The Ninety-second Roving Ranger
For three months I have not been able to send you the next edition of the Roving Ranger, for a number of reasons. I will try and get back into the bi-weekly swing of things and do a special edition on the months I have missed.
Events & Shows
A play on Lewis & Tolkien (Opens in a new window) is on in Hollywood, CA.
The Exeter Tolkien Society is organising a fantasy Christmas ball (Opens in a new window) on Nov 24th.
The Tolkien Society is having an online seminar on Tolkien and Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Opens in a new window) on Nov 26 - an excellent outlook on it can be found with Anna Smol (Opens in a new window).
The Tolkien Collector’s Guide (Opens in a new window) did a live stream (Opens in a new window) on the revised Letters; a review of the release event (Opens in a new window) in Oxford; and do join their subreddit (Opens in a new window).
In Exeter College’s on-going seminar series Laura Varnam will talk about Tolkien & Beowulf (Opens in a new window) at the college’s ‘new’ Cohen Quad on Nov 15 and Simon Horobin on ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Philologist’ on Nov 22.
Weta Workshop will be doing a special screening of LotR: Return of the King (Opens in a new window) in Auckland on Dec 5, including Richard Tayleor and Tania Rodger. The NZ Post (Opens in a new window) is issuing another set of celebratory stamps as well.
Wadham College (Opens in a new window)’s members of the MCR and SCR will be getting a Tolkien, Lewis and the Inklings tour.
The British Library has opened its massive Fantasy: Realms of Imagination (Opens in a new window) exhibition - two early (Opens in a new window) reviews (Opens in a new window).
[Please note: the BL’s website has come under attack (Opens in a new window) so you might not see the exhibition page; all exhibitions are running and you can book tickets here (Opens in a new window).]
Pembroke College has an event on the OED (Opens in a new window) at Nov 17.
The C.S. Lewis podcast Pints with Jack is trying to establish a CSL Reading Day (Opens in a new window) - on Nov 29 (CSL’s birthday).
Don’t forget - John Howe’s exhibition (Opens in a new window) in Brittany is still on until January.
Scholarship and Fandom
Reviews of Letters: Tolkien Guide (Opens in a new window) | Telegraph (Opens in a new window) [paywall]; The Times (Opens in a new window) [paywall].
A great write-up on recent Tolkien events & publications by Robin Reid (Opens in a new window). Anna Smol ist offering some of the books coming up (Opens in a new window).
For those of you who have not heard of Tom Hillman’s book Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring you can listen to some of the chapters read by the author (Opens in a new window) on Youtube.
Verlyn Flieger has left Tolkien Studies (Opens in a new window) - thanks and kudos to Verlyn! - and Yvette Kisor (Opens in a new window) will pick up her baton. Read more about Its Origins and Evolutions (Opens in a new window) with Douglas A. Anderson.
List, list, O, list! is a column with the Times Literary Supplement, including the subtitle 100 Novels, Tove Jansson’s Hobbit, Reviews misrepresented (Opens in a new window) and being a little acidic about top 100 reading lists and the British Library exhibition.
For the sake of Jansson’s other work, we are glad that she never had to endure a return to Middleearth (sic!). But because she portrayed Gollum as a paunchy giant, we are told, Tolkien later clarified that this particular creature of the imagination was “small” and “slimy”. We know whose fantasy we prefer. [List, list, o, list!]
Peter Grybauskas - the editor of Tolkien’s Battle of Maldon (Opens in a new window) - will be offering a course called Advanced Composition: Tolkien in Oxford (Opens in a new window) at the University of Maryland.
A professional writing course exploring the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien, professor and author of The Lord of the Rings.
