Scholar Guest of Honor, Mythcon 2015

So, I've been asked to be Scholar Guest of Honor at this year's MythCon -- or, as it's more formally known,  the Forty-sixth annual Mythopoeic Society Conference.

I've attended a fair number of Mythcons before,* all of which I presented at, and even been on the con committee of two and a featured speaker at another. But it's a real honor to be asked to be a Guest of Honor (the Author Guest of Honor being Jo Walton), and I'm really looking forward to the event.

The date:  Friday July 31st through Monday August 3rd.

The place: Colorado Springs, Colorado. I've never been to Colorado before, aside from a fraught layover at the Denver airport,** so this'll take me to a part of the country I've never seen before.

The facility: the Hotel Elegante, a hotel and conference site (looks quite nice).

The author Guest of Honor: Jo Walton -- someone whose work I don't know well, so I'll look forward to getting to know it better between now and the conference.

The theme: The Arthurian Mythos***


Here's the official announcement:

http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-46/

If you're going to be in the area, come join the fun.

--John R.



*1985 in Wheaton, 1987 in Milwaukee, 1992 in Oxford (the Tolkien Centenary conference), 1998 in Wheaton (the CSL and Owen Barfield Centenary conference), 1999 in St. Francis (just south of Milwaukee), and 2010 in Dallas

**I'd broken my glasses and had to try to read the monitors announcing all the gate changes for my flight while switching between my reading glasses (focal length: about one foot away) and my sunglasses (too dark for the available lighting)

***here's hoping they do a readers' theatre presentation of MARK VS. TRISTAN, Lewis and Barfield's little Arthurian romp.

Today is Tiw's Day

So, I was bemused by an article last week about Icelandic pagans (the Asatru Association) building themself a new temple for the first time in a thousand years, to house services for the newly revived worship of the ancient Norse gods (Thor, Odin, Tyr, et al):

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/06/back-for-thor-iceland-reconnectinbg-pagan-past

What struck me as odd about all this is that their high priest, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, says

he doesn’t pray to the Norse gods 

or worship them in any recognisable sense, 

nor does he believe in the literal truth of the texts 

From the description in the article, their typical gatherings sound more like a book club meeting than a religious ceremony:*

. . .  the group will gather for weekly study 

and for the five main feasts of the year 

when, . . . they will gather around a central fire,

recite the poems,** make sacrificial drink

 offerings to the gods – unlike some pagan groups 

they do not practise animal sacrifice – and feast 

on sacred horsemeat. (. . . “We have caterers.”)

On the other hand, they have their own graveyard and services for weddings and funerals, as well as a naming ceremony that serves the place of baptism, all of which sounds like a religion to me.

In any case, I was particularly struck by this piece because I'm finishing up an essay that early on in it quotes Tolkien's comments about Thor and Odin and why they don't appear in Middle-earth.*** And of course, being a Dunsanian, I was immediately reminded of his short piece "The Return of the Exiles" in FIFTY-ONE TALES [1916], in which the narrator comes across a gathering of men who are holding a sacrifice to recall Thor and Odin and honor them with a blood sacrifice. When the two gods unhappily complain "It used to be men", the worshippers shuffle uneasily, then all turn and look at the narrator, the only outsider among their midst -- who sums up his situation in one masterful phrase:

there are moments when it is clearly time to go, 

and I left then there and then.

--John R.

*a friend to whom I was describing it dubbed it 'Unitarian pagans', which is funny but probably not fair to Unitarians OR pagans.

**they use the POETIC EDDA as their testament -- and if there are some texts in there which seem an odd choice for use in a religious ceremony, the same can be said of the OLD TESTAMENT

***"The man of the twentieth century must of course see that . . . you must have gods in a story of this kind. But he can't make himself believe in gods like Thor and Odin. . . . I couldn't possibly construct a mythology which had Olympus or Asgard in it. On the terms in which the people who worshipped those gods believed." (JRRT 1965 radio BBC interview)

PERILOUS & FAIR (New Arrival/New Publication)

So, Friday brought to the doorstep my author's copy of PERILOUS & FAIR: WOMEN IN THE WORKS AND LIFE OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN (ed. Janet Brennan Croft & Leslie A. Donovan, Mythopoeic Press, 2015). Looks like a v. solid contribution to Tolkien studies, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

For those interested in the topic and wanting more detail, here's the Table of Contents. Those identified as new essays in the Introduction I've marked with an asterisk (*) and given the date for pieces reprinted for this themed collection.

