Three Tolkien novels, or, what Tolkien was doing when you weren’t paying attention

[calimac]

Here, in possibly excruciating detail, is what I presented to my fellow Tolkienists.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I read The Gleam a few years ago, but didn't find it worth keeping on my shelves; the characters didn't really come to life for me. I had actually been hoping from the listing that it would turn out to be an expansion of the half-remembered bit of fiction that I later discovered to be John C. Wright's pastiche about the Inklings encountering the supernatural. Now that I rather enjoyed, more actually than I have enjoyed Wright's published novels, though it might not have stood up to expansion into novel length.

The Icelandic one sounds at least clever, in a good way.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning on the turkeys.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If you've looked at my bibliography, there's a link to the Wright, since he put it online. I agree: it's more interesting than anything else of his I've read.

There are other "secret history" Inklings novels than Toward the Gleam. Probably the best of them, or rather the least bad, is Looking for the King by David C. Downing. At the other end of quality, there's the truly putrid graphic novel Heaven's War by Harris and Gaydos. Both on my bibliography.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm not having any luck googling for your bibliography. Can you provide a link to it, or if it's easier, to the Wright piece?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I could copy it over here, but the bibliography is linked to from the beginning of the article on the three novels, and the Wright, with link, is listed therein.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

So it is. Apologie for my inattention. I do still find it appealing, and it makes me wish there were more of it to read. Wright has managed the interesting trick of doing a brief sketch and making it seem as if the whole book existed somewhere.