The New Arrivals & The New Publications

So, in a few hours I leave on a two weeks' trip. And what shd arrive in today's mail? Not just the newest volume of TOLKIEN STUDIES (IX), but also the much-anticipated Tolkiendil journal, L'ARC ET LE HEAUME ('Le Mag de Tolkiendil').

Both of these include new publications by me, plus a lot of interesting pieces by others I'm looking forward to reading.

The Tolkiendil piece, "Un Fragment, detache: BILBO LE HOBBIT et LE SILMARILLION", is my examination of the relationship between THE HOBBIT and THE SILMARILLION, in which I weigh the evidence on both side and conclude that the former was always part of the legendarium.

And I'm in extremely good company, other authors including Shippey, Le Guin, Th. Honeger, Jason Fisher, Ted Naismith, and JRRT himself, as well as a number of authors whose names are new to me, and whom I'm looking forward to reading for that reason: Pantin, Sainton, Turlin, and Bellet.

Turning to the TOLKIEN STUDIES, this is a much slimmer volume than the last few, but that's not necess. a bad thing -- they'd started out about this size and then slowly been growing in thickness, volume by volume; this might represent scaling back a little. In addition to four articles, the Year's Work, and a "Bibliography for 2009" (is this a new feature?), there's the book review section, wh. contains my own modest contribution to this issue. There are only six reviews this time -- of Phelpstead's excellent book on TOLKIEN AND WALES (the Mythsoc's book-of-the-year), rev. by Marj. Burns; Dubs and Kascakova's MIDDLE-EARTH AND BEYOND: ESSAYS ON THE WORLD OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN, which I review; Liam Campbell's ECOLOGICAL AUGURY, rev. by Kristine Larsen; Jason Fisher's TOLKIEN AND THE STUDY OF HIS SOURCES (in which I have an essay), rev. by Paul Thomas; Jan & Phil's PICTURING TOLKIEN: ESSAYS ON PETER JACKSON'S LotR (in which I have an essay), rev. by Anne Petty; & Paul Kerry's volume THE RING & THE CROSS, probably the best book I've read on Tolkien and Xianity, rev. by Jonathan Evans.

So, between my review, and the review of my piece on Tolkien and Rider Haggard, and the review of my piece on Bombadil's omission from the films, quite a lot here. Which, alas, will have to wait until I get back from England.

More later

--John R.

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/

A New (Re-)Publication

So, a few weeks ago I got a query about giving permission for a piece of mine to be reprinted -- specifically, my article "A Kind of Elvish Craft: Tolkien as Literary Craftsman" from Volume VI of TOLKIEN STUDIES. This is new territory for me, so I consulted with a few people before saying yes. With the results that this essay is now due to appear in TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE CRITICISM towards the end of this year. For those who don't know this series (chances are there's a set down on the reference use-in-library-only shelves of your local university), here's the link to a description of it on the publisher's website:

http://www.gale.cengage.com/servlet/BrowseSeriesServlet?region=9&imprint=000&browseBy=series&titleCode=TCLC

I'll post a follow-up when it actually arrives; if anyone out there sees it before I do, I'd appreciate a head's up.

Woo-hoo.

--JDR

The New Arrival: TOLKIEN STUDIES VII

So, today's mail brought my copy of the newest volume of TOLKIEN STUDIES -- number seven in the series, and it continues to keep up the high standard of the whole run to date. This time the stand-out item is THE STORY OF KULLERVO, Tolkien's first piece of heroic/fantasy fiction: his own version of the Kullervo story out of the KALEVALA, along with his essay ON 'THE KALEVALA' OR THE LAND OF HEROES (two versions: both the manuscript draft and subsequent typescript). All of this edited by Verlyn Fleiger with Introduction and Notes. A major new contribution to Tolkien studies, and worth the price of the volume by itself.

Also here is a charming little contribution to Tolkien biography by John Garth, who has identified the child Tolkien refers to in ON FAIRY STORIES as dismissively scoffing at the idea of flower-fairies: he turns out to have been the little (half-)brother of Rob Gilson, one of Tolkien's closest friends.

The book review section also contains a major piece: a thirty-page review-essay on SIGURD & GUDRUN by T. A. Shippey (who better?).

I'm also particularly pleased with this issue for two other reasons. For one thing, it contains two reviews by me -- one of Mark Hooker's THE HOBBITONIAN ANTHOLOGY (p. 330-335) and the other of J. S. Ryan's TOLKIEN'S VIEW: WINDOWS INTO HIS WORLD (p. 340-345). For another, this time around David Bratman's ever-impressive annual survey of everything of significance written about Tolkien, "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies" has gotten up to 2007, and thus includes mentions of MR. BAGGINS & RETURN TO BAG-END. In fact, my book gets two mentions.

