The Most Important Tolkien Event of the Year

. . . is taking place this week in the Bodleian Library. In fact it started today; a major new exhibition of J.R.R.T.'s manuscripts, artwork, and associated items (like his iconic pipe). A full catalogue will be out in a month or two, as well as a shorter, simpler version for those a little less deeply invested in all thing Tolkienian. Wish I cd be there!

Here's a piece in today's GUARDIAN that gives a basis overview:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/drawn-into-tolkiens-world-exhibition

And here's a brief mention* of the special lectures that accompany the exhibition and turn it into an event:

MYTHOPOEIA: MYTH-CREATION AND MIDDLE-EARTH

5 JUNE 2018,
5.30–7PM

A celebration of Tolkien and his creations, with special guests Dame Marina Warner, Prof Verlyn Flieger and Dr Dimitra Fimi.

*cf. https://tolkien.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/

I'd love to hear an account of how it all goes.
--John R

WotC Days (2001) -- layoffs

So, we had a plumber in last week, which meant we had to move about fifty boxes to the other side of the box room so he could open up the wall and get at the pipes that were misbehaving. This being too good an opportunity to miss, we sorted through several boxes that have lain undisturbed for a long while now, throwing away a good portion of what was in them but plucking out some items of interest, at least to me.

Case in point: a seating chart at Wizards of the Coast, showing who was in which cube. This was clearly in the old building on Lind, not the current location.

This page is of added interest because I marked it up at the time to show who got laid off in the June through July 2001 layoffs, including myself.  I can date it from indicators like the absence here of Jon Pickens, who had been the longest serving department member when he left in the previous round (December 2000), and the presence of Charles Ryan, who came up to join us in Seattle at that point (the only member of Last Unicorn to do so when WotC shut down the offsite autonomous branch). And it's distinct from the next round (which came sometime in 2002, I think), which took out some not marked here, like Dale Donovan.

Not all of the people marked here as leaving the department left the company. Some left on their own dime, like (I think) Thomas Reid, who wanted to concentrate on his novels. Some, like Dave Eckelberry and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes transferred to other departments, like Cards R&D or boardgames. And some, like me and Duane Maxwell, Jason Carl and Owen Stephens, Steve Miller et al, were simply out of luck.

At any rate, a curious historical relic wh. I thought I'd share, since one thing WOTc had in common with TSR was that its inner workings were entirely oblique, so that the outside world was usually completely unaware of who was in-house and who was out-of-house/freelance, and who did what on what project. This gradually changed as the internet made it far easier to keep track of such things, but even as late as when I left for the last time in December 2005 most people who followed the game closely still had relatively little idea of the department as a whole, and who did what on what projects.

Here's the chart:

--JDR
--who's starting to wrap up my major proofing project and turning my mind to NTrpgCON

Books at Kalamazoo

So, I usually come back from Kalamazoo with a stack of books, both new books about Tolkien I hadn't seen before and medieval works connected with any of several ongoing projects. This year I brought home an interesting miscellany, mostly catching up on the new releases from Doug Anderson's Nodens Books.

Nodens Books titles:

LATE REVIEWS by Douglas A. Anderson (2018)
—this is the project I've long known under the name OBSCURE DEAD AUTHORS, after a memorable WisCon panel some two decades or so ago. No one knows more about forgotten authors and overlooked books than Doug, and his 'Late Reviews' can pluck out the one thing worth remembering a neglected book for. Really looking forward to reading this one.

THE CULT MURDERS by Leonard Cline (1928) [writing as Alan Forsyth]
—a tragic figure almost wholly forgotten today, Cline wrote a searing work of naturalism (GODSTALK) but is remembered today only for the past-life regression novel THE DARK CHAMBER, which seems to have influenced Lovecraft, esp. in THE RATS IN THE WALL. He also wrote some detective stories while in prison, of which this is one.

THE MAN WHO LIVED BACKWARDS AND OTHER STORIES by Charles F. Hall (1938)
—I wrote about this one's title story in my review of Doug's TALES BEFORE NARNIA: it's cited by CSL as an inspiration for his THE GREAT DIVORCE (and probably also provided a key idea for THE DARK TOWER).

