A Silmarillion Ring?

So, sometimes bits and pieces of British and American fantasy and/or horror can wind up in anime, sometimes in unusual ways --as in the final episode of of the PRINCESS RESURRECTION manga, where two minor characters are shown having tea in a cafe with a Lovecraft-themed name. Or in the latest of the BOOK GIRL novels, where the main character has a dream about the Book Girl turning into Dagon. As I said, odd. And that's not even taking into account the schoolgirl/harem series about Nyarlathotep.

That said, one of the strangest came up recently in a little one-off called Little Witch Academia, a sort of TWEENY WITCHES revisited.

The Tolkien reference comes the 10.19 point, not quite the half-way mark. Some student witches are exploring a labyrinth beneath the witch-school, with whichever witch who brings back the best loot before the deadline winning. One team is far in the lead, having already found

"a mithril mail, a galvorn knife, even a silmarillion ring"

Mithril mail is pure Tolkien -- we even know they got it direct and not via DandD because hey, they spelled it right.

Galvorn knife I didn't catch, and assumed it was something from some video game. My bad; looking it up, I see it's Tolkienian as well, this being the black metal Eol made. No one can remember every detail, but guess it's time I re-read the SILMARILLION again.

The 'Silmarillion ring' is interesting, because they seem to have a Ring of Power mixed up with a Silmaril. I hate to think what the power of uniting a Silmaril with a Ring of Power wd have been, so I'm glad it only occurs as a throwaway line in an anime. It does give the whole passage a sort of 'throw things at the wall in a jumble' sort of fell, though.


Anyhow, the show is amusing fluff; here's the clip, if you'd like to see it for yourself. Thanks to Janice for the link):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RBlqxEIJ_Cg#!

--JDR

A Tale of Two Spocks

So, thanks to Janice for this one -- a film short contrasting Nimoy with The New Guy.

The moment of truth comes a minute and eleven seconds (1.11) into the clip.

Thought for a moment the guy who got out of the third car at the end was going to be Shatner, but that might have been one joke too many.

Enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs&feature=youtu.be

Kalamazoo 2013 (schedule)

Not sure if I've posted this before, but if so no harm in doing so again: here's the schedule of Tolkien-related events at this year's Medieval Congress, put together by Doug Anderson from the program book (thanks Doug). Today is set-up and check in; events start tomorrow. As you can see, the Tolkien events this year are heavily skewed to the first two days of the conference (Thursday/Friday), with my own bit being Friday afternoon. There are also some Lewis events, but unfortunately those are largely focused on the least interesting part of his work (Narnia). Here's the listing:

Kalamazoo 9-12 May 2013

Wednesday May 8

Noon Registration begins, Eldridge-Fox lobby

Set-up Exhibits Hall, Goldsworth Valley III

Thursday May 9

Exhibits Hall, Goldsworth Valley III  Thursday: 8:00 a.m.–6:30 p.m.

10.00 AM    FETZER 1045 

Tolkien as Medieval Scholar     Presider: Brad Eden

“And they are making songs about him from here to the sea”: Samwise Gamgee

as Medieval English Yeoman     Leigh Smith, East Stroudsburg Univ.

A Historiology for England: Tolkien on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

John R. Holmes, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville

Music of the Ainu, Music of the Spheres: Tolkien and Cosmic Harmonies

Janice M. Bogstad, Univ. of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

Tolkien’s Poetic Scholarship: Old English Meter and Modern Poetry

Anna Smol, Mount St. Vincent Univ.

Tolkien as a Celticist: Views of a “Curtain Raiser” of the O’Donnell Lecture Series

Yoko Hemmi, Keio Univ.

1.30   SCHNEIDER  1280

In Honor of Verlyn Flieger: The State of Tolkien Scholarship (A Panel Discussion)

Presider: Amy Amendt-Raduege, Whatcom Community College

The Geek and the Scholar: Standing Pointy Ear to Mortarboard

Thom Foy, Independent Scholar

Splintered Light and Word: Tolkien’s Myth, Philology, and Faith

Edward L. Risden, St. Norbert College

Whose Myth Is It? Tolkien Scholarship as Interdisciplinary Studies

Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ.

