Quick post to promote two upcoming events I’ve been asked to highlight.
The Irish National Invincibles and Their Times: Perspectives on Late Victorian Irish Nationalism 130th Anniversary of the Execution of the Invincibles in Kilmainham Gaol Dublin
The first is a conference organised by Dr Shane Kenna titled “The Irish National Invincibles and Their Times: Perspectives on Late Victorian Irish Nationalism 130th Anniversary of the Execution of the Invincibles in Kilmainham Gaol Dublin“. It will be held in the historic Wynns Hotel, Abbey Street, Dublin on Saturday the 18th of May 2013, from 10.00 to 16.30. The event will be opened by the Irish artist Robert Ballagh and the Facebook Page is here. Reading the synopsis of the day it sounds very interesting and well worth attending.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Second, and slightly late, is the Burren Tolkien Society Festival being staged in An Boireann / the Burren, Co. Clare, from today Thursday the 9th until Thursday the 16th of May, 2013. Details are here, and you can read some more about JRR Tolkien and Ireland here. Lets hope they get the weather!
To promote your academic, cultural or political event please contact An Sionnach Fionn at the email address provided.
Robert E. Howard, Irish-American heroic fiction author and essayist
While going through the old bookmarks on my browser the other day I came across the Cimmerian, a wonderful if now defunct group-blog that was dedicated to Fantasy, Horror and Adventure fiction, with a focus on the works of the Irish-American writer Robert E. Howard in particular. Some of the most intelligent and thoughtful pieces on Fantasy literature that I have ever read graced the webpages of the Cimmerian, many notable for their length and analytical nature (the curse of the internet is the culture of brevity – very few people write long articles now and even fewer read them. Perhaps the rise of the tablet and phabelt will change that?).
As for the great man himself, Robert E. Howard is an author of some special meaning to me. Enough to know that it was the 107th anniversary of his birth three days ago. Most of his works have dated with the passing of the years – strange snapshots of another time, another place. Ironically so given their frequent historical setting (real or imagined). Yet the raw talent, creativity and productivity that left many others floundering in his wake continues to inspire new generations of artists, be they writers, illustrators or movie-makers. Howard was an author who truly had the potential for greatness, who was growing into his abilities with every new tale, until he brought it all to an end one terrible summer’s day in June 1936 at the tragically early age of 30.
Perhaps it is the tortured artist that I identify with? Or the fatal allure of self-death. While I celebrate life I do have my darker moments and a certain susceptibility to the siren call of the Cthulhu. Would it surprise you that back in the day some regarded me as a goth? I suppose I was in a way though I despised the term and those who wallowed in it as a lifestyle choice. I remember the young son of a friend describing me with the innocence of a child as “very black”. It amused us mightily at the time since we took it as a reference to my preferred colour of clothing. And car. And decoration. Perhaps it should have been An Sionnach Dubh? But I think he was also referring to my dark nature. More of the Diarmaid than the Fionn. Who else would love a black Christmas Tree? That’s not normal is it? But then being not normal is what I admire. I glory in unconventionality and those who cock-a-snoop at society and its restrictions. Conform? The hell I will.
Of course, I’ve changed a lot since those halcyon days. I’m not sure how anyone regards me now. I suspect with little favour. Too much pain. Too many things seen and done. Life is cruel and it will seek you out no matter how hard you try to hide. In my youth I was Séadanta. Now I have become Conchúr.
All of which rambling brings me to this movie I stumbled across on YouTube, “The Whole Wide World”, focusing on the relationship between Robert E. Howard (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) and his friend and lover Novalyne Price Ellis (a young Renée Zellweger). Enjoy.
