In Praise of Raymond Edwards

So, I've finally finished reading Raymond Edwards' biography of JRRT, which I first dipped into back in 2016 (reading roughly the last third of the book in Marquette Library's copy)* and returned to this summer with a copy of my own, working my way through it in starts and stops. I conclude that it has to be the most under-appreciated work on Tolkien in years: a major work that everybody seems to have ignored. This is what Tolkien biographies should be like, not another rehash of Carpenter but a rounded account that takes into account the wealth of information in the Scull/Hammond CHRONOLOGY and other resources not available when Carpenter was blazing his trails. Edwards is particularly good on Tolkien's academic milieu (just how much time Tolkien spent at his day job), his Catholicism (of great importance, but not the end-all and be-all of everything he wrote), and the difficulties he faced when trying to complete THE SILMARILLION.

It took me a long time to work my way through it because it's one of those books that starts the reader thinking -- I literally stopped every page to consider some point, or go look up some connection. The result was that it was a very slow read for such a reasonably sized book (300  pages not counting the Notes/Bibliography/Index).

An example of the sort of thing Edwards does well can be found in the section titled 'English at Oxford', part five (of seven) of Chapter Two, wherein Edwards follows his previous section's account of what Tolkien was up to during his student days at Oxford with a history of the men who were the philology and literature dons at Oxford, both while Tolkien was a student there (including which ones taught him what) and in the half-century or so before he arrived, setting the stage. Names which tend to swirl by in most accounts here emerge memorably: Richard Rawlinson, Joseph Bosworth, John Earle ('poor old John Earle' Tolkien called him), John Josias Conybeare, Arthur Napier and his sidekick Kenneth Sisam (Tolkien's tutor), Henry Sweet (rumored to be the model for Shaw's Henry Higgins), Walter Raleigh (who championed literature against the dominant emphasis on philology) and his assistant David Nichol Smith (who endured long enough to be an older colleague of Tolkien's), W. P. Ker (known to most of us primarily as a foil in 'The Monsters & the Critics', but so energetic and well-regarded as to have been a don at University College London, and Oxford, simultaneously), and most importantly of all Joseph Wright (Tolkien's hero).  All this, and more, in about eight pages, and judiciously written by one who is himself a philologist and wholly sympathetic to Tolkien's academic endeavors.

I would have thought a book this good would have won all the major Tolkien scholarship awards and become one of those rare books that everybody agrees ought to be ready at hand on your shelf. And I confess myself puzzled that instead it seems to be slipping into obscurity. Is it a case that so many books on Tolkien come out each year now that even a book this good can get lost in the crowd?

Anyhow, a great book: Highly Recommended.

--John R.
--current reading: just resuming a book begun and abandoned in June, when I was on the road.

*I think on the recommendation of Bill F. If so, thanks Bill.

The New Arrival: 2020 Tolkien Calendar

So, after the chaos of trying to get last year's Tolkien calendar, I order mine for this year, from Amazon, as soon as I heard from Janice that it was out.  It arrived today -- a neat trick, since it's not out till tomorrow. Guess there are some advantages of living within walking distance of a major Amazon.com warehouse in a city rich with Amazon locations and facilities.

As for the calendar itself, anyone who's been getting Tolkien calendars for a number of years learns that there are good ones and (God knows) bad ones. This is a good one. Only had a chance to give it a quick skim so far, but it strikes me as vintage Alan Lee. In fact it has a sort of valedictory feel to it.

--John R.

A Thought about Orcs

So, yesterday I was reading through some of JRRT's late metaphysical writings, during which I came across the following passage while looking for something else entirely:


The Valar feared to meddle with the Children . . . Also Eru had forbidden them to coerce their wills, daunting their minds by dread of the power of the Valar, or even amazing them with wonder of their beauty and majesty. But they [the Valar] deemed that since the rule of Arda was committed them, it was within their authority to hinder any creature from deeds of evil, or to restrain it from what might prove hurtful to itself or to others. By 'coercing the will' they understood the dominion or enslaving of the mind of a lesser creature, so that it might say 'I will', assenting to this or that against its true nature and inclination, until it lost, maybe, the power of choice.

