Blogging the Silmarillion--all parts linked

I've finished uploading all my prior Blogging the Silmarillion posts. In hindsight I feel like I wrote as many words as The Silmarillion itself. Hopefully not as dry as an ancient Second Age scroll found in the library of Gondor.

Just a final note, I made no attempt to preserve any spoilers. These are reflections on the text as I read along with it. If you do decide to read/re-read The Silmarillion use these to gauge your own interpretation of the text. I welcome any thoughts/comments.

Introduction

Part 1: The Creation of Arda and Myth-Making

Part 2: Of the coming of elves, and several degrees of separation

Part 3: Melkor strikes back, and the pride and exile of Fëanor

Part 4: Of northern-ness, the death of Fëanor and the creep of doom

Part 5: The breaking of the siege of Angband and other (myth) busting

Part 6: Of Túrin Turambar and the sightless dark of Tolkien’s vision

Part 7: Out of ruined lands and cities, a star of hope arises

Part 8: A straight road is bent and Men suffer punishment divine

Part 9: Closing the book on the Third Age

Conclusion

Blogging the Silmarillion--of faith and resisting despair

I finished re-reading The Silmarillion last night and so will update the remainder of my prior posts on the book.

I don’t have a whole lot else to add, other than if you haven’t yet read The Silmarillion, you ought to make the attempt. In fact, I’ll say you must give it a valiant effort, if you’ve read and enjoyed The Lord of the Rings. It adds a tremendous resonance and depth to the events of that book, and to a lesser degree The Hobbit.

Upon re-reading my old posts I do have one thing to add.

In Blogging the Silmarillion I talked a lot about the problems Tolkien explores within his broader legendarium: Death, and the pursuit of deathlessness. Power, and possessiveness. Loving the works of one’s hands too much. But I wrote comparatively little on the answers offered in The Silmarillion. These include courage and companionship, but above all, faith. That there is, as Sam sees in the star of Eärendil far above the Ephel Dúath, light and high beauty for ever beyond reach of the Shadow.

Even if you’re not of religious faith it’s important to have it in a general sense. Faith in our basic goodness. Faith that life is worth living. And that something greater may always be waiting, even at the brink of disaster, as long as we do not give in to despair.

Eärendil’s perilous voyage to Valinor succeeds because he refuses to succumb to despair. Húrin and Túrin give in to it, and commit the ultimate capitulation of suicide. Despair is a tool of the enemy (think of the Ringwraiths, for whom its their primary weapon) and a deadly foe. But even a bitter defeat can be a step towards ultimate victory. It’s perhaps the greatest lesson The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion have to teach us.

Aragorn is a descendant of the faithful, a group led by Elendil who obeyed the law of the Valar and kept the friendship of Elves. The faithful preserved the seed of Nimloth the Fair, survived the drowning of Numenor and carried the seedling of the white tree to Middle-earth. And ultimately prevailed against the overwhelming might of Sauron.

Today our own fourth age brings with it new burdens and challenges. The struggle continues, possibly toward a long defeat. But as always, new hope arises.

Blogging the Silmarillion part 5: The Breaking of the Siege of Angband and (other) Myth-Busting

Blogging the Silmarillion part 6: Of Túrin Turambar and the sightless dark of Tolkien’s vision

Evil never dies: Parts 3 and 4 of Blogging the Silmarillion updated

There is much goodness in Tolkien. But ample darkness, too.

In The Lord of the Rings, evil is exemplified in Sauron and the orcs and Shelob. But The Silmarillion greatly amplifies it. We get to know Sauron’s master, Melkor/Morgoth, the very embodiment of evil and most powerful of all the Valar. Along with dragons, balrogs, and the lust that invades even the hearts of elves like Eol and his son Maeglin.

But balanced against this Tolkien reminds us what goodness is, again and again. And how it should respond to evil: Hammerstrokes, but with compassion, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis. 

You think we’d know this but we don’t.

Evil is real. It’s not just the stuff of faerie, embodied in the evil monsters and beings of the early Ages of Middle-Earth.

It’s the twisted terrorist running a car through a crowd of partygoers.

It’s in the actions of the ruthless dictator or soulless CEO.

In Tolkien’s Catholic-inspired universe we are fallen creatures, made in the image of an omnipotent creator but imbued with free will—with all the potential for greatness but also horrors that entails.

So it’s important we be continually reminded of the good, and the incredible sacrifices required for the maintenance of peace. And how the good can fail, how good people can succumb to base impulses and commit evil. 

Being good isn’t easy.

We see this great drama played out in The Silmarillion in the chapters I’m working through. Here are the recaps, as I continue to restore my full posts from the Blogging the Silmarillion series.

Part 3: Blogging The Silmarillion: Melkor strikes back, and the pride and exile of Fëanor

Part 4: Blogging The Silmarillion: Of northern-ness, the death of Fëanor and the creep of doom

Silmarillion re-read, link to part 1 and letter to Milton Waldman

White ships from Valinor, Ted Nasmith.

I’m currently re-reading The Silmarillion and you can now find the full post of part 1 of my 2010 “Blogging the Silmarillion” series originally published on The Cimmerian, here.

A few additional thoughts and comments on this most recent go-round.

I don’t know why I previously failed to mention Tolkien’s 1951 letter to Milton Waldman that leads off the volume. It’s like reading the cheat code for Tolkien’s greater legendarium. Interestingly this letter does not appear in the 1977 Houghton Mifflin first edition hardcover, but does appear in the gorgeous, Ted Nasmith illustrated 2004 second edition that I also own. Get this latter edition if you don’t already have it, there are nearly 50 illustrations and many appear in this volume for the first time.

Waldman was Tolkien’s friend and an editor at the publishing house of Collins, and the letter is more or less a lengthy summation of Tolkien’s argument that The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings should have been published together, or at least in conjunction, “as one long Saga of the jewels and the rings.” Of course that did not occur as The Silmarillion was published posthumously in 1977.

The letter contains a wonderful summation of what lies at the heart of the legendarium, “Fall, Mortality, and the Machine.” I am perhaps slightly more forgiving than others of Tolkien adaptations, even though I’d be content if we got no more, but I do believe that any faithful Tolkien adaptation must contain these elements. A Fall from God, the creator, Iluvatar; the problem of Mortality (and the problem of the pursuit of deathlessness); and the Machine, or the desire to dominate or coerce other wills and raze and bulldoze the natural world. Either implicit or explicit.

Re-reading The Silmarillion, and reviving my old Cimmerian posts

I've started re-reading The Silmarillion. It's been a few years, and I'm due to revisit the rich and wonderful history of Middle-earth.

I'm enjoying it as much as I did upon my last re-read, which prompted me to revisit my old "Blogging the Silmarillion" series for the Cimmerian website. 

Back when I was writing for The Cimmerian I used to run part of the post here and link to the rest. Unfortunately that has resulted in incomplete posts after that site was radically overhauled. Time to correct that by posting the full text here, which I fortunately retained.

Here's the series introduction, Cimmerian sighting: Blogging The Silmarillion. 

I'll post the others as I work my way through the text, and possibly add a little additional commentary.