The British fantasy writer and humorous Terry Pratchett is one of those author’s whose publications I want to like, indeed ought to like, but somehow don’t. I read the first three of his satirical Discworld novels back in the 1990s and while I really, really (really) wanted to join with my friends in their fannish devotion to him I was largely left unmoved. Sorry to say, I simply didn’t find his books funny. Perhaps that was the callow age I was at, though admittedly I’m not sure. However one thing I am sure of his my liking of the man himself. Terry Pratchett has always come across as a thoroughly decent and modest person in any interviews that I’ve seen or read. His television series exploring his degenerative Alzheimer’s and the dignified manner in which he has come to terms with it was incredibly poignant.
Across his literary career he has managed to garner a veritable army of fans, and not just the usual suspects (i.e. folk like me!). Pratchett enjoys a certain cachet in Britain’s liberal media, the Discworld novels representing a sort of Harry Potter for grownups. This is reflected in regular reviews and articles examining his work in left-wing publications or websites. Now the New Statesman has a lengthy interview with the author, plus a couple of related articles examining his politics and attitude to death, all of which make for interesting reading.
So much so, in fact, that I think it is only fair that I dig out those old Discworld novels and give them another go.
Good Show, Sir – and the cover of Wicked by L.A. Banks
I love book covers, as some of you may know (pop over here to see why). I especially love what some pseudo-intellectuals pigeon-hole as “genre” fiction. That’s Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror to you and me (though a lot of other stuff is lumped in there too).
The wonderful website, “Good Show, Sir”, collects some of the best – or rather, worse – book covers out there. Many are very American in style and feel thanks to that nation’s fine tradition in pulp art. One of my joys is taking the same book title from the US and European markets and comparing their frequently quite divergent cover illustrations. Unfortunately, in these increasingly bland and homogeneous times, more and more jacket art is becoming identical, with only details of language and currency to tell works apart.
Enjoy!
Good Show, Sir – The Little People by John Christopher
The New Statesman carries a long interview by Laura Sneddon with Grant Morrison, the well-regarded Scottish comics’ writer closely associated with the reboots of such classic American superhero titles as Batman, Superman and the Fantastic Four, as well as his own creations (not least 2000ADs early anti-hero Zenith). I’ve never really been a fan of the superhero genre in comics and graphic novels, especially in the DC and Marvel form, but Morrison is clearly a creative force to be reckoned with and one has to admire his abilities as a writer (and by all accounts he is also quite a nice chap!). Recently there was something of a storm in a teacup about such a well-known left-wing figure accepting an MBE (Member of the British Empire) or ceremonial order from the British head of state, not least in Scottish nationalist circles. However that will be nothing to the flurry of excitement in global Fandom when Morrison’s version of DC Comics’ Wonder Woman hits the shelves in 2013!
Christopher Tolkien, the son of J.R.R., is the person who has undoubtedly done the most to explain the background and history of his father’s writing to the general public, and in particular to his many fans and admirers. Le Monde recently carried a lengthy interview with Tolkien from his south of France home, noteworthy not least for how rarely he grants access to his self-imposed rural retreat. In the article he discusses the complex relationship of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy of books, “The Lord of the Rings”, to the Peter Jackson produced movies of the same name. As some may be aware all is not well in this particular area, and a real note of sadness, despair even, seems to be the prevailing feeling. One is left wondering at times how much Christopher Tolkien is the inheritor and protector of his father’s legacy and how much he has become it’s prisoner.
Now Sedulia Scott has generously translated the article from the original French into English, including Tolkien’s disquiet views on the forthcoming movie, The Hobbit. It can be read here and for most Tolkien fans it will make for poignant reading.
“”I could write a book on the idiotic requests I have received,” sighs Christopher Tolkien. He is trying to protect the literary work from the three-ring circus that has developed around it. In general, the Tolkien Estate refuses almost all requests. “Normally,” explains Adam Tolkien, “the executors of the estate want to promote a work as much as they can. But we are just the opposite. We want to put the spotlight on what is not Lord of the Rings.”
This policy, however, has not protected the family from the reality that the work now belongs to a gigantic audience, culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it. Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
The divorce is systematically reactivated by the movies. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialisation has reduced the esthetic and philosophical impact of this creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: turning my head away.”
