening chapter or Introduction of my erstwhile dissertation would have taken), he set down a sequence of twenty-four aphorisms -- what might be called 'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'. It was so divergent from my own work that I found it more puzzling than enlightening, but in the interests of those who might be more in tune with Taum's thinking I present it now, in my authority as Taum's literary executor. In order to keep the sequence distinct from anything I might say about it, I'll post each entry separately as its own blog post, labeled 'Taum Santoski (I)', 'Taum Santoski (II), and so forth. I'll be particularly interested to see what, if any, comments these might elicit.

--John R.

PARKER

So, I wrote a tribute to my cat Parker (May 1989- August 4th 2002), who died nine years ago last week. But after I posted it, blogger.com somehow ate it, apparently beyond retrieving. Luckily Janice, who knew him better than anyone but me (while fond of her he was always My Cat, just as she's Rigby's Favorite Person), got to see it before it was wiped out. So rather than go through re-creating it again I'll just say: rest in peace, Parker. You are not forgotten.

NPR's Top Ten

So, a few days back I learned from Jeff's blog (http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2011/08/embarrassment-of-riches.html)about the current poll on NPR for people to vote for their top ten science fiction and fantasy books. And not long after, the MythSoc list started up several threads about the list, most of which revolved around definitions of what was (and was not) 'science fiction' or puzzlement where all the newcomers (books published within just the past few years) came from.
My first thought, when I skimmed through the books listed, was that half of my own top ten weren't even available as options. That's when I went back and adjusted my expectations: this wasn't the ten best books ever, it was ten best out of the pre-selected pool, as adjusted by Wolfe, Mendlesohn, & Clute. I'd completely missed the original round, but that didn't mean it wdn't be interesting to see what I thought was the best out of what remained.
Here are the ten I wound up voting for:

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

Watership Down by Richard Adams.

of these, the only iffy one for me is the Hitchhiker's Guide, which I chose not for the novelizations but the original radio programs for which he wrote the scripts; that sort of puts it in a different medium from the rest.*

As for Bradbury being on my list twice: if you're going to pick a top ten among writers of science fiction and fantasy, you might as well include the best writer of science fiction of them all among your choices. And I suppose they can stand respectively for his work in science fiction (THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES) and fantasy (THE ILLUSTRATED MAN), more or less.

Jeff mentioned how he had trouble trimming his list down; in contrast, my runner-ups were relatively few:

The Deeds of Paksennarion by Eliz. Moon

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

of these, Fionavar got edged out by Kay's TIGANA, while THE SILMARILLION got edged out (in my mind anyway) by THE HOBBIT, wh. shd have been on the list. Whereas the first and last book in Moon's series and the Willis wd have made it into my top dozen.

As for books that SHOULD have been on the list, had its compilers's judgment aligned more with my own, here are the ones I think they really missed the boat by not including:

The Book of Three Dragons by Kenneth Morris

The Books of Wonder by Lord Dunsany

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman

Hobberdy-Dick by Katharine Briggs

The Hobbit by JRRT

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll

The Night Land by Wm Hope Hodgson

The Well at the World's End by Wm Morris

Of these, I suspect THE HOBBIT and the Pullman got bumped as 'young adult', but there's really no excuse for the others not being better known and more highly valued, alas. Those of us who know and appreciate them really need to spread the word better.**

--John R.
*Gaiman's SANDMAN doesn't post the same problem for me; here I think the impact comes almost entirely from the literary quality of its scripts, not their 'performance' by various illustrators. And it's a masterful working out of a whole new mythology, which is pretty impressive all by itself.
**the same goes for Clark Ashton Smith's TALES OF AVEROIGNE -- if anyone had ever actually published such a book (i.e., collected his 'Averoigne' stories into a single volume).