The context of this lies in some commentary to The Converse of Manwe with Eru about elvish reincarnation.

What's interesting here is that reversing this line of thought leads to a means that satisfies some of the basics of The Problem with Orcs. What if Melkor the Morgoth, with his love of domination and free of any scruples his fellow Valar might feel as to the consequences of their work, imposed his will on the proto-orcs until they too 'lost, maybe, the power of choice'?

Not altogether satisfactory, but an interesting addition to Tolkien's various attempts (all ultimately unsuccessful) to sort out the problem of a race that is (a) sentient (b) free willed and (c) irredeemably evil.

--John R.
--current reading: J. M. W. TURNER: THE MAN WHO SET PAINTING ON FIRE by Olivier Meslay (another Thames & Hudson, but this one small-sized)

On This Day in 1981

So, on this day, Monday August 24th 1981, I first saw, and worked with, Tolkien manuscripts. I'd  arrived in Milwaukee by train on the 22nd, having moved sight unseen to a city I'd never visited before and where the number of people there I knew, or had even met, was exactly none. There must have been some paperwork confirming that I'd been admitted to the graduate school and granted a Teaching Assistantship in the English department, but all I remember are two letters I'd received from Chuck Elston at the Archives, the first saying that no, they couldn't send me photocopies of any of their manuscripts, and the second saying that I could certainly look at their Tolkien manuscripts if I came to Marquette in person.

The days leading up to this had been busy ones: my mother dropping me off at the train station in Little Rock late in the afternoon of Friday the 21st (so she cd get well on the way back to Magnolia before dark), my catching the train around midnight and arriving in Milwaukee around six or so the evening of the 22nd, then finding my new apartment (which took a while, due to the inability of the cab driver to find the building). Sunday I either walked or took the bus* down to the Sears on Mitchell Street and got some kitchen essentials, like a set of three or four pots and pans.** Monday I reported to the English Department and started their training for new TAs, which ran the week before classes started (both the ones we'd be teaching and the ones we'd be taking). That same day I went into the Archives for the first time and met both Chuck Elston, the Archivist, and Terry Margherita, the Archives secretary.

My reading list records that I read MR BLISS that day,*** and I still have a complete transcription of that then unpublished work that I made in those early days, followed I think by what I cd transcribe of the two earliest versions of FARMER GILES (which has always been a favorite of mine).

That evening I read John Bellairs'  THE FACE IN THE FROST, for the first of what turned out to be many times. I'd previously known only through a paragraph quoted in my friend Franklin Chestnut's master's thesis, so when I saw it in the university bookstore I bought it right away. It quickly became one of my favorite books (I read it again four days later****); that it gave me nightmares might have been partly to my reading it in a near-empty apartment in a strange city.


And I'm currently making plans for my next visit to Milwaukee in September to spend a week working with the Tolkien manuscripts there. The more things change . . .


--John R.
--current reading: just finished a near-final draft of a Master's Thesis (good!)
--currently reading a small book on J. M. W. Turner, about who I know next to nothing; enjoying this as well.

*I was without a car most of my years in Milwaukee
**one of these later figured in the exploding skillet story, but I'll save that for another time
***it's number seven (#II.7) in my restarted list
****#II.11

My Reading List

So, on this day in 1975 I started my reading list. The most recent entry thereto (Thursday the 15th)  was book #II.3522  -- and that doesn't include the 536 books I read between August 1975 and April 1981, whereupon my list-keeping was disrupted, causing me to start over with a new numeration that August (August 15th 1981, to be exact. It was a Saturday).

When I started my list I was just about to begin my second year of High School (eleventh grade). My motivation was that I'd read a book and then later forget the author or title. Or I might read one work of a series (say, a mystery novel) and not be sure afterwards which books in that series I had and hadn't read.  By writing down the title, author, and date I read it I was much likelier to be able to find a book again shd I need to.


