From the last lines of “On Fairy Stories” (PDFs of the article are easily unearthed), JRR Tolkien:

But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the happy ending. The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will like and unlike the fallen that we know.

Mark Sebanc’s article makes the case that Tolkien deployed the serious and learned device of play in his fantastic, or what Tolkien called ‘Enchanted,’ stories. Sebanc:

It seems to me that of all the ways of looking at Tolkien’s mythopoetic genius, at the truths that he breathes with praeternatural elvish craft through silver, the most comprehensive and overarching way would be to see it as falling into the category of a game-something that the ancients saw as being far from shallow and sophomoric, merely a children’sthing, as we might be tempted to see it. Plato links play with culture, denominating these two ideas as the things he deems most serious. These two words, “play” and “culture,” are, moreover, closely cognate in the original Greek. This is no accident of etymology. There are untold and fascinating intellectual depths to this idea of play, which Huizinga’s magisterial work, Homo Ludens, goes far towards explicating. It strikes me as being one of modern intellectual history’s idkes mnitresses, a superb interpretive tool with the help of which we may arriveat a better understanding of Tolkien’s achievement and, adver- satively, a keener insight into the poverty of thought and form that blankets modern literature like a miasmic counterpane of marsh gas.

It occurs to me that a profound sense of play requires the work of improvosation. What seems to link play together with improvisation is the element of surprise. Surprise unfurls reality with a sense of ‘all-of-the-sudden-ness’. All of the sudden, something concealed is revealed; yet, in being revealed, the reality is simultaniously uncovered and made strange.

The juxtaposed paradox of coming to know and being left wondering leaves the knower with a sense of delight. The surprise and delight of play and improvisation act something like the lowest common denominator of that allusive quality we term humor. Steve Wilkens: pulls some of these threads together:

It is hard to define humor itself. A dictionary definition such as ‘something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing” hardly seems to capture the richness and variety of humor. Instead of attempting to define humor, it seems more helpful to focus on how it works. Humor builds on punch-line surprises, disruption of the conventional, reversal of expectation, juxtaposition of seeming incommensurate things, challenging boundaries, misinterpretation, redefinition of the familiar, satire, paradox, irony, and other related devices…Doesn’t it seem possible that these incongruities and surprises share common ground with humor, and isn’t the delight we should feel at the oddity of these stories akin to the delight we experience in a good joke?

After listening to a reading of Mark Sebanc’s article on the Logos in Tolkien on Mars Hill Audio, I set to some reseach on the author. Alongside a brief interview, I found a blog of his centered around his sci-fi series which he coauthors with a friend. With promo and process blogs, Sebanc also includes some personal notes on the work of writing. I enjoyed this post on the “ten commandments of writing” from John C. Wright. Here are rules one and seven which I found helpful.

1. In order to be a writer, you must write.

2. If your manuscript is good or bad, send out your manuscript again. Genius does not count. Only persistence counts. The world will not recognize your genius until after you are dead. But the world can recognize your persistence now.

To reinterpret into Austin Kleon’s (Kleonees) jargon:

1. Forget the noun, do the verb
2. There is no genius, there is social genius that abides thru the persistance of individuals in community.

J.R.R. Tolkien:¹

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

Some time ago I snagged this quote from the blog of professor Richard Beck. Today, after learning the name Paul Farmer thru news of his death, the phrase "long defeat" resurfaced. The medical anthropologist was known for using it to describe the work he did with the poorest of the poor. Here he is in his own words:

I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. . . . You know, people from our background — like you, like most PIH-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.²

Robin Sloan:

The classic poem Beowulf begins with the Old English word “hwæt,” which has proven tricky to translate; it’s a call to attention, something like “hark!” or “behold!” Tolkien chose the musty “Lo!” Seamus Heaney, in his translation published twenty years ago—the first Beowulf I encountered—brought it up to date, opening with a winning “So!” Now, Maria Dahvana Headley, in a bracingly contemporary translation, does Heaney one better. Her Beowulf begins with—wait for it—“Bro!” Beowulf always was a little bro-y, wasn’t it? I love the way these translations speak to one another; neither Heaney nor Headley’s choices would be as appealing without the knowledge of what came before. Lo/So/Bro: a perfect progression.

Sloan’s commentary of casual Beowulf translation reminded me of John Gardner’s book Grendel. I read it for the first time last year and really enjoyed the rhapsodized re-telling of the Beowulf story from the point-of-view of the monster. Seems to me on the first reading to stand in the tradition of the unsettling groteesque characteristic of Flannery O’Connor.

After reading the book, I stumbled on some insightful commentary from Gardner in a letter he wrote to a group of young students. I appreciate when authors help readers understand their stories without nuetering the story.

Benedict, Bombadill, Gandalf, and Beck—
Treebeard “supposes.” His option: “must do.”
Given no choice, with the threat to his neck,
he heralds his plan and follows it through.

I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their backs.

—Frodo Baggins