It is hard to say who has won this silent battle between the respect for the word and popularity. Nor who, finally, has the Ring. One thing is certain. From father to son, a great part of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien has now come out of its boxes, thanks to the infinite perseverance of his son.”"
Warlock, The Fighting Fantasy Magazine, Number 2, 1984
Fighting Fantasy!
There is a name to instil some serious nostalgia in a geek of a certain age. Sci-Fi and Fantasy critic Damien Walter looks at the still flourishing (if lower profile) FF scene over on the Guardian.
Anyone remember the incredible artwork displayed on the the covers of the Fighting Fantasy books? Or how about the illustrations found in the pages of the White Dwarf magazine from the Games Workshop? I could never really get into the whole gaming culture (especially the desktop folk) but I enjoyed the publications around it, though as usual it was the artwork that initially drew me in. A particular passion at one time was the spinoff publication, Warlock, which I collected until its premature demise in 1986. My favourite cover illustration from that magazine remains Peter Andrew Jones’ the Snow Witch from “Warlock 2”, which I redrew several times. But then I discovered Métal Hurlant and left the tame world of Fighting Fantasy behind me.
Unfortunately I believe I have got to that certain age when the authors and musicians and actors and actresses of one’s formative years seem to pass from life with alarming regularity. Sometimes one views it with a raised eyebrow and a pinch of surprise or sadness. Sometimes though it instils a real sense of loss, as if a little bit of one’s childhood passes away with them.
That is certainly the case with the death of the British actress Mary Tamm at the all too early age of 62 (and from cancer, but of course). Sixty-two? What a terribly short life that is when one thinks about it. Three score years and two is no time to have experienced all that this world has to offer. How unfair it seems.
The Doctor and Romana, Tom Baker and Mary Tamm
Mary Tamm, in the character of the Time Lord Romana, was for me the greatest Doctor Who companion, bar none. No shrinking violet, or substitute adolescent-cum-viewer, she was every bit the equal of Tom Baker’s wonderfully exuberant, idiosyncratic Doctor: intelligent, self-confident, elegant, she put every female companion before, and after, to shame. Unfortunately in some ways that was her undoing as writers and producers latterly pushed her character towards the more traditional role of women in Science-Fiction. Lots of screaming, knuckle-biting, and falling over one’s high-heels while being pursued by monsters. Eventually she left the show and it was all the poorer for it. Until the character of Amy Pond appeared there was no one really like her in the Who universe.
Perhaps that’s why I’m attracted to smart and articulate women? Exposure to a genuine female role model at a very early age? (and why I detest tramp-stamp Barbie dolls and Jersey Shore wannabes – in Ireland they inhabit the television space titled appropriately enough Fade Street. Though looking at the pictures of Mary Tamm today I’ve just realised that quite a few of my ex-girlfriends had more than a passing resemblance to her in the role of Romana, and not just in terms of personality…!)
Romana and the Doctor, Mary Tamm and Tom Baker
Not so long ago I purchased a Doctor Who boxset, The Key of Time, first broadcast from 1978 to ‘79, a vague recollection from early childhood that surprised me by even better in reality that in memory. Thanks in no small measure to the quality of Mary Tamm’s acting Tom Baker excels as the two bounce off each other in the sort of Douglas Adam’s verbal jousting that one rarely sees on television these days (Aaron Sorkin apart. Talking of which, The Newsroom, excellent – but also a little dated, preachy and wide-eyed optimistic. American TV journalism as American liberals would wish it to be – but not as it actually is. Of course Ireland’s journalistic elite are just as bad)
If only all classic Doctor Who stories had stood up so (relatively) well to the passing of time. Have you tried watching any of the Davidson, Baker or McCoy era programmes? While one can make allowances for the antediluvian period they was made in, limited budgets, the audience demographics and all the rest there are only so many excuses one can make. Be honest. Much of it is terrible. In fact as far I remember I was an early escapee from the sinking ship, abandoning the good Doctor in the first outing of Sylvester McCoy’s cringe-inducing Time Lord and his companion, the apocalyptically awful Melanie Bush (Bonnie screamin’ Langford!), followed by the less awful but just as irritating Ace (Sophie Aldred, in proto-Rose Tyler form, in a jacket covered with “right-on” badges. Arrrgh…!).
