the book is out
Mar. 6th, 2007 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAnd I couldn't be more relieved if I'd written it myself. You may now buy The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Pavlac Glyer from Amazon, or pay more money and get it directly from Kent State University Press, or, like, be really daring and go to a bookstore.
And you might be more likely to want to than you might think. If you've ever heard the author speak, you know that she's no dry, convuluted academic but a direct, involved writing teacher. This book tells how Lewis and Tolkien interacted in the manner of the members of any writers' group or, for that matter, of any other closely-knit cultural community of friends, and it clears away a lot of the crud that's clogged up Inklings studies in the last few decades: the assumption that, because they argued, they didn't like each other or each others' work; the anxious claim that, because their work is not identical, they therefore had no influence on each other. Widespread, but not true; and if your reaction on reading this new book is to say, "Well, duh, of course," then the author has done her work well.
Enough blurbing; on to egoscanning of my own contribution. I wasn't worried about my bio-bibliographical appendix on the Inklings (yes, the dream of all true Tolkien lovers, I have now published an Appendix), because I'd seen that in proof. What worried me was the Index, which I was sweating over a few months ago and had not seen in proof. Would the publisher decide it was too long and shred it into incomprehensibility? No, they did not. Would they repaginate the text and thus render the index page markers unintelligible? No, they didn't do that either. Not much of it, anyway; a few lines here and there in the main text did get moved. Checking the published text against the proof copy which I'd marked up for the index, I find about half a dozen index entries now point to the adjoining page. I'm not upset; I've seen that a lot in indexes, and we'll take note to fix it for any subsequent printings.
I first saw the finished book in the hotel entrance court at ConDor in San Diego on Friday evening, where I happened to be waiting as the Glyer family drove up. After exchanging a few squeals, we settled down to planning for the book release party held in my room the following evening, which was quite successful: we had up to 20 people in the room at once, not bad for a 300-person con. And several copies of the book were sold, and others looked at.
More on the con anon.
And you might be more likely to want to than you might think. If you've ever heard the author speak, you know that she's no dry, convuluted academic but a direct, involved writing teacher. This book tells how Lewis and Tolkien interacted in the manner of the members of any writers' group or, for that matter, of any other closely-knit cultural community of friends, and it clears away a lot of the crud that's clogged up Inklings studies in the last few decades: the assumption that, because they argued, they didn't like each other or each others' work; the anxious claim that, because their work is not identical, they therefore had no influence on each other. Widespread, but not true; and if your reaction on reading this new book is to say, "Well, duh, of course," then the author has done her work well.
Enough blurbing; on to egoscanning of my own contribution. I wasn't worried about my bio-bibliographical appendix on the Inklings (yes, the dream of all true Tolkien lovers, I have now published an Appendix), because I'd seen that in proof. What worried me was the Index, which I was sweating over a few months ago and had not seen in proof. Would the publisher decide it was too long and shred it into incomprehensibility? No, they did not. Would they repaginate the text and thus render the index page markers unintelligible? No, they didn't do that either. Not much of it, anyway; a few lines here and there in the main text did get moved. Checking the published text against the proof copy which I'd marked up for the index, I find about half a dozen index entries now point to the adjoining page. I'm not upset; I've seen that a lot in indexes, and we'll take note to fix it for any subsequent printings.
I first saw the finished book in the hotel entrance court at ConDor in San Diego on Friday evening, where I happened to be waiting as the Glyer family drove up. After exchanging a few squeals, we settled down to planning for the book release party held in my room the following evening, which was quite successful: we had up to 20 people in the room at once, not bad for a 300-person con. And several copies of the book were sold, and others looked at.
More on the con anon.
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Date: 2007-03-06 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
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