The New Arrivals!

So, Friday brought some long-awaited arrivals: three boxes filled with four copies each of the new, improved, one-volume second edition of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT. These are my author's copies, mailed to me from Glasgow near the end of October; I assume they got delayed by all the holiday mail in-between. At over 5 kgs each,* they're a pretty hefty bundle.

Two are already spoken for, and the rest go on the smallish stack downstairs of my remaining copies of the first edition (the trade paperback version).

Horray!

--John R.

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Here's what Janice had to say about it, reposted from her Facebook:

Thump:

The sound of John's author copies of the 1 volume The History of the Hobbit arriving on the door step.

We've now got 13 hobbits. I wonder where we can find a dwarf to make up our lucky number?

*each box that is, not each book

There Once Were Two Cats from Kilkenny . . .

There's a Nobel Peace Prize in the offing for whoever can resolve this one:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/kitchenfloor-conflict-intensifies-as-rival-house-c,2384/

Oh, the humanity!

Thanks to Janice for sharing the link.

--John R.

current reading: Cerebus the Ardvark (scattered issues).

The Lost HOBBIT cartoon (1966)

So, here's a lost mathom: a twelve-minute cartoon version of THE HOBBIT slapped together by American animators forty-five years ago in order to fulfill a contractual obligation and keep their option on adapting Tolkien's book open.

That such a piece once existed was known, but I was not aware that the footage survived, much less had a chance to see it before.

I'll save commentary for a follow-up post: here's the film.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.337585-A-Long-Lost-Adaptation-of-The-Hobbit-Makes-Its-Way-Online

--JDR

Fifth Edition

So, today Wizards announced that work has now officially begun on Dungeon & Dragon's Fifth Edition.* Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Observation #1: Never thought I'd see the day when D&D news was reported in the NEW YORK TIMES, or FORBES (see below), or like venues. Like Tolkien's having become ubiquitous in our culture, it's a sign that D&D is now mainstream: so many millions of people grew up playing it that it's lost that weird scary outsider tinge that caused us all so much trouble back in the '80s.

Observation #2: My reservations about 4th edition -- which I tried to like but never cd warm to** -- turn out to have been pretty much universal. Having been given to understand from various quarters that I was a troglodyte if I didn't embrace 4e, it's surprising now to see in report after report that mine was the near-universal reaction, not the exception.

As for who'll be writing it, Wizards not only confirmed months of rumors that Monte Cook will be in charge of the project (a good choice!) but went ahead and announced the entire design team:

http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/01/09/welcome_to_the_group

So it's Monte Cook as lead designer, with Bruce Cordell (yay, Bruce!***) and Rob Schwab (whose work I don't really know, having postdated my time at Wizards). Also glad to hear Miranda Horner is the editor: I don't think they cd have made a better choice.

As for what the game will be like, Mike Mearls (who replaced Bill Slavicsek as head of the rpg group) is saying that it'll be a universal system that's adaptable to any previous edition -- something that sounds good in a pie-in-the-sky sense as a goal but which it's difficult to see how it'd work in practice. I think rather than saying it'll taste like Coke and New Coke and Classic Coke all at the same time, he's suggesting it'll be bottles of carbonated caramel-colored water wh you add yr preferred favorings to. That's not too far off from what 1st edition AD&D (the most popular version of the game ever published) was: a core rule set which people heavily adapted with their own 'house rules'. Seeing how they try to actualize that will make for a fascinating next six months.

Now I need to get signed up for one of those playtests . . .

And keep an eye out for Ewalt's book.

--John R.

*actually ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS' 5th edition, the fifth edition of D&D, by Troy Denning (the Black Box/Rules Cyclopedia set), having come out some twenty years ago.