SPHINX by David Lindsay (1923)
—the least significant of this author's seven books, but when the author is as extraordinary as Lindsay even his minor works are worth reading, at least once, to see what he was up to. After all, even on a bad day Hieronymus Bosch is still Hieronymus Bosch.

FINGERS OF FEAR by J. U. Nicolson (1937)
—this one I know nothing about, other than that it sounds like one of the thrillers Bertie Wooster enjoys reading. I'm looking forward to reading it sometime when I need a change of pace.

MONK'S MAGIC by Alexander de Comeau (1931)
—another book I know little about but which sounds rather Fersey-ish (as in Mervyn Wall's THE UNFORTUNATE FURSEY). And if this author can capture even a little of Wall's light touch it'll be well worth reading.

FERELITH by Lord Kilmarnock (1903)
—a book I know nothing about, yet.

GOING HOME by Barry Pain (1921)
—I've never read anything by Pain; looks like a good place to start, nice and short

LADY STANHOPE'S MANUSCRIPT AND OTHER STORIES by Dale Nelson (2017)
—M. R. James-ian stories of much more recent vintage than most of Nodens Books' releases. Read this one last year on Kindle; now picking up the hardcopy book for easier access..


Aside from the Nodens Books collection, I came home with a few more. Four of the five are gifts, and much welcome.

THE NATIVE AMERICANS: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Thomas, Miller, White, Nabokov, and Deloria; ed Betty & Ian Ballantine (1993) —a big illustrated picture book.

AUTHENTICATING ANCIENT INDIAN ARTIFACTS by Jim Bennett (2008)—filled with beautiful pictures of flintworks both real and reproduced.

INDIAN MOUNDS OF THE MIDDLE OHIO VALLEY by Susan L. Woodward & Jerry N. McDonald (2002)—lots of little maps of the interior of Indian mounds. Not only interesting in itself, but every D&D player can always use more maps of barrows.

THE SILVER VOICES by John Howard—a gift from someone I got into a long conversation with last year that seemed oddly at cross purposes, at the end of which it turned out he and I were talking about two different authors: John Howard in his case and Jonathan L. Howard (author of the Johannes Cabel books) in mine. Now thanks to his generosity I have a way of comparing the two before next year's Medieval Congress rolls round.

Finally, among the notes in Higgins' INKLINGS & ARTHUR volume I saw a reference to what sounded like a really interesting article that had appeared in a journal (ARTHURIANA) who always have a booth at Kalamazoo, so I made a note to look it up and buy that issue if possible. It was, and I'm looking forward to reading THE LOST ARTHURIAN PLAYS OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND. Wish Jim Pietrusz were still with us; I'd enjoy discussing this one with him.

Also, I ordered one book seen at the conf. and it's already arrived, so it shd get at least an honorable mention as an at-Kalamazoo-conference-purchase: TOLKIEN & ALTERITY ed Christopher Vaccaro & Yvette Kisor (the new organizers, starting next year, of the Tolkien at Kalamazoo papers track. The volume is dedicated to Jane Chance, without whom there wd be no 'Tolkien at Kalamazoo', nor the community of scholars it created, nor the three excellent volumes of presentations from the Tolkien track. They have a good group of contributors; I'm particularly looking forward to Verlyn Flieger's THE ORCS AND THE OTHERS. Though I must confess some look to go outside my comfort zone.
We'll see.

--John R.
--who's also ordered a pile of MYTHLOREs to catch up to the current issue, having recently lagged behind, and also order the catalogue for the big Tolkien Exhibit about to be unveiled at the Bodley this week.


UPDATE (W. May 30th)
Make that THIRTY years ago, at least, for that WisCon panel. Thanks to Doug A. for pointing out the time passed. --JDR

Kalamazoo, Day Four (Saturday May 12th)

continued and concluded

SATURDAY MAY 12th

So, Saturday brought the last full day of papers. Since there weren't any sessions dedicated to Tolkien (aside from the noon business meeting), and because I'd had such good luck coming across Paul Peterson's piece in a non-Tolkien themed panel the day before, I decided to wander further afield again by attending a session called OUT OF THE BOX, OUT OF THE BOTTLE: AMBIGUOUS SUPERNATURAL ENTITIeS IN MEDIEVAL MAGIC

My curiosity was rewarded by not one but two papers which told me things I didn't know that I was happy to learn.