To some people it may come as a surprise, it is nothing new to Tolkien scholars - the Italian right have been abusing his writings since the 1970s and today’s prime minister is only another name in a very long list: How did The Lord of the Rings become a secret weapon in Italy’s culture wars? (Opens in a new window) [Guardian]; Inside Giorgia Meloni’s Hobbit fantasy world (Opens in a new window) [Politico]; Why a Lord of the Rings exhibition matters to Italy's far-right PM Giorgia Meloni (Opens in a new window) [euronews.culture]; Is a Tolkein Exhibition in Rome Part of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Far-Right Agenda? (Opens in a new window) [artnet]; Meloni e Tolkien, la stampa inglese all’attacco (Opens in a new window) [Repubblica]; Rome to host Italy's first major Tolkien exhibition (Opens in a new window) [Wanted in Rome; only general tourist info]
It is unfortunate that the politics involved in this question offer a skewed picture of an exhibition that will be outstanding: TOLKIEN. UOMO, PROFESSORE, AUTORE (Opens in a new window) has been curated by none other but Tolkien scholar Oronzo Cilli (Tolkien’s Library (Opens in a new window)). There also was a special event during Italy’s reading week for schools, Libriamoci (Opens in a new window), at Milan, on Tolkien’s Hobbit. See this video for the opening (Opens in a new window), supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and with the cultural minister Sangiuliano (Opens in a new window) present, as well as Tolkien scholar Giuseppe Pezzini (Corpus Christi College (Opens in a new window)) who recently organised the exceptional conference Tolkien's Words and Worlds (Opens in a new window) in Oxford.
The Apocalypse According to J.R.R. Tolkien (Opens in a new window) by Robert Lazu Kmita [European Conservative]
Diana Glyer’s C.S. Lewis Bibliography (Opens in a new window) contains a number of titles relevant to Tolkien scholarship. Do look out for her latest publication, The Major & The Missionary (Opens in a new window).
John Garth started a series of posts with Steady on Wetwang (Opens in a new window). [I am still incredibly pleased to say I convinced John of joining me at Steady.]
Franchise and Merchandise
Lord of the Rings: Online is back with another expansion: Corsairs of Umbar (Opens in a new window). [YT, launch trailer]
A list of reviews on LotR: Return to Moria: Metacritic (Opens in a new window) | IGN (Opens in a new window) | Checkpoint Gaming (Opens in a new window) | Polygon (Opens in a new window) | Game Tyrant (Opens in a new window) | TechRaptor (Opens in a new window) | Empire (Opens in a new window). Here is an outlook on (Opens in a new window) future patches and DLCs by the developers. Luckily enough, the game is not as overwhelmingly bad as LotR: Gollum (Opens in a new window).
In the age of celebrities Chanel’s In the Library series is a prime specimen: Margot Robbie likes - among many others - The Hobbit (Opens in a new window).
It really does not come as a surprise that Jeff Bezos (Opens in a new window) is a Tolkien fan, too, like Peter Thiel (Opens in a new window) and Elon Musk (Opens in a new window).
An Australian ‘traveller’ seems to have missed out on franchise tourism the world over: Oh Lord: I visited a bizarre, fake Hobbit-theme park in a cloud forest (Opens in a new window).
Inter alia & Back in the day
I am not sure whether Esquire should be asking the question but here we are: What’s the future of books? (Opens in a new window)
Greta Gerwig is doing Narnia (Opens in a new window) for Netflix.
Sir Anthony Hopkins stays true to form and returns to C.S. Lewis - but this time as Sigmund Freud, talking to Lewis, in the film Freud’s Last Session (Opens in a new window).
The Eagle & Child (Opens in a new window) has been sold to a tech institute expanding into Oxford University - we’ll see what will come of it (see also with the BBC (Opens in a new window)) [I have written extensively on Tolkien’s pubs with Steady (Opens in a new window) and am in the process of writing more about this development.]
Star Wars author Timothy Zahn weighs in on ‘his’ character, Thrawn, his books and what might be in store (Opens in a new window) for one of the best characters in that universe.
Strange but true: The original model of Star Trek’s spaceship Enterprise was considered lost but might have resurfaced now (Opens in a new window), many decades later.
One of the most hilarious pieces I saw this week: the Economist titled The business of mining literary estates is booming (Opens in a new window) [paywall] and the website Fior Reports simply copied it fully (as far as I can see), retitling it The business of exploiting literary estates is booming (Opens in a new window).
If you need fresh reading material the Hugo award winners (Opens in a new window) - and all the nominees - make for a great TRL. Or the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize (Opens in a new window). Or the World Fantasy Awards (Opens in a new window).
Ansible 436 (Opens in a new window) has been published.
According to German law I have to infom you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's, the bookshop of my personal trust.
If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
The Tolkienist Blog (Opens in a new window) : Facebook (Opens in a new window) : Twitter (Opens in a new window) : Instagram (Opens in a new window) : Tolkien-Discord (Opens in a new window) [de/en]
