The Northmoor Road Project

 So, just as C. S. Lewis's home, The Kilns, has in recent years been turned into a residential hall and study center devoted to preserving the Lewis brothers' legacy, now it's Tolkien's turn:

https://www.projectnorthmoor.org

The idea of Tolkien's house being preserved is encouraging. And who wdn't want to have the opportunity to attend "a programme of retreats, writing seminars and other cultural events", either onsite or online?

The fear of course is that they'll go too cutesy, of which there are some hints in the initial announcement  (e.g. build yr own hobbit-hole in the garden). Though Tolkien himself might approve of the garden (yard) being restored (though it looks quite nice as is from the glimpses offered in the various views accompanying the online stories).

programme of retreats, writing seminars and other cultural events, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/03/campaign-to-buy-jrr-tolkien-house-backed-by-lord-of-the-rings-actors-ian-mckellen-martin-freeman

I was a little surprised that of the dozen people who show up in the promo film embedded in the link above I recognized only five: McKellan, Rhys-Davies, Freeman, Jacobi, and Lennox. The other seven I don't know, though the last of them seems to be children's author Julia Golding, who seems to be the driving force behind the project.

Also, I don't do much crowdsourcing (just the occasional Kickstarter), but isn't it unusual for a crowdsourcing project that doesn't make its goal to just keep what money they do raise? 

https://people.com/home/lord-of-the-rings-stars-quest-to-save-the-home-of-author-jrr-tolkien/?fbclid=IwAR2KeIoLb1exwugJBB000iRn1c5nfzHyBh1vwejhNupf8R4IplIkXt-8X8E

Thanks to Janice for the link.

--John R.

The New Tolkien

So, it's now been officially announced that the next book by Tolkien (that is, the next book of new material by JRRT) will be out in June:

THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH, edited by Carl Hostetter (co-editor of TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM).

 The write-up on Amazon doesn't have much information yet, other than that the book is 400 pages and the official release date June 1st.

I gather that this book draws from the period when Tolkien had largely abandoned  or set aside work on his various narratives and was shifting more and more into world-building.  Or to put it another way, rather than a grand narrative here we'll be seeing Tolkien's attempt to set down as much as he cd about Middle-earth. 

I suspect it'll feel rather like LETTERS, where he addressed so many queries from his readers. For those of us who came along too late to write to the Professor and pose questions ourselves, this book just might contain the answers to things we've always wanted to know. 

In short, not a book for the casual fan, but it promises to be full of good things for those of us who want to know all we can about Tolkien's subcreated world. Congratulations to Carl for bringing all this disparate material together. 

I've already pre-ordered my copy.

--John R.

P.S.: Here's the announcement of the news in THE GUARDIAN:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/19/jrr-tolkien-the-nature-of-middle-earth-published-june-2021

The Lindsay Event (Glasgow)

So, today was the long-awaited Centenary Seminar in honor of David Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920). The timing wasn't too bad for an overseas event eight time zones away: 6pm Greenwich time and 10 am out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Dimitra Fimi was host and moderator and did a good job setting things up and then moderating the Q&A at the end. 

Of the three speakers, independent scholar Doug Anderson gave a fact-filled overview of Lindsay's life and writing career --a good thing to have if you're new to Lindsay and for those who know some  helpful for clearing up various mistakes in previous accounts. My favorite new fact I learned: J. R. R. Tolkien owned three copies of A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS: one of the 1920 original, one of the 1946 reprint just after Lindsay's death, and one from the 1963 edition that more or less marked  the point at which Lindsay's work came to be more widely known.

Novelist Nina Allan, whose THE RIFT contains some Arcturan echoes, discussed Lindsay's legacy to his fellow science fiction writers. I think my major takeaways from this was inherent in the realization of this being the centenary, that VtA came out at a mid-point between the early days of Verne/Wells and the classic era of science fiction in the 1930s.

Finally Professor Rbt Davis compared Lindsay's work with various theological thinkers and schools of thought, particularly Gnosticism. He quoted a v. interesting passage from a letter he'd received from Philip Pullman regarding both what Pullman sees as Gnostic affinities in his work (the evil imposter-god) and his greatest departure therefrom (Pullman's celebration of the natural world as good, not evil).

Quite a lot of interesting material within a short space, well worth watching.

For those who cdn't make the live event, they've put footage of the presentations up on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6HpKWSLuBM

--John R.