October 02, 2023

55. There Was a Lot to Remember Here and I Don’t Remember Most of It.

56 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Notion Club

Papers. Written in 1945 during a creative pause in completing the final

third of The Lord of the Rings, The Notion Club Papers found Tolkien on

familiar ground, creating a set of purported notes from regular club meetings

among a group of Oxford professors much like himself and his fellow members of

the famed Inklings. While not advancing beyond a couple of drafts and far from

complete, the papers tell first of a professor who, due to a discussion on how

spacecraft would work in science fiction, avers he has himself been able to

travel in dreams through the reaches of space and meet other minds before

returning to earth. One initially skeptical member over time then tells of his

own unusual dream experiences, building up to a sudden moment during a massive

storm where he invokes the language and imagery of the downfall of Númenor, in

much the same fashion as The Lost Road did nearly a decade prior; related

manuscripts found Tolkien revisiting the Númenorean story in particular, as

well as speaking in detail about his invented language for the society. How

does the novel’s complicated structure work creatively, if at all, and is

there something there that could have been developed further in later drafts?

What does it mean that Tolkien seemed most at ease exploring the possible

sources of his own creativity in such a second-hand fashion, even if the means

by which he did so ended up being incredibly insular? What were the

contemporary sources and inspirations for this effort among his fellow

Inklings and beyond, and are there any parallels he acknowledges or, perhaps

notably, ignores? And who wouldn’t want to talk over the evident problems of

medieval life while getting a haircut from Norman Keeps?

Show Notes.

Jared’s doodle. This is why it’s

important to check the insulation on your windows.

And indeed the WGA strike did end

soon after we recorded our episode. SAG strike still

ongoing for the moment!

More from the Lord of the Rings musical

revival, and who knows

where it will go…

Amazon’s plans for ads for Prime

Video, great. Lovely. Couldn’t agree with that more. Yup.

News about the Tales Of The Shire game and we are very

curious indeed!

Yeah that whole Warren Beatty Dick Tracy thing.

There are indeed skeletons in Stardew

Valley. (The upcoming game Ned

mentioned is Wytchwood.)

The Notion Club

Papers! We recommend

at least a little caffeine before reading.

Knowing a little about the

Inklings will not hurt at all

when it comes to the Notion Club Papers.

Socratic dialogue can

indeed be rollicking.

Our episode on “A Secret Vice.”

Thomas Pynchon is out there and is happy not to

be recognized.

That Hideous Strength

concludes the Space Trilogy by taking a Charles

Williams direction (though as

Jared notes, not very successfully).

If you haven’t seen Inspector

Morse just ask a

relative who still watches PBS a lot. (Because they’ve likely been watching

Endeavour.)

Interstellar is trippy,

man. (In a formal Nolany way, but still.)

The Great Storm of 1987 as

reported on UK TV.

“The Call of

Cthulhu” is

probably Lovecraft’s most well known story. And boy does it have

problems too!

C. S. Lewis’s “The Dark

Tower” is a

weirdly fascinating fragment, while An Experiment With

Time by J. W. Dunne

was a reference point for both Lewis and Tolkien in these works.

Ringu aka The Ring, which of

course has nothing to do with a certain other ring. We think.

Monty Python’s Constitutional

Peasants,

one of their most perfect moments.

David Lindsay’s A Voyage to

Arcturus Tolkien

definitely liked. The Worm Ouroboros by E. R.

Eddison, rather more mixed.

(And relatedly our episode on Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight.)

The Grink! (RIP Twitter,

culturally at least, but Bluesky is starting to gel more.)

Per Ned’s closing comment, Roger Zelazny’s A Night In The Lonesome

October has become a seasonal classic of sorts.

(And the Gahan Wilson illustrations inside are a delight.)

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

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