John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 59

quote for the day

So, here's a quote I came across that I thought I'd share.

In a 1989 interview, Robert Holdstock described American science fiction magazines of the mid-sixties as

"where ideas were combined with illiteracy"
I wdn't put it that strongly, but I think Holdstock was picking up on something I noticed when trying to get a handle on the key difference between the New Wave of the late sixties and what came before it: writers of the Gernsback and Campbell eras, whose readers judged science fiction on whether a work had a new or interesting idea and not the eloquence of the prose. Some fans even made it a point of honor to disparage writers who wrote well, like Bradbury.

Anyway, thought it was a great quote. Enjoy!

--John R.

At the demonstration

So, today I went to the Black Lives Matter demonstration in downtown Kent, on the lawn in front of the Justice Center.

I've never been to a demonstration before. My thinking was 'if not now, when?'

I must say that it was a well-behaved group of perhaps a few hundred people with lots of signs, all variants on the same theme: this has got to stop.

The occasion marred only by the fact that due to a poor sound system it was pretty much impossible to hear anything the speaker was saying at any given point.

This was the first time since mid-March I've been out to a place where I knew there'd been a crowd. Unfortunately difficulties with the mask prevented me from being there for the whole two hours; I bailed about a third of the way through. Still I'm glad to have made it. I think it's something my father wd have done if he were here.

--John R.
--today's song: "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by The Rolling Stones (esp the line 'I went down to the demonstration')

Book Review (Mark Doyle's UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN)

So, my latest publication is now out, a book review for THE JOURNAL OF TOLKIEN RESEARCH (Volume 9 issue 2).

The book in question is Mark Doyle's UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN THEMES IN TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM (Lexington Books, 2020). In a nutshell, Doyle discusses the utopian/dystopian tradition, suggesting possible sources (Medieval, Victorian, Modern) for Tolkien's use thereof, as expressed through environmentalism, mythology, and politics. I didn't cover it in the review, but he ends with a Coda that looks at moral drift in 21st century adaptations of Tolkien and the Tolkienesque, from the Peter Jackson films through Tolkien-based computer games to GAME OF THRONES.


Here's the announcement

https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/

and here's the review itself

https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol9/iss2/3/

Enjoy!

--John R.

Saving Tadpoles

So, amid all the distressing news of late, here's a little story that caught my attention.

An Irish girl noticed some tadpoles in a puddle. Fearing that they'd be in a bad way if the puddle dried up, she rescued them and carried them home and put them in a tub. A few days later she went by and saw more tadpoles in the same puddle, so she rescued those too and took them home as well and put them in another tub. Fast forward a few weeks and she has by her estimation 37000 tadpoles in a little wading pool with rocks and greenery. The ones that are starting to grow legs she's been taking and releasing in local ponds and creeks within a two mile radius of her home.

Having attempted the rescue of many a tadpole back in the day, my sympathies are entirely with this frog-rescuer, who I hope has started what may turn into a career of taking care of a lot of overlooked small animals among our midsts.

Here's a link:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/07/teenager-hannah-mcsorley-collection-tadpoles-tiktok-star-northern-ireland

--John R.
--current reading: ANCIENT ECHOES by Rbt Holdstock

Watching plays

So, one of the few positive side effects of the quarantine crisis is that The National Theatre, The Globe, and other companies that specialize in live theater have been broadcasting filmed versions of some really good plays, most of which I'd not otherwise get to see:

Lloyd WebberJoseph and the Amazing Technicolour DreamcoatJesus Christ SuperstarJeevesPhantom of the Opera'Love Never Dies'greatest hits concertCats
ShakespeareMacBethTwelfth NightAnthony and CleopatraThe Tempest
OthersA Man with Two GovernorsJane EyreTreasure IslandFrankenstein This House 
Some of these were amazingly good (Jane Eyre, The Tempest), others bad (Love Never Dies,* Twelfth Night,** Anthony and Cleopatra,*** Treasure Island), and most interesting in some way. I'm happy to have finally gotten to see a staging of MacBeth that includes Banquo's ghost: as I hoped, it was creepy as all get out. And even though their MacBeth was twichy their Banquo, MacDuff, and (pregnant) Lady MacBeth were all v. good.
The only one I've skipped so far is A Streetcar Named Desire (Janice watched it, I took a pass).
Up next: Coriolanus, which I disliked when I read it back in grad student days; I'm hopeful it might have virtues when performed not apparent on the page.
--John R., who'e also been watching an array of less rarified entertainment, from SHIN GODZILLA to Scooby Doo, plus the usual anime.


*a misconceived sequel to PHANTOM OF THE OPERA**a good play badly performed***neither a good play nor performance

New TOLKIEN STUDIES (Voume XVII) Coming Soon

So, the contents of the forthcoming issue of TOLKIEN STUDIES (Volume XVII) have just been listed on David Bratman's blog:

https://kalimac.livejournal.com

I have connections with two pieces due to appear therein: a book review I did of TOLKIEN'S LOST CHAUCER by John M. Bowers and a review of a book I edited, A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS, the Verlyn Flieger festschrift.

And, as always, there's a lot here I'll want to take in when opportunity offers; I'm particularly looking forward to Wayne and Christina's piece on Christopher Tolkien.

--John R.

WATERSHIP DOWN in the news

So, thanks to Janice K. and Douglas A. for pointing me at the story about the just-concluded lawsuit between the Richard Adams estate and the filmmaker of the 1978 animated film, Martin Rosen. The estate charged, and the court agreed, that the filmmaker had engaged in a lot of unauthorized licensing, such as an audiobook, as well as keeping the estate's share of royalties from the 2018 remake.

For those who have been following the story of the dispute between the Tolkien Estate and Saul Zaentz and his successors over the years, this may sound eerily similar:

https://deadline.com/2020/06/richard-adams-estate-wins-back-rights-to-watership-down-in-english-high-court-case-1202948220/

It will be interesting to see what, having regained control over a book that ranks as one of the greatest of all fantasy novels (arguably second only to Tolkien), the Adams estate does with it.

--John R
--current reading: the Preiddeu Annwn

TSR R&D staff, Spring 1997

So, a little more of TSR history, this time a list of all the designers and editors and the product groups they were in at a specific point in history. The timing is at the time of the WotC acquisition, circa April 1997, so folks who were laid off in December 1996 like myself are not included. Nor does it take into account the rpg people already on staff out in Renton, like Jonathan Tweet, Kij Johnson, Mike Selinker, and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes.

Of the thirty-one people listed here,* eight decided not to make the move out to Renton in August 1997, and a few more switched to working off-site from back in the Lake Geneva area. These latter drifted away over the course of the next year. Things are complicated by some people, like myself, who were laid off in December 1996 then rehired by WotC in September 1997.

--John R.

*out of a total of eighty-four TSR folks invited to make the move from the old regime at  Lake Geneva to join the new at Renton.



TSR designers & editors, at time of WotC purchase (circa April 1997)
Group IThomas ReidKaren BoomgartenBill ConnorsDale DonovanJulia MartinCindi RiceSteve Schend
Group II  (ALTERNITY)Bill SlavicsekRich BakerJim ButlerDavid EckleberryKim Mohan
Group IIIHarold JohnsonCarrie BebrisAnne BrownSteven BrownSue CookMiranda HornerBill OlmesdahlEd Stark
Group IVSteve WinterMichelle CarterMonte CookBruce CordellJon PickensKeith StrohmRay VallesseSkip Williams
SpecialBruce Heard (scheduler)Roger MooreSean Reynolds (online)

Dr. Havard's 10%

So, here's a passage I cut from a draft of my recently published piece on Tolkien's failure to finish THE SILMARILLION.


Tolkien’s papers were disorganized to an extraordinary degree, and this trait grew on him in his final years. Yet we should also acknowledge that his internal vision of the legendarium seems to have been much more comprehensive and focused than the physical evidence records. Dr. Humphrey Havard, fellow Inkling and family friend, told me that he thought Tolkien had only ten percent of his legendarium written down. All the rest was in his head. 

I believe Havard based this on the fact that, he said, you cd ask Tolkien about anything in his mythology (I assume by this he meant any name, place, character) and he cd tell you all about it.

This may explain the curious phenomenon mentioned by Christopher Tolkien that his father treated the final chapters of The Silmarillion as finished, requiring only relatively minor revision to reach final form (HME XI 247). The real Silmarillion was in Tolkien’s head, and he seems not to have realized how little of it was recorded in a physical medium (like pen on paper).


I thought this a good explanation back in 1981 which explained a lot of what we knew at the time of JRRT's literary remains. Recently, having worked my way through a lot (not all) of the material in the last three volumes of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, I'm rethinking things. It now seems apparent that JRRT wrote down a huge amount of material relating to his legendarium, far more than was known in the decade following his death, many times including multiple drafts of given texts. Also, we have now quite a few examples of his thinking on paper, of ideas emerging in response to questions he'd been asked.

So while I think there's some truth to Dr. Havard's observation, and that JRRT had an enormous amount of carefully though out material about his legendarium in his head, I'm no longer inclined to consider it the whole truth.

Any comment much appreciated.

--John R.

P.S.: Coincidentally, there's quite an interesting article about Dr. Havard in the recent issue of VII, just out from the Wade Center at Wheaton.

Harold Johnson's group, spring 1997

So, this might be a little easier: a group drawing of the folks in Harold Johnson's product group in Spring 1997: post-layoff and pre-WotC. This full page version includes the names of all nine  designers and editors, along with (I assume) the lines they were working on.

Enjoy.

--John R.