Tolkien Gleanings #121.
* A new talk in London this weekend, Holly Ordway on “Beauty and Sorrow: Tolkien’s journey of faith”. At St. Mary’s Church, Sunday 10th September 2023. Her publisher Word on Fire has also just released a new and highly-polished official one minute trailer for Ordway’s acclaimed new book, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography.
* In October, Ordway is in Houston with a talk on “Tolkien’s Faith and the Foundations of Middle Earth”, 2nd October 2023. Free and booking now.
* The first review I’ve seen of the recent book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: What Middle-earth means to us today (2023). The reviewer finds it “a long wearying slog” and “a read that is about as compelling as a phone book”. Not to be confused with the academic collection Tolkien in the 21st Century: Reading, Reception, and Reinterpretation (2022).
* A new long and very informed article on “J.R.R. Tolkien on Philosophical Anarchism”.
* News of a new book, Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959. From Oxford University Press and apparently containing everything Tolkien ever published or said about Chaucer. Including his translation of the Reeve’s Tale, which is said to be as yet unpublished. The OUP issued a contract for the book in 2021, and the French Tolkendil forum suggests publication toward the end of April 2024. Amazon UK is pre-ordering, but currently has no shipping date.
* And finally… this week’s TLS comments, on the week’s literary news and very much in passing, that…
“[it is] fifty years since Anthony Burgess declared in the TLS [in 1973] that “The Hesse cult continues, though the Tolkien one seems to be at an end”, getting it exactly the wrong way round.”
Thus back-handedly implying that the TLS even now thinks that the attention paid to Tolkien is due to a ‘cult’. Judging by their lack of coverage, Tolkien is not high on their book-reviewer Wish List. Also, pushing the idea of a “cult” aligns with a small group of TV-oriented fans who try to label and dismiss the majority of Tolkien fans as “an intolerant cult”.
The Hesse referred to above was the now little-read German writer Herman Hesse, not to be confused with Hess the captured Nazi leader.