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Mythcon 42: program
Like most recent Mythcons, this one was about half-populated by first-time attendees. These people are bright and intelligent, and they seem to be having a good time, so I wish more of them would come back for further doses than has been the case. (Certainly my reaction to my first Mythcon was, "I don't ever want to miss one of these again" and I never have.)
Many of these new attendees gave papers, and most of them, at least the ones talking on Tolkien, began by expressing their nervousness about discussing such a complex and pitfall-filled topic to such a formidable audience as the Mythopoeic Society. (What, us, formidable?) They really need not have worried: all the ones I heard - and I got to as many Tolkien session as I could - were at least thoughtful and competent, and some had strikingly original things to say. I particularly liked a papers session organized by Corey Olsen, who podcasts as "The Tolkien Professor". He got together some participants from an online seminar concerning the 1977 Silmarillion to give papers on that book. Laura Berkholtz followed the always-productive technique of studying a minor character in detail, choosing the Vala Nienna. There was a certain unspoken Whiggishly teleological implication that Nienna's sole purpose in life was to teach Gandalf pity and mercy so that he could make his famous comments to Frodo, but the connection is there and was worth noting. And a fellow called - near-identically to someone else I know - Jordon Brown gave a robust description of how the sin of Pride felled both Fëanor and Thingol. His best conclusion about the latter: Don't be rude to Dwarves. Note that the questionable provenance of this episode played no part in the paper; this session was on the 1977 text as a free-standing work of art.
In another session, Alex Taylor found similarities between some of Tolkien's theological concepts and those of classical Hinduism (as well as noting the resemblance, which has been pointed out before, between the early Elvish alphabets and Devanagari). So far so good; where he lost the thread was in casting about to figure out what Tolkien could have read that would have acquainted him with Hindu theology. That turned an otherwise good paper into ritualistic source-hunting. The similarities were striking, but not so much so that Tolkien couldn't have developed the ideas independently, which (as someone else noted) by the arguments for universal morality in C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, would testify to the ideas' value more than straight borrowing would.
A passing remark in one other paper illustrated the corrosive effects of Jackson's movies on Tolkien scholarship. I don't want to come down too hard on the author of an otherwise decent paper, but when you write that "Sauron is reduced to a flaming eye," that's Jackson's character you're talking about, not Tolkien's. And this was a paper on Tolkien, not on Jackson. It's not the fact that Tolkien's Sauron has a full physical body that's so important (the many references to the Eye are a synecdoche); it's the word "reduced" that shows the harm. Jackson's giant floating eyeball looks diminished and impotent, but before the Destruction, Tolkien's Sauron is otherwise unstoppably powerful, and anything that makes you think otherwise eviscerates his story.
I gave my own paper on Roger Zelazny. He lived in New Mexico for many years, so the con's location was a good excuse to put together some thoughts on one of my long-time favorite SF authors. I described the high desert geographic references in Eye of Cat (also one of his most strikingly mythological novels) and Bridge of Ashes (a much easier book to read than its reputation suggests) and some short stories, and covered some of his other mythopoeic fiction, in particular arguing that the infamous chapter 2 of Lord of Light was not written solely for the sake of the infamous spooneristic pun near the end of the chapter, but that that pun marks the critical turning point generating the rest of the story. It went over well, particularly as I read aloud several long quotations to illustrate Zelazny's literary style. I also discussed "For a Breath I Tarry" (possibly the greatest SF story of all time), repeating the point I made about it here.
Many of these new attendees gave papers, and most of them, at least the ones talking on Tolkien, began by expressing their nervousness about discussing such a complex and pitfall-filled topic to such a formidable audience as the Mythopoeic Society. (What, us, formidable?) They really need not have worried: all the ones I heard - and I got to as many Tolkien session as I could - were at least thoughtful and competent, and some had strikingly original things to say. I particularly liked a papers session organized by Corey Olsen, who podcasts as "The Tolkien Professor". He got together some participants from an online seminar concerning the 1977 Silmarillion to give papers on that book. Laura Berkholtz followed the always-productive technique of studying a minor character in detail, choosing the Vala Nienna. There was a certain unspoken Whiggishly teleological implication that Nienna's sole purpose in life was to teach Gandalf pity and mercy so that he could make his famous comments to Frodo, but the connection is there and was worth noting. And a fellow called - near-identically to someone else I know - Jordon Brown gave a robust description of how the sin of Pride felled both Fëanor and Thingol. His best conclusion about the latter: Don't be rude to Dwarves. Note that the questionable provenance of this episode played no part in the paper; this session was on the 1977 text as a free-standing work of art.