One longed for the class, wit and poise of the original Romana, and an actress of the calibre of Mary Tamm to bring those attributes alive.
Two Time Lords are better than one, the Doctor and Romana, Tom Baker and Mary Tamm
“The Doctor Who actor Mary Tamm has died aged 62, her agent has said.
Tamm, who played the Doctor’s companion Romana alongside Tom Baker, died at a hospital in London on Thursday morning. She had been suffering from cancer for 18 months.
The actress was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, the daughter of Estonian refugees, and had a long career on stage and screen. She starred in the films The Odessa File and The Likely Lads and had recurring roles in the soaps Brookside and EastEnders.
Tamm, who lived in Battersea, south London, trained at Rada. Her first professional job was at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre where she worked alongside Derek Jacobi, Joan Sims and Ronnie Barker. From there she moved on to television work and film, her first feature film being Tales That Witness Madness with Kim Novak.”
I think I’ll have another watch of Mary Tamm in one of her most enjoyable roles this weekend, in tribute and affection (and a wee bit of mortality-driven nostalgia. Ah, age…)
A quick post to note the passing of legendary American science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury. From the Guardian:
“Ray Bradbury, who has died aged 91, was the 20th-century American short-story writer par excellence. Although he was also known for a few novels – principally the science-fiction book-burning dystopia Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) – as well as for children’s books, plays, screenplays and poetry, it was for his short stories that he gained his widest fame, with his best-known collection being The Martian Chronicles (1950). His tales were collected in dozens of volumes and reprinted in countless magazines and anthologies, including many school textbooks, making his name familiar to younger generations.
Born in the small town of Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury arrived in Los Angeles with his parents, Leonard and Esther, in 1934, and lived there for the rest of his life. At the time of his graduation from Los Angeles high school in 1938, he was already publishing stories in amateur fanzines, and was an active member of the LA Science Fiction Society, where he rubbed shoulders with more senior writers such as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett and Robert A Heinlein.
The best of his early stories appeared in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, edited at that time by Dorothy McIlwraith. These were moody, macabre pieces which avoided the stock ghosts and monsters of supernatural fiction. The Crowd, about a conspiracy of ghoulish spectators at traffic accidents, and The Scythe, about a farmer who involuntarily takes on the role of Death, were typical of Bradbury’s prolific output in 1943-44. These were collected, along with many similarly grotesque pieces, in his first book, Dark Carnival (1947), with some rewritten for his definitive collection of horror stories, The October Country (1955). He also contributed numerous stories to the crime and science-fiction pulps of the mid-1940s, some of them unreprinted to this day.
Ironically, however, it was in the lowly science-fiction pulps that his second – and best – book had its origins. With The Million-Year Picnic in 1946, he began a loose series about pioneer settlers on Mars and, over the next four years, these appeared primarily in the gaudiest of poorly paying pulp magazines, Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. They were gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (known in Britain as The Silver Locusts).
The Martian Chronicles was followed by The Illustrated Man (1951), The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) and, a little later, A Medicine for Melancholy (1959; known in Britain as The Day It Rained Forever). These, along with his short novel Fahrenheit 451 (filmed by François Truffaut in 1966), remain the core Bradbury books. The best of their tales have a magical quality that endures.
Although he continued to write to the end, most of Bradbury’s work after 1960 was less successful. Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) were adequately entertaining mysteries. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) and From the Dust Returned (2001) were latter-day attempts at “fix-up” novels, put together in the same style as Dandelion Wine. The former was based on “Irish” short stories written in the 1950s and 60s, inspired by his experience of working on location with John Huston on the 1956 film of Moby Dick (for which Bradbury wrote the screenplay); and the latter on very early fantasy stories of the 1940s. Later collections ranged from The Machineries of Joy (1964) to Driving Blind (1997), One More for the Road (2002) and We’ll Always Have Paris (2009).