Unfortunately I took next to no notes of this session, with the result that while I remember liking the opening paper well enough (HALF ETAYN AND THE GODDES MORGNE: THE AMBIGUITY OF THE PRETERNATURAL IN SGGK by Kersti Francis) I can't remember any details. But it was the middle session that really got my attention: TALKING HANDS AND BESTIAL SPIRITS: INVOKING PLANETARY SPIRITS IN MEDIEVAL LATIN MANUALS OF IMAGE MAGIC by Lauri Ockenstrom. This piece explored a topic (image magic) about which I knew nothing, but my attention was arrested when I realized that his description provided context for The Vyne Ring, which I'd researched a year or two back when working on my Nodens paper; he even showed a piece of art that echoed the only surviving image of Nodens in the so-called Lydney Tiara. I hope he publishes his piece so I can learn more about Planetary Spirits and the paraphernalia involved in conjuring them.

And Samuel P. Gillis Hogan's FAMILIAR WITH FAIRIES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN FAIRY CONJURING TEXTS contained reference to something I wished I'd known about back when working of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT: Gillis Hogan mentioned an old legend about summoning three fairies who would then give the summoner a magic ring of invisibility. I'll have to track this down to add it to the list of Rings of Invisibility I blogged about back around 2008. So here's hoping this piece sees print as well.



XXII.  Saturday noon came the  TOLKIEN AT KALAMAZOO BUSINESS MEETING, at which we brainstorm topics to submit for next year's Medieval Congress. Despite a rather odd encounter in which someone outside the group dropped by essentially trying to encourage us to have a more upbeat attitude, it was a well-run and productive meeting, which left us with a range of interesting topics dealing with Tolkien and many things Medieval to propose for next year.

After that I headed back over to the book room. Turned out there were two more Tolkien papers, each appearing in a context where it was the only Tolkienian piece in its session, both of which I'd heard mentioned in passing the day before but not been able to find in the program book when it came time to decidedd whether to go to it or not. The first was EALA EARENDEL: OLD ENGLISH EUPHONY AND TOLKIEN'S HIDDEN GOD by Alfred Kentigern Siewers (1.30pm Saturday afternoon) and the other TOLKIEN AND BOETHIUS: CHANCE MEETINGS AND DOOMED HEROES by Brian McFadden (3.30pm ibid)

Instead, during this time I hung around the book room and talked with various Tolk folk who came by. Which is, after all, one of the best parts about being at a conference full of people who share your interest.

If I'd been staying nearby I wd have sought out the two sessions on the C. S. Lewis track on Sunday morning, among the last events before things wrapped up for another year. But by this time we were sleep-deprived and not really up to getting up early enough to make the drive in from Marcellus, so gave that a pass this year. It was nice to see Joe Ricke, the driving force behind the CSL track, come to several of the Tolkien presentations.

And that, aside from yet much more Tolk talk during the day and into the night on Sunday, and the challenges of getting home in a time of thunderstorms, that was pretty much it for this year. A good Tolkien at Kalamazoo this year, and already looking forward to next's

--John R.
current reading: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS, which is as interested in the first half of that title subject as the last.

Kalamazoo, Day Three (Friday May 11th)