Introduction:

*Perilous and Fair, Ancient and Modern, Luminous and Powerful by Croft & Donovan.

[Part One: ] Historical Perspectives

*The History of Scholarship of Female Characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium: A Feminist Bibliographic Essay

by Robin Anne Reid

*The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien's Lifelong Support for Women's Higher Education

by John D. Rateliff

*She-who-must-not-be-ignored: Gender and Genre in The Lord of the Rings and the Victorian Boys' Book

by Sharin Schroeder

[Part Two:] Power of Gender

The Feminine Principle in Tolkien  [1984]

by Melanie A. Rawls

Tolkien's Females and the Defining of Power  [2007]

by Nancy Enright

Power in Arda: Sources, Uses and Misuses  [1996]

by Edith L. Crowe

[Part Three:] Specific Characters

The Fall and Repentance of Galadriel  [2007]

by Romuald I. Lakowski

*Luthien Tinuviel and Bodily Desire in the Lay of Leithian

by Cami D. Agan

*The Power of Pity and Tears: The Evolution of Nienna in the Legendarium

by Kristine Larsen

*At Home and Abroad: Eowyn's Two-fold figuring as War Bride in The Lord of the Rings

by Melissa A. Smith

[Part Four:] Earlier Literary Contexts

The Valkyrie Redux in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Galadriel, Shelob, Eowyn, and Arwen  [2003]

by Leslie A. Donovan

*Speech and Silence in The Lord of the Rings: Medieval Romance and the Transitions of Eowyn

by Phoebe C. Linton

Hidden in Plain View: Strategizing Unconventionality in Shakespeare's and Tolkien's Portraits of Women   [2006]

by Maureen Thum

[Part Five:] Women Readers

Finding Ourselves in the (Un)Mapped Lands: Women's Reparative Readings of The Lord of the Rings

by Una McCormack

Thus the new articles are the Introduction plus the ones by Reid, Rateliff, Schroeder, Agan, Larsen, Linton, and (presumably) McCormack; the reprints are the ones by Rawls, Enright, Crowe, Lakowski, Smith,  Donovan, and Thum. So I'm in good company.

I shd mention that the front cover art is quite eye-catching: a striking piece of Yavanna Kementari by Ulla Thynell, an artist I don't know whose work I'll need to learn more about. 

Here's hoping this collection sparks some interesting discussion.

--John R.

The Sting of the Dark Tower (CSL 'adaptation')

WARNING:
HERE BE SPOILERS


So, I posted some while back about a local group who were working on a radio-play version of CSL's THE DARK TOWER. Thanks to friend Allan (thanks, Allan!) I now have the link to the finished product, "The Sting of the Dark Tower" by Peter Gruenbaum:

http://coiledstories.com/dt/

Having now listened to the whole thing, I have to report that it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's good to see someone adapting a neglected CSL work. On the other, it's a pretty good sign something has gone seriously wrong when said adaptation ends by denouncing the author and urging people not to read him.

This radio-play, which is just over an hour in length, falls into two parts. The first is an adaptation of Lewis's story that pretty much covers the entire surviving fragment. They simplify and change some things but do produce something recognizable as a dramatization of CSL's work. I enjoyed the voice acting as well, for the most part, finding it pretty reminiscent of old radio plays; I'll want to save this one to listen to it again at some point down the line.  The second half goes beyond what Lewis wrote and completes the story, making clear that this is only a possible conclusion and probably not the one Lewis himself wd have come up with. Nevertheless, it represents the only continuation/conclusion I've seen, and thus is of interest for that point alone.*