Despite a 50-year decline from his peak of the 1950s, Bradbury remained a much-loved writer, his work often adapted for film and television. Never a great traveller (he preferred a bicycle to a car, and usually avoided aircraft), he lived quietly and was the recipient of many awards ranging from an O Henry prize in 1947 to a Bram Stoker lifetime achievement award in 1988 and, in 2004, a National Medal of Arts award.
Marguerite [his wife] died in 2003. Bradbury is survived by their daughters, Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra.”
Below is Ray Bradbury introducing the last performance of his Irish play, Falling Upward, in Los Angeles, 2007, a comedy based on his experiences staying in Ireland in the 1950s.
For all you hardcore geeks (myself included) the utterly obscure, utterly surreal Wizards and Warriors, a short-lived American television Fantasy series from the early 1980s. If you remember this you are definitely one of the fraternity. Well done!
Arthur Conan Doyle (Artúr Conán Ó Dúill) on the Western Front, Europe, WWI
I’ve always been a bit of a Sherlock Homes fan (or the much more impressive Irish form, Searbhlach de Hoilm!), especially since he was born of the imagination and pen of an Irish-Scots writer, one Artúr Iognáid Conán Ó Dúill or Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Doyle’s relationship with his ancestral homeland was problematic, to say the least, and there is a strong argument that he tapped into the anti-Irish prejudices of his day for the Sherlock Home’s stories, most tellingly in the Irish surnames he choose for Holmes’ two chief protagonists: Moran and Moriarty. He himself veered in his politics over the span of a lifetime from un-apologetic British Imperialist and Unionist to possessing somewhat more nuanced and socially liberal views of the world and Ireland in particular (by 1911 Doyle was convinced of the need for Home Rule or limited autonomy for Ireland within the so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, though that is as far as he could bring himself to go).
Arthur Conan Doyle’s interests in Irish revolutionary movements and the covert (and at times not so covert) war between them and the British colonial state in Ireland clearly influenced his writing. The Fenians in particular, both the Irish and Irish-American arms of the movement, were a major concern to him and at times he allowed himself to be caught up in the hysteria of the late Victorian age and its obsession with “Irish secret societies” (the surnames of Moran and Moriarty were regularly identified in British newspaper reports with alleged Fenian officers operating in Britain in the late 1800s). In some ways the “Irish question” became central to the Sherlock Holmes canon, always implied though rarely stated.
All this has helped me in my own writing (with a nod to Kim Newman), in particular my subversion of the Sherlock Holmes tales by turning them on their head and writing them from the point of view of Professor Moriarty, or rather Séamas Ó Muircheartaigh, 19th century Irish famine-child and exile turned revolutionary (and the efforts of his arch-nemesis to thwart him: the conflicted British Imperial agent Sherlock Holmes, and his baleful older brother Mycroft). Whether those tales of mine will ever see the light of day is, of course, another matter
Jeremy Brett – Searbhlach de Hoilm (Sherlock Holmes)
But for now, a slight twist, as I turn to the Guardian and an excellent article on the late great Jeremy Brett, the British actor who for many of us was Sherlock Holmes. A true thespian (and a genuinely courageous person who overcame many personal problems and tragedies in his life until his untimely death), he defined what Holmes should look like, sound like and act like for a whole generation of television viewers (and still does). From the retrospective by Natalie Haynes:
“You can keep Basil Rathbone, fond as I am of him. You can keep Robert Downey, Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Cushing. You can even keep Michael Caine in Without A Clue (my secret favourite portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the big screen). You know why you can keep them? Because, in exchange, I get Jeremy Brett, the Sherlock for the connoisseurs.
