A Parting of the Ways

So, now it's official: Doug Anderson is no longer Review Editor for TOLKIEN STUDIES, starting with Vol. IX. I'd heard this a few weeks ago, but now it seems he's also leaving the editorial board as one of the three guiding lights for the journal as a whole. Sorry to hear it. Doug's posted the official word on the whys and wherefores on his blog; here's the link.

http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/04/publishing-mordor-style.html

The comments are well worth reading too --it's rather horrifying to read that a library can pay $40,000 as subscription for a single major academic journal. I knew things were bad back in my Marquette days in terms of how many journals a college library had to buy, and how much they were charged; they've clearly only gotten worse during the intervening years.

For an independent scholar like myself, it's tantalizing to know there's so much available on Project Muse (a site which comes up rather often when I'm doing research for a specific article), and yet it's inaccessible to those of us not affiliated with a university. And it was rather startling, a year or two back, to find that a book review I'd written for MYTHLORE was available from amazon.com at $9.95.

In any case, here's best wishes to Doug in his new venture at Nodens Books (the first release from which I ordered a few days ago*). And also good wishes to the remaining editors at TOLKIEN STUDIES for carrying on the good work there. Eight volumes are a record to be proud of, and I look forward to the more to come.

Times change. Good work remains.

--John R.

just finished: THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD (#II.2995)

currently reading: THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP

*http://www.nodensbooks.com/

Illustrating the Hobbit

So, one of the great things about being a guest of honor at the recent LEOCON I in Commerce, Texas was that I got to attend the presentations of my fellow speakers, and see Doug Anderson's slide-show* of HOBBIT art. I'd seen this twice before, most recently when the second edition of his superb ANNOTATED HOBBIT came out in 2002. But it's an ever-evolving presentation: there were pieces he showed that were new to me, as well as old ones I'd forgotten and many more I'm simply happy to see again.

One of the newer features was the inclusion of Maurice Sendak's sample illustration from the mid-sixties, at a point when he was mooted to produce an illustrated edition (that ultimately came to naught, aside from this one piece),** and he also mentioned a Frazetta HOBBIT piece I hadn't heard of before.*** It's fascinating to see different artists' interpretations, yet I agree with Doug that Tolkien himself is the best illustrator of his own works.

Afterwards, I had a question. If you could have anyone illustrate THE HOBBIT, who would it be? It has to be an artist who was actually alive at the time and theoretically could have done the job -- i.e., not Tenniel or Van Gough, who both died long before the book was published, but someone like Mucha (d.1939) or B. Potter (d. 1943) wd be fair game.

Doug, when I put the query to him, had an inspired choice: S. H. Sime doing Mirkwood. I can't compete with that choice, but after mulling if over a while I opted for Edward Gorey as someone who wd do an interesting, distinctive, and yet somehow possibly get-it-right set of illustrations. As a back-up, it'd have been fun to see what Tolkien's world wd have looked like as illustrated by Hugh Lofting.

So, if you cd pick anyone to illustrate THE HOBBIT, who wd it be?

--John R.

*although, as I think he observed in these days of no more actual slides, it'd probably more properly be called 'a multi-media presentation'. For me, who still dials a phone, 'slide show' will still do.

**cf. my earlier blog post about this one,

http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/sendaks-hobbit.html

***here's the link to a handful of Frazetta Tolkien designs; I think he showed us the one of Gollum paddling his boat with his great big-toed feet. http://frankfrazetta.org/tolkien0001.php

I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one more years back at The Tolkien Shop's online site, but it was of Gandalf & the Three Walkers meeting with King Theoden at Edoras.

Doug's New Tolkien Blog

So, one great piece of news for Tolkien fans and scholars is that Doug Anderson has just launched a new Tolkien blog, called TOLKIEN AND FANTASY.

Doug already has one blog going that he contributes to, WORMWOODIANA, but this is a collaborative blog and he's one of several (three or so) people who posts there on a fairly regular basis. While a lot of interesting things show up on Wormwoodiana, making it someplace I enjoy checking every few days, the focus is wider than my own interests, including a lot of horror and a surprising emphasis on early twentieth century publication of horror fiction in Australia.

Now he's branched out and started a new Tolkien-centric blog all his own: TOLKIEN & FANTASY -- the first two posts of which list the contents of the forthcoming volume (VIII) of TOLKIEN STUDIES and news of the new Paul Thomas edition of E. R. Eddison's saga STYRBIORN THE STRONG [1926].* The latter has been far too hard to find for far too long; while not as weird and wonderful and wonky as THE WORM OUROBOROS it's pure E.R.E. and shows just what an Icelandic saga written in the earlier twentieth century would look like. Plus, of course, Paul is a great editor and I always enjoy his introductions and notes.

Here's the link:

http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/

Wormwoodia itself has just posted one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen there. Ever wondered what R. W. Chambers' own drawing of The King in Yellow himself would look like? Wonder no more: a publicity poster from the time of the book's first publication [1895], part of the Forrie J. Ackerman collection. What's more, it turns out part of that design was used for the old Ace Books edition's cover, which I had a copy of once long ago but no more. Here's that link as well:

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2011/05/robert-w-chamberss-artwork-for-king-in.html

So, good stuff, and I expect that much more good stuff will follow. This new blog's debut is definitely a good day for Tolkien studies.

--John R.

current reading: WATERSHIP DOWN

*I have a copy of the original edition of this (bought, in all places, in Bibliomaniacs, a great little used bookstore in downtown Delavan Wisconsin), but then I've read all of Eddison, including POEMS, LETTERS, AND MEMORIES OF PHILIP SIDNEY NAIRN [1916] and the unpublished juvenalia in the Bodley.