continued from previous post

FRIDAY MAY 11th 2018

morning sessions:
No Tolkien events scheduled this morning, so went to some medieval papers instead, in a panel with the forbidding name IN A WORD: PHILOLOGY, ETYMOLOGY, LEXICOGRAPHY, SEMANTICS, AND MORE IN GERMANIC, the first paper in which (EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE CONTACT IN OLD NORSE NAMES by Paul Peterson) looked at the interesting phenomenon of lots of people with Celtic names being among the settlers of Iceland -- were these still thought of as 'foreign' several generations on? My notes on the second paper (THE ONOMASTICS OF HONOR IN BEOWULF by Pater Ramsey) are so sketchy that I can't say much about his piece other than that among the things he discussed was the name of Hrothgar's queen and that he called Hunferth by that name. The third paper, Ilya V. Sverdlov's DOCH NICHT DEN RING, OR WAGNERIAN INFLUENCES ON LotR BEYOND THE TETRALOGY: THE CASE OF PARSIFAL, took it as a given that Wagner's Ring cycle influenced JRRT (quote: "He can deny it all he wants") and wanted to suggest possible influence from another of Wagner's works. I thought his comparisons too generic to really make his case, but perhaps I was a little detached because I'd somehow gotten the impression, from too-hasty scanning of the program book, that what I'd come to hear was a presentation suggesting influence from Wulfram's PARZIVAL --which is something I've only ever seen suggested by the late Dr. Rhona Beare. Anyway, the last presentation in the set (PROVERBS AS WEAPONS OF SUBVERSION: HEATHEN SORCERERS IN TWO LATE ISLENDINGA-SOGUR by Richard L. Harris) can be simply summed up by two quotes: "no good will come of this" -- when 'this' is consulting a sorcerer -- and the memorable line "they do terrible things to those poor witches"


early afternoon sessions (Friday 1.30)

MEDIEVALISM AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN TOLKIEN'S WORKS

XVI. SMAUG'S HOARD, DURIN'S BANE, AND AGRICOLA'S DE RE METALLICA: CAUTIONARY TALES AGAINST MINING IN TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION by Kristine Larsen found some interesting parallels between Tolkien's views of mining (Isengard vs. Dwarves) and a mixed medieval/renaissance tradition (Agricola, Spenser, Milton). As usual, approaches Tolkien's legendarium from a somewhat different direction and finds some interesting things thereby.

XVII. TOLKIEN'S FRANCISCAN ENVIRONMENTALISM by Deidre Dawson was a typically well-researched and wide-ranging piece which began with Voltaire (unusual in Tolkien scholarship) and ended with Francis of Assisi, citing examples both of environmentalism and anti-environmentalism within the Church. Among her more interesting quotes was one from Charles Huttar stating that the concept of biocentrism (that the nature world is not human-based) was "utterly un-Xian". I also came away with a reading list from this one; e.g. THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES and "THE LANGUAGE OF TREES". Her piece made we hope somebody writes one paralleling Francis of Assisi's love of animals with Tolkien's love of trees.

XVIII.  THE FRANCISCAN AND BENEDICTINE* ROOTS OF TOLKIEN'S ENVIRONMENTALISM by Vickie Holtz Wodzak wrapped up the session by linking Radagast the Brown with Francis of Assisi (wears brown, befriends animals, 'bird-tamer') while Gandalf she saw as more Benedictine; there was also some discussion of Bombadil's delight in the natural world and Sam's gardening

*the official title in the program book said DOMINICAN, but this was apparently in error.



later afternoon sessions (Friday 3.30)
TOLKIEN'S RE-ENVISIONING OF THE MEDIEVAL LAY: THE LAY OF BEREN AND LUTHIEN AND THE LAY OF AOTROU AND ITROUN

XIX.  THE LAY OF AOTROU AND ITROUN, BRETON LAYS, AND GWERZIOU
 by Matthieu Boyd argued that the Breton ballad ("Lord Nann and the Korrigan") that underlay Tolkien's recreated Breton Lay (A&I) is an authentic medieval survival, not a nineteenth century invention. As an added bonus, he sang us part of the ballad in the original Breton.

The next scheduled piece, Aurelie Bremont's TOLKIEN'S LAYS: SONGS OF LOVE, FAITH, AND DEVOTION?, was unfortunately cancelled, as was the piece that was to close the session, Michael D. Miller's MEDIEVAL SONGS OF LOVE AND WARFARE IN TOLKIEN'S LAY OF AOTROU AND ITROUN, so we proceeded directly to Holmes' piece:

XX.  MATIERE DE TERRE DU MILIEU: JEAN BODEL'S FORMULA AND TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM by John R. Holmes took a look at the twelfth-century formulation of The Matter of France, The Matter of Rome, and The Matter of Britain, suggesting that Tolkien's legendarium is perhaps best thought of as The Matter of Middle-earth. The discussion that followed at one point circled around the question of whether Tolkien ever mentions Marie de France and her work: not until afterwards did the shoe drop that the place to look wd be in his GAWAIN edition.