Jeremy Brett is the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood, and perhaps (as with the Doctor or James Bond) we simply attach ourselves to the first one we see. But I don’t think so. In the ITV series which began in 1984, and ran until a year before Brett’s early death in 1995, Sherlock Holmes was as close to his literary roots as he has ever been on screen.
Brett understood completely how mercurial Holmes could be. And he could play every variant of him: loyal friend, relentless pursuer, bored logician, avenging angel and mischievous impersonator. Brett’s performance is an astonishing exercise in dynamics: he murmurs advice, whispers hints, bellows irritation, barks laughter. He is also the master of the subtextual glance. When the King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia, series 1, episode 1) wishes Irene Adler was his social equal, Brett turns to him with every facial sinew screaming contempt, for just a fraction of a second. Then he agrees, with such seeming politeness that the king is impervious to his real meaning, that Adler was indeed on a very different level. No wonder Adler leaves the country, declaring him too formidable an opponent, even though she knows she has beaten him in this encounter.
Even if Brett had not been so ill when filming the series, his Holmes is intrinsically fragile: he really looks like he forgets to eat for days on end, and that he carries the lead weight of ennui between cases.
In re-watching The Red-Headed League last week, I also detected a disdain for poshness that verges on the revolutionary. He describes John Clay (Tim McInnerny) thus: “His grandfather was a royal duke and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. So, Watson, bring the gun.” And because he is Jeremy Brett, he slightly rolls the r of “bring”, just so we know Holmes knows that he is funny.”
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
This weekend I will be indulging my Brettian-Holmes passion by watching the British television drama The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes back-to-back (thanks to a lovely DVD collection grabbed – quite literally – for a ridiculously cheap 10 euros), but here, for the rest of you, is a mere taster:
The J.R.R. Tolkien fansite, TheOneRing.net, carries some news on the release of An Hobad, the Irish language version of Tolkien’s children’s classic the Hobbit. Very interesting it is, including details on some of the issues around finding a suitable word to translate the term Elf as Tolkien employs it.
“Part of the evening was taken up by media interviews with the extraordinary people involved in the translation. Professor Nicholas Williams (who previously translated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) explained that a particular difficulty in the translation was the absence in Irish mythology of an exact equivalent of Tolkien’s Elves. The search for a suitable word resulted in a years-long delay while Professor Williams and the publisher, Michael Everson (himself a formidable linguist, typesetter and font designer) sought to find common ground on the matter. In the end, a new word was created, Ealbh, based on a borrowing into Scottish Gaelic from Norse – a solution Tolkien might well have approved of!”
Maybe Tolkien would approve of it but I certainly don’t. What a terrible decision. And an awful Gaelicisation. Yes, I know it’s based upon an original Scottish word ealbhar, so has genuine Gaelic roots, but that word in turn is a borrowing from Old Norse álfr “elf”; and in Scottish the original borrowing now means “a good for nothing”. I should also point out that ealbh is an alternative spelling of the existing Irish word ealbha which means “a drove or herd of cattle”. Is that a suitable root for the Eldar of Middle-earth? And one that Tolkien the philologist would approve of?
There are many Irish terms for the Otherworld Folk which would have been entirely suitable for the Elves of Middle-earth and all derived from the base word Sí “Otherworld”. I have listed most of them here. Yes, some might say it is “culturally” incorrect (and perhaps confusing) to apply the same word for the supernatural race of Irish, Scottish and Manx myth to J.R.R. Tolkien’s imaginative creations. But since that imaginary race is so heavily based on its Irish counterpart, and since context would clearly indicate which race is being discussed, I see no harm in it.
In any case there are plenty of now fairly obscure Irish Otherworld terms that could have been used: and with far more gravitas and authenticity. Ealbh is right up there with rampaí as an indicator of our lack of confidence in our own language and culture. One only has to look at other non-English versions of The Hobbit to see the ready use of culturally-specific translations without the need for awful bastardisations. Elf would have been rendered far better in Irish as Sióg or Síogaí than the mongrelised Elabh. Or if they were felt too modern or too loaded with other connotations then one could have used Síodhaí, Síodhbróg or even Sídheog (all meaning an inhabitant of the Otherworld or an Otherworld domain).