Not everything I read goes onto the list. Things I left out include books I don't read all the way through, which are many, and audiobooks (despite several efforts to maintain a second list for audiobooks unfortunately it's never really taken). Short pieces are taken on a case-by-case basis, sometimes linked together as a single entry. The list doesn't include rpgs or magazines or correspondence or anything posted online (except for e-books of course, which are included in the main list).

Just for fun, here's a cross-section of books I've read.

#I. 1.  
The first book, forty-four years ago this week: Nicholas Meyer's THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION, the first of what wd prove a wave of new Sherlock Holmes novels not by Conan Doyle.
The next book that followed was THE SAGA OF KING HEIDREK THE WISE, tr. Christopher Tolkien, the first saga I ever read and still my favorite.


#I. 340.  
Forty years ago this week (August 18th 1979):  EARTH AND SKY by The Writers' Guild -- the first (and only) release by a writers group I helped organize while in college, an anthology of student-written poetry and prose.
The previous book before this was G. A. L. Burgeon's THIS EVER DIVERSE PAIR (which I later got autographed by the author, both under that name and his real one, Owen Barfield).
The following book was THE TOLKIEN SCRAPBOOK, ed. Alida Becker.

#II. 1175 & 1176 . 
Thirty years ago this week (Fri Aug 18th 1989): I finished up SOURCERY by Terry Pratchett (Discworld V, not one of his best) and continued on to read that same day the whole of WYRD SISTERS (Discworld VI, my second reading of this much better book). I spent the next few weeks and again in December slogging through David Edding's utterly generic double quintology, finally giving it up after the eighth book in the ten-book series (and I've never been able to make myself go back and force my way through the last two books).

#II. 2167.
Twenty years ago this week (Sun 8/15 - W 8/18 1999): the SORCERER'S SHIP by Hannes Bok (awful! just goes to show not every oldie is a goodie). Far more interesting were the books before and after it: a prose translation of Chretien's PERCIVAL (with the first two Continuations) and Stephen Jay Gould's QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM.

#II. 2797.
Ten years ago this week (in three spurts: M 8.17 - Fr 8/21, Sun 8/23-M 8/24, & Sat Sept 6-Sun 6th 2009): THE PLEASURES OF A FUTUROSCOPE by Lord Dunsany (A posthumous publication of his last novel some fifty years after his death. Pity it's so very bad.).


#II. 3522. 
Finished up three days ago (7/10, 7/19, 7/22, Sun 8/11 thr Th 8/15-19):  Jeffro Johnson's APPENDIX N.

Between the 500+ books on the First List and the 3522 books on the Second List, that's well over four thousand books. So far.


--JDR
--Current reading: starting back on the third of four books that have been left hanging with on-and-off again reading the last two months or so -- two down (#II.3521 & II.3522), two to go.

The Late Great Barry Hughart

Sad news reached me yesterday (thanks to Doug A. for sharing)  that Barry Hughart had died. I would have ranked him as the greatest living writer of fantasy, and I stand by my evaluation in CLASSICS OF FANTASY that his BRIDGE OF BIRDS is "among the ten best fantasies ever published".  I particularly admire the book's conclusion, which I described there as "the purest eucatastrophe known to me in fantasy, where all the threads come together and every single plot point is resolved. There's really nothing quite like it in all of fantasy literature".

Here's a link to the too-brief announcement in LOCUS. Note however that this brief obit gets his date of birth wrong: being eighty-five, his birth-date must have been 1934, not 1924, and wikipedia confirms this.

https://locusmag.com/2019/08/barry-hughart-1924-2019/

I'm reminded of Dunsany's words about Sime: "We have lost, in a time of losses . . . a genius
whose . . . imagination has passed across our time little more noticed by most people than the shadow of a bird passing over a lawn"


--John R.

Is Sword & Sorcery 'trashy romance novels for guys'?

