Reviewed, reviewing, and reviewing reviewed

I learned recently that Hither Shore, the annual publication of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft (German Tolkien Society), printed a review of The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On in its most recent number. I contacted Thomas Honegger, who sits on the editorial board for Hither Shore, and he kindly put me in touch with the reviewer, the esteemed Thomas Fornet-Ponse, who in turn kindly sent me a copy of the review.

Mit Hilfe von einem Freund (danke, Mark Hooker), I polished up a translation of the two paragraphs that pertain to me, the first explicitly, the second more implicitly. I’ll give you the original German first, then the translation — and please feel free to suggest improvements:

Strukturanalogien zwischen Elias Lönnrot, Tolkien und Hieronymus fragt, insofern alle drei ähnliche, nämlich mythopoetische Aufgaben in ihrer jeweiligen Sammlung und Kompilation von Texten durchgeführt hätten. Andererseits widmet er sich auch der Rolle Christopher Tolkiens, die in ihrer mythographischen Dimension ebenfalls große Ähnlichkeiten zu derjenigen Lönnrots und Hieronymus’ aufweise.

Wie bei den beteiligten Personen nicht anders zu erwarten, sind die Beiträge durchgängig von hoher Qualität und versprechen sowohl dem schon gut informierten Leser einige interessante Einblicke als auch dem weniger gut informierten (dem allerdings wohl noch einige mehr).

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Jason Fisher had an entirely different approach [from that of Michaël Devaux]. On the one hand, he looked at the coincidences in the area of content or structure between the works of Lönnrot, Tolkien and Jerome [i.e., Hieronymus], in so far as the three are similar, namely the mythopoeic aspect of each of their collection and compilations of texts. On the other, he discusses the role that Christopher played in the mythographic dimension, and how it was similar to those of Lönnrot and Jerome.

As is to be expected with the people taking part in the project, the contributions are of a high quality throughout, and promise to provide the already well-informed reader with a number of interesting insights, and the less-well-informed reader with even more.

Thomas informs me that this review, essentially unchanged, will also appear in the upcoming Inklings Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, published by the Inklings Gesellschaft. His favorable comments are counterbalanced against the first Amazon review of The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On (if review you can call it). One Carol Reed has this — and no more than this — to say: “Some of these people need to get a life. I was hoping for some discusion of the inconsitencies and contridictions in Tolkien’s work..” The spelling errors are hers; I’m resisting the temptation to [sic] my dogs on her. ;)

And so, I suppose in the category of “needing to get a life”, I’ve written four new book reviews of my own recently. The first, on the Douglas Anderson collection, Tales Before Narnia, was printed in the current issue of Mythprint. You can read it here (and don’t forget about this post, where I track my Mythprint reviews).

I have two book reviews in the current issue of Mythlore. I review Myth and Magic: Art According to the Inklings, edited by Eduardo Segura and Thomas Honegger (read it here), and Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, by Douglas Charles Kane (read it here). The latter is currently on sale; if you follow the link to Amazon, it’s 27% off right now — very helpful for an expensive book like this!

Finally, I think I can let this cat out of the bag officially, now that the issue has gone to press, I have a review forthcoming in Tolkien Studies, Volume 6. There, I review Martin Simonson’s The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition. I’m afraid I can’t give you a copy of this to read, but I’m told the issue should be arriving around the end of June. For those of you with Project Muse access, you may see it a couple of weeks sooner.

As I hinted in the title of this post, some folks have been discussing my reviews too. This is invaluable to me, not just as proof that my hard work is actually being read, but also in terms of substantiating (or not) the opinions I made such an effort to share. Some of you may have noticed that Eduardo Segura and Martin Simonson visited Lingwë to comment. If you missed them, back up to this post and read the comments. John Rateliff also gave me a little feedback in the comments to a post on his own blog (I admit, I solicited feedback). Furthermore, rank and file readers — as opposed to the authors or editors — have brought up my reviews in various recent online discussions: here (in the comments), here (you may have to register), and here (in Dutch).

In the latter, I was thrilled to find these two opinions: “Ach, Als Jason Fisher er enthousiast over is, heb ik er redelijk wat vertrouwen in” [Well, if Jason Fisher is excited about it, I have a lot of confidence]; and “die recensie van hem is nogal een lap, maar ook zeer de moeite waard om door te lezen” [This review from him is quite a piece, but also very worth reading].

It’s quite something to realize that there are people as far away as the Netherlands reading my reviews. And I am humbled to learn of their faith in my judgment. It spurs me to work ever harder. :)