Of course one could point to the translation of the term Hobbit itself: Hobad. Why? It is perfectly clear that the Halfling Hobbits of Tolkien’s Middle-earth have a close role-model in the Little People of Irish Folklore, the Lucharacháin or Leipreacháin. Yes, that’s right: Leprechauns. However the more literary term Lucharachán for Hobbit would surely have been more suitable, and more indicative to an Irish-speaking reader, than the utterly meaningless Hobad.
I wish the translators of An Hobad every success. They have done wonderful work and so far I have heard nothing but praise for the job they have done (a job, in fact, apparently superior to many other translations made of Tolkien’s first published work of Middle-earth legendarium). I will certainly be purchasing it and I recommend others do the same.
I’m just hoping that Ealbh dies the linguistic death it so richly deserves. But I doubt it.
UPDATE: Two videos on the release of An Hobad, one from Grafton Media and the other from Club Leabhar via Gaelchultúr (focusing mainly on the translation Eachtraí Eilíse i dTír na nIontas or “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by the same translator of The Hobbit).
UPDATE: Michael Everson, the publisher of An Hobad, has been generous enough to contribute several comments below vigorously defending the use of the word Ealbh for “Elf” in the translation, and the reasons for doing so.
The Guardian holds an excellent Q&A with comics’ writer Alan Moore, one of the modern doyens of the genre, focusing in particular on his series of comics and graphic novels beginning with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and how he views the third volume in the saga:
‘When we started the third volume of League, we got a vague idea of how the plot would progress and would enable us to use characters and situations from respective Leagues – 1910, 1969 and 2009. But as the book has actually progressed as it has been written, the prevailing thing about it seems to be a critique of culture. And the most noticeable thing is the decline if you like – diversification. It’s always the most healthy thing for a species and it’s probably the same for culture as well.
When we start out in 1910 we have a fairly rich background to draw from – we’ve got Brecht’s Threepenny Opera which was set around that time, we’ve got all of those wonderful occult characters that were being created around then. By the time we get to 1969 we’ve got some equally interesting characters but they’re a kind of different category. They’re more often drawn from popular culture, because of course popular culture has expanded incredibly in the 50 years since 1910 when culture was still largely the preserve of an educated elite. But changes in society over the first 50 years of the century meant that by the middle years culture had changed. Certainly by 1969 where pop culture was predominant and previous culture was perhaps in danger of becoming increasingly marginalised. And by the time we return to the League story in 2009, it’s a much bleaker cultural landscape still.
So I suppose inevitably you’re going to find in this book that there are contrasts that are going to arise between the different eras. And there’s also a marked sense that culture is possibly contracting in certain areas. There is the thing of the richness of the Victorian or the Edwardian era. That the range of characters and ideas to draw upon have nowhere near the same breadth that they seem to back in the day. This is something that has purely emerged from the story. Wasn’t anything that we necessarily set out to write. But it seems to be the case.’
He also talks about working with long time creative partner and acclaimed comics artist Kevin O’Neill:
‘It is an absolute pleasure to work with Kevin. He is one of the finest and most distinctive comic book artists this country has ever turned out. Also, he is the only one of my mainstream collaborators who is from a similar background to myself and who has ever taken my side in any of my bust-ups with the comic companies. This is why Kevin is the only person that I’m still working with. During the unpleasantness with DC, he was taking the brunt of it. Because I’d walked off and he still had to finish the book. They were very angry that we got sick of them and were taking it to another publisher. He is as good an individual as he is an artist.’
For some more on graphic novels and comics visit here.
In this 2002 article British Fantasy author China Miéville, l’enfant terrible of the so-called New Weird generation of writers, rallies against the orthodoxy of the field with an examination of the man who helped define its modern form: J.R.R. Tolkien.
