Back in Kent

 So, it's good to be back in Kent after a long (four week) research trip spent in the Marquette Archives. Once again my work focused mainly on fine-tuning the Map of the Manuscript I've been working on for about four years now. This schematic shows the sequence in which every draft of every chapter of THE LORD OF THE RINGS was written, making it much easier to navigate between the vast amount of material in Marquette's collection.  I made a lot of little fixes (and some not so little). As usual I learned a lot: it's impossible, for me at any rate, to spend any amount of time with the manuscripts without thinking of some project I'd like to work on, if only there were time.

And of course I enjoyed being back in Milwaukee. I've been away from the area twenty years now but still have a lot of friends in the area, some I got to see (which I enjoyed) and some I didn't manage to sync up with (hoping for better luck next time). Plus I got to visit the cat cafe twice, ordered out from my favorite Milwaukee restaurant (and trying out several I hadn't been to before), got some frozen custard, had a few long walks around the East Side, visited a bookstore famous for its cats, only to discover its longtime cat had died just two week before. No C.o.C. game in The Walnut Room, but then  my visit did fall during GenCon.

And now after the better part of a week spent settling back in it's back to work on the current project Monday. 

---John R.

--current reading: A KNIFE IN THE DARK.

--PORIUS by J. C. Powys

Six Books

Here's a question about staying power. 

WATERSHIP DOWN has been out nearly fifty years now. THE LORD OF THE RINGS is more popular than ever after more than sixty years.

So, of the books listed below, which do you think will stand the test of time and still be read twenty, thirty, forty years from now?

 

Ben Aaronovich—The Rivers of London series

 

Susanna Clark—Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

 

Suzanne Collins—The Hunger Games

 

Jonathan Howard — Johannes Caball, Detective;  'Jonathan Caball and the Blustery Day' and other stories (uncollected)

 

Daniel O'Malley—The Rook

 

Philip Pullman Northern Lights.

--John R.

--current reading: "A Long-Expected Party"

--last day at Marquette 

Radio Adaptation of LUD-IN-THE-MIST

So, thanks to Doug A. for the news that BBC4 is broadcasting an audio-drama of Hope Mirrlees's highly respected but seldom read LUD-IN-THE-MIST (1926), one of the great classic fantasy novels. Here's a link:

http://file770.com/tag/joy-wilkinson/

and here's another with more detail, including that Neil Gaiman will be doing a cameo. How Hitchcockian of him.

https://scifibulletin.com/2021/09/21/visit-lud-in-the-mist-for-halloween/

History suggests (WRINKLE IN TIME, DARK IS RISING, EARTHSEA) that adapting fantasy is a tricksy business and prone to disaster.

On the other hand, I’m more hopeful for their ability to do a radio play than a film adaptation. And  it’ll raise her profile and introduce some people to her book, which is all to the good.

So I’ll be looking forward to it but trying to keep from getting my hopes up too much.

—John R.
--current reading: many parts of LotR and the LotR-relevant portions of HME (esp. Vol. V).

Monsters of the Id? (Milwaukee downtown art)

 

So, here's something new since my last visit to Milwaukee: a statue on  Wisconsin Avenue east of the river that I can only describe as a local variant of Jonny Quest's monsters of the id.

Or maybe that just holds for those of us who were part of that show's original audience (and thus scarred for life).

--John R.

September 22nd

So, happy Bilbo's birthday (though I think of it as Silmarillion day.

As my time for my current research trip winds down,  there's always that final rush to get things to a good stopping point.  It's been a successful trip, and I've enjoyed seeing old friends and being in Milwaukee again (after all, I lived here for more than ten years). What can you say about a city that not only has a zeppelin mooring post downtown but also a bronze statue of a heroic little mother duck and three of her ducklings?

Still, it'll be nice to be back home again.

--John R.

--current reading; THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH and snippets of other things. I abandoned Douglas Adams' unfinished novel because it seemed appropriate.  --JDR

The Marquette Project

Left to right: Ed Sanchez, head of Marquette's Library IT; 

myself (John D. Rateliff), Tolkien scholar; 

Erik Mueller-Harder, software developer and Tolkien scholar;

 William Fliss, curator of Marquette's Tolkien Collection.

 So, for the past four years* I've been coming to Marquette twice a year to work on an ongoing project. I was finally able to share it as a work in progress at the Tolkien day gathering at Kalamazoo's Medieval Congress (the last time they had an in-person gathering --2019?). Now it's been officially announced. Here's yesterday's announcement on Facebook:

 

J R R Tolkien Collection - Marquette University Libraries

 

New posts on this page are infrequent, but that doesn’t mean we’re not busy at Marquette!! This has been an incredible month as we work on the system for digitally reprocessing the manuscripts for The Lord of the Rings. Here is the core team: Ed Sanchez, head of Library IT, John Rateliff, Tolkien scholar extraordinaire, Erik Mueller-Harder, software developer and Tolkien scholar, and Bill Fliss, curator of Marquette’s Tolkien Collection. After years of mapping the collection, we are finally designing the system for navigating the virtual collection. It will make life so much easier for scholars who visit Marquette to study the manuscripts. (Copyright prevents us from just sharing the system, with its 10,000+ images, online.) The project has been exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Meetings have been intense but productive as we work through known obstacles and anticipate future challenges. Truly, “There shall be counsels taken / Stronger than Morgul-spells.”

--I'm really looking forward to sharing news about this project as it moves from creating a 'map of the manuscripts' (my contribution to the project), a graphic representation** to quickly guide researchers to a specific draft of a specific chapter of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, a framework that will provide the basis for an electronic database that will use this 'map' to quickly access a high-quality scan of any page out of the thousands in the collection.***

I think this project, when fully realized, will build on Christopher Tolkien and Taum Santoski's work in the late eighties to make it far easier for visiting scholars using the collection to track a specific scene or passage or motif's first appearance within the story. It'll be a particularly valuable tool for those who use it in conjunction with the relevant HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH volumes built upon that work.

  Exciting times. And the next stage of a long-simmering project nearing culmination.

--JDR

--current reading: THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH, THE SALMON OF DOUBT.

*except the plague year, 2020, when travel and research were alike impossible.

**think of the London Underground 'map' as an example

***including any text on the back of a page, such as pages from student essays

Live in A Hobbit House

So, from time to time we hear about someone who's created their own version of a hobbit hole. Some go so far as to live in them. But this is the first one I've heard of who decided to dress the part, and even organize a re-creation of the journey of the ringbearer by what seems to have been a pleasant stroll to Mt Vesuvius to toss the ring in their local volcano. Except they decided to give the ring to some passing kid. Which, thinking about it, wd make a pretty good origin story for a future Dark Lord Jr.

Here's the link

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/what-is-this-if-not-magic-italian-man-living-hobbit

--John R.

--current reading: LORD OF THE RINGS manuscripts, mostly.