Second Breakfast

This is the second edition of this work, which was originally written before much of the 10 volumes of The History of Middle-Earth, based on Tolkien’s extensive unpublished notes and material and edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher, were published. So this second edition is extensively updated, and provides a tremendous amount of insight into the linguistic and theological roots that deeply inform Tolkien’s work.

The main idea of the book is to examine the key position that language plays in the construction of and philosophy behind Tolkien’s legendarium of Middle-Earth. This is hardly a new notion in Tolkien criticism, but Flieger’s exegesis on this topic is both extensive and detailed, and she shows the marvelously layered intricacy of JRRT’s methods. Flieger also examines the important influence that Owen Barfield’s ideas about the relationship between language, meaning, and myth played in the development of Tolkien’s own ideas about language, and how this greatly influenced Tolkien’s writing and myth creation.

Barfield’s basic idea was simple, but affected Tolkien profoundly: language, humanity’s perception of the world, and myth are necessarily related, and inextricably linked. Myth, in particular, is not an “accident of language” as some have claimed, but a direct reflection of humanity’s view of its relationship to the natural and supernatural worlds. Barfield argued that the process of the development of words into more specialized forms traces the development (and fragmentation) of human consciousness, and working backwards one can point towards an ancient semantic unity of thought and concept. This greatly influenced Tolkien’s professional and philological work, and also enormously impacted Tolkien’s recreational writing.

As a result of this line of inquiry, Flieger examines in detail the role that the idea of light plays in Tolkien’s mythology and languages, showing how ideas of unity and fragmentation of light and darkness are played out both in both the mythos and the development of Tolkien’s languages. This analysis is particularly interesting, and I’m blown away by the many-layered sophistication that Tolkien incorporated into his methods. Light and its fragmentation and dimunition — the first light of creation, the light of the Pillars and Two Trees, of the stars, and then the sun and moon — play central roles in the creation of Middle-Earth, and in Tolkien’s languages we see a similar arc from primary, brighter forms where notions of light and shining are central, to “dimmer” forms that reflect a fading from an initial unity.

The book also heavily incorporates material from two of Tolkien’s most important essays: “On Fairy Stories” and “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” which are some of the best sources for understanding Tolkien’s philosophy and ideas about both language and fantasy.

Flieger is also adept at the use of her own language, and her prose at times is quite beautiful and moving. This book is ultimately a manifesto answering the question “Why does Tolkien matter?”. I am quite impressed with both her scholarship and eloquence.

The Internet is a great thing. Besides being the world’s most efficient and profitable distribution mechanism for pornography, it allows people to connect with each other in all sorts of great ways.

Take for example an e-mail that I received recently from someone who reads my blog. He’s a software developer (the lead maintainer of a particular Linux distribution) out in the SF Bay area, and he found my blog because of a post in which I mentioned Trip Shakespeare, a band from the early 90s that I am a fan of.

So last week he sends me a message introducing himself, talking about his connection to TS (he knew them while in college in Moorhead, MN), and reminiscing about living in a climate that has actual seasons and winter with snow. He also had digitized some recording of live shows he made of the group, and made them available for me to download (although I won’t share them with anyone else without permission). The live shows are great, and were a wonderful accompaniment on my trip to NYC this weekend.

So thanks to Patrick for his generousity!

Trip Shakespeare released four albums during their active period on the late 80s and early 90s, after which they broke up to take time off or pursue other projects. John Munson and Dan Wilson of Trip Shakespeare went on to form Semisonic, and had a lot of success with the single “Closing Time” in 1998. I kept recognizing Dan’s (?) voice whenever I heard the song on the radio (it got a LOT of air play), and kept thinking “gee that sounds like the guy from Trip Shakespeare”. Turns out I was right.

I’m not sure what this means, but Alan and I found this sign while wandering around Soho and I thought it was vaguely creepy and photoworthy.

