January 08, 2024

58. What an Absolute Nightmare This Man Would Have Been to Work With.

58 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Letters of J. R. R.

Tolkien. Following the publication of his official biography of Tolkien,

Humphrey Carpenter worked with Christopher Tolkien to edit and present a

selection of Tolkien’s letters across the decades, originally appearing in

Containing both a large swathe of personal detail about his life as an

aspiring academic and young father, then an established professor and finally

an increasingly popular author, it also presented a large amount of background

information on Middle-earth via his exchanges with publishers, writers and

readers, including some long letters that have remained touchstones of

information on his creative process since. In late 2023, a new edition was

published, which featured the entirety of the original selection that

Carpenter and Christopher had created but had to trim down for initial

publication, revealing various new facets of interest in particular about his

own personal beliefs and philosophies across time. What areas of Tolkien’s

life remain relatively undiscussed or absent from the presented letters, and

what can we deduce from the estate’s choices to possibly not let that material

be shared out? How do the ‘new’ letters in particular fill out our

understanding of Tolkien’s Catholic beliefs, especially in the context of mass

and creative culture? Is there something to be said in how Tolkien may have

changed or otherwise introduced more nuance into some of his more sweeping

statements about women in his private correspondence as he aged, especially in

contrast to his fellow Inklings? And finally, who wouldn’t want to be the fly

on the wall for that conversation between Tolkien, Robert Graves and Ava

Gardner?

Show Notes.

Jared’s

doodle.

Something about a lovely start to a letter…

Remember, join the Megaphonic Patreon!

Listen to us and everyone else talk about the movie musical

Scrooge! (Spoiler: we

were not pleased.)

Did we mention preordering Jared’s book? Let’s mention it

again.

Here’s preorder info for that British Library talk on Twenty First

Century Tolkien. Looks like it could be good!

In which writing an unauthorized sequel to The Lord of the Rings further goes

askew. Demetrious Polychron really, really does try.

But.

Our Dennis McKiernan/Silver Call duology

episode. It really is better in

comparison!

Ah, cotillions. Look, you want

them, have them, but maybe not around the Shire?

AO3…waits.

The letters! (New edition that

is!) It is a very, very thick book.

Letter 131 is a doozy! These

days it’s most often seen appended to the more recent edition of The

Silmarillion.

That withdrawn article on Edith

Bratt, as

much as remains in the journal listing. Who knows?

Zero inbox, the blessed and

unachievable state.

Worth briefly noting The Tolkien Family

Album, written and

presented by John (the younger) and Priscilla Tolkien.

Vatican II’s impact is

still very much with us…

The Power Broker once again. (Consider our episode on

evil.)

Yeahhhhhh the Spanish Civil

War. Not pretty at all.

Tolkien and anarchism, there’s a lot of talk about that out there. (Tolkien balancing out

anarchism and monarchism? Somehow he did it…) As for the Shire as society and

what it does or doesn’t have, consider our

episode (and the Gollum

one with the murder mystery!)

The Song of

Bernadette! It

really hit Tolkien hard, this film. (Vincent Price in fact played “Vital

Dutour, Imperial Prosecutor” but he would have been a great Mary.) And hey if

you ever want to visit Lourdes…

Milton and Tolkien would have been at total odds in terms of religion but they

absolutely agreed on the joy of sex. (Do a search for the line “This said unanimous, and other

rites” and read further.)

Our episode on Aldarion and

Erendis. Still a remarkable story.

Gloria Steinem as a Tolkien

correspondent, that’s a vision.

C.S Lewis and women…well THAT’S a subject.

The 1955 radio version of The Lord of the

Rings

is lost as noted but as the Wikipedia entry notes, the script itself survives

at least. As for the 1968 radio Hobbit

adaptation, indeed

curious that there’s nothing from Tolkien about it…

Robert Graves! Was he a snack

in his youth, Sigurd-like? Hey, you be the

judge.

Ava Gardner! Pretty awesome,

really. (And she did live in the UK for the last decades of her life so why

not attend an Oxford lecture?)

One of John Scalzi’s various

posts talking about

the idea of ‘convention famous.’ Makes total sense!

Again, consider supporting our network,

Megaphonic, to help us make the show, and to

join us on a friendly little Discord! Thank you if you do.

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

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