Stratofanatic's Emporium

 . . . and by "reading" Lewis's Space Trilogy, I mean I sure as heck tried to read his Space trilogy. I got through  1 1/2 of the books. You see, I'd made the conscious decision a few months back to work my way through the Inklings besides Tolkien. My Charles Williams project didn't go very well (except maybe for War in Heaven ), so I was hoping to redeem myself with my Lewis project. I've actually read the Narnia series twice. I remember enjoying it during my first stint in grad school, back in 2007 or thereabouts, although I don't recall quite picking up on all the religious elements. They darn well punched me in the face during my second go-around, though. I re-read the series last winter break, and Lewis's didacticism and brazen certainly just got to me. But I get it -- I'm not the target audience. Well, it was more of the same with his Space trilogy. OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET I did get through this one in its entirely, and it had some def...

So, meant to post this a month ago, but it slipped my mind. After I published my essay on Saruman, Thrasymachus, and rhetoric , I also posted it to academic.edu . Then I forgot about it. Well, I opened the site back up in late October, and two messages were awaiting me. One guy -- someone from the London School of Economics, no less -- complimented me on my "beautiful writing," which warms my heart. I certainly try, y'know. Another was from a faculty member in classics and world religions who thought my essay's introduction would be a great way to introduce Gen. Ed. students to standard issues from philosophy and rhetoric. Pretty awesome.

Well, on this happy Gobble Day, I'm where I always am -- Starbucks, working on the dissertation. A few days ago, I helped my friend Sarah get a load of P.G. Wodehouse books she'd put on layaway at a used bookstore called Grumpy's. Apparently, she got quite a deal -- 40 Wodehouse (pronounced "wood-house," I was told quite vehemently ) books in hardcover, at 8 bucks apiece but 20% off.  So, mission happily accomplished. What made the encounter intriguing, however, was how thoroughly it proved to me that I lived in a red state. The guy had a "Trump" sticker on his front door (this is a business, mind you!) and a "Jesus is Lord" sticker as well. That actually reminded me of another business in town that has had "Obama did not build this" painted prominently on the side of its outside wall. Well, I walked into the bookshop to the sound of Christian talk radio, which is unsurprising enough, but then I saw that Mr. Grumpy himself was doing...

Came across this facebook post I did about a year ago, well before I began the blog here. It's about one of the deconstructive postcolonial articles*** in the special issue done by  Modern Fiction Studies back in 2004 or so. I was amused: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, bother. I'm reading a postcolonial/deconstructive critique of LOTR, and I came across this sentence: "Thus, any critical 'naming' of Tolkien's work that this analysis may arrive at, if such a naming is indeed possible, will be double-voiced, traced with echoes, shadows, and split subjects." Translation: "Read through the next 20 pages, and I double-dog dare you to find one single assertion in the whole piece. Seriously, just one proposition -- I'll give you a million dollars. If this entire article doesn't waste your life, then I've wasted my time in stringing together all these unrelat...

This is the second part of my review of  JTR's  special issue on "Authorizing Tolkien" -- the first part can be found  here . Not to keep anyone in suspense, but let me say that I really liked what this issue is doing. The following are all high quality articles and, although I have a special place in my heart for the piece by Thumma-Walls, every following piece certainly deserves a perusal. Reid, Robin A., and Michael D. Elam. “Authorizing Tolkien: Control, Adaptation, and Dissemination of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Works.” Authorizing Tolkien. Spec. issue of Journal of Tolkien Research 3.3 (2016): 1-10. Web . The editors' introduction. The issue of “adapting” a work, especially when the themes of that adaptation differ from the original author’s, is a highly vexed question. The editors argue that “one needn’t be alarmed by adaptations” (2) because we should see the act of “borrowing as one that has analogies—even if not perfect—in a long view of literary histo...

Still reeling from the shock and horror of last Tuesday, but academic blogs, as they say, go on. Issue 3.3 of The Journal of Tolkien Research was a special issue dedicated to adaptations (primarily game and popular culture adaptations) of Tolkien's work. I gotta say, I really liked the general concept of the special issue. Although I myself have very little interest in ever writing an article on popular culture, it is still something that can tell us a lot about audiences and how those audiences look at and view Tolkien. It's a very new area of research and maybe might help define the identity of JTR, carving out a critical space that Tolkien Studies seems unlikely to delve into. Any critical comments I might have are very minor, and they relate to typos and some inconsistent citation.  ( JTR's style guide for citation seems both crazy and unhelpful.) But I would like to start this review on what may be one of the best -- if not the best -- article on Tolkien written thi...

Recently read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1855) , mostly for reasons of the (distant) Tolkien connection. Tolkien read it, and liked it, and apparently Longfellow earned some inspiration from the meter -- trochaic tetrameter -- of the Finnish  Kalavala . John Garth, after noticing the similarities between the death of Smaug and the death of Megissogwon, already did a nice piece on the connections ,** and I don't really hope to add anything major beyond a few observations. In the Letters, the only reference to Longfellow is indirect -- when Tolkien compared his philology to Lewis Carroll's fascination with math, he makes an interesting remark. With characteristic self-deprecation, he says that "this stuff of mine is really more comparable to Dodgson's amateur photography, and his song of Hiawatha's failure than to Alice " ( Letters 22). The poem Tolkien is referring to is Carroll's " Hiawatha's Photographing ," a c...