**to the extent that I found myself giving up playing what'd been my favorite game for a quarter-century rather than play "4e", which just didn't feel like D&D. Compare similar reservations reported in the Forbes article about the 5 e announcement:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/01/09/wizards-announce-new-dungeons-and-dragons-an-inside-look-at-the-game/2/

***one thing I'm particularly proud of in my twenty-year off & on again rpg editing career is that I edited Bruce's first published adventure, THE GATES OF FIRESTORM PEAK. His work was outstanding, even then.

Have to say though I'm sorry to see from this that Wizards still has a Development Team, since it's long been the greatest impediment to their releasing top-quality product. Perhaps its role has evolved since I was there

ADDENDUM:

For more on the big news, cf. the following links. Thanks to Janice, who passed them along to me (along with the ones above), their having originally had been gathered by Miranda Horner:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/9329-Speak-Your-Mind-in-the-Next-Version-of-Dungeons-Dragons

http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/09/wizards-of-the-coasts-announces-new-edition-of-dungeons-and-dragons/

http://critical-hits.com/2012/01/09/new-edition-of-dungeons-dragons-announced/

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4ll%2F20120109

http://www.baldmangames.com/ddxpnews/2012/1/9/huge-ddxp-2012-updates.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/316069-wizards-coast-seeks-unity-new-edition.html

Riding the S.L.U.T.

So, this time we got the 'do something this month we've never done before' out of the way early. I have an appointment downtown later this week, in an area of Seattle I don't know v. well. That being the case, and given my ability to get lost when driving in unfamiliar neighborhoods,* we decided to scope out the route over the weekend, so that on the actual day I'll be less likely to take a wrong turn and show up late.

Since traffic is always uncertain, I'm going mass transit all the way. Most of the trip will be on the light rail (what I think of as the 'Orca', though that's really the name for the commuter pass to ride it), taking it from its southmost stop at SeaTac airport up to its current northernmost terminus** at WestLake station.

From there it was a short walk to the new streetcar, which I've never been on before. It reminded me v. much of those in Portland and also Minneapolis: v. nice. Not sure what they call it these days: the original name for this brainchild of billionaire Paul Allen was the South Lake Union Transit -- right up until the time they actually launched the thing and realized what the obvious acronym wd be. Now it's officially 'the S. Lake Union streetcar'.

Two stops later and I was at my destination, walking around to get a good sense of the streets leading up to it. In the course of which, I went inside a Whole Foods for the first time -- having seen this many times on TOP CHEF, it was amusing to finally enter one. Glad to report that they carry both Cheshire and Wensleydale, both of wh. I've had a hard time getting lately at my regular cheese shop down at Pike Place Market, though both highly overpriced.

From there, we walked down to the market, where we looked around for a bit and ended by having two cups of tea (Bailin Gongfu) at the crumpet place (v. nice!). Then it was back to the light rail, back to where we'd parked, and back home again for a quiet evening.

And now all's ready for the big event on Thursday: more about this later.

--John R.

current reading: THE CHINESE LAKE MURDERS by Rbt van Gulik [1960]

*not being able to read street signs till they're past plays a large role in this. I usually do lots of circling back once I realize I've passed my turn, but this is harder in a busy area with lots of one-way streets, like downtown.

**they're currently working to extend it north & east to the University District, wh. will be altogether a Good Thing; eventually it'll go all the way up to north Seattle. It wd have gone across the floating bridge to Bellevue as well, but the mayor who backed that plan didn't come into office until too late.

Tolkien's Application for War

So, yesterday Janice sent me a link to an interesting document now available online, courtesy of the National Archives: Tolkien's application to become an officer in World War I.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/people/p_tolkien_app.htm

It's chilling to see this form, knowing how many men who filled it out discovered later that it'd been an involuntary suicide letter, condemning them to a horrible death in an unnecessary war.

That aside, a few details do stand out, almost a century later, about how things were done back then:

First, that this was an application for a "temporary" commission, one to last only until the end of the war.

