John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 81

Lapidary prose (twenty-five words a day)

So, while revising to my Eddison piece I came across a striking passage that I'd either overlooked before or, more likely, read when the book in question (Paul Thomas's edition of ERE's ZIMIAMVIA) came out (in 1992) and since forgot.

In a passage discussing the composition of THE MEZENIAN GATE, Paul describes how Eddison wrote slowly but persistently, writing and rewriting a passage until he was satisfied with it.* By Paul's estimation,  at times, when working on particularly important passages, Eddison wrote an average of about twenty-five words a day.

Even given the amount of time and energy the War took up during Eddison's final years, that's punishingly slow progress, especially for someone who had taken an early retirement in order to devote whatever time he had left to his books.** It's surprising he got as much down of that final book as he did, and testimony to his persistence.

--JDR
--at the desk, with Hastur in a box, on the desk, soaking up warm bright lights and accepting a little handheld  bowl of water.


*ZIMIANVIA p. 572-573.
   This is the exact opposite of Dunsany's practice: Lord D. made it a point of honor never to revise his work but to present it just as he had left it once he'd captured the idea in words.


**Eddison walked away from a senior post at the Board of Trade (including, it's said, a probable knighthood); I'm not certain of the date, but it seems to have been about 1939 (with his sudden death coming in 1945).

Lyrics of the Odd

So, I just upgraded an album I like from the cassette to the cd version (which cd be described as shifting from one outmoded format to a slightly less outmoded mode). Relistening to it (it's been a while), I'm struck anew by how much I like the oddity of some of their lyrics. Here are some examples:

You suggested we get married and move into a houseI suggested we jump overboard and live in the lost city of Atlantis . . .One year later I was transferred to the moon.
and a second example, from later on in the same song
Nineteen tequilas later we had a deal
and a third, from another song on the same album

little bits of Texas are floating up in space

What's particularly appealing to these and others like them from this group is that each line makes sense in context: only the first example uses non-sequitur, and that quite deliberately. It cd be that the tradition of Carroll and Lear is alive and well, it's just abandoned poetry as currently practiced and shifted to lyrics.


So, just out of curiosity, can anybody out there recognize song album and group, without looking it up through a search engine?
--John R. 

Hughart's blanket

So, last week I finished up the revisions for my BRIDGE OF BIRDS piece, before moving on to the WORM OUROBOROS piece (which took up most of this week), and prepping the way for UNKNOWN KADATH, which I'll be getting to next week.

While working on the Hughart I was struck by a brief* biographical account he wrote that I hadn't noted before, in which he discusses his struggles with depression, experiences setting mines in the Korean DMZ (with resultant flashbacks), and his love of the Far East. The BRIDGE OF BIRDS, he says, came about because

"I decided . . . to create an alternate world into which I could creep on dark and stormy nights and pull over my head like a security blanket."
After sharing his revelation that the story had to be 'about love' rather than just a string of exciting incidents (giving as an example Miser Shen's love for his dead daughter), he ends his account with the wish

"I most particularly hope that on dark and stormy nightssome of those readers will be able to crawl into my alternateworld and pull it over them like a security blanket"

This shows how in its inception Hughart's China that never was is an unusually pure example of Escape in the Tolkienian sense.

It also sets Hughart firmly in the group of writers who create secondary worlds first as a private preoccuptation,  an absorbing intellectual and creative activity,  and only secondarily think of publication. A. T. Wright's Islandia is the classic example, but Tolkien himself, who worked on his legendarium for many years before attempting to get it into print, also fits the pattern, with the caveat that when the possibility of publication reared its head he was glad to pursue it.


--John R,


*it fits on the inside front and inside back dustjacket flaps of the 2008 Subterranean Press Master Li/Number 10 Ox omnibus

Flieger festschrift -- kind words

So, here's a link to some thoughts about A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS by one of our contributors, David Bratman, as recorded in his blog Kalimac's Journal:

https://kalimac.livejournal.com/1055057.html

Takeaway line: "I come not to review this book . . . but to praise it."
It'll be a while before there are any reviews out there, but I'll try to post news of them as I discover their existence. Nice to know that the original response so far seems altogether positive.

--John R.

My Newest Publication: a book review of THE INKLINGS & KING ARTHUR

So, the newest volume of TOLKIEN STUDIES (Vol. XV, 2018) arrived today -- always an event, but this is one of those times I'm a contributor, having reviewed the Sorina Higgins edited collection THE INKLINGS AND KING ARTHUR: J. R. R. TOLKIEN, CHARLES WILLIAMS, C. S. LEWIS, & OWEN BARFIELD ON THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. It's a rather lengthy piece (about eight pages), since they allowed me to go with my decision to review the entire book and not just its Tolkien content.

