Richard West, R. I. P.

 One of my oldest and closest friends died today from the covid virus. 

A modest and kindly man, I don't think Richard ever realized that he was one of the best of the best of Tolkien scholars.

I will miss him terribly.

Rest in peace.

The Cat Report (Fr. 11/27-20)

Here's a quick update on our current crop of cats.

POPPY SEED and CHIA CAT, the bonded pair of half-grown kittens, are still with us. They’ve overcome most of their shyness and come out right away to make the place their own, playing every kind of game offered to them. POPPY SEED (the black one) loves to get his teeth in a toy and then drag it off to his lair. CHIA loves being petted almost as much as she enjoys playing with her sister. Both come and go in and out of Maya’s place without a second though.

The three new kittens (WALLY, GUS GUS, and FIONA) follow the recent pattern of arriving and being adopted within a day or two, so they were already gone off to their new homes. 

Mother cat MAYA (who’s only a year old herself) is adjusting to being on her own. She’s shy about coming out but loves being petted in her cage. It helps that she has the great big cage which offers lots of shelves to look out in several directions. She let me pick her up and carry her out of her cage but always went back in again when opportunity presented itself. Ninety minutes into my shift she came out to explore on her own and thoroughly checked out the inner room. She poked her head into the outer room a few times but declined to venture into the kitten-playing zone.

Nobody was up for a walk, but everyone got attention and a chance to stretch like only kittens and young cats can do and show off their pouncing.

—John R.

 

THE DARK TOWER and A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS

So, I've been reading (or more accurately re-reading) a number of books by  David Lindsay, whose first and most famous book, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, celebrates its centenary this year. And I was struck by something I had previously passed over without its drawing my attention: a striking parallel between  Lindsay's book and Lewis's THE DARK TOWER. Lewis openly confessed his debt to Lindsay, particularly to OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, but I don't think I've seen anyone extend the influence to include the final, unfinished fourth book of the Ransom series. 

I'm all tied up with other projects right now, but if I were going to write this up I'd focus on one of the most striking things in A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. Lindsay's work is famous for the way his protagonist grows new organs and appendages once he enters the alien world, the first of which is a breve, described as "something hard on his forehead . . . a fleshy protuberance, the size of a small plum, having a cavity in the middle, of which he could not feel the bottom" (VtA.44) 

This is strongly paralleled by what happens to Lewis's hero:  when Scudamour jumps through the chronoscope, switches places with his double, and arrives in the Otherworld, he acquires a sting growing out of his forehead: "It was broad at the base and narrowed quickly to its point, so that its total shape was rather like that of a thorn on a rose-branch . . . It was hard and horny, but not like bone . . . and . . . [d]ripping with poison" (DT.33). But where Maskull's breve granted him telepathy, The Stingerman's sting converts those he attacks with it into automatons. 

In addition to this major point of the appearance of otherworldly organs on the forehead, three other paralleled elements between Lewis's unfinished work and Lindsay's odd masterpiece might be worth exploring.

First,  the seance that opens Lindsay's book, along with the materialization of a being from the other world into our own, parallels the projection of images from another world that opens Lewis's. MacPhee even has an exchange with Orfieu about the validity or otherwise of psychical research.  

Second, there's the image of the Tower that so dominates Lewis's story, while a similar tower frames Lindsay's work, appearing first as the Observatory early in the book, then reappearing as Krag's tower at the story's climax, containing the long sought for route into the true world, Muspel. 

Third, it might be worthwhile to do something with the theme of doubles: Maskull and Nightspore in Lindsay's book (so that one cannot appear until the other is gone) and Scudamour/the Stingerman in Lewis's.

As I said, I'm too absorbed in something else to write this up and develop the argument. And besides, I've already had my say about THE DARK TOWER in my essay on the interrelations between Lewis's Ransom books, esp the first and fourth one) and Tolkien's two time travel stories.* And I've also already said pretty much what I had to say about A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS.**

On the other hand, if anybody has explored / developed the DARK TOWER / VOYAGE  TO ARCTURUS parallels and I just missed teir piece,*** I'd be happy if someone points me to it.

--John R.