We attended a “Gay Bloggers Meetup” (I’m not sure if there was an official title or not) loosely based around the “Gay Bloggers” Tribe on Tribe.net. Basically a bunch of folks (mostly men) who had been communicating around and on each other’s blogs agreed to gather at a predetermined place and time in New York. Since a lot of the folks in that group are already living in New York, that kind of works out. For some of the rest, that meant a trip to the Big Apple, which was for us a great excuse to get out of Michigan and visit friends in the World’s Capitol.

These folks are, as a group and individuals, at least as interesting and charming as their online personae, with the added advantage that they buy you drinks and occasionally set articles of your clothing on fire. I’m not sure the fire bit was actually charming, but since it was incurred in the act of having my picture taken with a tall, handsome fella, not a total waste. The Perry Ellis shirt has been written off as a “casualty of whore”, although it may make a reappearance in a short-sleeve incarnation (although my husband insists you can make french cuffs work on a short-sleeve shirt, which I cannot visualize without giggling).

What struck me most about the New York Homo Blogger Meetup is that we (the giant, collective we that we all belong to, like it or not) can create community out of just about anything. The chemistry at Barrage on Friday night among the group was quite good, and people were being very friendly and open with one another. I would guess that the same group of men, without the prior knowledge of one another and the excuse of the blogging commonality, would have had very limited interactions otherwise. That is to say, I generally find gay men to not be terribly friendly in “socializing with strangers” situations, and New York is always a rather tough and competitive social environment. Social spaces in the leather and bear communities can be less so - although they have their own set of problems, as they don’t live up to the inclusive ideals that they sometimes espouse.

But creating communities, however fragile and tenuous, seems to be what we humans do best. Or at least, we do a lot of it, and it gives us a lot of satisfaction.

I also got a better sense of how and why New York ‘works’ as a place to live. In the past I have mostly found Manhattan to be a stressful place to spend time. But if you spend enough time walking around (which requires some getting used to if one is accustomed to less walking, as has been the case in my rather car-oriented lifestyle these days, hence the extra poundage) you will come across these quiet moments in an otherwise very busy and crowded city. You can be walking down a street in the West Village, turn a corner, and suddenly the noise of the traffic fades to nothing and a moment of peace descends on you like an unexpected gift. I have experienced similar moments in San Francisco, which is similarly dense and crowded. The conveniences of a city with real and extensive public transport (a definite must in any urban future) are wonderful: I could easily envision a car-free lifestyle.

I totally couldn’t get into the Charles Williams book that I was reading, and it was a lovely Friday evening two weeks ago so I wandered over to Afterwords books, which is a remainder book shop just across the street from where we usually hang out at Cafe Felix. They usually have some interesting things among the pickings on their sci-fi and fantasy shelf.

I saw this book and was intrigued. I had never heard of Fletcher Pratt (the famed author of such books as “What Every Citizen Should Know about Modern War”, “Invaders From Rigel”, and “Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles, and Space Ships”), but the publisher was Gollancz, who had also republished John Crowley’s “Little, Big”, so I thought this might be interesting. It is, but it is a difficult read.

This book was published in 1948, six years before Tolkien published Lord of the Rings, so it predates by a few years the real establishment of the modern heroic fantasy genre. But we have many of the same elements: a world entire, complete with history, a map, peoples, and places with some linguistic root to their name and arrangement; magic with its attendant consequences; politics and power struggles; and a hero who undergoes a great personal transformation as he is drawn into a world of struggles much larger than himself.

One thing that is difficult about the book is the language — Pratt makes heavy use of dialect and idiom, which makes conversations and the action difficult to follow. Pratt is also not overly-fond of exposition, so the reader is pretty much thrown in the middle of a history and conflict without a lot of orientation. What I found most infuriating is the heavy use of place-names that don’t exist on the map, but figure heavily in the action. I kept flipping back to the front of the book to figure out where the heck people were talking about.

That said, this is an interesting book, and if you’re an attentive reader there is much here that is rewarding. The book is stylistically very effective, and I found myself enjoying the read even though I didn’t always follow exactly what was happening or why. But I have a short attention span, even for someone who reads so many books.