Of the year in writing, and reading--memoir update and more

I went outside yesterday to take in the trash barrel and pick up the mail (exciting stuff--I’m a rock star, in case you haven’t realized that yet) when I felt a firm bite, piercing my heavy flannel shirt. A deep cold settling into New England. 

The year is winding down, fall rapidly turning to winter, and as I’m wont to do in December I’m turning reflective. 

And so, a reflective post.

I’m planning on one of my usual “annual state of the blog” posts later this month, so I’ll save the Silver Key analysis for later. This is an update on what’s going on outside of the blog, of a reading and writing bent.

Heavy metal memoir

My work in progress has a name but I’m not going to share it—yet. More than a name it’s got 80,000 plus words over 11 chapters, words that are being hammered into readable shape, and setting into something I’m reasonably happy with.

I am confident in saying it will be published next year. If not by a traditional publisher, then by me. 

I’m experiencing the same phenomenon as with Flame and Crimson. The first draft did not come out in a rush (writing is not easy) but it came out, with a beginning, middle, and end, following a detailed outline I put together in the fall of 2022. 

Then I put down the draft, read it … and cringed. Did I forget how to write? Apparently.

On to round two. Ripping out an entire chapter, sections of others. Wholesale rewrites, and additions.

Then round three.

This wave of edits is finally resulting in headway. Despair is turning to hope as I hammer on the raw material and find some gold. Or at least ingots of copper and silver.

This is a far more difficult book to write than Flame and Crimson. That required a great deal of research and academic rigor, far more than the WIP, but the struggle with memoir is telling a compelling story. Not quite what you’d do with a novel, but it relies on some amount of novelistic technique. Scenes, and dialogue, and interior observation. Deciding what is important to the reader vs. what was important to me. It also requires raw honesty of a very personal sort.

To be clear, this is book is most definitely not a history of heavy metal. Those are legion, written by authors far more knowledgeable about and closer to that wild and interesting subject than I. This is my story, of the prime years of my life from teenager-dom to adulthood, written in the context and against the backdrop of heavy metal. It has metal history and observations in it, but filtered through my unique experiences, which form the basis of the work. 

Will anyone find this interesting? Will anyone read it? I don’t know. I do know I had no choice but to write it. 

I believe it is worth committing to paper, if only for my own sake. I believe anyone who has lived a full life has a memoir inside to share. The process of writing it has been cathartic. It involves joy, and pain, revisiting old memories and opening some old wounds. 

It’s intensely personal, loud and dumb. It’s also a blueprint for how I improved my life and how a reader might theoretically improve his or her own. 

I am riven with self-doubt about its viability as art or commerce but that’s par for the course. 

I hope anyone who follows this blog and has enjoyed my ramblings over the years might consider picking it up. I don’t believe you have to be a metal fan to appreciate its message.

Flame and Crimson

Flame and Crimson had a solid 4-5 year run with a lot of chatter, reviews, and even an award from the Robert E. Howard Foundation. It finally seems to be receding into the past, which is fine. Most who know S&S have encountered it in some way, shape, or form.

I remain immensely proud of the book. And I continue to get praise, which never fails to move me.

For the curious Flame and Crimson has a joint 274 reviews across Goodreads and Amazon, averaging 4.6 stars on the latter and 4.2 on the former. Most readers seem to have enjoyed it, both as a scholarly work that added some critical rigor to the subgenre, and as a compelling read. That was the goal.

I believe at some point I will do an expanded second edition. But no immediate plans on that front.

Reading

I’ve read 40 books to date. Not bad, but again will fall short of my annual goal of 52 books (one/week). Which I almost never meet. Life gets in the way, as I’m mostly glad is the case. I live a pretty good, full life.

After The Fall of Arthur I’m feeling like it’s time for another delve into Tolkien—The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, maybe some volumes of HOME or some of the criticism. I’ve read enough to know that Tolkien will never be surpassed by any other fantasy author, living or dead. So I keep returning to him. Arthur has whetted my appetite.

Here's what I’ve read to date.

1. The Saga of Swain the Viking: Volume 1: Swain’s Vengeance, Arthur D. Howden Smith (finished 1/7)

2. Excalibur, Bernard Cornwell (finished 1/15)

3. Conan the Barbarian: The Official Story of the Film, John Walsh (finished 1/18)

4. Death Dealer 3: Tooth and Claw, James Silke (finished 1/23)

5. Misfit, Gary Gulman (finished 1/29)

6. Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir, Lisa Dale Norton (finished 1/31)

7. The Shadow of Vengeance, Scott Oden (finished 2/2)

8. From the Heart of Darkness, David Drake (finished 2/11)

9. Art of Memoir, Mary Karr (finished 2/25)

10. Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis (finished 3/3)

11. The Long Game, Dorie Clark (finished 3/9)

12. Bulfinch’s Mythology, Thomas Bulfinch (finished 3/24)

13. Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons and Dragons, Jon Peterson (finished 4/2)

14. Silk Road Centurion, Scott Forbes Crawford (finished 4/28)

15. Twisted Business, Jay Jay French (finished 5/8)

16. In a Lonely Place, Karl Edward Wagner (finished 5/14)

17. Eaters of the Dead, Michael Crichton (finished 5/30)

18. The Vikings, The Seafarers series, Time Life Books (finished 6/8)

19. Tain, Gregory Frost (finished 6/19)

20. Into the Void, Geezer Butler (finished 6/30)

21. The Craft of Revision, Donald M. Murray (finished 7/2)

22. Tehanu, Ursula LeGuin (finished 7/9)

23. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (finished 7/13)

24. Beowulf and Other Old English Poems, translated by Constance B. Hieatt (finished 7/19)

25. Deliverance, James Dickey (finished 7/28)

26. A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis (finished 8/5)

27. Hither Came Conan, Rogue Blades Foundation (finished 8/18)

28. Somewhere in Germany, Mark LaPointe (finished 8/20)

29. Weird Tales of Modernity, Jason Ray Carney (finished 9/2)

30. Neither Beg Nor Yield, Jason Waltz editor (finished 9/16)

31. Fire-Hunter, Jim Kjelgaard (finished 9/22)

32. Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, HP Lovecraft (finished 10/7)

33. My Effing Life, Geddy Lee (finished 10/9)

34. The Shining, Stephen King (finished 10/22)

35. The 6% Club, Michelle Rozen (finished 11/4)

36. Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, Dave Mustaine (finished 11/5)

37. Freedom, Sebastian Junger (finished 11/9)

38. Immaculate Scoundrels, John Fultz (finished 11/20)

39. The Last Celt, Glenn Lord (finished 11/26)

40. The Fall of Arthur, JRR Tolkien (finished 12/2)

Sons of Albion awake: Of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur and Iron Maiden

You'll probably want to read this.

The King Arthur myth is ubiquitous and timeless because it is powerful and its themes universal. The Arthurian myths speak to us subconsciously, on deeper levels than we can readily articulate. 

We feel their powerful call, and many have sought to capture their magic in diverse adaptations. These include authors separated by long gulfs of time—Malory and T.H. White, for example—and artists working in very different mediums. 