The Tolkien Scholarship Project

Robin Anne Reid, Texas A&M Univ.–Commerce

Saruman’s Coat of Many Colors: Tolkien’s Exploration of Medieval Theories of

Light  Michael Wodzak, and Vickie Holtz-Wodzak, Viterbo Univ.

3.30   SCHNEIDER  1280

Tolkien and Alterity: In Honor of Jane Chance

Presider: Christopher T. Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont

Medieval Organicism or Modern Feminist Science? Bombadil, Elves, and

Mother Nature  Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ.

The State of Tolkien and Alterity Scholarship

Robin Anne Reid, Texas A&M Univ.–Commerce

Language and Alterity in Tolkien

Deidre Dawson, Michigan State Univ.

The Alterior Motive: Patterns of Difference and Otherness in Tolkien’s World

Jared Lobdell, Independent Scholar

7.30 SCHNEIDER 1280

Art and Music of The Hobbit

Presider: Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State Univ.

A Game of Tolkien

Ed Ouellette, Air Univ.

Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: From Children’s Story to Epic Film

Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College

Songs of Peril in The Hobbit

Laura Smith, Signum Univ.

Sub-creation in Action: Music Inspired by The Hobbit

Brad Eden

Friday May 10

Exhibits Hall, Goldsworth Valley III  Friday: 8:00 a.m.–6:30 p.m.

1.30 VALLEY  I   104

Women in Tolkien’s Professional Life

Presider: Yvette Kisor, Ramapo College

“Professor d’Ardenne of Liège has arrived to harrass me with philological

work”: Simonne d’Ardenne as Student, Collaborator, Translator, and Friend of

J. R. R. Tolkien

Douglas A. Anderson, Independent Scholar

The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lifelong Support for Women’s Higher

Education

John D. Rateliff, Independent Scholar

1.30  SCHNEIDER 1155

In Honor of Marcia Marzec: Papers by Undergraduates I

Presider: Katherine McMahon

2nd of 4 papers

The Eorl That Could Have Been: Theoden as Tolkien’s Answer to Beorhtnoth’s

Ofermod

Colin Pajda, St. Louis Univ.

3.30  SCHNEIDER 1220

Queer Tolkien

Sponsor: Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages (SSHMA);

Tolkien at Kalamazoo

Presider: Graham N. Drake

Niggle, Smith, and Giles: Medieval as Queer

Stephen Yandell, Xavier Univ.

To All Elf-Friends and Wizard’s-Pupils: “It gets better”: Medieval and Modern

Categories of the Queer in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

Christopher T. Vaccaro, Univ. of Vermont

Respondent: Jane Chance, Rice Univ.

7.30  FETZER 1045

Tolkien Unbound (Performances) Fetzer 1045

Presider: Robin Anne Reid, Texas A&M Univ.–Commerce

Maidens of Middle-earth: The Silmarillion

Eileen Marie Moore, Cleveland State Univ.

The Waking of Angantyr: A Poetic Drama (Text by

Deborah C. Rogers) based on an Old Norse Saga,

Performed with the Assistance of the Western

Michigan University Department of Theatre

Richard C. West, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison

Saturday May 11

Exhibits Hall, Goldsworth Valley III  Saturday: 8:00 a.m.–6:30 p.m.

12.00 BERNHARD 211

Tolkien at Kalamazoo Business meeting

Sunday May 12

Exhibits Hall, Goldsworth Valley III  Sunday: 8:00 a.m.–12:00 noon

8.30 AM  SCHNEIDER 1120

Tales after Tolkien: Medievalism and Twenty-First-Century Fantasy Literature I

Presider: Carol L. Robinson, Kent State Univ.–Trumbull

Refracted Romance: Re-visioning the Grail Legend in Catherine Fisher’s Corbenic

Molly Brown, Univ. of Pretoria

George R. R. Martin’s Quest for Realism in A Song of Ice and Fire

Shiloh R. Carroll, Middle Tennessee State Univ.