‘In 1954 and 1955 a professor of English at Oxford University published a long, rambling fairy story in three hardbacks. And nothing much happened. This was the 1905 of fantastic literature – a dress rehearsal for the revolution. That revolution came in earnest ten years later, when the book, The Lord of the Rings, was published in the US in cheap, pirate paperbacks, along with rapid response authorised versions. And they sold. A generation of students, hippies and potheads found hidden meanings in legends of power, wisdom, magic and secret knowledge. They reconfigured the texts, and turned a quaint, portentous 1950s fable into a key counter-culture text of the 1960s – to the avuncular professor Tolkien’s bemused horror.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien belonged in the rarefied air of Oxbridge, from where he wrote scholarly works, smoked his pipe and constructed his imaginary world, Middle Earth. It would be hard to imagine a man less at home among his new readers, whom he called the ‘lunatic fringe’.
The influence of The Lord of the Rings on modern literature and culture has been enormous and controversial. Its iconography is everywhere, constantly stolen and ripped off. But when it topped a recent poll as ‘book of the century’, many highbrow types were appalled that such a ‘childish’ work of fantasy was so honoured. The literary establishment’s incoherent critique combines snobbish disdain for popular culture with an ahistorical philistinism. It sees the fantastic as pathological, as sub-literary, rather than as one mode of expression among many. Those of us who skulk by those garish shelves in the bookshop have all been told that we’ll grow out of it, or asked when we’re going to start reading real books. And there is a left variant of this dismissal, which follows the Marxist critic Lukács in seeing the fantastic as decadent or socially ‘irresponsible’. But if, as radical critics of both bourgeois respectability and Stalinist agitprop, we defend science fiction and fantasy, does that mean we should be rallying under the banner of ‘Socialists for Tolkien’? Hardly.’
John Carter of Mars holds a special place in the history of Science-Fiction. The hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ series of Barsoom novels he is one of the archetypal figures of the genre, a character who has been reimagined numerous times and under numerous guises in the works of other authors. So it was with more than a little trepidation that I read the news last year of Disney Picture’s planned movie version of the first book, A Princess of Mars (1912). Looking at the pre-release teaser for John Carter it would seem that my worse fears may well be realised. Oh dear…
The Guardian features a piece on legendary Science-Fiction artist Chris Foss, whose work illustrated some of the best SF book covers of the 1970s and ’80s (most of which are still dotted around my bookshelves). Here is a link to the fantastic official site too.
Still widely available is Colmán Ó Raghallaigh’s An Táin, the ground-breaking Irish language graphic novel or Úrscéal Grafacha illustrated by Barry Reynolds. A superb visualisation of the ancient Irish epic it is highly recommended and for those who are learning Irish there is an excellent online English language translation provided by the publisher Cló Mhaigh Eo.
For another take on the Táin Bó Chuaille (in the English language) try the webcomic of Irish writer and artist Paddy Brown with his The Cattle Raid of Cooley.
A very different take is the French-based Cú Chulainn, a manga style of illustration producing some visually arresting images (just don’t expect too much historical accuracy). Several other related titles are also published by the very interesting (and multi-lingual) Oghme comics collective and are well worth visiting.
I’ve written several articles about the long tradition of Irish language authors working in the Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres and will post them here soon. In the meantime here is some interesting essays which touch on the subject from the Celtic Cultural Studies journal. Interesting question: when does Mythology and Folklore cross over into literary genre? Does Irish Mythology qualify as Fantasy?
More of this from me anon but in the meantime we have:
I have a lengthy appreciation of the wonderful British-born Irish language writerCathal Ó Sándair - whose prodigious body of quality works would shame most other writers, in any language – that I will post here as well.
Meanwhile here is a link to the blog of Irish Sci-Fi author Peadar Ó Guilín, whose new children’s book The Deserter (image at the top) is receiving a lot of positive press at the moment.
And if you like your Science-Fiction or Fantasy with a hefty dose of Irish and Celtic inspiration try these gems:
