Linkage

I've had this enormous build-up of links in the past couple of links.

The Tale of Despereaux trailer: I'm not wildly thrilled. At least from the trailer it looks like they've cutified it.

NYTBR Outtakes: An interview with Markus Zusak. I really need to read more of his books.

I'm YA and I'm OK: An interesting musing on being a Young Adult writer. (Personally, I think the whole category is a lot of hooey.)

Why Jane Austen matters: Just shows that people have a much higher capacity for understanding than most want to allow.

E-mail error ends up on road sign: Is it wrong that much laughter was my immediate response to this?

Wax ornaments: I want to say that my family or someone we knew once made these? But I could be wrong. Not sure.

Over-earnest: Excellent post from The Common Room on parental expectations.

Embracing Story: Another excellent post from The Common Room on Story.

Pride and Prejudice as Facebook: Also known as Sheer Genius. I especially love "Lydia Bennet and Kitty Bennet joined the group 1,000,000 Strong Against the Officers Leaving Meryton!" Because you know there would be a Facebook group for that.

Lemony Snicket posts! How can you not love that?

Part of a story revealed

I admit that I get most of my news from the front page of Yahoo. (In my defense, I don't believe everything they say and more often than not, my response is probably not what it "should" be.) Anyway, this morning they had an article about the mysterious boy that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary. It seems that they've found a photo of him. According to the article:

The photo of Peter Schiff was donated to the Anne Frank museum by his former childhood friend Ernst Michaelis who realized after rereading Anne's diary recently there were no known pictures of Schiff, a museum spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

If you're a history buff, or just like Anne Frank, check it out!

Linkage

It's a cold, grey Saturday here, and I've been out of it all day. Perfect time to link to some other pages!

Blogging Friends
Krista writes about Beauty in the Mistakes.
Mrs. Wilt examines the ideals of Christian art.

Orthodox Christianity
On Giving Children the Sense of the Beautiful.
The feeling of loneliness is in our nature.
Beautiful pictures from St. Seraphim's 25th anniversary.

Tolkien
Tolkien lectures at University of Washington--January and February 2008
Tolkien quote.
Terry Jones will talk about Tolkien.
Why the new "Dark is Rising" movie is awful. I agree.
This is funny and sad at the same time.
Tolkien lecture in Perrysburg, OH, Oct. 11.
Peter Jackson "Hobbit" may be a possibility.

Other
Jeeves and Wooster fun.

Reviewing a review

Since The Children of Húrin was published there have been many, many, many reviews of it, both formal and informal. I haven’t read it yet myself (on the waiting list at the library), but I’ve been tracking the comments which vary quite a bit. This review is one of the more interesting to me, on several levels.

"The Children of Húrin is packaged as a prequel to Lord of the Rings. It comes with lavish and lovely artwork by Alan Lee….and has its own trailer on the web. The action, however, takes place six and a half thousand years and one geological upheaval before Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday. It’s a prequel in the sense that a book about Neolithic traders of the Dorset coast is a prequel to Persuasion."

Can I just say here and now that I love that last sentence, even while I disagree with it? Not entirely—he is making a valid point—but a book about Neolithic traders and Persuasion are separated by more than time. Húrin and LotR are part of the same vast mythology, created by one man. That’s not to entirely discount Boyce’s point: the two books are worlds apart in many ways. Perhaps a book about Neolithic traders of the Dorset coast by Jane Austen, would be a more apt example.

"It’s not supposed to be entertaining. There is no chance, for instance, of being surprised by the hero’s death when one of the chapters is called "The Death of Túrin." It is dry, mad, humourless, hard-going and completely brilliant."

Tolkien at his most…Tolkien-y.

