Mythcon 42

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This past weekend I attended Mythcon 42 - the 42nd annual conference of the Mythopoeic Society - which this year was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The scholar guest of honor this year was scheduled to be Michael Drout, the esteemed professor of Anglo-saxon at Wheaton College, and the editor of Beowulf and the Critics . The author guest of honor was Catherynne M. Valente, about whom I know nothing.

We arrived in Albuquerque late on Friday night, so we missed all of Friday's festivities (including the group attending of the release of the new Harry Potter film). On Saturday morning we woke up early, and decided to hit the hotel's exercise room before going in to breakfast. After a nice workout on the stationary bike, I was walking out soaked in sweat, and in a pre-caffeine, post-endorfin daze when I was stopped by an older woman who looked somewhat familiar. Doug Kane? she asked. Yes, I replied. Verlyn Flieger, she added, at my somewhat puzzled look. Duh! I must admit I acted a bit star-struck at this first meeting with a person who I have long greatly admired. Fortunately, I did have other opportunities to make a better impression.

After breakfast, we went in to the room where Mike Drout was just beginning his scholar keynote address (we missed the opening processional and the opening ceremonies, which I didn't really care about). Mike was talking about the effect that Tolkien's famous Beowulf essay had on Beowulf scholarship. He is an excellent speaker, and his talk was thoroughly enjoyable.

I next sat through a short, disjointed paper called "The Return of the King’s Journey" comparing a character in a comic book series by Neil Gaiman called the Sandman to Aragorn. A thorough waste of time, I'm afraid. However, after I left that paper, and was heading back to my room, I noticed that Verlyn was sitting at a table with a gentleman in the hotel restaurant (which was otherwise empty). So I went back to the room, got a copy of my book, signed it with a dedication to her, and went back to the restaurant. There followed another bit of awkwardness when I offered her the book, and she replied "but Doug, of course I already have your book; I got it as soon as it came out." However, she invited me to join her and her friend (actually her partner, Vaughn), and I proceeded to have a lovely discussion with her for the next hour about my book, how I came to write it, about her work, and asundry other topics. She also noticed that I had inscribed the copy of the book to her, so of course graciously accepted the gift. I then went back to the room to get Beth to go to lunch, and we ended up sitting at a table with Verlyn and Vaughn and several other people, and continued to have a lovely conversation.

After that, I thought I had better spend a little bit of time going through my paper, which I was scheduled to present at 2:30 that afternoon. I should note that while I had a rough idea of what I wanted to say, I didn't actually finish writing the paper until the day before, largely because I had suddenly gotten unexpectedly busy at work. Usually I really like to massage things, but this was really a last minute effort, no more than a rough draft. In fact, the main reason why I was able to finish it at all was that I realized that I had said some of what I wanted to say in a thread here three or four years ago, and I was able to take that an incorporate it into the paper.

I went through the paper and made a few last second hand-written changes, and at least got a sense of how it flowed, though I knew that I wasn't going to have any choice but to just read it through, since I simply didn't know it well enough to do otherwise. Arriving a few minutes early, there were only a few people present, but people starting arriving quickly, and by the time it was time to start, the room was almost full, including both Verlyn and Mike Drout, and a few minutes into the paper, I noticed that there were people standing and sitting in the back.

The title of the paper was "Laws and Customs of the Peoples of Middle-earth, Númenor, and Beyond" and basically it was a look at how Tolkien incorporated legal themes into his legendarium both to give his secondary world an additional sense of credibility (a credible green sun, as I quoted from On Fairy-Stories) and to advance some of moral, philosophical, and psychological concepts, as well as to demonstrate how his writing advanced and matured over the course of its development. I'm happy to say that the paper seemed to be well received, and sparked a very lively discussion, with both Verlyn and Mike asking several questions and adding to the discussion. It was quite satisfying. I also sold (and signed) four copies of the paperback, which I had brought for that purpose.

Next up was the paper that I was most looking forward to, not surprisingly the paper that Verlyn was presenting, entitled the "Jewels, the Stone, and the Ring," a look at the differences and similarities that the Silmarils, the Arkenstone and the One Ring play in their respective stories. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and sparked a fascinating discussion. I will say that I am already planning my next paper in response to it, which I am tentatively thinking of calling "Tolkien's Holy Contradiction: Why the Silmaril Did Not Burn Thingol's hands." Stay tuned! One big surprise is that she actually cited me in her paper, though to be honest I was so surprised, I didn't note actually what it was that she cited me as saying!