J.R.R. Tolkien and Iron Maiden. 

I just got finished reading Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur. It’s a curious little volume, 233 pages, of which the actual centerpiece poem is incomplete and only comprises 40 pages. The rest is critical apparatus by Tolkien’s son Christopher.

But what a poem it is.

40 pages of 14th century alliterative verse rendered into modern English metre, telling the story of Arthur’s journey into far heathen lands before he is summoned back to Britain to quell an uprising by the traitor Mordred. Of Guinevere’s flight from Camelot and a great sea battle.

This is no tale of formal courtly love or restrained codes of chivalry, but resembles something out the pages of The Iliad, the Goddess singing of the rage of Achilles:

Thus the tides of time     to turn backward

and the heathen to humble,    his hope urged him,

that with harrying ships     they should hunt no more

on the shining shores      and shallow waters

of South Britain, booty seeking.

As when the earth dwindles    in autumn days

and soon to its setting    the sun is waning

under mournful mist,    then a man will lust

for work and wandering,    while yet warm floweth

blood sun-kindled,     so burned his soul

after long glory     for a last assay

of pride and prowess,     to the proof setting

will unyielding    in war with fate.

There is no magic, no romance, just vengeance, hard combat, lust, and doom.

… then a man will lust for work and wandering… so burned his soul after long glory. Not exactly Bilbo comfortably enjoying cakes and tobacco at Bag End. Yet Tolkien wrote The Fall of Arthur contemporaneous with his much more famous work.

Tolkien began the poem in the early 1930s and there is evidence to suggest he may have continued working on it as late as 1937, when The Hobbit was published. He spent a lot of time getting the words right, and his effort was not wasted—its words ring with power. Christopher says his father drafted some 120 pages before settling on the final text presented in the book. “The amount of time and thought that my father expended on this work is astounding,” he says. 

Given the effort expended it remains a mystery why Tolkien abandoned the poem, though Christopher offers up a possible explanation: He was turning his whole thought to Middle-Earth. 

After the publication of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien expressed a desire to return to the poem, but the effort failed. It’s a shame the poem remained unfinished but Tolkien’s unbounded genius outstripped his available hours. 

But the extant work is remarkable, and as Christopher demonstrates in the additional material served as likely inspiration for the great Middle-Earth legendarium, including the voyage of Earendil and the fall of Numenor.

Arthurian Eddie.

What makes these stories so potent? For that answer I need to turn to Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson.

Arthur was taken to Avalon to be healed after his great wound suffered at the hands of Mordred at Camlann. The story from there varies; in some versions he does not make the voyage but dies and is interred in an abbey graveyard at Glastonbury. But in others he seems to reach the fabled isle, where one day he will return, healed, to unite a divided land.

Maiden refers to the legendary properties of the isle in “Isle of Avalon” off of 2010’s The Final Frontier.

The gateway to Avalon

The island where the souls

Of dead are reborn

Brought here to die and be

Transferred into the earth

And then for rebirth

This same Isle of Avalon prefigures Tolkien’s Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle, accessible only by a Straight Path out of the Round World denied to mortals, that led on to Valinor.

Arthur, gravely wounded, bides in Avalon/Tol Eressea. His return is promised in the old rituals and the enigmatic enduring standing stones of Britain, as depicted in “Return of the King,” a track appearing on the expanded edition of Bruce Dickinson’s 1998 solo album The Chemical Wedding.

What is the meaning of these stones?

why do they stand alone?

I know the king will come again

From the shadow to the sun

Burning hillsides with the beltane fires

I know the king will come again

When all that glitters turn to rust

The song is a powerful cry for Arthur’s return, one that I feel.

We’re all engaged in the eternal struggle. As human beings we're possessed of individual desires and wants and enjoy our freedoms, but must balance that as members of a civilization that provides purpose and joint safety--and in exchange saddles us with restrictions and obligations. The Arthurian myths speak directly to this great tension. 

Arthur is a man with earthly desires, including his great love for Guinevere, but must subsume them to greater obligations owed to his kingdom. Launcelot is a heroic figure whose martial prowess and love for Guinevere can be viewed as the Chivalric ideal, but his base desires and human weaknesses undo a kingdom.

All the same struggles play out today. There is no clean resolution, just a balance that must be struck with compromise.

I think we’ve have tipped too much into individualism. We create and curate our own virtual realities in our smartphones. We distrust institutions. Civic engagement has sharply declined. Some of this institutional skepticism is warranted. But if everyone reverts to selfish individual interests the center cannot hold, and civilization falls apart.

We need the return of a king to unite this fragmented land. 

In “The Darkest Hour” Bruce/Winston Churchill exhorts the besieged people of England to turn their ploughshares into swords and take up arms against tyranny (“You Sons of Albion awake, defend this sacred land”). Perhaps we one day we may unite under a common cause, the idea of Arthur, and create a new shining kingdom from the wasteland, a “Jerusalem” on earth:

I will not cease from mental fight,

nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant Land.

More (mediocre) content is not better than no content: A rant

Once in a while you’ve got to let off some steam (Bennett). For most, that means punching a heavy bag, screaming into a pillow, maybe going crazy and tearing the tag off a mattress.

For me, it’s … angry blogging! Friday rant incoming.

What’s gotten under my skin?

The incessant need for “more content.”

I’m hearing this in the cries of Rings of Power defenders, many of whom admit that while the show is mediocre at best, and plays fast and loose with Tolkien lore in nonsensical ways, they nevertheless continue to watch. Because “its more Tolkien content, and I need more Middle-Earth. I need more content.” 

Actual quotes.

This chaps my ass.

No one needs “more content.” Not of this sort.

To me it sounds like infantile and babylike cries of, “more food, mama!”

How about, more art, please.

Stop consuming cheap and disposable shit, and begging for more. Find the good stuff that already exists, and enjoy that instead. 

There’s more content right now than anyone can consume in a lifetime.

If everyone stopped producing content tomorrow—if somehow we implemented a worldwide ban, and you could only consume content that’s already been made—you’d have enough for 50 lifetimes.

You’ve got way more than enough. I’m not advocating this, BTW, just making a point.

I hate the need for more, at any cost. I also strongly dislike the word “content” when it comes to media. “Content” is the stuff we expel from our bowels. Probably not what we should be feeding our minds with.

We do need good art. But corporations don’t make art. Corporations make content, on an industrial scale, for undifferentiated masses, in order to make loads of cash. As we see with Star Wars and now (unfortunately) The Lord of the Rings “franchises.” Corporations buy franchises and expect massive ROI on their investments. In Amazon’s case, it’s all about getting more Amazon Prime subscribers, converting to product consumers. The Lord of the Rings becomes a means to an end, a power grab, which is the opposite message of the book.

When you consume poorly made “content” produced by corporations it encourages more of the same behavior. Instead:

Support independent artists and small businesses producing new material. Discuss thoughtful and well-made art. Appreciate it. Encourage creation of more of that sort of art. Or, explore the good, old, time-tested stuff. 

If you adopt these practices worry not, you still have near infinite options.

More “content” comes with a cost.

