39. These Aren’t My Questions, I Translated Them.

On the Red Book of Westmarch.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Red Book of
Westmarch. It’s hinted at at the end of The Lord of the Rings when Sam
reviews some title pages – a device carried over into the Jackson movie
adaptations – but the appendices and part of the introduction both make it
clear that the published story is meant to be a translation from Bilbo and
Frodo’s own handwritten memoirs, covering The Hobbit as well, and thus Tolkien
in this conceit is not the author of the text but its translator and editor
instead. It fits within Tolkien’s own life as an academic and an interpreter
and presenter of texts, as well as being part of a lengthy tradition in
numerous societies over millennia where writers employ the creative tool of
claiming their work as that of others, be they found documents, unearthed
manuscripts, discovered letters and so forth. It’s something that many readers
may simply find an intriguing amusement when it comes to The Lord of the
Rings, but it does introduce further questions about perspective and authorial
intent worth the consideration. How does framing the story through the lens of
certain participants only shape what we might consider a ‘true’ history of the
events of the book, and what would it mean if other perspectives were shared
instead? What other times had Tolkien used this framing in his own creative
work as a way to present a tale in a different context, and with what intent?
Is Tolkien’s work in fact the first postmodern fantasy as such, a self-conscious creation that plays with tropes even as it also establishes new ones
in turn? And just what are all those memes about how the main protagonist of
the story is really a Maura Labingi about?

Jared’s
doodle. Who
wouldn’t want the real Red Book of Westmarch?

Aw, crypto turned out to be a hype scam
market, who knew. (Everyone with sense,
of course.) As for Lonely Ape, puh-leez.

Do check out Oriana’s other podcasts! American
Grift and Mission:
Recall, both great.

The bit from John Howe in Empire – we’ll talk about the issue
covers that were released next episode.

Reports from the Amazon promo event for the
hyperfans are…to be expected.
(Again, the ones with the cautious optimism are the ones we appreciate more
over the raves.)

The LOTR on Prime
tweet confirming
Tyroe Muhafidin as ‘Theo’ aka the one with the broken blade.

IGN speaks with the scientist who named the most
distant star yet found in the universe Earendel.

Alan Lee in LitHub on illustrating The Lord of the Rings.

Den of Geek tries once and for all to untangle the
whole rights question. It’s still unclear.

Tolkien Gateway’s
entry on the Red Book
of Westmarch.

We don’t quite use the term in the episode but the concept of the frame
story, as discussed on Wikipedia,
is a broader category that can include the kind of stories where authors are
presenting works they’ve supposedly found and presented rather than simply
written. A key example as Jared discusses would be the epistolary
novel, and don’t forget the
unreliable narrator.

Maura Labingi! It is Frodo’s real
name.

Postmodernism in fantasy is a
thing and has been discussed in various ways – back in 2010 Brandon
Sanderson and Jeff
VanderMeer had an exchange on the matter.

Thomas Pynchon’s written some good work. Or
found it, if you will.

The Red Book of Hergest,
Tolkien’s real-world model.

Our Farmer Giles of Ham episode.
And our Nature of Middle-earth
one.

How well known was David Foster Wallace for footnotes? This should give you
an idea.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell definitely has a LOT of footnotes.

The Message Bible, as not recommended by Jared.

The Book of Mazarbul in
Tolkien Gateway, including Tolkien’s own created pages from it, planned as a
possible inclusion for the initial printing of The Lord of the Rings.

Laurence Sterne, literary
badass.

John Darnielle interviewed by the New
Yorker. (We highly recommend Devil House.)

The Manuscript Found in
Saragossa,
and its 1965 Polish adaptation for film, The Saragossa
Manuscript.

We forgot to give Nate Thatcher a mention in the episode but he was the
listener who pointed us to the
lecture Jared
mentions watching, Michael Drout’s “Lord of the Rings: How To Read J. R. R.
Tolkien.”

The Cats of Queen
Berúthiel! And
that’s about all we know.

Malazan Book of the
Fallen by Steven
Erikson – worth a read!

The 1987 US one-volume edition of The Lord of the
Rings
designed to look like a Red Book of Westmarch, part of a series of such
editions.

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