Continued on next rock

[calimac]

Yesterday came Mallorn 42, the journal of the (British) Tolkien Society. Some good reviews of the Jackson films: John Ellison, always of piercing intelligence, explains how the films succeed as spectacle but not as drama: Jackson lost sight of the meaning of the story, and thus the conclusion, for all its relative faithfulness to Tolkien, "came across rather as a disconnected series of episodes in which the outline thread of the story itself, and much of its meaning, have been lost or obscured." Under the name Kensington Prallop appeared one of those weird British satires whose point of view is not always possible to discern, but it appears to be at least in part a review of the book as if it were a novelization of the movie. I love silliness like this takeoff of reductionist source criticism:

Tolkien is a writer well known among a legion of commentators for having invented almost nothing of his own in his stories, and they have proved it by finding well known works such as Martha Vandella's big book of Trappist rug-making which Tolkien would certainly have read and borrowed from. Some of the references indeed turn up not just in one source, but several different ones, proving that the Professor also had a poor memory. A great many of the story ideas and locations, if not all of them, are clearly places and references that the producer has come across in his own life, and copied for his story. There are many hills, so he has clearly seen a hill somewhere. We see the dark dungeons of Moria, and we know instinctively he has been to Pittsburgh. We wonder at Treebeard, and realise that our author has been in a wood and seen the trees walking about, probably enjoying picnics or taking out unwanted splinters or having quiet tree moments of their own.

There's also a good article by Caroline Galwey analyzing critics who detest Tolkien so much they're incapable of explaining what they have against him. Galwey essentially says it's a reflexive anti-Romanticism at work. "If you read [some of Tolkien's grander prose] and your automatic reaction is an embarassed snigger, does that make you a fearless detector of humbug? Or are you merely being risk-averse, disconcerted by any language not strictly contemporary, and falsely modest about claiming grand words to suit grand feelings?" Unfortunately, having warned against accepting these critics' own premises in the effort to rebut them, she does so herself, claiming that LotR is by "a don at play" and that the absence of sexual relationships is pre-adolescent. Sigh. Both old chestnuts, long refuted.

Two hundred years ago today (well, yesterday): Lewis and Clark are at the future site of Sioux City. One of their three sergeants, Charles Floyd, has been very ill. The journal descriptions suggest appendicitis, for which no medical treatment of the day could be of any help. He dies and is buried on the hillside, the only man the expedition will lose in its entire three years. A hundred years later, his grave, still visible but falling apart, will be rebuilt, topped by a huge obelisk like unto the Washington Monument.
Lewis and Clark have been busy during the month since I last wrote about them. They met with the Oto and Missouri Indians at a place called Council Bluffs, explaining that the Americans had taken over the European concession in the area from the Spanish. A deserter was captured, whipped, and fired - ordered to accompany the keelboat party when it goes back to St. Louis next spring. The captains had had considerable trouble with discipline in the 1803-4 winter camp and some more on this first leg of the journey, but by the time they set out into uncharted country next spring, they'll have a skilled, reliable, confident party.