Second, the question about whether he cd ride a horse: a relic from an earlier day and a different kind of war.*

Third, the curious question (v. high up on the list) asking for assurance that he's "of pure European descent". I assume this requirement is to screen out 'half-castes', as they were called in those days -- British citizens who had a parent or grandparent among the colonial peoples the British had conquered and subjugated. I know that in such a deeply racist society as prewar (and postwar) Britain such folk faced all kinds of societal ostracizing, but had not realized their background precluded their serving as officers as well.

Still, a remarkable document. A good example of how context and foreknowledge affects the effect of what we read and see, how something as simple as a form letter can be weighted with sinister forboding when we know what all awaited him in the next few years.

--John R.

*though in point of fact being able to ride in training camp turned out to be just about the only thing Tolkien enjoyed about his military service.

UPDATE (Tues. Jan. 10th):

I hadn't realized that this link originated with Mike Foster, whom I shd have credited. Sorry Mike! --JDR

Tolkien's Style (Nobel, con't)

So, one point I wanted to follow up on in my previous post about the news of Tolkien's having been nominated (though obviously as a long shot*) for a Nobel Prize in literature was focusing in on the specific reason given for his rejection: literary critic Anders Osterling's judgment that Tolkien's prose did "not in any way measur[e] up to storytelling of the highest quality". David Bratman, in his comment on my original post, points out the difficulty involved in judging the prose style of a work in a foreign language. I don't know how members of the Swedish academy generally handle this -- it's unlikely they're all fluent in all the languages in which the major nominees write -- but I'd think they'd be wary of making stylistic judgments based on translations. Something worth finding out more about.

In any case, I don't think Osterling's charge shd pass unanswered. Even though made fifty years ago, its only being released now means that it'll soon be seized upon by Tolkien bashers as evidence that Tolkien's really not a literary figure but simply a pop-cultural phenomenon.**

Attacks on Tolkien's style are endemic, but oddly enough some of them come from people who are otherwise well-disposed to Tolkien's work, in the midst of essays which praise Tolkien and stress his importance as a writer, which is somewhat bizarre. Prime examples include Stephen Medcalf, whom I saw giving a major presentation in which he kept reading out loud individual sentences from LotR and saying how bad they were, as if it were self evident (neither I nor I think anyone else in the audience agreed). An early and influential example is Burton Raffel in his essay in Isaacs & Zimbardo (TOLKIEN & THE CRITICS, 1968) in which he pillories Tolkien's prose and suggests readers love this stuff purely because of the storytelling.

I don't know why Tolkien scholars have been so slow to challenging the Medcalfs and Raffels in their midsts, when they've been all too eager to take on clueless outsiders like Harold Bloom and Edmund Wilson. I've done what I cd in my recent articles, esp. the Marquette lecture that appeared in TOLKIEN STUDIES, "A Kind of Elvish Craft, Tolkien as Literary Craftsman", to argue that Tolkien is a v. careful stylist who deliberately weighed the effect of each word. The only person I know of who's made a spirited and detailed defense of Tolkien's style a major aspect of their work is Brian Rosebury in the two editions of his book (the first of which I greatly admire, the second of which I've only skimmed as yet). I hope there'll be more work along these lines, so that the Tolkien-bashers aren't met with silence or worse a half-grudging admission that one of the most widely read and obsessively re-read writers of our times really cdn't write v. well. Which is nonsense, pure and simple.

--John R.

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current reading: THE CHINESE LAKE MURDERS by Rbt Van Gulik

*does CSL's nominating him demonstrate that Lewis was prescient about a great writer in their midst who had not yet been recognized (which is how I'd like to take it) or simply prone to cronyism (which the evidence of the whole making Adam Fox Professor of Poetry and promoting his pad Ch. Wms as among the greatest poets of the century)? Or, perhaps, some mix of the two?

**there were no comments on the Guardian piece when I first read it, but later that same day there were a long string, and even a quick skim of a few showed the Tolkien-bashers were already out in force. Any popular author, or director, or actor, generates a crowd of anti-fans who delight to deprecate his or her work at any opportunity, and Tolkien is no exception.