still later Friday (5.15)
XXI. TALES AFTER TOLKIEN business meeting
—went to sit in on the Tales After Tolkien society's plans to regroup and refocus


to be continued

--JDR

Kalamazoo Day Two

So, to continue:

THURSDAY MAY 11th (Morning Session):
TOLKIEN AND THE CELTIC TRADITION


XI. QUEER BORDERS, HIDDEN KINGDOMS: PERCEPTIONS OF WALES IN JRRT'S WORK by Dimitra Fimi looked at Tolkien's elusive contact with various things Welsh -- things which seem suggestive (e.g. place names) but can't quite be pinned down -- such as a trip he took to Wales as a child to which he referred in old age but about which we know almost nothing. She praised Jim Allan's AN INTRODUCTION TO ELVISH (1978) for how well it holds up, forty years later. I think it was as part of this presentation that she pointed out that the memorable phrase the walls of Wales, which I'd assumed was a well-known usage, is in fact Tolkien's own coinage, which he uses twice (once in FALL OF ARTHUR and once I think in ENGLISH AND WELSH).


XII. BRAN AND BRENDAN AND ERIOL AND AELFWINE by Kris Swank was another piece (the third?) in what has become an excellent series by K.S. looking at Tolkien's Irish antecedents. The focus this time was on THE COLLOQUY OF THE ANCIENTS, a key text in the Ossian story and probably the biggest gap in my own reading of Irish myth. I was pleased to see her call out Wm Morris's THE EARTHLY PARADISE (wh. I'd argue was the key inspirational text that launched Tolkien on THE BOOK OF LOST TALES PROJECT) and Lady Gregory's GODS AND FIGHTING MEN (an old favorite of mine, sadly neglected; where I first learned about the Tuatha de from).


XIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF IMAGERY FROM THE LAY OF AUTROU AND ITROUN in LotR
by Yvette Kisor argued that the Korrigan of A&I contributed to the later description of Galadriel. I thought she made her case but unfortunately took few notes and so can't reconstruct her presentation, other than she pointed out the parallels: beautiful fay by her fountain (called by some a witch) granting a  favored visitor magical phial or philtre.



THURSDAY MAY 11th (Afternoon Session):
EALD ENTA GEWEORC: TOLKIEN AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

XIV. THE CLASSICAL ORIGINS OF TOLKIEN'S ELVISH LANGUAGE INVENION by Andrew Higgins looked at Quenya as Elf-Latin, suggesting that Tolkien deliberately made Quenya more like Latin is some ways. It's Andrew's gift that he can talk about Tolkien's invented languages in a way that the nonphilological can follow and appreciate. The big carry-away from his talk for me was a side point, a passing reference to young Tolkien passing his (?Oxford entrance) exams in Greek and in Scriptural Knowledge. I've sometimes seen that argument made that as a Catholic Tolkien wd not have been that familiar with the Bible, which I've always thought an odd claim. But hearing this reference from Andrew, I realized that by finding out what sort of things wd have been on that 'Scriptural Knowledge' test we cd show at least a baseline.


XV. SING, MUSE, THE WRATH OF BOROMIR, DENETHOR's SON: THE WORKINGS OF THUMOS AND LOFGEORNOST IN JRRT by Dennis Wilson Wise makes the case for Boromir as a hero by presenting his words and deeds and beliefs in the best possible light. Feeling that the author has rather stacked the deck against Boromir,  D.W.W. uses the key terms thymos, lofgeornost, and ofermod to provide contexts for his behavior and parallels from classical and medieval (Old English) perspectives.


XVI. TOLKIEN'S CLASSICAL BEOWULF by Jane Chance, the founder of 'Tolkien at Kalamazoo', gave an intriguing piece on Tolkien's famous BEOWULF essay, focusing on his actual presentation of the lecture, in which a relatively young man attacked the conventional wisdom of his elder, distinguished colleagues. She also focuses in on Tolkien's election to the professorship at Oxford to provide context, and details specific scholars, some of them legends within the field (Ker, Craige, Chambers), whose considered opinions he was attacking -- some perhaps even to their faces (I strongly suspect Chambers was there that day in 1936). It wd be interesting to be able to get a sense of the room, of how they responded to his iconoclastic speech.