But here’s where it gets really good:

"Tolkien is often paired with CS Lewis, but he disliked Narnia and worked hard to make sure that Middle Earth did not descend to allegory. Allegory makes fantasy dependent on real life. He wanted Middle Earth to seem separate and real. When he first started work on this story as a young man recovering from trench fever in Staffordshire [my note: he was recovering in Staffordshire, he hadn’t contracted it there], he was hoping to create a new British mythology that would replace wishy-washy Arthurianism."

*dances around* The guy gets it!! My head aches when I think of the countless people that insist, in the face of all the facts, on equating Narnia and Middle-earth. Much as I like Narnia, Middle-earth for me, thank you. And that is thanks almost wholly to that desire to make it “seem separate and real.” My only quibble here is that Tolkien’s mature vision was quite different from the earlier version. He didn’t regret that earlier enthusiasm exactly, but it was tempered with reality, at least on the surface.

"One of the things that distinguishes Lord of the Rings is Tolkien’s ability to suggest other stories yet untold, places yet unvisited."

I could be wrong, but I believe Tolkien himself says something about that somewhere or other. Something along the lines of, “The stories not told are sometimes the most fascinating.” Or maybe he never said it, or maybe someone else did. If anyone knows, tell me!

'Maybe it’s more than elves and hobbits. maybe ideas like the evil empire, and our current sense of a world in terminal decline, come also owe something to Middle Earth. It would be difficult to argue that his dreams of replacing our native mythology hasn’t come true, at least in part."

Literary news again

This is everything I'd collected for about the past month, but most of it was repetitive (anyone noticed how the internet is like that?) so there aren't actually all that many links to post.

Charles Dickens

Two new Dickens adaptations in the works: David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. The last one is interesting--is it a requirement that the hype for every new adaptation says something about it being "new and updated?"

J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien's Christianity and the pagan tragedy. I think the first paragraph is interesting but it goes downhill from there, since, among other things, Tolkien himself said that Beowulf was a Christian not a pagan tragedy. Still, some interesting points to think about.

Sales are evidently high for The Children of Hurin. Not a surprise--Tolkien fans are many and geeky. I can say this, being one.

A roundup of Children reviews. For the record, I would include the accent, but I can't figure out how to. Technological illiteracy creates its issues.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Filming is starting for "Cranford."


And in non-literary news, an interview with the nun who runs the Vatican's website.

Literary news and such

I really won't be posting much this week but I had a number of Google Alerts cluttering up my e-mail and I wanted to get rid of them, so here we are!

Charles Dickens

On "Household Words".

Spontaneous human combustion--that which is used to such effect in Bleak House. Seems they have a new theory. It's evidently aliens now. I am amused.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Offering information on the Tolkien Conference at the University of Vermont.

Personal ruminations which don't have that much to do with Tolkien. Here are the pertinent paragraphs:

Nothing could be further from my strengths, as I'm a lousy historian and documentarian. Attention to precision and detail has never ever been my forte. My talents lean in the opposite.

Epic, mythic in patterns and sweep. Perhaps I've more in common with J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, whom coined the term mythopoeia, or myth-making.

I think she's a bit confused as Tolkien was obsessive about details and LotR is replete with them. Interesting post anyway, with which I somewhat agree although it's very New Age-y.

EDIT: Pardon me, I forgot. Last, but not least:

Elizabeth Gaskell

Review of North and South by Krakovianka.

According to this interview, the BBC is making a new Cranford. No confirmation from IMDb though.

Literary news

Tolkien

This review piqued my interest. I'll try to get ahold of the book it mentions and if I do read it I'll be sure to review it here. I find the Inklings quite fascinating and would be glad to learn more about them.

Dickens

Interesting article from The Guardian asking why the intelligent authors today do not fill the same sort of role that George Orwell and Charles Dickens did in their time.

Another article that only tangentally mentions Dickens. It's mostly about Jane Austen (Or "Austin" as the author spells it.) and the need or lack thereof for annotated versions and "Regency Handbooks." (I like Regency handbooks myself. Although I see his point.)

Picture from Jane Eyre 2006, edited by myself.