Mythcon, part 1

[calimac]

We are returned from Mythcon in LA. My little putt-putt of a car drove us all the way there and back again, on a gratifying 38 mpg, though it struggled a little getting up the hills on the way home.

I'd volunteered to do too many things at this Mythcon: two papers (one of them, "The Inklings and the Pacific Ocean", already written; the other, "The Inklings in Fiction", turned out to be written when I put together the scraps and fragments I'd been compiling and discovered that I had all the pieces I was supposed to) and a play and a panel.

The panel was a revival of the "Dead Inklings" panel, which I'd done (as Tolkien) before. I'd thought it would be a full hour daytime, but it turned out to be a post-prandial number after the banquet, which gave me an excuse to cut it short and punchy. We had good participation by various persons playing the usual cast - Tolkien, both Lewis brothers, Williams, and as an extra attraction Miss Sayers - and the main topic of discussion was our reactions to being told by Diana Pavlac Glyer's The Company They Keep that we'd influenced each other. I had Tolkien say that the word "influence" was ill-defined, that it wasn't the same thing as mere encouragement which is what he acknowledged, and that if anyone was inclined to use the Oxford English Dictionary to dispute these definitions, "please remember, I wrote the Oxford English Dictionary."

The play was a readers' theatre production of a talky Sayers comedy-of-manners titled "Love All", excellently abridged to punchiness by sartorias. I like readers' theatre because if I have to memorize my lines, I need to keep all my energy focused on keeping them memorized, and have none left to act with. Here I can cut loose and try out characterization. I played a man who is alternately fatuous and indignant, and trying to figure out how to balance these qualities and make sure it came across as funny gave me as much insight into the actor's craft as anything I've done. I spoke in the same kind of heavy, plummy voice I'd use for Pooh-Bah, which for a character who says things like "Don't mention it" and "I don't want any lunch" (actual Pooh-Bah lines) seemed appropriate. B. played my character's butterfly of a mistress, which she did with great panache; while my character's discarded wife was played by a friend of ours with the same first name as the character, which added some piquancy to the drama.

The side effect of being well-known in the MythSoc is that my name came up alarmingly often in the banquet ceremonies. In the acceptance speech he sent in for his Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, John D. Rateliff made a point of thanking me for feedback during the writing process, as my name had been inadvertently omitted from the first printing's acknowledgments. (You're welcome, John.) A friend with whom I've had many a clash on the virtues of the Jackson films (he's determined that if he digs far enough into that dungheap, he will find a donkey), got in a dig in his Dylan song parodies. And Author GoH coppervale, alluding to the critique of his books in my paper, suggested the possibility of tuckerizing me in a future volume. ("Ah, it's a fearsome weapon that man wields," as Dr. Johnson or somebody is supposed to have responded to the offer of a dedication.) All in good spirit, of course.

More anon.

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

You even got a Drunken Hobbit verse all of your own! :D