A Tale of the Brave Little Article that Could: New Essay in Tolkien Studies

YES!!! So, my two contributor's copies from the most recent issue of Tolkien Studies have just arrived .... my article is "Depth, Globalization, and the Domestic Hero: The Postmodern Transformation of Tolkien’s Bard in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Films," and I think it'll be a highly useful application of neo-Straussian and Marxist theory to Tolkien Studies as a field.

Here's a quick recap of the argument. Afterward, though, I'll spend this entry discussing the absolutely tortured publication path my brave little article had to follow.

ARGUMENT:

Does anyone remember the scene from The Battle of The Five Armies when Alfrid Lickspittle asks Bard, “The Master’s mantle was there for the taking, but you threw it all away. And for what?” Bard doesn't answer, but Jackson, who's not really known for his subtlety, quickly pans the camera to Bard's children, thereby implying that family (duh!)  is important.

Anyway, that's Jackson in a nutshell. He takes Tolkien's content, which is very specific to English cultural and literary history, and "postmodernizes" it to conform to the demands of a global cosmopolitan audience. The first film trilogy picked a Star Wars-esque conception of Good vs. Evil, and so the second Hobbit trilogy picks an emphasis on family from a book that doesn't show families at all. As I argue, Jackson's adaptation fits quite well into the definition of postmodernity advanced by Fredric Jameson, where the postmodern equates to historical shallowness. Tolkien, though, is all about historical depth.

That should mean that Marxist critics who hate postmodern aesthetics, like Jameson, should love Tolkien, right? Well, no. ... So I spend the rest of my article's second half basically shouting, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, MARXIST CRITICS?

TORTURED PUBLICATION PATH:

Anyway, this essay began from a CfP I saw for a peer-reviewed edited collection back in .... oh, May 2015, it must have been. (Yes, that's right -- almost seven years ago.) Since I was then writing my dissertation, I decided to double-dip, even though nothing else in the diss remotely concerned the Jackson films.

Anyway, I wrote the chapter, send it off, and eventually came to discover the meaning of "academic publication horror story."

You see, although this collection was destined for McFarland, which isn't known for publishing great scholarship, the editor (let's call them Editor Joe) co-edited a previous collection on the Jackson films, so I thought, "Oh, okay, this all sounds legit."

But the warning signs came soon. My friend, Sarah Crotzer, with whom I also shared this CfP, just couldn't get a reply from Editor Joe one way or another. Then more warning signs came after I got my two peer reviews two months part. For the second review, the editor forgot to remove the first reviewer's name -- incidentally, the late, great Richard C. West. The first review, however, was mean, incompetent, and absolutely intellectually useless. It should never have been passed on to an author. "Oh well," I thought. Not knowing any better, I rolled up my sleeves and tried to address the few objections that seemed to hold merit. Editor Joe acknowledged receipt, but offered no comment on the changes.

More time passes. I defend my dissertation easily, and then ... nothing. One year passes. Two years. I sent a few queries to Editor Joe, asking how the collection's coming along, and he keeps responding, "Oh, I've had some health problems, but I'm writing the introduction now, and things will come together shortly. The end of next month, surely!"

Another year passes. Still nothing. 

By this point it's February 2019. Out of curiosity, I re-read the book chapter, and I'm dismayed to realize how absolutely dreadful the writing is. Full of fluff and infelicitous phrasing, though the argument still held up. On one hand, I became grateful that Editor Joe had delayed things so much that my writing skill could have improved so drastically. On the other hand, I thought: "How does any competent editor agree to publish this book chapter without further copyediting?"

The answer, of course, was that Editor Joe wasn't competent.** Finally, I pulled the essay in Summer 2019. Still proud of the argument, I re-submitted to Tolkien Studies later that August. Since I had the ill-fortune to submit while TS XVI was in preparation, a positive editorial decision came two months later. The external peer reviewer, though, took only three days to return high-quality feedback. A thousand blessings upon that kind-hearted soul, whoever they are. 

The resulting revision took another month or two, but eventually I sent the (now) article off in December 2019 with high hopes of appearing in the 2020 edition of Tolkien Studies. Unfortunately, the pandemic intervened, and the article got pushed back to TS XVIII in October 2021.

All's well that ends well, though. I'm proud of "Depth, Globalization, and the Domestic Hero," and I'm ecstatic that something originally intended for a forgettable McFarland collection found its way into Tolkien Studies. Brave little article, I salute you!

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** In another context, I saw one of Editor Joe's unpublished academic books reviews. Its functional illiteracy was shocking. I don't make this claim lightly, or with exaggeration.