The gist of my review can be found in the first and last two sentences:

[first:] "This is such a good idea for a book that it's surprising no one thought of it before."

[last:] "It's a substantial volume, both in size . . ., price  . . , and the range and quality of its contents: there are three or four essays within each of which would make purchasing the collection a good idea just to get that essay alone.* Recommended."

--John R.

current reading: the latest in the Rivers of London series (more on this later), various essays on E. R. Eddison.


*While I hope my review makes the point that there are a number of good pieces herein, I particularly enjoyed Alyssa House-Thomas's piece on Guinever in THE FALL OF ARTHUR, Charles Huttar's detailed look at Inklings' images of Avalon, and Sorina Higgins' own essay, and overview of the whole volume.

2019 Tolkien Calendar

So, is there something up with next year's Tolkien Calendar, which is to feature Alan Lee's work from THE FALL OF GONDOLIN? Amazon cancelled my order, saying their stock had run out. Barnes & Noble say they haven't gotten it in yet. Just bad luck on my part?

--John R.
current reading: the new Aaronovich (just out!), with more evidence therein that his master villain The Faceless Man* is a Tolkien fan, even using the G-for-Gandalf rune at one point. Though for some other runes the detective hero points out that the villain is using movie-runes there, not book runes. Which confused me, since I thought they'd gone to a lot of trouble in the movies to use Tolkien's runic system.

*'faceless' rather like Saruman's being Of-the-Many-Colours

A C. S. Lewis puzzle

So, between the excitement of the new book I edited (A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS) now being out, and caring for a much-loved senior cat now entering her final days (Hastur), seeing a small project off my desk ('Project X'), getting back to my current main project of turning the old online column into a print book (CLASSICS OF FANTASY), and some doctors' visits, it's been an extremely busy holiday season.

Today I was able to take a break to visit one of my favorite haunts: the Starbucks inside the local Barnes & Noble. While visiting the book-selling side of the symbiot, I discovered that among there puzzles section they have a thousand-piece puzzle made up entirely of front covers of C. S. Lewis. This seems to have come out right about this time last year from Re-Mark Puzzles, which at a quick glance looks to be a local Seattle-based company.

There doesn't seem to be a Tolkien equivalent, at least for now. Does this mean the powers that be in the world of jigsaw puzzle making and marketing feel CSL is a greater draw to their core audience? Or simply that they haven't gotten to it yet?

Here's the link:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toys-games-1000-piece-c-s-lewis-puzzle/31817832


--John R.
current reading: BRIDGE OF BIRDS: first draft version (just finished; re-reading)
TAKING DETECTIVE FICTION SERIOUSLY by D. L. Sayers (resumed)

A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS -- Table of Contents

And here's the table of contents for the Flieger festschrift, listing all the essays with their authors.


Table of Contents Introduction             John D. Rateliff
Tolkienian Studies 
A Seed of Courage: Merry, Pippin, and the Ordinary Hero            Amy Amendt-Raduege
Smith of Wootton Major and Genre Fantasy            David Bratman
Three Stories Holding Hands: The Wind in the Willows, Huntingtower, and The Hobbit            Marjorie Burns
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Foolhardy Philologist            Jason Fisher
‘Mythology is Language and Language is Mythology’: How Verlyn Flieger’s Favourite ‘Bumper-sticker’ Works in Tolkien’s Legendarium                                                                                                                    Andrew Higgins
Do Eldar Dream of Immortal Sheep?: Dreams, Memory, and Enchantment at the End of the Third Age            Thomas Hillman, with Simon Cook, Jeremiah Burns, Richard Rohlin, & Oliver Stegen
‘A Green Great Dragon’ and J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Native Language’            John R. Holmes
Splintered Heroes: Heroic Variety and its Function in The Lord of the Rings             Thomas Honegger
Lessons of Myth, Mortality, & the Machine in the Dream State Space-Time Travel Tales of J. R. R. Tolkien and Olaf Stapledon            Kristine Larsen
‘To Recall Forgotten Gods from their Twilight’: J. R. R. Tolkien's ‘The Name Nodens’            John D. Rateliff
A History of the Acquisition: Marquette and the Tolkien Manuscripts            Taum Santoski
Seers and Singers: Tolkien’s Typology of Sub-creators            Anna Smol
Tolkien’s Story of Kullervo: A Lost Link between Kirby’s Kalevala and Tolkien’s Legendarium            Vivien Stocker
The Rare and Elusive ‘Green, Great Dragon’            Sandra Ballif Straubhaar
‘A Recognizable Irish Strain’ in Tolkien’s Work             Kris Swank
Canute and Beowulf            Richard C. West

