Mythconn

[calimac]

It's properly spelled "Mythcon", but the alternative spelling is the one on the directional signs provided by the site, which after all was the state university of Central CONNecticut. A newish, spread out, somewhat hilly campus in New Britain (a town which from brief exploration might better be named New Poland), with food that made better discussion topics than meals, space aliens from another planet staffing the dorm offices, a video program defeated by a lockbox, and a periodic table of the elements in every classroom that we used.

It was a small con, but the advantage of the northeastern location - a first for Mythcon, which had never been nearer than D.C. in one direction and Ann Arbor in another - was the presence of a number of attendees who'd never or rarely been to a Mythcon before. Most senior of these was Ed Meskys, last Thain of the now-legendary Tolkien Society of America. Ed has a new guide dog since the last time I'd seen him, one which is still learning how not to walk its master into doorposts, but it was good to have him. And many others. Two wombats, no waiting.

Lots of good discussion going on. Biggest topic question of the conference: do Tolkien's Elves have free will? I need to write later about the stout but ultimately futile defense of C.S. Lewis's infamous trilemma. A paper by a young scholar on Tolkien's depiction of war made its lucid points very wittily -- "'Hinder me?' says the Lord of the Nazgûl. 'Thou fool. No living man may hinder me.' Éowyn and Merry then proceed to hinder him." -- but had the fundamental problem of treating Tolkien's book and Jackson's films as interchangeable, leading to some misreadings of the former by infection from the latter. Leading Tolkien scholar Christina Scull shocked her audience, except for a few of us who've dealt with this stuff before, by recounting tourist-mad local authorities who inflate or outright invent Tolkienian connections with their communities. (Hint: if you read that the Shire was inspired by the Ribble Valley in Lancashire, don't believe a word of it.)

And the dazzling linguistic papers, and nellorat on Charles Williams's incarnation as a character in his own novels, and GoH Sharan Newman's speech exposing the problem of how much most people don't know about the Middle Ages, and the panel on fairy-stories that hardly mentioned Tolkien's article but went deeply into the emotional and spiritual role of fairy-tales in our lives, and the badly-miked but wonderfully goofy "Lord of the Ringos" Beatles-song parodies ("We're all trapped in a willow really mean, a willow really mean, a willow really mean"), and staying up until times for which no numbers exist talking about (among other things) Proust.

One traditional Mythcon question is, what will emerge in the form of a food sculpture at the end of the banquet? Of this year's entries, the best honored Pauline Baynes, who was memorialized verbally earlier in the proceedings. Deb Sabo skillfully arranged long green beans on a large plate to spell out PAUL, in beans. You may all groan now.

Did I mention that I got a lion? Well, I did. The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer, having failed the Hugo the previous week at the hands of the OED, came above another OED-based volume to receive the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies, and in the official nomination list my work on the appendix (and index) is formally credited, so along with the author I was called up to receive an award of my own - now sitting temporarily on the small book hutch in our living room - taking the form of a statuette of Aslan who looks remarkably just like old Patience and Fortitude in front of the NYPL (whom we saw in person on this trip, but that's a later story).

My speech in its entirety: "I have just a few words to say: Appendix! Index entry! Bibliographical reference! Thank you."

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I was so very thrilled about that award! I was strongly pulling for Diana's excellent book.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Diana was utterly floored, as two other nominees -- Marjorie Burns and Verlyn Flieger were both also present, and this was just the first year of eligiblity for Diana's book.

But I agree, it really is that good.