Androgynes, Crossdressers, and Rebel Queens: Modern Representations of

Medieval Women Warriors from Tolkien to Martin

Rachael Mueller, Catholic Univ. of America

The Meaning of the Middle Ages: Fans, Authors, and Industry

Helen Young

10.30 SCHNEIDER 1120

Tales after Tolkien: Medievalism and Twenty-First-Century Fantasy Literature II

Presider: Douglas A. Anderson, Independent Scholar

Pratchett’s The Last Continent and Nominalist Questions

Jay Ruud, Univ. of Central Arkansas

A Divergent Medievalism in Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man Trilogy

Geoffrey B. Elliott, Technical Career Institutes

Black and Liminal in Camelot

Kris Swank, Mythgard Institute

The Hunger Games: Reinterpretation of a Medieval Quest Narrative

Stephanie A. Amsell, Southern Methodist Univ.

Monday May 13

disperse . . . 

--JDR

Arrivals

So, I shd have noted the arrival of the new biography of Father Francis Morgan, which arrived on the 18th. But I've been so busy getting ready for Kalamazoo after losing a week to the cat-bite incident that posts have lagged behind. So let me just quickly note some new arrivals/purchases of interest:

 LA CONEXION ESPANOLA DE J. R. R. TOLKIEN. This looks to be an interesting and consequential book, but I'll have to brush up my long-rusty Spanish to be able to make any headway into it at all. Once I get back I'll try to post a list of chapter titles/topics, the better for folks to see what the book covers.

The second of the two WETA WORKSHOP making-of-the-film books. The first was much more interesting than I expected, so I'm looking forward to making my way through this one too at some point.

3-MINUTE TOLKIEN, by Gary Raymond [2012]. I heard about this one recently on the MythSoc list, and saw that Wayne and Christina have weighed it and found it wanting. Looking through the 'bargain books' (remaindered) shelves at Barnes & Noble turned up a small stack of them (as well as the Tolkien Trivia book I blogged about a while back and the David Day). Thought it'd make for light reading on the plane (varied with re-watching the Peter Jackson HOBBIT). I'm about half-way through, so I'll hold off comment for now.

And finally something really weird: a coffee-table biography of H. P. Lovecraft by S. T. Joshi. I shd have thought HPL the last author to lend himself to such treatment, and Joshi the last scholar to have his work come out in that format. Live and learn.

And so it goes on the eve of the medieval congress, where I'll no doubt find some interesting books I never heard of while looking and failing to find several I'd like to pick up. The book room at Kalamazoo never disappoints, but it's capricious in its discoveries. We'll see what it yields up this year.

--John R.,
in Kalamazoo,
the night before the day before.
(the biggest 'arrival' being myself, at Kalamazoo, completed draft of my paper* in hand)

*8000 words

Perhaps She's On To Us . . .

So, I've been buried the past week trying to finish my paper for Kalamazoo, and finally finished the draft today. It ran long (8,000 words), so the next task is to abridge it for oral presentation.

In the meantime, here's an amusing passage I came across while researching the piece that I thought I'd share:

"Miss Rogers . . . postponed the compilation of her history Degrees by Degrees, which friends and relatives put together from her papers after her death. Perhaps she resembled other dons, both at Oxford and elsewhere, whose high standard of perfection prevents them from ever bringing a work to completion, and thus compels lesser men and women to confront the accusations of superficiality, inaccuracy, and prejudice which publication normally brings. Silence alone preserves the legend of impeccability and omniscience . . . "

--Vera Brittain, THE WOMEN AT OXFORD: A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY [1960], p. 193.


current reading: NO FOR AN ANSWER (Philip Larkin), THE MIRROR OF KO HONG (Ernest Bramah)

E. M. Forster and C. S. Lewis (SCREWTAPE)

So, a few weeks back (W.4/10) I came across an interesting conjunction between two figures we usually think of as inhabiting different worlds: C. S. Lewis and E. M. Forster. Today Morgan Forster is remembered for his associations with the Bloomsbury Group (as a welcome visitor rather than a core member) and for his epic writer's block -- he wrote four novels between 1905 and 1910, then emerged from silence in 1924 with a fifth; his sixth appeared posthumously almost half a century later, in 1970. But despite his scanty output he was one of the great novelist of his time and cast a long shadow over the early twentieth century --for example, his influence is obvious on Barfield's ENGLISH PEOPLE [1930] and Tolkien's LOST ROAD [circa 1936].

