Would you like to hear J. R. R. Tolkien singing one of the songs from The Hobbit?
Of course you would. If you wouldn’t, don’t tell me about it, because I’m not sure we want people like you around here.
(Thanks to Dale Nelson)
Category Archives: Authors
In Memory of Jack
Joel Miller reminds us today is the 49th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis. He writes,
I read a newspaper obituary about Lewis that my grandmother kept. She preserved the entire paper. The event was buried in the back–barely two column inches if memory serves. The rest of paper, or at least the majority of it, was dedicated to reporting the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Both men died the same day. Coincidentally, both men answered to Jack.
In which the world is upside down, and there is no justice
James Lileks, to the grief of millions, has announced a short hiatus from his Bleat blog. He attributes it, with commendable frankness, to a bad review of his novel, Graveyard Special.
Someone whose opinion matters a great deal gave a rather brutal review of “Graveyard Special.” I admit it has its deficiencies, and had hoped that the $4.00 price and general spirit of fun would carry it along, but man. Aside from a note that it had occasional patches of “brilliant” writing, there wasn’t a single positive thing said. Not much said at all, really, beyond just “I’ve been dreading this” and “do you really want to know?”
I’d say that we all know the feeling, but I’m not sure I do. I’ve gotten bad reviews to be sure, but never from anyone whose opinion mattered a lot to me. I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you get into the big leagues and the sharks start noticing your scent.
In any case, I wish Lileks well. If this can happen to him, who among us is safe?
I, on the other hand, have an almost embarrassingly positive review to report. Novelist and opinion writer Hal G.P. Colebatch sent me the link to a review he did almost a year ago in the Australian News Weekly. I think I’ve got a new blurb somewhere in there.
Feedback for the Professor
From the Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society’s July/August 2012 issue: In an article entitled “Between Friends,” Pastor Mark Koonz provides extracts from reminiscences by George Sayer (who wrote the Lewis biography, Jack), in which he recounts a visit by J.R.R. Tolkien to his home in the summer of 1952. Tolkien was depressed, having had his The Lord of the Rings manuscript rejected by several publishers.
To entertain him in the evening I produced a tape recorder (a solid early Ferrograph that is still going strong). He had never seen one before and said whimsically that he ought to cast out any devil that might be in it by recording a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic, one of the extinct languages of which he was a master.
He was delighted when I played it back to him and asked if he might record some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings to find out how they sounded to other people. The more he recorded, the more he enjoyed recording and the more his literary self-confidence grew. Continue reading Feedback for the Professor
Praise from Caesar
Today the American Spectator published my article on Andrew Klavan’s Weiss-Bishop mystery trilogy.
Klavan himself noted it on Facebook. He said, “Well, I like it when someone is both smart AND flattering…. When you sit down to write three books around the theme of love, you think to yourself, ‘Not that anyone will ever get that.’ It’s gratifying to be read so intelligently – and by someone who likes the books to boot!”
You may mark this down in the court records as a good day.
The Fall of Arthur, a New Epic Poem
“Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.”
Thus begins a new epic poem by the beloved author of The Lord of the Rings. What’s that, you ask? How can write a new poem when he’s been dead since 1973? Bah! What is death among friends?
Picking Up on an Author’s Worldview
Lavonne Neff says that despite the slow burn on J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy, the story builds out of what she believes is a “profoundly biblical worldview.” The story is one of a small English town, clearly described as post-Christian, and when the most Christian man around dies, a large body of characters step up to reveal themselves as the hypocrites they are. Neff says the story is bleak, but possibly noteworthy.
Faulkner Resigns as Postmaster
Unless Faulkner was completely joking with his resignation letter, he apparently didn’t believe his employer deserved an honest day’s work for a day’s wage. “How can I serve you?” doesn’t appear to be in his English phrase book. I can’t say this speaks well of him.
Luther, Martin Luther. I’m an Art Critic
Daniel Siedell, a Christian art critic and curator, writes, “While finishing my doctoral dissertation and teaching modern art at a state university in the mid-1990s, I read Francis Schaeffer’s Art and the Bible and H.R. Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture
He finds a path toward a theology of art with from Martin Luther and writes about it in his book God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Cultural Exegesis)
“Under the Shadow of the Hideous Strength”
Prof. Bruce Charlton, at The Notion Club Papers, today publishes a paper by our friend Prof. Dale Nelson on C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.