Posted on by mwhybark

Interesting or Boring? Promising or Scam?

New Tolkien book discovered at news.com.au.

A US academic, Michael Drout, found the Tolkien material by accident in a box of papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

An assistant professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, Dr Drout was researching Anglo- Saxon scholarship at the Bodleian, and asked to see a copy of a lecture on Beowulf given by Tolkien in 1936.

It was brought to him in a reading room in a large box. Professor Drout, who reads Anglo-Saxon prose to his two-year-old daughter at bedtime, said: “I was sitting there going through the transcripts when I saw these four bound volumes at the bottom of the box.

“I started looking through, and realised I had found an entire book of material that had never seen the light of day. As I turned the page, there was Tolkien’s fingerprint in a smudge of ink.”

The book is a translation of Beowulf and a critical analyis. I must admit, peronally, that holds more appeal than more of the prefatory or accompanying notes and so forth for LOTR and The Silmarillion… So maybe.

As I noted earlier, I was excited to recognize the way in which Tolkien borrowed and adapted genuinely antique material to create his work – this might be a chance to see him looking directly as that material with no stage management.

(For some reason I’m prompted to note that the Beatles film Yellow Submarine is vaguely based on Beowulf. According to family legend that’s the first movie I ever saw – in Santiago, Chile in 1969.)

Posted on by mwhybark

more on the lower case

Yowsa! I’m all tapped out for the day – you can find my blatherings here, in the comments on lower-case i, wherein all and sundry have offered opinion and diagnostic on the Great Internet Controversy of Ought-Two, (or is that the great internet controversy of ought to) including a spirited and technologically-informed defense of the capital-I Internet usage by the Gentil Knight himself, Allan Baruz.

I also realized I’d incorrectly memorized the spelling of his name. Double-ell.

In other news, Ken “Jim-Dandy Research Squirrel” Goldstein still doesn’t care for Adaptation despite incontrovertible evidence that it’s hilarious. I should know! after all, I’m a kidder!

That doesn’t stop him (nor should it) from taking a poke at my “jargontastic” recrding of tales of techno-woe from time to time (he asserts “weeks”, but don’t point out that he’s off base – as an accountant, he is very touchy about his dyscalculia).

He also notes, accurately, my undisciplined use of the semi-colon, which I don’t defend. But it’s probably going to stay that way in first drafts, as much of the blog you now read is written.

Finally, he notes the high geek coefficient in my entry about our DVD player cutting out, to which I’ll cop. It’s a hard life, what with being happily married and all; nope, nothing like being the cool man-about-town Mr. Goldstein must be, there in his cozy bachelor pad, overlookinging the gloriuos Pulaski skyway. It’s a wonder I ever found someone.

If only I was less geeky, and, oh, for example, got into the cool stuff the cool kids are into, like fantasy baseball, for example. Or oh, I don’t know, vintage reproductions of early twentieth century semi-professional sportswear. If I got into that I’d probably be as cool as my good, good friend Ken Goldstein.

Did I mention that Ken has aparently taken to posting biting personal accounts of having broken up with the love of his life disguised as restaurant reviews? Poor man. I think I see it now; Adaptation probably struck too close to home. The alienated loneliness of the bitterly obsessed. Poor, poor man.

Won’t someone take pity on him? I’ve heard he’s the swinginest!