Ignoring lapses such as Orfieu referring to his friend Lewis as "Clive", or referring to their 1940s version of CSL as "Professor Lewis" (which mainly just goes to show the scriptwriter doesn't know much about CSL, and didn't bother to show the script to anyone who does), it's rather nice to have some dialogue from the former Stingerman in our world and see a bit of how he looks at things (he insists his sting 'brings happiness' to those whom Lewis et al consider his victims). But there's a didacticism on the scriptwriter's part that keeps breaking in inappropriately into Lewis's story, as when the intermittent  frame story interjects a defense of mercy killing or warns against taking pharmaceuticals to treat mental conditions. And however good their intentions, it's purely incredible that CSL wd end the story by expressing his admiration for sassy New Yorker Camilla Bembridge with a toast "To modern women: what would we do without them?"

But I was disabused of the notion that this adaptation had 'good intentions' when the frame story ended by launching into a sudden denunciation of Lewis himself:

Screw C. S. Lewis.

I mean, who cares what he would do?

You know, if you want to read

some old science fiction

you cd do way better than Lewis.

The script then segues into praise for John Wyndham and especially James Tiptree; Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood are also mention in the fade-out.

So, the whole hour-long radio-play turns out to be a set-up to tell Lewis fans (the only people likely to spend an hour listening to an adaptation of a lesser-known CSL work) that they're idiots to waste their time on Lewis and shd instead be reading other people whom the scriptwriter prefers.

So for me the ending spoiled the whole -- which is a pity, since a lot of work clearly went into this. They did a great job of capturing that old radio-drama vibe. And it had some amusing or interesting touches (such as the ex-Stingerman's warm appreciation of our world's fish-and-chips), or the big reveal in the end that the master of the Stingermen is none other than the Othertime's C. S. Lewis analogue. But I found the frame story a whole lot more annoying than it was intended to be, and its conclusion spoilt the whole for me. Too bad.

--John R.


*having myself speculated in print about how Lewis may have intended to conclude the story, and knowing of at least three other such speculations.

A snippy parody

So, while I was massively disappointed in THE WOBBIT, Harvard Lampoon's recent companion volume to BORED OF THE RINGS, there were two bits of interest within it that I thought I'd share.

The first is the passage, near the end of the book, where parody versions of J. R. R. Tolkien ("J. R. R. Toking"), George R. R. Martin ("G. R. R. Marauding"), J. K. Rowling ("J. K. Rousing"), and C. S. Lewis ("C. S. Losing") all show up to try to re-assert control over their creations. The odd thing about this section is that they only bring up Lewis to bash him. When first introduced along with the others we're told he's "the one with no business here" (p. 135). Later, "feeling al little left out of the fun", he jumps into the conversation with a complete non-sequetor ("Did you know I'm a devout Catholic?" asked C. S. Losing"; a footnote to this comment opines "Getting left out of the fun is, debatably, the whole point of Catholicism" (p. 136). His final comment comes immediately after Rowling reveals that she is a woman, and thus has introduced an actual female person into the all-male world of THE WOBBIT; to the cry "She's a woman!" the Lewis-character responds " 'This might go against my Catholic faith,' C. S. Losing let it be known, as if anyone cared what he had to say." (p. 137).

So, all I can conclude is (a) that the Harvard Lampoonians really don't like C. S. Lewis, and (b) that they know next to nothing about him, not even enough to parody him properly -- i.e., such as the fact that he's NOT CATHOLIC.

The second, and far superior, passage comes v. near the end (and yet not near enough), where they re-write Bilbo's first song, "Roads Go Ever Ever On", into an indictment of the modern commercialism of fantasy:

Franchises go ever ever on,

Over-budget and under-seen,

Through sequels that are quickly gone,

And prequels that never should have been . . .

(p. 146)

--And there it is; even a dud can include a passage worth sharing.

--John R.
current audiobook: none
current dvd: DESOLATION OF SMAUG 'Appendix IX' documentaries
current reading: THE SUMMER TREE (GGKay), AS CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME TO DUST (Flavia de Luce), THE CIVIL WAR (Foote).

A New Idea About Madlener

So, the story's well known from Carpenter's biography how Tolkien bought a picture postcard of a mountain-spirit known as a Berggeist, an old man with a beard and hat, during his 1911 trip to Switzerland and years later wrote on the envelope he kept it in 'Origin of Gandalf'.