Flieger’s Fictions
‘Green Hill Country’: A Scholar’s Tale            Peter Grybauskas
Words Made Flesh in Avilion: A Romance of Voices            Paul Edmund Thomas
Identity, Time, and Faerie in Pig Taleand The Inn at Corbie’s Caaw: An Unexpected Convergence of Realms            David Wilson Wise

Three Personal Tributes
A Teacher’s Teacher: Verlyn Flieger            Susan Yager
Music, Time, and Light in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Verlyn Flieger: A Reflection            Bradford Lee Eden
‘Whose Myth Is It?’: Tolkien Studies as Interdisciplinary Studies            Kristine Larsen

About the Contributors                                                                                                                                                                                                                         




--JDR

A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS -- Table of Contnets

And here's the table of contents for the Flieger festschrift, listing all the essays with their authors.


Table of Contents Introduction             John D. Rateliff
Tolkienian Studies 
A Seed of Courage: Merry, Pippin, and the Ordinary Hero            Amy Amendt-Raduege
Smith of Wootton Major and Genre Fantasy            David Bratman
Three Stories Holding Hands: The Wind in the Willows, Huntingtower, and The Hobbit            Marjorie Burns
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Foolhardy Philologist            Jason Fisher
‘Mythology is Language and Language is Mythology’: How Verlyn Flieger’s Favourite ‘Bumper-sticker’ Works in Tolkien’s Legendarium                                                                                                                    Andrew Higgins
Do Eldar Dream of Immortal Sheep?: Dreams, Memory, and Enchantment at the End of the Third Age            Thomas Hillman, with Simon Cook, Jeremiah Burns, Richard Rohlin, & Oliver Stegen
‘A Green Great Dragon’ and J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Native Language’            John R. Holmes
Splintered Heroes: Heroic Variety and its Function in The Lord of the Rings             Thomas Honegger
Lessons of Myth, Mortality, & the Machine in the Dream State Space-Time Travel Tales of J. R. R. Tolkien and Olaf Stapledon            Kristine Larsen
‘To Recall Forgotten Gods from their Twilight’: J. R. R. Tolkien's ‘The Name Nodens’            John D. Rateliff
A History of the Acquisition: Marquette and the Tolkien Manuscripts            Taum Santoski
Seers and Singers: Tolkien’s Typology of Sub-creators            Anna Smol
Tolkien’s Story of Kullervo: A Lost Link between Kirby’s Kalevala and Tolkien’s Legendarium            Vivien Stocker
The Rare and Elusive ‘Green, Great Dragon’            Sandra Ballif Straubhaar
‘A Recognizable Irish Strain’ in Tolkien’s Work             Kris Swank
Canute and Beowulf            Richard C. West

Flieger’s Fictions
‘Green Hill Country’: A Scholar’s Tale            Peter Grybauskas
Words Made Flesh in Avilion: A Romance of Voices            Paul Edmund Thomas
Identity, Time, and Faerie in Pig Taleand The Inn at Corbie’s Caaw: An Unexpected Convergence of Realms            David Wilson Wise

Three Personal Tributes
A Teacher’s Teacher: Verlyn Flieger            Susan Yager
Music, Time, and Light in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Verlyn Flieger: A Reflection            Bradford Lee Eden
‘Whose Myth Is It?’: Tolkien Studies as Interdisciplinary Studies            Kristine Larsen

About the Contributors                                                                                                                                                                                                                         




--JDR

A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS -- Contributors

So, here's a list of contributors to the Flieger festschrift:

Contributors: Amy Amendt-Raduege
David BratmanJeremiah Burns
Marjorie BurnsSimon CookBrad EdenJason FisherPeter GrybauskasAndrew HigginsThomas HillmanJohn R. HolmesThomas HoneggerKristine LarsenJohn D. RateliffRichard RohlinTaum SantoskiAnna SmolOliver StegenVivien StockerSandra Ballif StraubhaarKris SwankPaul Edmund ThomasRichard WestDennis Wilson WiseSusan Yager
--Many thanks to all for the time and effort they put into their essays and recollections.I'm looking forward to re-reading it myself once I have a copy in bound book form.--JDR