*this appeared in TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM, an unofficial festschrift for Christopher Tolkien (2000)

**in my online monthly column CLASSICS OF FANTASY: Lindsay's strange masterpiece was the focus of the sixth essay (January 2003). It's no longer up on the Wizard's site but can still be found online with a bit of internet searching

***I think I've read all the scholarship on DARK TOWER, but you never know

William Hope Hodgson: The RPG

So, here's something I had on Kickstarter which has now arrived: the new rpg based on the Sargasso Sea stories of Wm Hope Hodgson. Called GREY SEAS ARE DREAMING MY DEATH, it draws on such classics as "The Voice in the Night" and "The Derelict" to craft a horror-at-sea game. I've now skimmed this but haven't looked at it in detail because (a) I definitely want to play this but (b) one of the other people in my gaming group may opt to run it,* (c) in which case I wdn't want to know any spoilers. But (d) I may wind up running it if no one else wants to be Captain (i.e., DM).

It looks like one of those games with a v. narrow focus, which is what you want in a specialty themed rpg such as this one. I hope they've captured the theme of doomed pluck that is so distinctively Hodgsonian, while at the same time introducing some more readers and gamers to one of the greats (and one of the most overlooked of authors of his era who deserve to be called great).

It staggers me that forty-plus years on from D&D there's still no rpg based on Hodgson's masterpiece, THE NIGHT LAND.** They've borrowed a few monsters Hodgson's other works (HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, the end-of-time NIGHT LAND); a closer look shd tell whether they've successfully integrated this into their late nineteenth/early twentieth century sea setting. One way or the other I'm looking forward to finding out.

--John R.

*This is made all the more probable when I found out tonight that three of the seven people in our Monday night game backed the Kickstarter.

**I initially thought DARK SUN wd be that world but was sadly disappointed to discover it was an uberConan setting instead. 

Modernism and the Kitten

So, a while back Janice shared the clip below with me, and I thought it encapsulated what T. S. Eliot was trying to say in the final section of THE HOLLLOW MEN (1925):

Between the idea 

And the reality

Between the motion 

And the act

Falls the Shadow

https://twitter.com/akkitwts/status/1302218632617844736?lang=en

--JDR

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

 So, I had kind of tuned out news about the Tolkien tv series currently in the works, feeling detached from the project once I realized that I was not their target audience (as opposed to the Peter Jackson movies, which I followed closely from v. early on). Which is why I initially missed the announcement that the people working on the Amazon project are looking to hire extras "comfortable with nudity".*  And that they have hired an 'Intimacy Coordinator' to oversee sex-scenes to make sure actors and actresses appearing in them are treated respectfully.

Nude extras is one thing -- say for example a shot of the elves awakening at Cuivienen (I doubt if they were created fully clothed). Hiring an Intimacy Coordinator sends a different kind of message: that this series will be less Peter Jackson and more Game of Thrones. That's not surprising, but it is disappointing.

For a rumination on the issue of nudity in the new series, see the following post from www.theonering.net:

https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2020/10/06/108573-sex-sensibility-amazons-nude-take-on-tolkien/

--John R.

--current reading: LINDBURGH by Scott Berg, a light novel, and David Lindsay's THE WITCH

*BEYOND BREE, Nov. 2020 issue, page 10

The New Tolkien

So, it's now been officially announced that the next book by Tolkien (that is, the next book of new material by JRRT) will be out in June:

THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH, edited by Carl Hostetter (co-editor of TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM).

 The write-up on Amazon doesn't have much information yet, other than that the book is 400 pages and the official release date June 1st.

I gather that this book draws from the period when Tolkien had largely abandoned  or set aside work on his various narratives and was shifting more and more into world-building.  Or to put it another way, rather than a grand narrative here we'll be seeing Tolkien's attempt to set down as much as he cd about Middle-earth. 

I suspect it'll feel rather like LETTERS, where he addressed so many queries from his readers. For those of us who came along too late to write to the Professor and pose questions ourselves, this book just might contain the answers to things we've always wanted to know. 

In short, not a book for the casual fan, but it promises to be full of good things for those of us who want to know all we can about Tolkien's subcreated world. Congratulations to Carl for bringing all this disparate material together. 

I've already pre-ordered my copy.

--John R.

P.S.: Here's the announcement of the news in THE GUARDIAN:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/19/jrr-tolkien-the-nature-of-middle-earth-published-june-2021