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calimac"The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2008," which has been occupying most of my time and concern for the last couple of months, has been turned in to the publisher. Volume 8 of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, that hardbound journal which has been running my Year's Work pieces, will be out this summer.
And so it seems time to make a public announcement on the subject.
No, I'm not quitting the gig, or disappearing off to Rivendell.
But because I've been doing this for seven years now, and because the 2008 coverage was exceptionally large (that being the year that the nearly-hundred-paper Proceedings of the Tolkien Society's 2005 Birmingham conference was published), I have taken on a collaborator.
My colleague is Merlin DeTardo, known I think mostly on Tolkien BBs online, but known to me for reviews and other pieces that suggested - accurately, as it turned out - that of the "younger" or "newer" (or whatever less condescending word you want to suggest) Tolkien scholars, he particularly combines the necessary breadth and depth of knowledge in Tolkien to evaluate intelligently the mass of scholarship. He also has the surprisingly rare ability to count the trees without losing track of the forest.
Further, he is the only person I've ever met who can name all the Presidents of the United States faster than I can. This has irrationally endeared him to me.
We split the subtopics of the Year's Work between us, half to each. The results of our labors - 223 works summarized and discussed, 24,000 words - will be out ... this summer.
And so it seems time to make a public announcement on the subject.
No, I'm not quitting the gig, or disappearing off to Rivendell.
But because I've been doing this for seven years now, and because the 2008 coverage was exceptionally large (that being the year that the nearly-hundred-paper Proceedings of the Tolkien Society's 2005 Birmingham conference was published), I have taken on a collaborator.
My colleague is Merlin DeTardo, known I think mostly on Tolkien BBs online, but known to me for reviews and other pieces that suggested - accurately, as it turned out - that of the "younger" or "newer" (or whatever less condescending word you want to suggest) Tolkien scholars, he particularly combines the necessary breadth and depth of knowledge in Tolkien to evaluate intelligently the mass of scholarship. He also has the surprisingly rare ability to count the trees without losing track of the forest.
Further, he is the only person I've ever met who can name all the Presidents of the United States faster than I can. This has irrationally endeared him to me.
We split the subtopics of the Year's Work between us, half to each. The results of our labors - 223 works summarized and discussed, 24,000 words - will be out ... this summer.