Although Forster ceased writing fiction, he continued to write essays. And he made many radio broadcasts, some have now been transcribed, collected, and published, in THE BBC TALKS OF E. M. FORSTER 1929-1960: A Selected Edition, ed. Mary Lago, Linda K. Hughes, and Elizabeth Macleod Walls [2008]. And, in one particular talk ("Some Books": W. Feb. 3rd 1943; pp.222-226), he discussed C. S. Lewis's new book, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS:

"What's wrong with the world? Three out of four books I'm mentioning try to answer this question. Something is wrong with a war every twenty-five years, national and communal and racial hatred, frightened individuals, people starving in one place while food is being destroyed in another. If we listen to the past we can, as it were, hear that same ugly tune of human failure played quietly. Today it is being played fortissimo, and it is often difficult to listen to anything else. So it is natural that three out of these four books should deal with the question.

  You've probably noticed in books -- and in yourself -- two tendencies. Sometimes when you ask yourself what's wrong with the world, you answer 'It wants reorganising economically. When a basic standard of physical comfort has been achieved, the rest will follow'. And this is the attitude of Mr. Mulk Raj Anand in his "Letters on India", one of the books on my list. At other times you'll answer, 'No it wants a change of heart. When we become different -- and better -- as individuals, then the rest will follow'. That is the attitude of Mr. Gerald Heard, a practising mystic, and a pacifist, in his new book "Man the Master". And a change of heart is also demanded by an orthodox Christian writer, Mr. C. S. Lewis, in his "The Screwtape Letters". Mr. Heard and Mr. Lewis have very little in common. But they both take hold of the psychological end of the stick, as opposed to Mr. Anand who takes hold of the economic end. Which end do you take hold of yourself?

   I will take Mr. C. S. Lewis first. He is an Oxford don, and a layman of the Church of England, and he writes to justify the Christian point of view, and to give the Christian interpretation of what's wrong with the world. Sin is what's wrong, wars and starvation being only a consequence, and although the Creator of mankind is good and omnipotent, men sin because he chose to give them free will, and because they choose to make a wrong use of that will. Mr. Lewis attacks these mysteries in an interesting book called "The Problem of Pain" which I've also been reading, but I won't talk about it here. I will confine myself to a much livelier work, "The Screwtape Letters". But besides being a theologian, Mr. Lewis is as clever as they make 'em, if I may use the expression. He is witty and ingenious, and sometimes recalls the late G. K. Chesterton, though he hasn't Chesterton's robustness. Here is a book of his "The Screwtape Letters" which purport to be written by a devil called Screwtape who has rather a good position in an underground office, and writes weekly to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is on earth, in charge of a mortal, and being young and inexperienced is constantly making mistakes, and driving his patient toward righteousness instead of the reverse direction. Screwtape advises him on each occasion, for instance what to do when the patient quarrels with his mother or falls in love or is converted to a religion. Unfortunately the patient dies in an air raid, when he behaves heroically, and is saved. Wormwood loses his prey and returns to Hell where his affectionate uncle eats him up.

   A couple of sentences which will give you the taste of the book. Screwtape is writing about the Future, and says, it is of all things the least like eternity:

   "Hence the encouragements we have given to all those 

schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific 

Humanism, or Communism which fix men's affections 

on the Future. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future.

 Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present: 

fear, avarice, lust, and ambition to the Future".

   I should have thought that Hope looked to the Future too, and that it is a virtue. However I am not here to criticise either Mr. Lewis or Screwtape, but to indicate the provocative little book which they have collaborated to produce. Mr. Lewis does not believe in progress or that the world will be put right by humanism or by planning. It is wrong because men have sinned, and they have sinned because God has left them free to choose between good and evil, and, tempted by the devil, they have chosen evil. The world, indeed, is not a place to put right. It is a place to do right in.

   Compare with this view the view of Mr. Gerald Heard. Mr. Heard also begins with the unseen. Like Mr. Lewis he believes that the world has gone wrong for psychological reasons, but there the resemblance between them ends, for he believes that the miseries with which we are all surrounded -- the war, the starvation, the mutual hatred -- can be averted if we like, and that now is the moment . . . 


---at this point, Forster devotes two paragraphs to Heard's book and then one to Anand's, his most interesting comment in this part being

. . . I always feel when reading Mr. Heard's books --- and I think I've read them all -- that his analysis of our troubles is convincing, but that his remedies are not.

