Stratofanatic's Emporium

So, by dint of my work on Paul Edwin Zimmer's poetry, who once dubbed J.R.R. Tolkien and Poul Anderson as his "literary masters," I'm now delving into what Poul Anderson has done poetry-wise . . . . . . . and this has proven to be quite an interesting task. I'm pretty much getting all my information on Anderson's poetry from the wonderful  Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database , and, while some of it has been reprinted in widely scattered -- and hard to find -- volumes of work, much of it first appeared, and continues to only appear, in the famous sff fanzine Amra . This was a great home for many 1960s sword and sorcery authors, including Lin Carter, L. Sprague DeCamp, and of course Anderson. So my weekend was spent basically interlibrary loaning hoards and hoards of Anderson poetry which appeared in the fanzine over the course of the decade. Many of the poetry, intriguingly, is not original to Anderson; it's almost entirely translations from O...

Looking for some light reading after doing some dense critical theory, I decided to wander over the local Bookman's and grab myself a number of C.S. Lewis books: The Screwtape Letters The Abolition of Man** Mere Christianity . My thoughts? (1) Lewis is a remarkably clear writer, and his style is refreshingly pleasant. (2) He may not be a genuine philosopher, but he's funny, he's charming, and he writes with an incredible honesty. He's someone who I'd really like if I ever had the chance to meet him -- and that's not something I often contemplate when reading an author. Quite the opposite, actually. (3) On much of the practical advice that he gives, we're pretty simpatico. For example, he calls "gluttony" any situation where someone is overly picky about the food they eat. I might call it something else, but it's a tad too self-indulgent for my taste**** and also, if you're out in public, just plain bad manners. Likewise, ...

As an innovative program, one of the things that the U of A Writing Program has begun doing in recent years is an Annual Performance Review for Career-track Faculty (i.e., the group formerly known as lecturers and NTTs). This year being my first year, obviously this was my first APR. Since I was a member of the APR committee in the fall, I mostly knew what to expect and, despite hearing some horror-and-griping stories from older lecturers, the process was pretty manageable. All in all, gathering together the various documents** took me . . . actually, I have no idea. Anywhere between 5-15 hours, I suppose. That's the benefit of doing bureaucratic work while avoiding harder writing tasks like composing an article -- the time just flies by. Anyway, last Monday I had a post-APR meeting with one of the WP faculty . . . it's a nice gesture on their part and just a way to touch base with us Career-track faculty. Quite a positive experience, and it's a relief to know that I ...

Back when I was an MA student and unsure of the future direction of my academic study, I was obsessed with a perceived divide between literary studies and philosophy. Critical theory and cultural studies seemed like a lot of hocus pocus to me, where good old-fashioned analytic philosophy had the methodological rigor to get the truth out of real questions. Well, that perceived divide is no longer a big issue with me (the value of one and the limitations of the other have become more apparent), so it's somewhat amusing to see disciplinary rancor when it crops up. I'm currently reading a book called Fame by a professor of philosophy named Mark Howlands. He's talking about the Protagorean view that "man is the measure," by which one understanding of the phrase is that truth claims such as the earth's roundness are always relative to the observer. This, however, "is a truly asinine doctrine," he says, "that can find a home only in university Englis...

Well, this was a peach . . . . Other day, I received a random email from a well-known Tolkienist entitled, "Book on Tolkien for JTR." Immediately I think, Whoa, he wants to review for Fafnir! Just a few days before, I posted a CfR for Fafnir that had five Tolkien books as among the available titles. I was surprised because established scholars don't usually engage in reviewing all that much . . . it's more something for motivated early career academics.All five of those books had been grabbed up within the first 24 hours, incidentally, and I was worried that I'd have to explain how his book had already been given away! Anyway, turns out that he was actually offering me a chance to review a book for Journal of Tolkien Research , which tickled me pink for all sorts of reasons. I've done tons of book reviews before, but usually after seeing a CfR or soliciting a reviews editor. This was the first time someone had solicited me . Moving on up, as George Jefferson...

So, in the wake of meeting Stephen R. Donaldson at the ICFA, he had -- as I mentioned -- given me his contact e-mail . I waited a week and a half or so before emailing him; since he seemed genuinely interested in my work, I also sent the longer version of my article on his feminism and the issue of gender violence, currently under the review. A very pleasant exchange followed, which warmed my cold bleak heart.  I considered writing that  article, at a time when I  should  have been transforming my dissertation into a book, as a sort of homage for a set of books that just haven't received enough of the right kind of attention, at least not for the virtues I've always seen in them. So it's quite nice that he appreciated my remarks. . . . although, granted, if he had been irked by anything, I suspect his natural courtesy would have prevented him from saying so. Anyway, concerning this blog's title: Rollo May. As I was doing background research, I did some ...