Except it's not true, as various Tolkien scholars (most notably Manfred Zimmerman) discovered: the Madlener painting actually dates from the mid to late 1920s and could not have been purchased during that 1911 trip.* The dating is important because there's still some debate about whether Tolkien started THE HOBBIT in the summer of 1930 (as I believe) or sometime in the 1920s (as a minority opinion holds). If we cd date this image and also date when Tolkien first came across it, it might narrow down the field a little.


Now comes a new suggestion breathtaking in its simplicity, in the essay "Merlin, Odin, and Mountain Spirits: The Story of Gandalf's Origins" by Leila K. Norako, in the otherwise somewhat disappointing collection THE HOBBIT AND HISTORY.**  Norako suggests

by saying that Der Berggeist was the origin of Gandalf,

Tolkien could easily have been pointing to the broader 

Rubezahl tradition as source of inspiration rather than

to Medlener's specific rendering of the figure (p. 168)

That is, what if it's not the Madlener image that Tolkien meant by 'Origin of Gandalf' but the thing represented: Der Berggeist itself?  If that were the case then Tolkien's annotation could be entirely accurate and yet be of no help dating THE HOBBIT whatsoever.

Of course we can always assume Tolkien came across this picture at some point after beginning THE HOBBIT and simply though it a good likeness, but I'm reluctant to accept that explanation because it directly contradicts Tolkien's simple and straightforward statement that in some way the Berggeist was the 'origin' of Gandalf.

In any case, an interesting suggestion, I thought; one I've not seen before, and one I'll have to mull over.

--John R.

*For a good account of the Madlener painting, see Doug Anderson's THE ANNOTATED HOBBIT pages 36-39; this book also reproduces Madlener's original in color  on the lower half of Plate 5 (between pages 178 and 179).

**not because the essays aren't well done but because of a kind of diminishing returns: I've read so many essay already on the topics included herein (e.g., Beorn and Bothvar Bjarki) that I already knew most of what they had to tell me.

The New Arrivals (nine books)

So, over the last month or so a number of new Tolkien books have arrived, the greater part of them due to my having taken in the change jar (which formerly held five pounds of Tupilo honey) and exchanged its contents for an amazon.com voucher. So several newish books that had been parked in my check-out cart at amazon are now here waiting for me to find places for them all on the Tolkien shelves.


THE HOBBIT AND HISTORY, ed. Janice Liedl and Nancy R. Reagin [Wiley, 2014]
subtitled on cover "The Unoffical Movie Tie-In to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies", a subtitle that does not appear on the title page or elsewhere. Its links, such as they are, are more with the second movie (and, to a lesser degree, the first) than the third -- naturally enough, since none of these authors could have seen the third and final HOBBIT film at the time they wrote their essys.
Part of the Wiley Pop Culture and History Series, along with Star Trek and History, Star Wars and History, Harry Potter and History, and Twilight and History, all of them edited either by Reagin or by Reagin and Liedl.
--disappointing, though one essay did have a brilliant suggestion re. Tolkien and the Madlener picture.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN, ROBERT E. HOWARD[,] AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN FANTASY by Deke Parsons [MacFarland 2015]
--claims that Tolkien, Howard, and Superman (who for some reason didn't make it into the title) are the main inspirations for modern fantasy. If by 'modern fantasy' you mean D&D, then I'd say Parsons is on more or less solid ground, but as a sourcing for modern fantasy in general it's either too narrow (excluding figures like Dunsany) or too wide (failing to recognize Tolkien's pre-eminant position). Have no idea why he threw Superman into the mix. No doubt all will become clear when I have a chance to actually read this.

TOLKIEN AND THE MODERNISTS: LITERARY RESPONSES TO THE DARK NEW DAYS OF THE 20TH CENTURY by Theresa Freda Nicolay [MacFarland, 2014].
--One of several recent books to acknowledge that Tolkien was in fact a twentieth century author.
A potentially good topic; won't know until the reading whether Nicolay makes a good case.

THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF MIDDLE-EARTH: LEARNING FROM THE LORD OF THE RINGS by Abigail E. Ruane and Patrick James [Univ. of Mich. Pr, 2012]
--I've recently been seeking out and reading a series of oddball books on Tolkien: new approaches to Tolkien from unusual perspectives.  This one has more charts and diagrams than I expected but at the very least won't be the same-old same-old.

THE UNOFFICIAL MIDDLE-EARTH MONSTER'S GUIDE by 'The Mordor Collective' [2013]
--this is parody by the same folks who published THE UNOFFICIAL HOBBIT HANDBOOK a few years back; looks to me that if you liked that, you'll probably like this as well (and vica versa).

THE BODY IN TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM: ESSAYS ON MIDDLE-EARTH CORPOREALITY, ed. Christopher Vaccaro [MacFarland, 2013]
--a rather unusual thematic choice for a book on Tolkien, with an unusual grouping of contributors, some of whom I know from Kalamazoo or recognize their names from TOLKIEN STUDIES, a few of them new to me. The lead essay is by Verlyn Flieger (always a good way to lead a collection of essays on Tolkien, given the opportunity).


THE LOSS AND THE SILENCE: ASPECTS OF MODERNISM IN THE WORKS OF C. S. LEWIS, J. R. R. TOLKIEN[,] & CHARLES WILLIAMS by Margaret Hiley [Walking Tree Press, 2011]
--in the abstract, this one sounds to me like Charles Moorman's AUGUSTINIAN CITY revisited; shd make for an interesting contrast to the other recent book on Tolkien and modernism by T. F. Nicolay.

THE HOBBIT PARTY: THE VISION OF FREEDOM THAT TOLKIEN GOT, AND THE WEST FORGOT by Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards [Ignatius, 2014]
--Of all these, this is the next one I intend to read. I gather it tries to align Tolkien with Belloc's Distributists and to place JRRT within today's political scene and suggest what position he'd take on current issues, which seems to me a forlorn undertaking. In any case, it's been the subject of heated discussion on Joseph Pearce's website, which I plan to hold off reading until I've read for myself the material they're arguing over.

THE WOBBIT by The Harvard Lampoon [2013]. The folks behind the infamous BORED OF THE RINGS [1969] return for an uninspired second try at parodying Tolkien. Only two goodish bits: one an appearance by JRRT, CSL, GRR, and Rowling in an ultimately vain attempt to regain control over their creations and the other a parody of the closing poem; more on these later. All I can say about this book as a whole is that if you enjoyed BORED OF THE RINGS, don't spoil those memories by reading this dreck. And if you didn't like BORED OF THE RINGS, you're not likely to like this wan imitation either.


Finally, there's one new e-publication to note: J. R. R. TOLKIEN's LOST ENGLISH MYTHOLOGY by Simon J. Cooke [2014], the e-equivalent of a T-K Graphics pamphlet or the occasional Tolkien Society booklets. Think we'll probably be seeing more like this in the future.

Also, I shd probably note three magazines as well: the inaugural article from THE JOURNAL OF TOLKIEN RESEARCH (already noted in a post of its own a few days ago), the arrival of the latest issue of VII, and the current EMPIRE magazine (January 2015 issue).  I'd been surprised when the December issue did not feature the release of the third and final HOBBIT movie as its cover story, as had been the case with the previous installments in the movie trilogy. Well, they've more than made up for it with this new issue, which is guest-edited by Peter Jackson himself. Lots of behind-the-scenes information about the making of the movies; definitely intend to get round to some of this once I have time to do more than skim it.

It'd be nice to say that this recent influx of books meant I now had all the new books that've come out in the last year or two, but it wdn't be the truth. There are at least twenty more I know about that I don't have, and no doubt more I haven't heard about yet. Still, there shd be some interesting reading among them -- though it'll take me time to work my way through them.

--John R.
current reading: AS CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME TO DUST by Alan Bradley (an attempt to re-start his 'Flavia de Luce' series), THE SUMMER TREE (Book One in THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY) by Guy Gavriel Kay (re-reading for Book Group)
current dvd: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, extended edition, with commentary, plus extras.