--more to come.

--John R.
--current reading: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS -- an enjoyable and informative read so far (I started with the next-to-last  chapter).

My Presentation at Kalamazoo (TOLKIEN'S METEORITE)

So, my own presentation for this year's Tolkien Seminar, held the day before the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, was a piece I call 'Tolkien's Meteorite'. This is a work in progress: I've finished the first and second parts (and Appendix) but the third section still needs more work. For those who might be interested, here's the three-paragraph opening that sets up the topic. The first section that follows looks at the evidence for dating the work. The second section contrasts Lewis's and Tolkien's treatment of their common theme. And part three looks at real-world and fictional analogues which might have inspired or influenced either.

Enjoy! Feedback welcome.

--John R.
--current job: proofing
--current reading: more essays by Martin Amis. Who's certainly no Christopher Hitchens.

Tolkien’s Meteorite

—A Preliminary Investigation—

In his fascinating but unfinished time-travel story, The Notion Club Papers, written circa 1944–46 but not published until 1992, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a passage in which the character based upon Tolkien himself^Nt1 describes the experience of a meteor falling to earth from the point of view of the meteorite itself through a kind of psychometry or object reading.

At about the same time his fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis wrote a meditation on a fallen meteorite which took the form of a poem simply named ‘The Meteorite’. Published in Time and Tide in December 1946, and probably newly written at the time, it was shortly thereafter reprinted as the headpiece to Lewis’s book Miracles (1947), and hence presumably was felt by Lewis to have some relevance to the theme of that work of apologetics.

It seems beyond happenstance that these two Inklings would be working on different expressions of such a striking common theme at about the same time with no connection between the two. What I’d like to do in this paper is explore the relationship between these two works, starting by seeing if we can establish priority of which was written first. It also behooves us to look for antecedents and analogues, both real-world and fictional, for any common source that might underlie both men’s work.

Back from Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo Day One)

Well, that was a busy week. In fact, I was so busy going to papers, prowling the book room, and having Tolkien discussions with Tolk folk that I didn't have time to blog about it as it was happening. To make up for that, here is the first of several posts covering highlights of the extended weekend.


WEDNESAY MAY 9TH: TOLKIEN DAY

The official Medieval Congress started on Thursday, but I flew in Tuesday in order to be on hand for the Tolkien Seminar, an independent event held just before the conference but not part of it. This was held off-campus in the basement of a local church and, I thought, went really well. There were ten presentations in all  scheduled for that first day:

I.  EOMER GETS POETIC: TOLKIEN'S ALLITERATIVE VERSECRAFT by Luke Baugher-Sheldon took a look at Tolkien's alliterative verse and suggested that he may have been the twentieth century's leading practitioner thereof (I think Auden might be most folk's first choice).

II.  THE CLOUD OF UNSEEING: MYTHS TRANSFORMED AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS by Kristine Larsen looks at nineteenth-century attempts to explain difficulties in the first chapter of GENESIS arising out of its description of Light (Day and Night: First Day) preceding the creation of the Sun and Moon (Fourth Day), comparing this with Tolkien's Myths Transformed in MORGOTH'S RING (HME.X). I found this particularly interesting because just a few days before I'd seen a documentary on Bill Nye (the Science Guy) in which a modern-day Creationist made much the same arguments she'd described from the better part of two centuries ago.


III.  LIKE YET UNLIKE: THE UNCANNY AND THE SODOMITIC IN TOLKIEN'S SARUMAN by Chris Vaccarro looked at Saruman's various sins (pride, anger, impatience), laying stress on various passages and phrases in the draft LotR that presented Saruman in a slightly better light and suggests he is capable of repentance, particularly one scene in which Merry's kind gesture sparks a genuine response. My favorite line was "the wish that the Wicked can be saved". I did find it slightly disconcerting that he pronounced 'Saruman' as if it were spelled 'Sodoman'.

IV. WHO IS MR. BLISS, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT KIND OF CONCERTINA IS HE PLAYING?: FILLING A MINOR LACUNA IN TOLKIEN STUDIES by Michael Wodzak was an informal but informative piece about two traditions regarding two different versions of this instrument, analogous to the fiddle and the violin: one a folk-instrument for home and local entertainment, the other part of the classical music tradition.

