The New Arrivals

So, yesterday brought a new book by Tolkien -- sort of.

At Kalamazoo I heard the news that Michael Drout's book BEOWULF AND THE CRITICS, the draft versions of JRRT's famous essay THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS, was going into a second edition. They didn't have copies for sale at the event (or if they did, these were already gone), but I was able to pre-order it at the conference discount -- which, considering that this is a 58$ book, makes a difference. And yesterday there it was, waiting on the doorstep. No time to look through it yet, but glad to have this; it'll definitely come in handy for future reference somewhere down the line. And it's a handsome volume, too: a nice leather-brown instead of the white of the first edition.

And Saturday had brought treasures of its own, with the arrival of the latest MALLORN (along with AMON HEN). Again haven't had time to read this yet, but pleased to see a review of TOLKIEN AND HIS SOURCES, including my essay, got a favorable review: it's always gratifying when a reviewer's comments shows that the idea you were trying to convey got across.*

Quite beyond that personal connection on my part, the issue as a whole looks good too: the lead article is by Kristen Larsen, who's made quite a name for herself as the Tolkien astronomer through a string of interesting pieces over the last few years.** There's also a piece on Tolkien's not getting the Nobel, on why Tolkien was called 'Reuel', and on time-travel parallels in other authors to Tolkien's own time-travel stories. Plus of course another half-dozen reviews besides the one that immediately drew my attention. All in all, looks like good issue.

And, perhaps best of all, Wednesday had brought a whole new book about Tolkien's work, about which more later.

--John R.

*and, conversely, discouraging when this is not the case, as in a review of my 2004 Blackwelder essay, alas.

**to my chagrin, she told me at Kalamazoo last year that there was an error in the moon-phases I'd printed as part of The 1960 Hobbit in RETURN TO BAG-END -- or, rather, that Tolkien had made an error and I'd not caught it. I've tried to fix this in the new revised one-volume edition, but given that I refer to these entangled chronologies and timelines as "the section that broke my brain", let's hope I got it right this time around.

Ents & Clarinets

So, the day before yesterday a batch of back issues of MALLORN arrived. It'll be a while before I have time to sit down and read them properly, but I have begun browsing, starting with the reviews of the first installment of the Peter Jackson movies (MALLORN 40, Nov. 2002). Rather surprising to see balanced, mostly positive comments, some of them from people who went on to become harsh critics of the whole series. It'll be interesting to trace the evolution of their stances through the next two issues, which respectively cover the second and third installments of the film.

One article did catch my attention, because one aspect of it hinged upon a point in THE HOBBIT, and not surprisingly THE HOBBIT rather dominates my mind these days. In "Treebeard's Voice" (volume 40, page 28), John Ellison goes beyond the obvious that the ent sounds like a woodwind (as stated in LotR itself) and asks what kind of woodwind. In passing, he makes the (to me) interesting point that the clarinets Bifur and Bofur bring to Bag-End are anachronistic, since these are 18th-century instruments. I should have remembered that, since I'm a clarinet player myself (or was, back in junior high and high school--I actually had a band scholarship my first year in college), and commented on it in my discussion of the anachronisms (real and perceived) in that chapter.

As for what Treebeard sounds like, if C. S. Lewis's claim that he was the model for Treebeard's voice is true, then the old ent sounds like Sean Connery impersonating Alfred Hitchcock -- at least that's what CSL's voice sounds like on the surviving tapes I've heard (THE FOUR LOVES, his inaugural lecture, his talk on Bunyan, &c). It certainly does give me a whole new perspective on one of my favorite characters.


--JDR

current reading: BEHIND THAT CURTAIN by Earl Derr Biggers [1928]