June 06, 2022

39. These Aren’t My Questions, I Translated Them.

55 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Red Book of

Westmarch. It’s hinted at at the end of The Lord of the Rings when Sam

reviews some title pages – a device carried over into the Jackson movie

adaptations – but the appendices and part of the introduction both make it

clear that the published story is meant to be a translation from Bilbo and

Frodo’s own handwritten memoirs, covering The Hobbit as well, and thus Tolkien

in this conceit is not the author of the text but its translator and editor

instead. It fits within Tolkien’s own life as an academic and an interpreter

and presenter of texts, as well as being part of a lengthy tradition in

numerous societies over millennia where writers employ the creative tool of

claiming their work as that of others, be they found documents, unearthed

manuscripts, discovered letters and so forth. It’s something that many readers

may simply find an intriguing amusement when it comes to The Lord of the

Rings, but it does introduce further questions about perspective and authorial

intent worth the consideration. How does framing the story through the lens of

certain participants only shape what we might consider a ‘true’ history of the

events of the book, and what would it mean if other perspectives were shared

instead? What other times had Tolkien used this framing in his own creative

work as a way to present a tale in a different context, and with what intent?

Is Tolkien’s work in fact the first postmodern fantasy as such, a self-conscious creation that plays with tropes even as it also establishes new ones

in turn? And just what are all those memes about how the main protagonist of

the story is really a Maura Labingi about?

Show Notes.

Jared’s

doodle. Who

wouldn’t want the real Red Book of Westmarch?

Aw, crypto turned out to be a hype scam

market, who knew. (Everyone with sense,

of course.) As for Lonely Ape, puh-leez.

Do check out Oriana’s other podcasts! American

Grift and Mission:

Recall, both great.

The bit from John Howe in Empire – we’ll talk about the issue

covers that were released next episode.

Reports from the Amazon promo event for the

hyperfans are…to be expected.

(Again, the ones with the cautious optimism are the ones we appreciate more

over the raves.)

The LOTR on Prime

tweet confirming

Tyroe Muhafidin as ‘Theo’ aka the one with the broken blade.

IGN speaks with the scientist who named the most

distant star yet found in the universe Earendel.

Alan Lee in LitHub on illustrating The Lord of the Rings.

Den of Geek tries once and for all to untangle the

whole rights question. It’s still unclear.

Tolkien Gateway’s

entry on the Red Book

of Westmarch.

We don’t quite use the term in the episode but the concept of the frame

story, as discussed on Wikipedia,

is a broader category that can include the kind of stories where authors are

presenting works they’ve supposedly found and presented rather than simply

written. A key example as Jared discusses would be the epistolary

novel, and don’t forget the

unreliable narrator.

Maura Labingi! It is Frodo’s real

name.

Postmodernism in fantasy is a

thing and has been discussed in various ways – back in 2010 Brandon

Sanderson and Jeff

VanderMeer had an exchange on the matter.

Thomas Pynchon’s written some good work. Or

found it, if you will.

The Red Book of Hergest,

Tolkien’s real-world model.

Our Farmer Giles of Ham episode.

And our Nature of Middle-earth

one.

How well known was David Foster Wallace for footnotes? This should give you

an idea.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell definitely has a LOT of footnotes.

The Message Bible, as not recommended by Jared.

The Book of Mazarbul in

Tolkien Gateway, including Tolkien’s own created pages from it, planned as a

possible inclusion for the initial printing of The Lord of the Rings.

Laurence Sterne, literary

badass.

John Darnielle interviewed by the New

Yorker. (We highly recommend Devil House.)

The Manuscript Found in

Saragossa,

and its 1965 Polish adaptation for film, The Saragossa

Manuscript.

We forgot to give Nate Thatcher a mention in the episode but he was the

listener who pointed us to the

lecture Jared

mentions watching, Michael Drout’s “Lord of the Rings: How To Read J. R. R.

Tolkien.”

The Cats of Queen

Berúthiel! And

that’s about all we know.

Malazan Book of the

Fallen by Steven

Erikson – worth a read!

The 1987 US one-volume edition of The Lord of the

Rings

designed to look like a Red Book of Westmarch, part of a series of such

editions.

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

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