First, in his introduction giving an overview of the year's corpus, he follows up a mention of Shippey's ROOTS & BRANCHES collection with a paragraph about "long awaited" works by myself and Diana Pavlac Glyer (both of which were in-process since the early nineties). He calls THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT and THE COMPANY THEY KEEP "the keystone works of 2007's scholarship", saying that mine is "highly welcome after the long wait" and notes that both won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award (in Inkling Studies): hers in 2008 and mine in 2009. (TS.VII.348)

Then, two pages later, he devotes pretty much a full page to THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, noting that while it's my name on the title page the book "is every bit as much a work by J. R. R. Tolkien as is THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH" -- which is absolutely true. In fact, I went back and forth so much about whether or not Taum Santoski's name shd appear with mine on the front cover (e.g., perhaps as "with the assistance of Taum Santoski") that the obvious question of putting JRRT's name up there first simply never came up. Most of David's paragraph is a succinct description of my book's contents (trust a bibliographer for being able to convey a lot of information clearly in a short space), but when I read his last line my head started swelling to the extent that I might have to get a new hat. He says of the mini-essays that I add throughout the book following each chapter: "Each of some fifty essays by Rateliff would make a major research paper on its own." I certainly put as much work, both research and writing, as for a full-fledged essay into each (one reason the book took me so long to finish!). In the end, I find my work keeps coming back to my favorite mantra from Keats: "load every rift with ore".

And all this isn't even taking into account the first half of this volume of TOLKIEN STUDIES, with ten essays from scholars both well-known, like Kristine Larsen, and others whose work is new to me, like Vladimir Brljak and Sherrylyn Branchaw. I haven't had a chance to read any of these yet, but once again looks like this volume will be full of good things. Congratulations to its editors.

--John R.

current reading: CROW PLANET by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

current audiobook: KING JAMES BIBLE (2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah

UPDATE 9/7-10:

corrected

Vladimir Brijak to Vladimir Brljak

and Sherrylun Branchaw to Sherrylyn Branchaw,

thus inadvertently reinforcing the point that these scholar's names were new to me.

my apologies for the errors; thanks to Merlin for spotting the slips. --JDR

The New Arrivals: TOLKIEN STUDIES VI

So, today Hastur was sitting peacefully in my lap -- a rare occurrance -- when she suddenly sat up and growled. I looked out and, sure enough, a Post Office van had just pulled up outside in our driveway (there's no visitor-detecter as good as a nervous cat). By the time I'd gotten disentangled and all the way downstairs and out to the porch, the mail-carrier was gone, but she'd left behind two promising book-shaped parcels.

One, which came all the way from Belgium (first time I've ever ordered a book from Belgium, I think) is Andrew Warn's CONSTRUCTING NATIONS, RECONSTUCTING MYTHS -- the T. A. Shippey festschrift and the last of the books I ordered at Kalamazoo. This is a non-Tolkien-themed volume which focuses instead on 19th century philology, with what look to be interesting essays on MacPherson's OSSIAN and The Four Branches of THE MABINOGI and of course Grimm, and titles like "How Elvish Were the Alfar?" and "What is 'Middle-Earth'?: Origin, Evolution, and Mythic Function". The latter, by Paul Battles, looks to be one of the two in the collection devoted in whole or part to Tolkienian themes, the other being the always interesting Jonathan Evans' "Worter, Sachen, und Wahrheit: Philology and the Tree of Language in Tolkien".


It's the other new arrival, however, that's captured my attention, since I have the lead article in this year's TOLKIEN STUDIES: "A Kind of Elvish Craft: J. R. R. Tolkien as Literary Craftsman". It's a great honor to appear in Tolkien Studies at last, and as the lead piece, complete with a John Rateliff Checklist of my scholarly works. This is the written version of the speech I gave at Marquette back in October 2007 as that year's Blackwelder Lecture, and I'm glad to see it in print** to see what folks make of my argument (that Tolkien deliberately crafted his style to evoke participation in the subcreation on his readers' part). I also make a case for Tolkien's prose being so interwoven and carefully constructed that it's difficult to change any detail without unintended consequences somewhere down the line -- something I've more recently been looking at in another piece (just finished) on the various films and radio adaptations. And of course I love seeing a page from the HOBBIT manuscript on the front cover of this year's volume, thanks to Marquette and the Estate.

Actually, I'm in this issue of TOLKIEN STUDIES twice, since I wrote a review (of the Walking Tree Press collection TOLKIEN'S SHORTER WORKS, this topic having been a longstanding interest of mine*) as well. Looking over both pieces now, there are passages I like, places where I'd tinker with the wording a bit, a comment there I'd moderate, a point here I'd emphasize -- but on the whole I'm relieved to find I'd essentially say the same thing if I were writing it today.

So, if you come across and read this, let me know what you think.

---JDR

*cf. my contribution years ago to the Tolkien Society's little volume LEAVES FROM THE TREE

**I understand it's been available online through Project Muse for about two weeks, but I don't have access to that -- and, besides, there's great satisfaction in getting an actual copy of something you wrote in print and making a new place for it on your shelves.