The final paper that I attended that day was called "Who’s Telling this Tale?: Modern Precision – or Ambiguity – in the Narrator of The Lord of
the Rings," by Chip Crane, who actually was one of the people that we had lunch with, so I had already established a connection with him. It was quite interesting, actually. He took a very narrow topic - looking at the instances in The Lord of the Rings where Tolkien used the words "seems" and "as if" (which he determined was much greater in LOTR than in The Silmarillion - and speculated on what the purpose of this usage was. An interesting point was that in many of the circumstances, Tolkien appeared to use that language in order to place the reader into the mindset of the characters, showing how things appeared to, particularly, Frodo and Sam. However, one significant place where this type of language was used was in Gollum's near-redemption scene at the stairs of Cirith Ungol, and since both Hobbits were asleep at this time (until Sam woke up, with disastrous results), that could not be the case. Later, at dinner, I suggested to Chip that maybe the purpose of using that language there was to emphasize how things would have looked to, particularly, Sam, had he been able to observe Gollum, since the results would have been so different if Sam had been more enlightened at that moment. He agreed that was an interesting possibility.

In addition to Chip, one of the other people that we ate dinner with was a gentleman from Poland named Marek Oziewicz, who had approached me after my paper to say that he had written a piece on Tolkien and Justice that he wanted me to take a look at if I was willing (of course I agreed). Honestly, I was more nervous about the meals than I was about presenting my paper, because I would actually have to socialize with strangers (aaaahhhh!!!!!111), but they all were perfectly enjoyable.

The next morning, there was an early panel that I wanted to see on The Silmarillion that started at 9:15, so I was a little dismayed to wake-up to find that it was 8:40 (I never sleep that late). Fortunately, I was able to rush to breakfast, and get to the panel on time. Actually, it turned out that it wasn't really a panel, it was a series of three short papers written by participants in an on-line seminar on The Silmarillion that was done by Professor Corey Olson. The first paper was on Nienna, and made some nice points about how her relationship with Olórin might have influenced Gandalf's making the point to Frodo about the importance of Pity. The next paper was on Fëanor and Thingol's pride (which I found rather superficial), and the final paper was an interesting comparison between Abraham in the Old Testament and Aulë. Another interesting discussion ensued, in which I engaged in a bit of a friendly debate with Verlyn about whether the Valar truly had free will or whether they were really just instruments of Eru's will.

After the panel, I hit the exercise bike again, since there weren't any other papers that morning that I was interested in. After a nice lunch, I attended a panel on the continuing relevance of the Inkling's scholarship, moderated by David Bratman, and featuring Verlyn, Mike Drout, and Marek Oziewicz. Honestly, Mike mostly reiterated what he had said in his keynote speech, but Verlyn of course was very illuminating in discussing how she uses both the Beowulf essay and particularly the On Fairy-stories essay in her teaching (as well as how she uses some of Lewis's essays, though she is much less of a Lewis-phile). However, the real revelation was Marek, who was witty, funny and interjected a real jolt of energy into the proceedings.

After the panel, I rushed back to the room to watch the end of the women's world cup final, which was exciting but disappointing. After that, we attended the conference auction, which included a signed copy of my book (which went for considerably less than it was worth, sadly). We then went back to the room to rest for a bit before the conference. On the way out, we ran into Verlyn and she made a point of wishing me luck, which I returned (her and Doug Anderson's Tolkien On Fairy-Stories was one of the other finalists for the Inkling's Scholarship award). I was hoping that we might be able to join Verlyn and Vaughn at the banquet, but there table was full and we ended up sitting at another table. However, Marek was at our table, and he introduces us to his father, who apparently now lives in Mexico and had come up specifically for the banquet. It soon became clear why when the awards coordinator announced that before they presented the 2011 awards, they were going to present the award to the 2010 winner of the Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies (the "other" scholarship award), who had come from Poland - none other than Marek himself. He proceeded to make an incredibly moving speech about what it was like for him to read Tolkien and Lewis while growing up in communist Poland, and talked about how his father - who was sitting there at the table next to us - had been active in Solidarity and had been several times arrested and jailed. It was a totally electric moment. After that, the presentation of the 2011 awards was somewhat anti-climatic, particularly since none of the winners were present and so their acceptance remarks were read by others. As I expected, the Inklings Scholarship award went to Michael Ward for his Planet Narnia, which actually many had expected to win last year, and was in its last year of eligibility. There was a short break after the award presentation, and Verlyn came over and gave Marek a big embrace and thanked him for his moving speech. She then turned to me and with a little sparkle in her eyes, said "next year" (my book has one more year of eligibility). I don't think it is any more likely that I'll win next year than there was this year or last, but I still appreciated the gesture.

After that, Beth left to go watch the Red Sox play the game of the week, and honestly I wish I had gone then too. The less I say about the keynote address that Catherynne M. Valente gave the better; suffice it say that she looks at things differently than I do and leave it at that. After that, I did leave, skipping the Masquerade and Not-Ready-for-Mythcon Players. I still got to watch a full nine innings of the game, which went 16 innings until Dustin Pedroia finally came through and knocked in the one run of the game (earlier that evening a young woman had noticed Beth's Red Sox t-shirt and was mooning over Dustin, and we later figured that it was probably because at about 5'4" he is about as close to a Hobbit as a baseball player can get).

The next morning we caught the airport shuttle and flew back home, and that was that. As an addendum, the following morning, I was going to write an email to Verlyn saying how nice it was to finally get to meet her, but before I got a chance to do so, I received one from her, saying the same in reverse. It is, as I wrote back to her, a wonderful thing to get a chance to meet for the first time someone that you vastly respect, only to have them not meet your high expectations, but instead exceed them. She also had a suggestion for me, but I will keep that to myself, at least for now.

[vison]

Well, my goodness. What a good, thorough report!!! Very interesting.


I heard Drout speak in Toronto years ago. I thought he was engaging and easy to listen to and in the question and answer session that followed he was approachable and forthright.

[Primula Baggins]

Thank you for sharing this! Though of course I'm dying to know what Verlyn Flieger suggested. But oh well. You'll tell us if and when.

It's a lovely detailed report, and I feel as if I had been there. (I do recognize some things, such as the complete relief it can be at some points to get back to one's room and stop being "on").

I couldn't be happier that your hard work has earned you the respect of people you yourself respect. There's nothing better.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

It sounds like you made a very nice connection, Voronwë.

...and the final paper was an interesting comparison between Abraham in the Old Testament and Aulë.

I presume this was in regards to the passage below?

As a child to his father, I offer to thee these things, the work of the hands which thou has made. Do with them what thou wilt. But should I not destroy the work of my presumption?

Then Aulë took up a great hammer to destroy the Dwarves; and he wept...

I recall reading that for the first time and instantly thinking of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, exactly.

[Lalaith]

That was very interesting, Voronwë. Thank you for typing it up and sharing it with us.

Maybe Verlyn gave you a suggestion for a new book?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Lalaith]

Ooooh, do we get a prize if we guess correctly? You could make this a contest.

[Primula Baggins]

Or nel and Wampus and I could corner him in the back parlor and get it out of him fairly quickly.

But that would be wrong. Violence is wrong.

Unless there's just no other alternative.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

But that would be wrong. Violence is wrong.

Is tickling considered violence? I know that would make me talk.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sorry friends. I shouldn't have mentioned it at all, as it is not something that I can talk about at this time. Hopefully all will be clear, eventually.

[Teremia]

I love detailed reports like this one! And it sounds like you managed to Network, which is always such an achievement for us shy peoples.

But I would like to hear more about your disagreements with Catherynne M. Valente, because I just recently read her children's book, THE GIRL WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED FAIRYLAND IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING, and found myself 90% loving it. So I'm a little curious about the author.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm glad you enjoyed it (at the banquet, it is a tradition to create food sculptures, and several people created renditions of a girl circumnavigating fairyland in a ship of her own making in ther her honor). I'm sure that my distaste at her speech was entirely due to my own failings, and not due to anything else.

[Holbytla]

I loved the report and am happy that you had a good experience. Mostly anyway.

I find it interesting how Tolkien always evokes such passionate emotions.
There are social situations that incur heated debates and things even beyond that. I am always amazed that the subject of Tolkien manages to evoke something even akin to those.

Whatever his faults were, never will he be accused of being ignored.

[Lalaith]

Faults? What are these faults to which you refer?

[vison]

The books were too short.

[Teremia]

And there were too few of them.

[Holbytla]

Oh even he admitted his shortcomings.
Like a work such as he entered into could ever have been truly completed succinctly by one human. Ha! Human lives are too bifurcated and short for such an undertaking.

I marvel at what he did accomplish.

[N.E. Brigand]

So sorry I couldn't make it to Albuquerque and see you and Beth again. Thank you for the great report!

Catherynne M. Valente has posted her guest of honor speech (apart from some introductory remarks, I believe) here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The introductory remarks were the best part. She basically recited Bilbo's speech almost verbatim, and almost the entire room called out "Proudfeet!" at the appropriate moment.

I'm really sorry that you weren't able to be there, but I'm already looking forward to seeing you next year in Berkeley!