A Different Kind of Mess

So, I refrained from posting during the Debt Ceiling crisis, mostly because I found the whole thing too alarming and discouraging. But in its aftermath I thought I'd share a few links.
First, to Mr. Krugman on just how bad the resultant deal is. Given that just in the last three days we're already hearing talk about the recovery collapsing, the economy falling back into recession, AND the U. S. credit rating being downgraded anyway,* I'd say he's more Cassandra than not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=2

By contrast, here's a piece by someone who rather smugly chides those who believed Obama might actually attempt to do any of the things those who voted for him elected him to do. It's one of several pieces that have appeared lately that have made me wonder if it isn't best to think of Obama as essentially a moderate Republican: an essentially decent man dedicated to not rocking the boat, whose ideal audience/potential supporter is David Brooks.
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/07/31/did-obama-cave/

And finally -- and here's why I'm posting at all -- here's the loony take on things: the suggestion that the treasury simply coin two $1,000,000,000,000 platinum coins as a way out of the crisis. I shelve this one with the 'sovereign citizen' loons, but hey, at least it's numismatically interesting:
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/28/282471/the-platinum-coin-option/
--John R.
*given how disfunctional the government just showed itself to be, and how incapable of taking even the most obvious steps (i.e., raise taxes on the quarter-million people in this country who are millionaires).

How to Make a Mess

So, anyone can make a mess. But there's something about making a mess in a kitchen that requires a man's touch. Stories about exploding skillets or icing on the ceiling or what happens when you don't have a good grip on the stick blender. And today I'm able to contribute a point-by-point case study.
First, open up the fridge and take out the tupperware container filled with peanut soup.
Make sure you grasp the container so that when the lid suddenly comes off you have a firm grasp on the lid.
When the rest of the container, holding all the soup, surrenders itself to gravity, consider how lucky you are that it lands face up.
That's when another law of physics kicks in, actions and reactions. Or, as what they taught us in eight-grade science would have put it, the potential energy collected by the soup as it fell is converted to kinetic energy once it lands. The container itself no longer being in motion, the soul leaves it and explodes upwards, just like in those line-lapse photos of a raindrop hitting water.
This experiment works best if you use a thick, viscous soup. Even better if it's something that wd stain (say, with a lot of tomato in it). Luckily peanut soup fills the bill on both accounts.
Now, the experiment having run its course, start the clean up. The walls come first, since you want to get that off before it stains. Then the part you can see, splattered on the refrigerator shelves and all the nooks inside the door (since you had the door open in order to take out the soup in the first place). Then tackle all the surfaces you can't see: since it splashed from below, the bottoms of all those shelves in the door (e.g., the one holding the eggs, &c) have each their decorations.
Finally, take care of the pool on the floor.
Then go back and check again; you'll be surprised how many spots you missed on the first go around. Rest assured that in any case you'll be finding random spots of peanut soup hidden here and there for months.
Last of all, warm up what's left of the soup. Enjoy; you might not be getting peanut soup again for a while.
--John R.

THE BONES OF THE OX

So, yesterday's mail brought my author's copy of TOLKIEN AND THE STUDY OF HIS SOURCES: CRITICAL ESSAYS (formerly 'The Bones of the Ox', taking its cue from Tolkien's Cauldron of Stories in OFS), edited by Jason Fisher, which includes my essay "SHE and Tolkien, Revisited".* This is a re-casting and expansion of my v. first scholarly essay, which appeared in MYTHLORE as far back as the summer of 1981. I was glad to be asked to revise this piece, which seems to get cited a lot over the years. We have so much more material available to us now than then (e.g., LETTERS of JRRT, the HME, the Scull-Hammond chronology), but my basic premise still held, I think, and it was good to be able to include more evidence in support of my conclusions. And it was interesting to revisit a piece written so long ago (thirty years) -- my style and also I think my critical acumen have both evolved over that time.
I'm also glad that I'll now have a chance to read my fellow contributors' essays, which cover a range of subjects from Mesopotamian sources and the Goth/Lombard/Byzantine connection to writers whose lifespans overlapped Tolkien's own like Haggard and Buchan. It's not an exhaustive collection -- it's hard to see how it cd be** -- but it's a good place to start a look at how Tolkien handled his sources (which is as interesting a question as what the sources were).
And of course congratulations to Jason for his first book. Putting together a collection of essays by diverse hands can be like herding cats, and it's a tribute to his organizational powers and stick-to-it-ness that we now have this book. Kudos!
--John R.


*which I delivered at last year's MythCon in Dallas.
**a thought which conjures up visons of a companion volume someday with pieces on MacDonald, Morris, Dunsany, &c.