V.  Session V. was unfortunately cancelled; it wd have been about "the ring motif in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages".


after a quick break for lunch, the sessions resumed with my own presentation:

VI. TOLKIEN'S METEORITE: A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION by John D. Rateliff marked my own contribution to the gathering; more on this one in its own separate post. Thanks to Kristin Larsen I even had show and tell; she brought two small meteorites (one metallic, the other stoney) to pass around. And I brought a flake from a meteor from Mars.

VII. TOLKIEN ON 'HOLIDAY' by Andrew Higgins drew attention to the curious theme of how badly things tend to go in Middle-earth on special occasions (most notably the Fall of Gondolin and the earlier attack on the Two Trees). More generally, he looked at holidays, feast days, and celebrations. It made me wonder: isn't Fr. Christmas's point of view in an exactly inverse position to our own, since his day of work is our day of celebration?

VIII. THE GLISTENING OF DEW DROPS: TOLKIEN, HOPKINS, AND INSCAPE by Vickie Holtz-Wodzak suggested affinities between Hopkin's verse and JRRT's works. While I only know of one direct reference to Hopkins by Tolkien I think it quite likely T. knew at least some of H's work. And certainly there were Inklings connections: Ch Wms edited two major books by Hopkins and I'm pretty sure Ch Wms. brought his friend and co-worker Gerry Hopkins, the poet's nephew, as his guest to at least one Inklings meeting (though I haven't yet had time to hunt down the reference for that).

IX. THE TOLKIEN ART INDEX by Erik Mueller-Harder revealed a project of breaktaking scope I hadn't even known was in the works. It's basically a database with a little thumbnail of each known and published piece of art by JRRT, carefully indexed and cross-referenced so you can quickly search for a specific image, or grouping of images (for example, by typing in a search term such as 'trees'). It reminded me of Dr. Blackwelder's TOLKIEN PORTRAITURE  project years ago. Kudos to Mueller-Harder for having put in so much work to create and fine-tune such an amazingly useful resource.


X. MAIDENS OF MIDDLE-EARTH VIII: WOMEN OF THE EDAIN, performed by Eileen Moore, was this year's representative of 'TOLKIEN UNBOUND (which is sometimes dramatic readings, sometime musical performances)', but I missed it this year because I needed to be in the book room at that time, helping to set up the Nodens Books table.



--John R.

--current reading: a (disappointing) collection of essays by Martin Amis.

I'm at Kalamazoo

So, I'm now (a) at Kalamazoo and (b) have a wi-fi connection.

Yesterday's 'Tolkien Day' Seminar went well, and my own presentation seemed to go down okay.

Today's already off to a good start with an excellent morning session; in half an hour the afternoon sessions, which also look promising, kick off. I've already run into more Tolk folk than I have time to list here.

I'll post some quick descriptions of the various Tolkien-related presentations when I get a chance.

Meanwhile, it's time to go to the next session. More later

--John R.
curent reading: a most peculiar 'biography' of pulp hero Doc Savage by Philip Jose Farmer.

P.S.
I''ve already bought my first book of the conference, a volume of ARTHURIANA with an essay in it about the Lost Arthurian Plays of Elizabethean England. Who cd resist?

Getting ready for Kalamazoo

So, Wednesday I reached a milestone in my getting ready for this year's Kalamazoo: I finished the draft of my paper. Now all it needs is a little polishing to improve the phrasing, tighten up any loose ends, rework weak points in the argument, get the notes and bibliography in shape, &c. So it's finished but not Done.

Now comes preparation for the actual delivery. I practiced a read-aloud yesterday and found that it runs about twenty-three minutes, a little over the fifteen-to-twenty minute time slot available to me. So I've now come up with two variant shorter versions which I now need to time.

Bobo Shinn is still missing

Thanks to Pam, via Janice, for this link.

A sad but interesting update to  the cold case of the only person I've ever known who was murdered.

No one knows who killed her, nor where the body was hid.

At this distance in time, it's unlikely her remains will ever be found or her killer identified.

Here's the link.

http://www.fox16.com/news/state-news/missing-arkansas-woman-vanished-in-1978/1155020461

--John R.