Tolkien Gleanings #165.
* In the latest edition of the UK’s The Critic magazine, a long article on “Grimdull”. Freely online. The author is of the opinion that…
“The fantasy genre is afflicted by a dull and tedious obsession with adolescent cynicism, prurient scenes and one dimensional anti-heroes. [And even given the vast output of such fare] it’s striking how little headway [has been made in trying to seize fantasy, by leftist ‘realists’ / ironic modernists / strident atheists]. Whilst Tolkien feels timeless, not least because of its echoing of the language and sensibility of myth and fairy tale, much of the ‘realist’ fantasy that sought to supplant it now feels terribly dated. [And] even the most procedural and uninventive of past fictional fare starts to look good, next to the chaotic and senseless storytelling that is increasingly the norm.”
* In July 2024, the second International Conference on Constructed Languages. The two-day event is set to happen in Orleans, France, and the organisers write that…
“We are expecting two keynote speakers, including Edouard Kloczko, translator and expert on the languages of J.R.R. Tolkien.”
* OutSFL interviews the writer of the forthcoming biographical graphic-novel of the young Tolkien…
“A good story inspired by real events should not move away from reality as we know it for the sake of making it more exciting. Writing about a life should be a pact signed with the reader or viewer: ‘I’m telling you a true story’. Otherwise, you might as well invent the whole thing entirely. […] I read everything I could find about Tolkien’s life, on the course of the First World War and the Battle of the Somme in particular, but also on the war efforts in Oxford and Cambridge, the relationships between people at that time, their way of behaving, the clothes and uniforms, weapons, etc. I tried not to leave anything to chance and wanted to recreate as faithfully as possible a reconstruction of this period and this part of Tolkien’s life.”
Amazon currently lists the hardcover of this English translation as shipping on 27th February 2024, and the Kindle ebook version is already available.
* Anna Smol ventures into Shelob’s Lair, with the aid of Tolkien’s plans of the place…
“Once Tolkien gets his hobbits inside the Lair, he can imagine which ways they can go by drawing the Plan of Shelob’s Lair”.
* And finally, one I missed from back in 2022. The Wade Centre had a one-hour podcast on Tolkien and the Green Knight. One of the participants notes C.S. Lewis writing on the Green Knight as a man…
“… as vivid and concrete as any image in literature” […] a living coincidentia oppositorum; half giant, yet wholly a ‘lovely’ knight’; as full of demoniac energy as old Karamazov, yet in his own house, as jolly as a Dickensian Christmas host; now exhibiting a ferocity so gleeful that it is almost genial, and now a geniality so outrageous that it borders on the ferocious; half boy or buffoon in his shouts and laughter and jumpings; yet at the end judging Gawain with the tranquil superiority of an angelic being.”
This was published in 1962 (the podcast participant, who seems to be a Lewis expert, claims it dates from 1947). If 1962, which various bibliographies suggest is more likely, then this seems in part to also be Lewis’s oblique comment on the likely origin of Tolkien’s Bombadil?