---Surprisingly enough, it turns out that Heard's ideas are very similar to Barfield's, as expressed in works like UNANCESTRAL VOICE (his masterpiece):  

. . . He [Heard] holds on the evidence of anthropology, that men were once in touch with each other instinctively like a herd of animals, that they have lost touch, thought the development of individuality, and that they must re-establish it or perish

---In the end, Forster sets out the differences between these three books thusly: 

re. Mulk Raj Anand's LETTERS ON INDIA: "his general attitude is "Make people comfortable and then they'll be good". Whereas Mr. Heard's attitude is "Make people good and then they'll be comfortable". And Mr. Lewis's is "Make people good and it doesn't much matter whether they're comfortable or not".

The final section of his review is quite interesting in itself but completely different from what came before: here his book is a collection of letters by Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to the Queen (1870ff) -- the man responsible for managing Queen Victoria's schedule. These provide an odd glimpse into a vanished world where the Queen communicated by note: "the Queen . . . did not like seeing people unless she was sure they were going to agree with her", including her own family; thus a constant stream of message-bearers up and down the chilly halls of Balmoral ("Queen Victoria disapproved of fires") carrying messages back and forth between the queen, her children and the staff. Forster concludes

It was a strange job and a strange age -- though I suppose a philosophic observer, or an economic expert for that matter, can see latent in it the evils which have risen to the surface and occupy Mr. Heard and Mr. Lewis and Mr. Anand today. Even in these days the evil melody of war is already being played -- but softly, a sinister undertone.  We today are much more conscious than the rulers and the people of the Victorian era. We know much better what the human race is up against. And it may be that our successors, fifty years hence, will know much better than we do, and will consequently discover solutions. 

--E. M. Forster

Larkin's Game of 'Spot the Inkling'

So, it's not particularly well known that Philip Larkin, before he became the great English poet of his generation, had begun his career as a novelist, and only abandoned writing fiction when writer's block made it impossible for him to continue. And it's even less know that, in addition to his two published novels, he left several early unpublished and/or unfinished novels, two of them dating from his time at Oxford. Having just read his 'Oxford novel', WINTER TERM AT ST. BRIDE'S, I was amused to see several Inklings references in it, and thought I'd share.

WINTER TERM AT ST. BRIDE'S (written 1943; published posthumously in 2002) is a sequel to Larkin's TROUBLE AT WILLOW GABLES (ibid.), which had been a deliberate attempt to write a 'girls' school' novel (he even wrote an accompanying essay analyzing the genre). This second attempt follows the adventures of some of the same girls as they arrive at Oxford for their first university experiences. One goes all-in for sports, another spends all her time studying, one blows off all lectures for social events, and so forth (which only goes to show how thoroughly women had become acclimatized to Oxford a mere twenty-odd years since first being admitted as full students).

What's amusing from my point of view is a running motif about a new detective story set in Oxford, Edmund Crispin's THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY [1944]. Crispin is famous today for another novel in the same series (the fourth, SWAN SONG [1947]) including the line "There goes C. S. Lewis . . .  It must be Tuesday" [p.60] as his detective et al. sit in the front room of the Bird and Baby (so called by Crispin, rather than Eagle and Child). In real life, "Crispin" was a friend of Larkin's named Bruce Montgomery, but  THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY (the first in the series) had appeared pseudonymously, and Larkin gets a good deal of fun out of the fact that in his novel everyone is speculating about who wrote it and assigning various absurdly inappropriate Oxford luminaries to the role of being hidden behind the pseudonym: Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, and C. S. Lewis prominent among them.


[first excerpt, page 198-199]

"Three coffees," said Margaret to the waitress.

   Marie, Margaret, and Mary were in Elliston's next morning at eleven o'clock. Marie had just come from Blackwell's, where she had bought her daily book; Margaret had been pursuing her own private affairs since breakfast-time; while Mary, strange to say, had only just got up. She felt rather hungry.

   "And buns," she added. "Buns for one — or two," she added, catching Marie's eye. "What's the book, Marie? Looks rather a shocker."

   "It's a detective story," said Marie guiltily, displaying the yellow wrapper. "A new one."

   "The Case of the Gilded Fly?  I don't like Oriental things. I suppose it's full of Chinamen and sliding panels."