Appendix N: The Book -- a mixed bag  [see first post on 7/14-19]

So, I've now had time to read through all forty-three essays, plus the introduction, three game reviews, and an interview that make up Jeffro Johnson's APPENDIX N book, and my overall impression is that it's decidedly a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's an interesting project that he sees through to the end, and the book gets better as it goes along, as he builds up a kind of critical mass along the way. On the other, he doesn't have much to say on some of these pieces and quite a few times the essay takes a sharp turn midway through and drifts off into some other topic that has little to do with the book he's supposed to be discussing. Thus his discussion of Burrough's A PRINCESS OF MARS (essay V) focuses its attention on critiquing the poster for the original STAR WARS movie (he feels the movie doesn't deliver on the promise implicit in Princess Leia's cleavage in the film's iconic poster). His discussion of Zelazny's NINE PRINCES IN AMBER (essay IX) wanders off into a discussion of 1st edition AD&D's druids and monks. One of his Poul Anderson pieces (essay XXV) devotes two and a half pages to THE BROKEN SWORD and then spends the rest of its time,  four and a half pages, on 1st ed. AD&D's DEITIES & DEMIGODS. 

His comments are also occasionally weird, most notably in the entry on Howard's CONAN (essay X), where he argues first that Conan has a code of conduct (which I don't think anyone ever doubted) and then suggests that it's explicitly Xian (really? I must have missed the stories in which Conan professes 'blessed are the meek' and 'turn the other cheek'). An author need not share his or her character's beliefs, but anyone advancing this argument really shd address the fact that R.E.H. was himself a stone cold atheist.

Jeffro J.'s does strike gold at least once: the whole book is worth his moment of self-reflection where he confesses that he enjoys the sleazy side of books like Merritt's DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE (essay XVI), and muses that perhaps the book can be thought of as "a trashy romance novel for guys (p. 110). Expanding that thought out to consider sword & sorcery as a whole, and I think he may be on to something.  He also has a great line worth remembering when he describes a passage as "written entirely in High Gygaxian" (p.179)

In the end it's this book's thesis that Gygax's original Appendix N offers proof that we've been disinherited from our legacy: the great books and authors who wrote sword & sorcery (aka 'heroic fantasy') in the half-century or so before D&D debuted. Johnson concludes that these books are not just of historical interest for what they contributed to D&D but are worth reading in their own right. I on the other hand think that's only true of some of them. Some of these books and authors are great (e.g., Tolkien), some are terrible (Lin Carter, Gardner Fox), and many are in-between: an enjoyable read if you have a taste for the popular fiction of decades past (I do), a reminder of how bad bad fantasy can get if you don't.

So if the pulp fiction of a bygone era is your cup of tea, you might find this book worth your while. But be warned that if you've already read a book he covers you'll probably find yourself not learning much from his corresponding essay: his method is not to research an author or his or her works but to share his experience of reading them, to jot down thoughts that occur to him as he's reading the book in question. 

Where I think he goes wholly off the tracks is, not surprisingly, Tolkien. After having cited Tolkien repeatedly throughout the book, when it comes to the essay specifically devoted to JRRT (essay XXXXIII, the last in the book), he reverses himself and spends the whole piece arguing that Tolkien had no significance to the creation of D&D, serving only as the source of a few negligible borrowings. He even asserts that Tolkien didn't dominate fantasy in the 1970s, where he was one fantasy writer among many, but only came to dominate the field in the 1980s (p. 296). This is pretty much the reverse of historical fact.* 

The book ends with an interesting oddity: an interview with Ken St. Andre, creator of TUNNELS AND TROLLS, an early imitator of D&D. Closing a book on Gygax's inspirations by an interview with St Andre is like being unable to interview John Lennon and so deciding to interview Peter Tork instead.

--John R.

--current reading: APPENDIX N (just finished).

*for a corrective, read any good account of the Tolkien craze of the 1960s and also the role played by Ballantine's Adult Fantasy series in the late sixties through the mid-seventies.