From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Tolkien Book List:  FOLLOWUP -- request for titles
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 18:35:17 GMT

>In article <1992Sep10.171502.9230@pbhyc.PacBell.COM>, djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) [me] writes...
>>In article <10SEP199201321341@amber.mgh.harvard.edu> loos@amber.mgh.harvard.edu (William D.B. Loos) writes:
 
>Yes, I'll do that.  I am familiar with the Holmes and Arthurian lists.  Both 
>are attempts to give complete lists on their respective subjects

Well, the Holmes is, more or less.  (I know of one work that isn't listed,
but I haven't told Evelyn because the friend who has a copy hasn't been willing
to give me the information -- for what it's worth, it was published in an
obscure gay firmcore porn mag ten or twenty years ago and was called "Sherlock
Holmes' Queerer Brother.)  And its near-completeness is because Evelyn very
carefully limited the scope to _fiction_.

The Arthurian list isn't and can't be; fiction and poetry and secondary-
tertiary works on Arthurian "stuff" are even more myriad and diffuse than
Tolkienia; it seems to be in the spirit of "this is what I know about and
people have told me about," and I'd think that a similar spirit would be
apropos for the Tolkien list.

Would you want a list of existing periodicals in the subject?



>>>B) Related Middle-earth Works: 

>However, I can't agree with the rating of the Road Goes Ever On below tAoTB in 
>informational content.  The casual dismissal -- "excepting JRRT's introductory
>essay" -- seems an underestimation.  I assume the reference is to Tolkien's
>appendix on the Elvish songs Namarie (Galadriel's Lament) and A Elbereth 
>Gilthoniel (the song Frodo heard in Rivendell).  

It is indeed, and in fact the dismissal was an error with roots in my personal
history -- tRGEo was out of print at the time I became actively involved with
amateur JRRT scholarship, and -- due to involvement with things like the
Mythopoeic Society, etc. -- by the time I found a copy, there was (for me)
little or no "new" (that is, "new to me") information in that appendix.  


>Ah.  Not having finished Lost Tales yet, I didn't know that.  As you hint, The 
>Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers (closely related to The Lost Road), while 
>new, are too disconnected and surrounded by commentary to be read as stories.  
>Actually, my comment above was in the nature of a pre-emptive response to those
>who talk sneeringly of a "Tolkien industry" and portray HoMe as either worth-
>less, a ripoff, an exploitation of JRRT, or all three.

Well, some of my Mythopoeic Society friends _do_ refer to HoMe as "Tolkien's
laundry lists," but that's a reference to a Woody Allen essay. . .

You're right, it's necessary to give some sort of cautions as to what these 
books are and are not.  I think they *are* readable by the general public,
not as stories-by-Tolkien, but as the ongoing story of how one of the most
astonishing creative minds of our time went about the creative process.  There
is a passage in THE LORD OF THE RINGS where Gandalf briefly considers using
the Palantir, thinking that he'd love to 'see the hands of Feanor at work'
or something like that:  that's what HoME is, for me.  Or one thing it is, 
anyway.


		The Pavlov dog and the Schroedinger cat
		Side by side in my forebrain sat
		With Shakespeare's monkeys crowding in behind. . .
		. . . it's all in your mind.
			-- Visual Purple

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written