July | 2013 | evening redness

Archive for July, 2013

Knowing in Middle-earth

Posted in Here at the End of All Things, The Generic, Writing with tags fantasy, Here at the End of All Things, horror, science fiction, sf, tolkien on 26 July 2013 by Ben

In Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, Brian Rosebury writes:

“By this point it should be clear that a theme is emerging from the analysis. If The Lord of the Rings stands at a tangent to the novel as a genre, it is not because of a general abstention from realism or archaism of style–neither of which can really be attributed to it–but because of a highly specific feature for which precedents are hardly to be found in the novel tradition: the complex, and to an extent, systemic, elaboration of an imaginary world” (25)

He goes on to say that even SF does not go so far in such world building, and I think that it is likely true that no other fantasy goes this far either. However, it is precisely this point that is deceiving because we do noy, in fact, know everything about Middle-earth. If we do, we have to admit that there is actually very little to know, because we in fact know so little of, for example, the common people. If we do know everything, the world is not actually all that complex. If we don’t know everything, then we are deceived into believing we do. The issue here involves the idea that everything in Middle-earth can be known, is knowable, which is not even true of our own world (or planet, as it were, in Eugene Thacker’s terms). What Middle-earth lacks is horror, the discovery of what should not be, what cannot be knowable according to prevailing ways of knowing.

Symmetry and meaning in Lord of the Rings

Posted in Here at the End of All Things, The Generic with tags fantasy, Here at the End of All Things, literature, magic, mervyn peake, tolkien on 25 July 2013 by Ben

Tom Shippey’s overall argument (in JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century) involves explaining the consistency in Tolkien, against charges by CN Manlove for example (in Modern Fantasy and elsewhere). Manlove argues that Tolkien’s conception of evil is inconsistent, that the Ring does not affect everyone equally nor does it do what it is supposed to do (destroy Frodo’s mind, for example). Shippey notes that Tolkien began Fellowship with little sense of the overall story and that, as a result (he discovers after studying drafts of the text in The History of Middle Earth), often in the first book certain things are less than they come to be. For example, he notes that the Black Riders are not nearly so frightening, and that they do not appear powerful as they move through the Shire. Manlove also notes this inconsistency. (I thought this was partially explained by the fact that Sauron had not yet refound much power and that the Riders therefore were lacking at this point; however, it is strange that they did not use a bit more force as capturing the ring would have solved the problem of a lack of power.) In any case, Shippey notes this inconsistency and, while not exactly excusing it, makes clear that it might be a result of the writing process Tolkien went through.

However, in the overall argument Shippey seems to do too much to make everything in LotR explained and explainable. Whereas Manlove goes too far demanding explanations he thinks are impossible to find, Shippey goes too far I think in finding them. This is not to say that either is wrong. Manlove is operating under assumptions of “literature”, namely the realist novel. Shippey is operating from a position of deep knowledge (that Manlove would not have had access to in 1976, even if he would have wanted it, which is unclear): that knowledge provided him by the publication of the History of Middle Earth and seemingly having know Tolkien. Shippey also “benefits” from his training in philology, and therefore his attention to the languages of Middle Earth. In both cases, however, the question of explanation is problematic if we want the text to do something other than what literature does.

For, it seems, that Manlove is content to exclude Tolkien from literature (and indeed most if not all fantasy, even if some, such as Peake, is better than others–he says Tolkien is the worst in Modern Fantasy). And, it seems, Shippey desires to place Tolkien in an expanded field of literature, one not guarded by critics such as Manlove, but one dedicated to the complexity of the individual work and the voice of public opinion. But, again, to do more the work of fantasy cannot rest on the commonplace, cannot be for or against literature, but must be other than it, must refute the Generic not directly, as in historical conflict, but by existing either beyond its horizon or by escaping (forever escaping, never escaped) over that horizon even as the world turns and meridians pass under our feet and thereby we include ever more within the known.

Miss RSS Pie (with apologies to Don McLean)

Posted in Uncategorized on 4 July 2013 by Ben

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that newsfeed used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my say
That I could make that reader stay
And maybe we’d be informed for a while

But July 1st made me shiver
With every story it delivered
Bad news from the dev team
Google reader had lost its steam

I can’t remember if I cried
When all subscriptions were denied
But something touched me deep inside
The day the reader died

So bye-bye, Miss RSS Pie
Point my Chrome to the HOME page but the homepage was dry
And them good old boys were linkin’ Facebook and lies
Tweetin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

Did Slate write the book of love
And do you have faith in Drudge above
If Politico tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll
Can Pitchfork save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to read real slow?

Well, I know that you’re followin’ him
‘Cause I saw you Skypin’ in the gym
You both logged into chat
Man, who has time for that?

I was a lonely thorysomething readin’ buck
With a Wordplus bog and Google Plus
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the reader died

Now for two days we’ve been on our own
And news unread becomes the unknonwn
But that’s not how it used to be
When Sergey thought about baud rate
In a coat he borrowed from Bill Gates
With metadata that came from you and me

Oh, and while Livejournal was looking down
Zuckerberg stole its emo crown
The chatroom was dispelled
Godwin’s law was upheld

And while Lessig wrote a book on code
Or newsfeeds went in the commode
And we blogged about Mad Men episodes
The day the reader died

Helter skelter in a summer swelter
Civil right were on the run to a fallout shelter
Snowden knew and they were falling fast
They landed foul on the grass
“Leftists” tried to give Obama a pass
With Greenwald on the sidelines in a cast

Now the hypocrisy was sweet perfume
While the journalists marchd to the marching tune
We all got up to need
Oh, but Google didn’t see the need

‘Cause the citizens tried to take the field
The journalists still refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the reader died?

So bye-bye, Miss RSS feed
Point my Chrome to the HOME page but the homepage was dry
And them good old boys were linkin’ Facebook and lies
Tweetin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in Face-
Book–no time left to start again
So come on, Page be nimble, Page be quick
Larry Page sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend

Oh, and as I watched him on the blog
My keys were stalled, it was a slog
No Feedly born in Hell
Could break that reader’s spell

And as the flamewars climbed into the night
Arguments were seen as impolite and
I saw Brin and Page laughing with delight
The day the reader died

They were singin’ bye-bye, Miss RSS Pie
Point my Chrome to the HOME page but the homepage was dry
And them good old boys were linkin’ Facebook and lies
Tweetin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

I met a girl who said lean in
And I asked her if it would ever come again
But she just sneered and turned away
I went down to Google Play
Where I’d downloaded the reader years before
But the bot there said the reader wouldn’t play

And on the web, the bloggers screamed
The tweeters tweeted and the Beliebers dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The Atom feeds all were broken

And all the aps I admire most
For email, blogs, and all the rest
We were shown that they might not last
The day the reader died

And they were singin’ bye-bye, Miss RSS Pie
Point my Chrome to the HOME page but the homepage was dry
And them good old boys were linkin’ Facebook and lies
Tweetin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

evening redness

Archive for July, 2013

Knowing in Middle-earth

Symmetry and meaning in Lord of the Rings

Miss RSS Pie (with apologies to Don McLean)

Ben Robertson

None of this is normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media

Recent Tweets

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