It devalues the historical wealth of riches we already have. I have a bias here; I’m a historian. I do wonder: Who talks about Fritz Leiber anymore? Clark Ashton Smith, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson? Very few, in comparison to the new and shiny content of the moment. Hell even Ursula LeGuin, once a household name, is starting to slip into the past. 

I worry these men and women will be lost to time under an avalanche of new “content.”

“More content” chokes out the magic of what makes old properties special in the first place. The avaricious need for more content causes every timeline, every side character, every magic item or scroll, every byway, to be fully filled in. Until the magic is gone. 

We no longer need to wonder how the force operates. We no longer need to speculate about the Blue Wizards and what they were doing.

They’ve all been spelled out, like an adult paint by numbers, in the pursuit of feeding the content machine.

We need dark places in the woods, unexplored realms beneath the seas. 

And we need white space on the page. 

Obviously, I enjoy modern adaptations. Obviously, I consume some of them. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite. But I’m definitely more judicious these days with what I watch and read, because I know that you are what you eat. And I’m not a big fan of eating shit.

I’m not advocating closing off possibilities. What I do advocate is, mindful consumption. Read or watch deeply instead of broadly. Then share that out. Celebrate the good. And stop giving your time and attention to the mediocre. 

The Battle of Evermore and the timeless nature of fantasy

(early metal-ish Friday)

That it is told in the language of fantasy is not an accident, or because Tolkien was an escapist, or because he was writing for children. It is a fantasy because fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

--Ursula LeGuin, “On Fantasy and Science Fiction”

The critics who have dismissed fantasy as juvenile escapism have failed to recognize that fantasy grapples with real and eternally pressing issues, albeit wrapped in metaphor and fantastic trappings.

The same critics who worship at the altar of realism and extol the virtues of novels about average people in familiar times cannot admit their darlings have rapidly aged and are fast losing their relevance. While the classics of fantasy remain as fresh today as the day they were written.

That’s because the language of fantasy is unbound by time, or place. It deals with the big issues—conflict within and without, love, sorrow, friendship, the inevitable march of time, pain, decay and death—in poetic abstraction, and in heroic meter and timbre. Modern novels that reference an author’s time and place will confuse the modern reader with surroundings that grow increasingly abstract and impenetrable with the passing years, while the Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth remain eternally familiar and inhabitable even as their authors slip further into the past. They are distanced from the ordinary, but close to the human heart.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, though perhaps never as well as this version by Heart. Because we all grasp its emotional depths, and understand the meaning of the plaintive cries.

The apples turn to brown and black

The tyrant's face is red

Oh war is common cry

Pick up your swords and fly

We’re always trying to bring the balance back. It’s the eternal struggle never won, but once in a while we experience the blessed peace of equilibrium.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, and remain as unspoiled as Lothlorien, because it is the timeless matter of fantasy.

Ruminations on subversive and restorative impulses, and conservative and liberal modes of fantasy fiction

Two towers, old and new.

Liberalism seeks to make anew. Conservatism desires to preserve the time-tested. 

The former represents the creative forces of chaos. The latter the ordered forces of law.

It’s a very yin-yang, or Moorcockian, way of looking at things. 

The older I get I see the need for both. For tradition, and for change. Both in life, and in art. Perhaps you’ll find this a milquetoast viewpoint, and want more sturm un drang. But not today. I’m feeling reflective.

Defenders of the old see what the masters have done and want that to stand, immobile and fixed, like some mountain. It was great, it still is, why change it?

Proponents of the new see old art and admire some aspects of it, but believe that it no longer reflects present realities. And wish to carve new stone out of the existing material, or make something else alongside it.

I see a lot of angst over this divide, but believe these seemingly opposing forces can be reconciled. Because we need both.

I believe our present culture is entirely too much focused on the new and shiny. And not enough on learning from the brilliant minds who have come before us and did some things better than we do. There is so much to be gleaned from history. Much of what we think of as new has been done before. So don’t confuse looking backwards with a backwards mindset. 

But I also recognize change as inevitable, and often results in forward progress. Doing the same thing over and over again results in staleness and conformity. S&S grew moribund in the latter 70s and collapsed in the 80s. The New Wave of SF and its dangerous visions broke away from the hard SF that was itself popular and groundbreaking in the early 20th century, but had become fixed and rigid. And the 60s and 70s saw amazing new works created.

Change is inevitable. It’s always been with us. If you don’t believe so, you might look at H.P. Lovecraft, who broke from the old gothics and ghost stories with his radical new extradimensional horror, or Steven King, who added a blue-collar pop sensibility and more humanity to Lovecraft.

Of course, merely because something is new or subversive doesn’t make it good. Nor does critique of your subversive project mean a bunch of old farts “just can’t handle it.” It just might mean the art was poorly executed. There was a lot of bad old art in the past that was once new, but has been forgotten and discarded. No one remembers most of the authors working in Weird Tales. But those that have lasted have much to teach us.

It’s cool to make new stuff by recombining old things.

It’s OK to love old school stuff, even to repeat or pastiche its forms. 

We can have it all. No one is getting hurt by the conservative impulse to preserve, or the liberal urge to subvert. 

Where do I fall, preferentially, on this spectrum?

To no one’s surprise I’m a small c conservative when it comes to art. I enjoy some subversive art, and admire the creators who challenge the status quo with potent new visions. Though I find myself preferring subversive material that is old enough to have passed into acceptable territory again. See Elric, or bits of The Once and Future King. 

But my deepest sympathies lie with old fiction. Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien remain two of my literary lodestars, and always will. I don’t see them as old. I still see them as innovators who broke new ground from old sources, who had their influences but took them and made something wholly original. Powerful enough to spawn imitators, and genres. 

In “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien chided the literary critics who sought to study Beowulf by reducing it to its component parts, and in so doing, broke it. Pulled down the old tower turning over stones, not realizing from the top you could see the sea.

But if Tolkien had only looked at and admired the past we wouldn’t have The Lord of the Rings. He also made something new from old legends, and broke new ground, though his own powerful creative impulse.

Feeling like it's time to watch these again

Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?

I have. To this book. And to the movies.

But it's been a while.

Today was my last day in the office until I return on January 2, 2024. A blessed 11 days of downtime. I think it's time for a rewatch of one of my favorite films (yes, I consider this one film) of all time. 

Great, not unreservedly so, but great.

I saw these one by one as they premiered in theaters and still love them. And am pleased to own the extended versions on DVD. Were I to watch them all back-to-back-to-back (which I never have done), Google tells me it's 11 hours and 36 minutes. An investment. 

But it's time.

Secret Fire

What is the “fire” borne by characters and otherwise present in the works of Cormac McCarthy and J.R.R. Tolkien?

“I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor.” – Gandalf, Fellowship of the Ring

"Therefore Ilúvatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä." ― The Silmarillion

I want to be with you.  

You cant.

Please.

You cant. You have to carry the fire.

I dont know how to. Yes you do.

Is it real? The fire?

Yes it is. 

Where is it? I dont know where it is.

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there.

I can see it.

--Father and boy, The Road

He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it.

--Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men

There’s been a fair bit written about the meaning of carrying the fire in McCarthy's The Road, and the origin of Gandalf's "secret fire," but comparably less on what the fire actually is. As I see it:

The creative impulse; the drive to make, rather than destroy. 

The life force. Life comes from somewhere, not from nothing.

That which we must pass on, to the next generation, lest we slip back into darkness. Kindness, opposing selfishness.

Hope, in dark places.

That which makes us good.

The divine spark, if you believe in that.

That it can be “carried” without outward sign tells us it is metaphorical (in Tolkien, it is sometimes more, but Gandalf still describes it as “secret,” rarely unveiled). It is something out of myth, not meant in a literal sense, but conveying a larger Truth.

Carrying means that it requires some effort to sustain. It also seems to signify it can be passed on, to another willing recipient.

I try to do good things with my life. I have been better at this at various times, worse at others. I try to teach my daughters, at least by example. Here is how you behave, watch me. I am trying to give back to others, more than I have as a younger man.

The fire flickers, I lose sight of it. I breathe into the embers, keep it kindled.

What fire sustains you?

---

I make no claim that the fire described by Tolkien and McCarthy share a similar source—though both are Catholic—only that there are similarities of expression and interpretation.

A couple good interpretations here: 

The Grey Havens, “What is the Secret Fire That Gandalf Serves?” 

The Art of Manliness: “Carry the Fire” 

Top 10 reasons why I don’t care about Amazon’s The Rings of Power

The Rings of... Meh.

Perhaps you might be wondering, hey, when is that guy from The Silver Key going to weigh in on The Rings of Power? He loves Tolkien.

Consider this that post, but it’s probably not the droids you’re looking for.

I haven’t watched ROP, and at this moment have no plans to. I explain why in this handy top 10 listicle.

A caveat: If you like ROP that’s great! The point of this post is not to (overly) criticize the show, because I haven't seen it. That wouldn’t be honest, or fair. It's to explain my lack of interest. 

That said, apathy for a richly budgeted, dramatic interpretation of a beloved property must have some basis in negativity or critique. In my case, I saw each of The Lord of the Rings films in the theater on opening night, buying advance tickets and braving big crowds and sticky theater floors to watch Tolkien on the big screen. In contrast, I have Amazon Prime, could watch ROP at the click of a button from the safety of my living room… and have yet to expend even that amount of non-effort on the show. Why? My answers follow.

If you like or love the show and think I should give it a chance, please explain why. Who knows, you might win me over. But it will be an uphill battle.

1. The rights weren’t enough. No Silmarillion? No coherent storyline to hang an adaptation upon? Big problem. I knew the writers of ROP were facing monumental issues after learning that they only had rights to the Appendices of LOTR, not the 12-volume History of Middle-Earth nor The Silmarillion. There is no cohesive story to hang a dramatic series on, which means much artistic interpretation is required. That’s a recipe for failure. J.R.R. Tolkien was a genius, and trying to recreate what made him great from appendices and notes is a near-impossible task. The Jackson films were at their best when they hewed to Tolkien’s story and dialogue. In short, the limited deal struck by Amazon was like planting seeds into a thin, arid field, and expecting a rich crop. 

2. The Hobbit wrecked me. If I were to critique the loudest critics of this show it’s with this point: Your Peter Jackson veneration has a large blind spot. Remember these awful films? Like LOTR I also saw them in the theater. Not only did they suck, but I blame The Hobbit for creating the template that film adaptations of Tolkien must be LOUD AND EPIC AND IMPORTANT. The Hobbit (book) is rather small and cozy, save for The Battle of Five Armies and Laketown. The focus should have been on atmosphere and character, and instead it became a wholly unnecessary nine-hour epic. ROP seems to be a continuation of this fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Tolkien great. It’s not bombast and spectacle, it’s story and heart.

3. Dumping Tom Shippey soured me early. I wish we had a better recounting of what led to this foolish decision, but Shippey is the closest human being on earth we have to Tolkien, now that Tolkien’s son Christopher has passed. To cut the World’s Greatest Tolkien Scholar from the project seems to me a major misstep. He was an advisor on the Jackson LOTR films and played a part in their successful adaptation. Plus, he’s a genuine good dude (I spent more than an hour with him years ago at a convention in Boston, and he was very kind and generous with his time). 

4. The reviews haven’t been good. I read and watch reviews (and have written a fair number myself), and I have learned enough to know this show has some serious problems. Many disregard critics (“those who can’t, teach,” etc., and other such nonsense). I don’t. If it’s a source I trust, or if the reviewer is objective, thoughtful, and fair, these hold weight for me. I’m too old and my time is too limited to mindlessly consume entertainment without some indication that it’s worth my time, which leads me to point 5.

5. I only have so much time. I’m 49 years old and am acutely aware that I have only so much time on this planet. I’d prefer to spend that time providing for my family, spending time with family and friends, writing/creating, and reading. The ROP is apparently set to run five seasons, x 8 shows per season, and one hour per episode. That’s 40 hours minimum time investment. That’s a big commitment on something which apparently is not very good (see #4).

6. I’m not a big TV watcher. Give me a book any day. My current TV consumption is some evening news, and the occasional football game. My daughter got me into Stranger Things and I enjoyed that well enough. Beyond that, I don’t watch TV. My friends are still in shock when I tell them I haven’t seen Breaking Bad or The Wire or Better Call Saul or Ozarks, or whatever the hot property is at the moment. I'd rather do other things with my time than suck on the glass teat.

7. I like movies better. Movies have much more appeal than episodic, open-ended series that may or may not end well... if they end at all. Sure, movies can suck too but at least it’s only 2 hours wasted, as opposed to the folks who sat through seven seasons of Game of Thrones only to suffer through a dumpster fire final season. Or folks that invested time in prematurely cancelled shows. I did watch The Walking Dead and was sorely disappointed when that show began to rot from within, ambling along like a mildly hungry animated corpse. Maybe it’s the sword-and-sorcery fan in me, but give me the quick-hitting single film (S&S short story) over the multi-episode, multi-season TV series (phonebook epic fantasy equivalent).

8. I’m old and jaded. Hype bounces off me. I’ve seen enough, and done enough, and experienced enough heartbreak and disappointment, that trailers, regardless of how well-made, aren’t going to move me. I need to find the commitment from within. The irony is this is coming from a guy who works in marketing. 

9. It’s Amazon. I don’t particularly like this company, even though I admire its efficiency in delivering my packages on time. Doesn’t Amazon own enough of the world already? Do we want to live in a world where it also owns all art and product, in addition to the means of distribution?

10. I don’t want to see Tolkien adapted anymore. Yeah, it’s selfish, maybe petty. I don’t know. We’ve got the books, some cool old cartoons, the Jackson films. That’s more than enough. There are wonders beyond compare in The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarillion, HOME, The Children of Hurin, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, his letters, etc., not to mention the hundreds of academic volumes examining his works. All of this should be enough. If the right director were to do the right adaptation, for example a Robert Eggers directed The Children of Hurin, I’d watch it. But even then, we don’t NEED it. We’ve got the books, and the books will always be better. You can’t out-do Tolkien’s unique brilliance, no matter how big your budget. Sorry Jeff Bezos.

Before They Are Hanged, some thoughts on Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy

Some hanging... much stabbing.

I'm now two-thirds of the way through Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, having just finished the second volume Before They Are Hanged, and damn, I’m enjoying this (long) journey. 

These books are all over 500 pages, far longer than the lean and mean S&S I typically prefer. I’m not the biggest fan of this type of thing: Epic fantasy/Grimdark, multi-volume series of phonebook sized tomes. With a few exceptions. I’ll gladly read long series from the likes of Bernard Cornwell, for example. 

Joe Abercrombie is another exception. I’ll read what the dude puts out. He’s an excellent writer and the First Law are easily among the best books I’ve read this year. His strengths as I see them are: 

• Ear for dialogue. His characters speak with unique voices, with each other (not at each other, not in declarative speech, but dialogue), and through the dialogue the plot moves apace. He also adds a simultaneous internal dialogue that reveals the characters’ thoughts simultaneously—which is sometimes at odds with the carefully concealed lies they speak aloud.

• Characterization. A series of this size requires a cast of characters and I would say at least 3-4 are something approaching fully realized. There are characters you remember, including Ninefingers, Ferro, Jezal, Glokta, and to a lesser degree West and Dogman, to whom you can’t wait to return.

• Depictions of violence. If you like battles (who doesn’t?) these are taut, wildly dangerous, unpredictable. Abercrombie is up there with the likes of Bernard Cornwell and GRRM for desperate melees and violence that you can picture as you read it. There is an amazing sequence in which a main character who thinks he’s victorious is suddenly struck in the face with a mace, and after a detour into unconsciousness returns to the horror of pain and disfigurement. Grimdark, but very well done.

A few specific observations and a few critiques.

Abercrombie is at this best when he’s focused on the conflict of human beings and gritty reality, but seems slightly out of his element when portraying fantastic elements. I find his use of monsters/magic not entirely convincing, and not as compelling to read. Which is why his The Heroes resonated strongly with me—there’s nary of whiff of magic in it. I have a hard time picturing what the Shanka look like; they are called “flatheads” but are essentially orcs (I think?)—hordes of cannon fodder with less menace than any of the human protagonists. Likewise Bayaz, a great wizard of the first order, can move things with his mind with a psionic-like power, but it fails to awe or inspire. Bayaz in general reminds me of a much less likeable, highly irritable Gandalf. 

I could see Abercrombie morphing into an author of historical fiction. There is a lost Empire of Gurkhul that evokes the ancient Roman empire, of past glories of architecture and construction that can no longer be achieved by the peoples of the current (fallen) age, only glimpsed through ruins. I think he could do a wonderful series set in 6th or 7th century Britain, something like Cornwell’s Arthurian trilogy.

Despite the story moving apace, and the general high quality of the prose, the series does not entirely avoid the bloat endemic to almost all high fantasy. Some of the sequences, even when well done, feel like semi-indulgent detours into world-building. I think the overall page count could be safely reduced. Probably more of a preference-thing; some people love world-building. Not really my thing.

A final note: I was tickled at mid-book to read what is essentially a voyage into Moria complete with the bridge of Khazad-dum, a bridge “soaring across a dizzy space in one simple arch, impossibly delicate.” It is a work of some master maker, “undiminished. They shine the brighter, if anything, for they shine in a darkened world.” At one point the group’s guide, Longfoot, launches into an entirely un-Abercrombie-like soliloquy complete with archaic, high language that sounds as if it issued from Boromir or Aragorn, completely different than the rough, coarse, modern dialogue typical of the rest of the book:

“And this is why I love to travel,” breathed Longfoot. “At one stroke, in one moment, this whole journey has been made worthwhile. Has there ever been such another sight? How many men living can have gazed upon it? The three of us stand at a window upon history, at a gate into the long-forgotten past? No longer will I dream of fair Talins, glittering on the sea in the red morning, or Ul-Nahb, glowing beneath the azure bow of the heavens in the bright midday, or Ospira, proud upon her mountain slopes, lights shining like the stars in the soft evening. From this day forth, my heart will forever belong to Aulcus.”

Longfoot is then cut off by Ferro, raining on his parade by calling the sight a “load of old buildings,” which rips us back into the dark narrative. Perhaps Abercrombie (a big fan of Martin, his chief inspiration for the First Law) is taking a bit of a piss out of old JRRT. Interesting, nonetheless.

Blood Tears, Blind Guardian

Today's Metal Friday is a cut off Nightfall in Middle-Earth by the great Blind Guardian.

"Blood Tears" is typical of the work on this album... fucking awesome. The tempo changes in this one...wow. At 1:33 the song transforms from an atmospheric and melodic medieval feel, to full-on mosh-pit. Then returns. There and back again.

Tolkien is on my brain a bit more than usual (JRRT never leaves this cranium) due to the recent Rings of Power, which I still haven't watched. Will I? I don't know, I'm feeling very apathetic about it all. I’m not a big TV watcher, but mainly I have no faith Amazon can recreate Tolkien's genius.

But I can say Blind Guardian channeled a bit of it, with Nightfall in Middle-Earth. Enjoy this bit of First Age storytelling. “Captured” and “Blood Tears” are about the capture of Maedhros, Morgoth’s chaining of the Elven hero by his wrist to a sheer cliff in the mountains of Thangorodrim, and his deliverance when Fingon hacks off his hand. Blind Guardian offers a moving look into the mind of Maedhros and the torment and pain he must have experienced:

And blood tears I cry

You've searched and you've found

Cut off your old friends hand

 

S&S updates: Dunsany, New Edge, book deals, and a fine response to a troubling essay

Hail to the King of Dreams, baby.

A roundup of recent-ish news and updates on the sacred genre.

My most recent essay for Tales from the Magician’s Skull is up, a piece on fantasy in the era of Lord Dunsany. You can read that here. I’ve recently been digging into a short, informal, but interesting quasi-biography by Hazel Littlefield (at right), who visited Dunsany in his home country and later hosted him late in his life during a trip to the United States. “Fantasy” was a different country back then, wilder and with almost no borders and boundaries, not the oft-discussed, greased publishing machine with its various subgenres and conventions that we have today. I get into a little bit of that in the essay, restrained a bit as TftMS has a hard-ish cap of around 1,000 words.

New Edge, a new S&S digital magazine headed up by Oliver Brackenbury of the “So I’m Writing a Novel” podcast, is now open for registration. The first issue (#0) is free and I believe the plan is to gauge interest for a paid ‘zine, supporting new authors and artists. Recently I agreed to write an essay on the outsider trope in S&S for this debut issue (got to get cracking on that).

Not “new” news, but new-ish to me, is the forthcoming Conan novel Blood of the Serpent, a prequel to “Red Nails” now available for pre-order. I have not read anything by author S.M. Stirling, but after a recent conversation with Deuce Richardson I feel confident that he’s a solid choice for this novel. Stirling has a reputation as a good writer with a big imagination and knows REH inside and out. Time will tell. I hope it’s better than the average novel in the TOR line.

Baen signs Howard Andrew Jones to a five-book deal. I’m glad to see a publisher with some budget and clout invest in S&S, and HAJ is a good author to get behind. I have enjoyed his The Desert of Souls and some of his short fiction in Tales from the Magician’s Skull, and these books will feature his exiled general Hanuvar. Let’s hope this is just the tip of the spear for a continued S&S revival.

I have yet to say anything on the new Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, of which we’ve now seen a couple trailers (or maybe “teaser trailers”?). I’ve been underwhelmed at the generic, CGI-heavy glop I’ve seen to date. The core problem is Amazon’s lack of rights to Tolkien’s actual material. A large, multi-interest conglomeration does not possess Tolkien’s soul and vision, his unique time-and-place honed brilliance with languages, and love and care for his creation. The odds are this will disappoint. The Jackson LOTR films worked because they largely stuck to the source material, and his Hobbit films flopped when they deviated from the book. Amazon has precious little rights to Tolkien’s source material. What we really need is Robert Eggers directing The Children of Hurin.

Finally, I wanted to point folks in the direction of this lengthy but fine post by Jason Ray Carney, rebutting a recent article which made the case that sword-and-sorcery needs to be updated for a modern audience (part of a natural process of discernment), and its old works discarded. We all engage in the process of discernment; it’s why we read Shakespeare instead of instruction manuals, and admire and preserve the Sistine Chapel instead of a child’s crayon drawings. Discernment helps explain why we might love the Chronicles of Narnia or the Chronicles of Prydain as a child, but choose not to read them as adults; though they might still be good books, we’ve developed a more refined palate for adult prose styles or complicated storylines and themes. Likewise, through a process of discernment, many readers have moved away from S&S over the years. But, personal discernment strikes me as very different than a general call to discard literature that someone, somewhere finds problematic. When reading old pulp or pulp-inspired S&S of the 60s-80s, my advice remains consistent: Detach and apply historical context, or as Carney suggests, adopt an egalitarian attitude of “chronopolitanism.” We can like old and new things, simultaneously. We can enjoy old barbaric works as entertainment without becoming barbarians ourselves. 

In summary; If this “new edge” movement embraces the likes of Renegade Swords and Schuyler Hernstrom alongside the likes of the Whetstone crew and Howard Andrew Jones, etc., I’m in. If it draws lines based on adherence to certain political views, or places bounds on artistic freedoms, I’m out.

Fantasy without Tolkien? Yes that happened, and yes it matters.

My latest post is up on the blog of DMR Books: "Fantasy without Tolkien? Yes that happened, and yes it matters." Check it out here.

This one was prompted by a few lines I heard Corey Olsen, aka., The Tolkien Professor, state during one of his recent podcasts. It was rather a throwaway line but struck me as not fair to fantasists working before the world-altering impact of The Lord of the Rings, and so I felt compelled to respond.

If you read the post, you will see that A) I venerate Tolkien, and B) I enjoy Olsen's work. But, I also call them as I see them. And I think the fantasy genre would have materialized even without JRRT. It would have been far less rich, a paler version, and the genre might never have attained the commercial success it now enjoys. I can hardly bear to think of it... but, I think if you review the evidence of what was occurring in the 1950s and 60s, prior to the Ace Tolkien explosion of 1965, the arrival of the genre was inevitable.

We'll never know and this is of course all speculation, a game of alternative history. Tolkien's arrival ushered in a new brand of fantasy and changed the course of history, and fantasy fiction, forever. But, we should not forget that he himself was influenced by many fine writers of fantasy, the Burroughs boom was in full swing, and in all likelihood we would have had the Lancer Conan Saga. The likes of Burroughs and Leiber and Moorcock and Vance and Lovecraft were coalescing and emerging from the shadow of 1950s science-fiction. 

And, with all due respect to Olsen, their work absolutely mattered.

Tolkien’s Modern Reading: A review

Tolkien: Not just for medieval scholars, anymore.

Given that Tolkien was not the first to write secondary-world fantasies for adult readers, nor the first to popularize traditional stories for modern audiences, we should ask what it was that made The Lord of the Rings so startling. Part of the answer, at least, is that Tolkien, like a scribe of the kingdom, brought out from his storehouse treasures both old and new.

 

--Holly Ordway, Tolkien’s Modern Reading

 

J.R.R Tolkien has been described as harder to influence than a Bandersnatch, and commonly believed to be utterly uninterested in any literature written after the Canterbury Tales. As it turns out, these claims are largely untrue. Tolkien was indeed an ardent medievalist, but the “leaf mould” of his imagination was far deeper, and richer, and broader, than just an amalgamation of ancient works. Despite what many commonly believe, Tolkien also read and enjoyed modern literature, too.

 

The person to blame for this inaccurate characterization? The late Humphrey Carpenter, author of the only authorized biography of Tolkien and the only outsider (still!) ever permitted complete access to Tolkien’s complete letters. We now have Holly Ordway to thank for setting the record straight with Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire, 2021). This is one of the better works of Tolkien criticism I have read. Nothing can (or likely ever will) compare to Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth, and I’ve also got a great respect and admiration for John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War, but Ordway’s book is both highly readable and illuminating, which is what I look for in literary criticism.

 

Ordway’s book studies fiction that Tolkien would have considered “modern” (published 1850 to his present day) and that had some influence, glancing or readily apparent, on his main legendarium (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion). Ordway restricted her work only to those authors whom Tolkien definitely interacted with, as can be traced to notations or references in his public writings, letters, interviews, from reports from other people, or in his work in academia. Ordway’s work lists a total of 148 authors and more than 200 titles. These include the likes of a few authors that should be familiar to readers of this blog: Poul Anderson, Algernon Blackwood, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Andrew Lang, Fritz Leiber, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, George MacDonald, C.L. Moore, William Morris, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, and T.H. White, among many others. Many of these seem to have had negligible influence (Tolkien read the likes of Howard and Smith for example in the L. Sprague de Camp collection Sword & Sorcery, and has little to say about it), but other authors made an impact, sometimes profound. 

 

Ordway does a fine job tracing these influences and matching them up, thematically or stylistically, with passages from Tolkien’s texts. For example, from MacDonald’s Lilith he may have drawn inspiration for his themes of death and deathlessness (MacDonald was father to 11 children, but was predeceased by six of them, including his eldest child Lilia). Both MacDonald and Tolkien were “men much acquainted with grief.” Tolkien also credits MacDonald’s goblins as a direct inspiration for his own underground dwellers in The Hobbit. MacDonald looms large enough to get his own chapter, as does, unsurprisingly, William Morris, whose Goths from The House of the Wolfings are stamped all over the Rohirrim. Interestingly, Ordway makes a good case that Morris’ imperialistic, militarized Romans may have inspired Tolkien’s orcs. 

 

Haggard might be a surprise to some: Tolkien read so voraciously of old HRH him that Ordway devoted a whole chapter to his influence (“Rider Haggard: Fresh Ore from Old Mines”). We know that the eponymous She of Haggard’s wildly popular novel was an influence on Galadriel, and that he loved King Solomon’s Mines, but Ordway also reveals that Tolkien read the likes of the lesser-known The Wanderer’s Necklace. As late as 1961 he was still reacting positively in interviews to the name of Haggard. Dunsany was like Tolkien a veteran and wrote the preface of Tales of Wonder while recovering from a war wound, just as Tolkien began writing of his legendarium while recovering from trench-fever. Ordway also includes some deep cuts, noting that Tolkien borrowed elements of a pitched wolf battle in the pines from S.R. Crockett’s The Black Douglas (1889) for Bilbo’s escape from the wargs in The Hobbit. The striking art from this book bears it out. Not all of Tolkien’s reading was fantastic: One of the books that apparently inspired him greatly was J.H. Shorthouse’s John Inglesant, widely read in Tolkien’s day though largely forgotten today.

 

There is much, much more to recommend from this book, including coverage of writers such as Matthew Arnold, Sinclair Lewis, even a handful of science-fiction authors like H.G. Wells (Tolkien read them, too). If you’re a Tolkien fan, seek it out and read it.

20 year anniversary of the Fellowship of the Ring/LOTR films

I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3,000--err 20--years ago.

20 years ago today New Line Cinema and director Peter Jackson delivered unto the world the first of the three Lord of the Rings films, The Fellowship of the Ring (release date Dec. 19, 2001). I was there on opening night.

There was huge anticipation for these films. I was hoping against hope that they would be good, but I feared and expected the worst. The odds of them sucking were high. I could count on one hand the number of truly good fantasy films prior (Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, Rankin Bass Hobbit, the original Star Wars trilogy should you count them as fantasy). And, my expectations were incredibly high. The Lord of the Rings is my favorite novel, across any genre. It is one of the greatest novels ever written, and stands alongside the best classic literature of the last two centuries, full stop. To put a work like this in the hands of a Hollywood studio was an invitation to butchery and disaster. Surely Jackson would not be able to meet the high standard I had set.

Nevertheless I had to see the films. They were getting a lot of hype and some advance praise from critics (which I largely avoided), and so made the trek to the theater on Dec. 19, 2001.

Opening night was pandemonium. There were people in line in elven cloaks and chain mail. Two dudes were swordfighting in front of the screen with boffer weapons. Most nerdy of all, a dude in the row in front of me watched the film with an LED headlamp on, following along with the book on his lap.

I kid you not. That's some hardcore nerdity right there. 

When the opening title sequence came on with Howard Shore's atmospheric score the audience broke into cheering and applause.

I will admit, I was rapidly swept away into the film. The Shire looked largely as it had in my imagination. The cast was spectacular. I was moved to tears with Boromir's death. Shockingly, against all my fears, it worked. I left the theater blown away, surprised by joy beyond anything I had hoped. Over the next two years, I repeated the pattern with The Two Towers and the Return of the King. I cried again, when Sam put Frodo on his back on Mount Doom, and Theoden led the ride of Rohirrim on the Pelennor Fields.

I was sad to see it all come to an end.

So, twenty years later, how do they hold up?

Pretty darned great, in my opinion. Great does not mean flawlessly. When I watch them now there are a few parts that I actively dislike (collapsing bridge sequence in Moria, shield-surfing at Helm's Deep, and the green ghost army at Minas Tirith). The Paths of the Dead sequence is not particularly well-done. I don't miss Tom Bombadil and believe that was a smart cut, but I do miss the scouring of the Shire, and believe that its excision makes it a lesser film. The action is over-emphasized and some of the slapstick humor is out of place. Jackson would amplify these flaws a hundred fold in the absolutely abysmal adaption of The Hobbit a decade later.

Are the movies as good as the book? No, they're not, and they could not be, not even with 12 films and an unlimited budget. The world we see on screen is not as deep or wide as the one we encounter in Tolkien's text. Some of the themes and much of the complexity was removed.

All that said, I'm full of gratitude that we have these films. I think 20 years from now they will still be beloved. They hold up, quite well. I'd still love to see a proper Hobbit but I'm happy with the LOTR films. It might be time for a rewatch over the Christmas break.

A review of Tolkien (2019)

I’m currently on a J.R.R. Tolkien kick, having finished both a re-read of The Lord of the Rings and a re-read of Humphrey Carpenter’s outstanding biography. Last night I watched for the first time Tolkien (2019), which I have both managed to (until now) avoid out of some combination of forgetfulness and anticipated dread of ill-treatment of its subject. I’m pleased to say that I found it a good film, not great, but worth the watch.

Tolkien focuses on Tolkien’s early life from roughly age 10, circa 1902, ending with him writing the iconic first line of The Hobbit, in the early 1930s. We get a heavy emphasis on his romance with Edith Bratt, his friendship with the T.C.B.S., four passionate boys who shared a common love of heroic literature, his love of languages, and his experiences with love and war that inspired his great story of the war of the ring and its underlying mythology.

Overall I enjoyed the film, and was moved by a few scenes. It took several dramatic liberties, compressing and magnifying various events to help propel along the sometimes quite ordinary course of about 25 years of his life. Other events I believe were wholly created—sneaking into the storage room of a sold-out concert hall to listen to a performance of the Richard Wagner opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen” with Edith, for example. Normally I would not complain about it, except that Tolkien was not particularly influenced by Wagner’s opera, despite the shared conceit of a ring of power, and a casual viewer of the film might leave thinking that Wagner’s Ring Cycle was the chief influence on The Lord of the Rings (it was not). Tolkien did romantically reunite with Bratt after the latter had gotten engaged to another man, and encouraged her to break off the relationship. But it did not happen in the seconds before Tolkien dramatically boarded a transport ship to France, as was portrayed in Tolkien. But I accept these changes in the spirit of needing to create a dramatic film, which is very different from biography or history.

Tolkien was also surprisingly low on the “cringe” factor. There were no made-up dramatic charges into German machine gun fire, embarrassing sex scenes, or manufactured maudlin T.C.B.S. speeches; rather the genuine friendship and spirit of the four boys was well-portrayed, as was Tolkien’s view of Edith as something akin to an elven princess (for better and for worse, as she often felt alienated by his split personality around her). Tolkien’s life had a great many tragedies and triumphs that required no exaggeration, and the film presented some of these faithfully. I particularly liked that it preserved the 1916 letter from G.B. Smith to Tolkien, in which the former foresaw his own end in the fields of France and implored his old schoolmate to continue the great work the T.C.B.S. had vowed to create:

My God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.

It is heartbreaking to think what came next: T.C.B.S member Rob Gilson died in one of the many suicidal advances across the mud-choked Somme battlefield, straight into German machine-gun fire; Smith suffered shrapnel wounds from an exploding artillery shell and later died of gangrene infection. That left only Wiseman and Tolkien to carry on the T.C.B.S.' promised great work. Tolkien developed trench fever and had to be evacuated back to England, which in all likelihood saved his life. He and Wiseman held up their end of the bargain: Wiseman would go on to become a school headmaster, while Tolkien of course would go on to become an Oxford professor and write the greatest fantasy the world has ever known.

The best account of this period of Tolkien’s life remains John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War, which after Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth is one of the best pieces of Tolkien scholarship I have read. But you could do worse on a Saturday night than a viewing of Tolkien.