In another session, Alex Taylor found similarities between some of Tolkien's theological concepts and those of classical Hinduism (as well as noting the resemblance, which has been pointed out before, between the early Elvish alphabets and Devanagari). So far so good; where he lost the thread was in casting about to figure out what Tolkien could have read that would have acquainted him with Hindu theology. That turned an otherwise good paper into ritualistic source-hunting. The similarities were striking, but not so much so that Tolkien couldn't have developed the ideas independently, which (as someone else noted) by the arguments for universal morality in C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, would testify to the ideas' value more than straight borrowing would.
A passing remark in one other paper illustrated the corrosive effects of Jackson's movies on Tolkien scholarship. I don't want to come down too hard on the author of an otherwise decent paper, but when you write that "Sauron is reduced to a flaming eye," that's Jackson's character you're talking about, not Tolkien's. And this was a paper on Tolkien, not on Jackson. It's not the fact that Tolkien's Sauron has a full physical body that's so important (the many references to the Eye are a synecdoche); it's the word "reduced" that shows the harm. Jackson's giant floating eyeball looks diminished and impotent, but before the Destruction, Tolkien's Sauron is otherwise unstoppably powerful, and anything that makes you think otherwise eviscerates his story.
I gave my own paper on Roger Zelazny. He lived in New Mexico for many years, so the con's location was a good excuse to put together some thoughts on one of my long-time favorite SF authors. I described the high desert geographic references in Eye of Cat (also one of his most strikingly mythological novels) and Bridge of Ashes (a much easier book to read than its reputation suggests) and some short stories, and covered some of his other mythopoeic fiction, in particular arguing that the infamous chapter 2 of Lord of Light was not written solely for the sake of the infamous spooneristic pun near the end of the chapter, but that that pun marks the critical turning point generating the rest of the story. It went over well, particularly as I read aloud several long quotations to illustrate Zelazny's literary style. I also discussed "For a Breath I Tarry" (possibly the greatest SF story of all time), repeating the point I made about it here.
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The trouble, for us, is that we feel very isolated at Mythcon. We're surrounded by people who have been going to a lot of them, and who are talking to each other, and very few of them seem interested in talking to us. I don't address this to you specifically; our conversation with you in 2009, over lunch, was probably the longest conversation we had with anyone but each other—until a young woman we knew from her playing in one of my campaigns, and from livejournal, and who wasn't even at the con, arranged to have lunch with us and took us to the train station. We had a lot of social interaction in 2010 with people who weren't Mythcon regulars.
Certainly, the two of us are not very good at that social interaction stuff; both of us are fairly introverted and find it hard to break through the glass wall. But I suspect a whole lot of people who show up at Mythcon are introverted. I think it was Schopenhauer who compare humanity to porcupines huddling together for warmth; that may not be true of human beings in general, but it's true of a lot of introverts. And I think you may be seeing introverts who come in from the cold, encounter more prickles than warmth, and go away disappointed.
Now,
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A question and a comment
The comment — apart from echoing you, David, that even a lot of the "oldtimers" are introverts (though I am not one of these; nor would I yet call myself an oldtimer :) — is to suggest that one reason some first-timers don't come back is that some of them — an increasing number, I believe, though this is just an impression, not backed by any hard evidence — are graduate students looking for an opportunity to present a paper, and not necessarily looking for a new social group to belong to. If they can give a paper on a topic they enjoy at a fun event, so much the better, but the main objective is to fatten their vitae. Thus you find a number of *local* first-timers who come to Mythcon but for whom traveling to other cities in subsequent years is a bit more investment than they care to (or are able to) make. I know that at Mythcon 41 in Dallas we had quite a few of these. One or two are totally won over and do return, but many do not, or cannot.
Re: A question and a comment