   "It may be," Marie answered. "I believe it's rather good," she added dubiously. "By Nevill Coghill, you know."

   "Who's he?"

   "Look here, what's the latest but Hilary?" interposed Margaret . . .   

[second excerpt, pages 215-216; Hilary meets 'Diana's Set'] 

   "Now, let's have a little bright intellectual conversation!" commanded Diana, clapping her hands. "Come on, Pam. Say something intelligent."
   "Are you reading an interesting book?" Hilary asked, looking at the beige-and-grey volume* lying face downwards on the thick carpet. "Who's it by?"
   "Oh, it's Lord David Cecil's book," said Diana carelessly, snatching it up. "The Case of the Gilded Fly, you know. I'm half way through it."
   "Diana dear, I'm sure it's not Lord David," said Pam. "Someone was telling me it was C. S. Lewis."
   "Oh no, dear, not C. S. Lewis. It's obvious that 'Fen' is a caricature of Lewis. Fits him to a T. Horribly malicious."**
   "Surely if it were by Lewis it would be about God," suggested Hilary, cautiously exhaling smoke.
   "If it were about God it would have been in the Daily Mirror first," said Pam. "Anyway, there's no place for God in a detective story."
   "Oh, it's a detective story, is it?" said Diana, frowning at the book with renewed interest.
   "As a matter of fact, I think you're all wrong," said Miriam. "Someone told me yesterday, straight from the horse's mouth, that it was by Lord Berners. But do keep it quiet."
   "Well, that would account for the music bits," agreed Diana. "But do you think it's good enough for Berners?"
   "Heavens, I haven't read it," said Miriam, shrugging her shoulders. "Haven't the ghost of an idea."
   "I expect in the end you'll find it was by Stanley Parker," said Pam . . . 

[*note: we're meant to assume Diana is so incredibly swanky that she even has cheap novels recovered in her favorite colors]

[**i.e., Gervase Fen, Crispin's eccentric-professor detective]

[third excerpt, page 219; one of the characters develops an obsession with belts]

   "I've tried everything. I've been long walks. I've been to the theatre and cinema. I've even read detective stories." Here she waved a despairing hand towards a copy of The Case of the Gilded Fly which lay on the mantelpiece. "But nothing does any good. I'm lost. Nothing can save me now."

[fourth excerpt, page 230]

[Here, things begin to get really weird. One character gets so drunk that she wanders out of the story and briefly encounters characters from the previous story ("Willow Gables"), who explain to her that she's in the current story but they're not; then she strays into real-life, where those present include Montgomery himself:]

. . . near the door, a pale girl with distant eyes and pale-rimmed spectacles laid one hand on the arm of her companion, a severe young man with a walking-stick, and said:

   "But what are you going to call it, Bruce dear?"

   "I shall call it," said the young man in the voice of one who has no doubt, "The Case of the Gilded Fly". The pale girl looked uncertain. "It's from King Lear," he added crossly.

---I admit to not knowing Lord Berners, or what the joke as concerning the Daily Mirror, and the editor himself confesses ignorance as to "Stanley Parker"

---Still, I was fascinated by this little spoof. After all, one of the Inklings DID write detective stories, though under his own name: Charles Williams. And both Coghill and Lewis contributed poetry to Oxford magazines pseudonymously. Lord David Cecil never wrote any fiction at all that I know of, but he was someone Larkins and Kingsley Amis never tired of mocking for his aristocratic speech patterns.

---Larkin, by the way, knew Charles Williams slightly and rather liked him as a drinking companion, though he had a v. low opinion of C.W.'s poetry and found him rather a figure of fun for frequently quoting poetry and always getting it wrong (though, as with Rev. Spooner, the degree to which Williams misquoted may have been exaggerated for effect).

---one more element of the joke: everyone in Larkin's novel (written 1943) is reading Crispin's book, whereas the real book came out in '44 and was probably still being written at the time Larkin's characters were making their speculations about its author.

---I suppose we shd count ourselves lucky that Larkin didn't fix on another of his professors who annoyed him, JRRT, for inclusion in this dubious gallery of faux-detective story writers.

--in any case, an amusing glimpse into Oxford personalities when the Inklings were in full flight.

--John R.