(no subject)

[pegkerr]

For all of those of you grieving over Frodo's decision to leave at the Grey Havens, I strongly recommend this article.

Had a perfect evening: went to eat delicious Thai food at Lois McMaster Bujold's house, where we burbled about the movie, went to see the movie again and bawled over our favorite parts, and then back to Lois' house where we ate Godiva chocolates and drank ginger tea and talked about it some more.

Am re-reading Shippey's book, which I strongly recommend, and desperately want to talk with someone else who has read it too; am very interested in his distinction between "Boethian" and "Manachaean" [sp?] conceptions of evil; he maintains that LOTR uses both.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I think Shippey was one of the people interviewed in the TTT extended edition Appendices section on Tolkien (if you can follow all that).

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Am re-reading Shippey's book, which I strongly recommend, and desperately want to talk with someone else who has read it too;

Sounds like a Minicon panel....

[ionas.livejournal.com]

It would be great to discuss the Shippey book. My copy has post-its all over it, with questions and commentary, but few I know have read it, or wished to consider it more deeply.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I've lent my copy to Kij, so I don't have it in front of me, unfortunately.

What struck me about it first was Shippey's contention that Tolkien was a writer with a block. Oddly enough, this was enormously comforting to me, a writer who has struggled with blocks continually. What he really wanted to publish, of course, and never did, was The Simarillian. I knew that he had paused in the writing of LOTR for almost a year (at Balin's tomb, in the Mines of Moria), but hadn't known about some other points that Shippey pointed out: that he thought he was 3/4 of the way through the book at the pass of Caradhras, that he was writing for seven months but had no idea yet what the story would be--yet kept writing it. He wrote his way into the story, which is the technique I'm trying to use with the book I'm working on (in a very desultory fashion). This gives me hope.

Secondly, the philological stuff was fascinating. I've read a lot about Tolkien over the years and knew about his private languages--I did part of my Master's degree on him, after all--but didn't know much of that material which Shippey pointed out about how his fascination with words led directly to creative plot points.

But the most interesting chapter, as I said, was the one about evil. The way I've been thinking about it as I've worked on this book was triggered by a comment in the afterward to pameladean's Tam Lin: that her story is about trying to keep a heart of flesh when the world wants to put in a heart of stone. I would like to think further about how the "heart of stone" is linked to Tolkien's concept of "wraith." Found the discussion of shadows very interesting, too. Is evil a force or an absence of good?

Must think further on this.

Cheers,
Peg

[ionas.livejournal.com]

I am heading into the home stretch on a reread, and I have been reading closely indeed. Tolkien does not provide any easy answers about the nature of evil--despite the scoffings of sophisticated pomo critics who apparently ripped through the text as if it were a comic book, and thus missed the nuance. (I suspect one has to respect a text before one reads closely; this would explain why my pomo friends can have profoundly insightful comments about, say, William Gaddis, and make dismissive comments about Tolkien based on ignorance of what lies in the text.)

Enough of that.

Indeed, it's clear that Tolkien was severely blocked not just once or twice, but many times as he wrote LOTR. I always sensed that he was trying to blend the northern tale forms with modern prose, and thus creating something new--something he'd never seen before, and at times he did not know where to go next because he kept reinventing his structure. He knew where the tale had to go, but nobody had laid down a trail for him to follow in putting it together.

Thus, feeling one's way along in a story seems to me a good way to delve more deeply into one's material, either consciously or subconsciously (some writers need to let their subconscious do the brick work)in order to fashion something that feels new. This is, at least in my perception, an admirable thing. But it does take time. The easy road is the quick road, following where so many others have trod before (and I hasten to add that that can be entertaining too; I do not want to be perceived as scorning tales with familiar signposts just because the signposts are familiar. Sometimes we need to be like the hobbits and have a familiar tale.)

Shippey is indeed wonderful on the linguistic front, as well as when he talks about evil. I would love to hear him speak some day.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I have in fact read this book, but not recently.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Y'all guys need to join the Mythopoeic Society. www.mythsoc.org
There's even a Minneapolis discussion group http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/RIVENDELL.html
Us mythies live to discuss such things. And this year's Mythcon will be in Ann Arbor, not an unreasonable distance from Minneapolis.http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon35.html

MKK

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Hi Peg, don't miss my photos of the natural ice palace (http://www.livejournal.com/users/vwaffle/152658.html) that reminded me of you.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Those are absolutely beautiful! Thanks for letting me know about them!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome!

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the referral to my essay. ;-) I've been so busy working two jobs, lately; it helps to know people are reading what I've already done, even while I struggle to get more written. But January's coming...

Haven't seen ROTK movie yet. I usually wait until January or thereabouts, after the rush is past. It'll be interesting to see how they treated the Havens bit. I still remain "bookish," when it comes to it, but the movies are interesting to watch as interpretations of the book.