Smith and Tolkien and Dunsany

A while ago I saw a notice that a day's conference on the works of Clark Ashton Smith was being held in January. I've never read much of Smith's fiction, though I've collected several books of it, and since attendance was limited I decided to sign up: I might learn something, if I was able to go. It's next weekend, and it looks as if I can. It's in Auburn, the Sierra foothills town where Smith lived most of his life, about 3 hours drive from here.

The organizers are asking each of their attendees to name their favorite Smith story. I never really thought in terms of having a favorite Smith story, but I decided on the one with a contemporary setting - a rarity for Smith, who usually preferred lost continents or decadent future ones - whose first line reads "I have seldom been able to resist the allurement of a bookstore." I can identify with that.

Concurrently, in the context of a Zoom meeting commemorating Tolkien's birthday, which was yesterday, we were asked for favorite moments from the legendarium, and I chose for a favorite single line one of Treebeard's from The Lord of the Rings: "I am not very, hm, bendable." I can identify with that one too, and I quote it often.

Renewing and extending my acquaintance with Smith, I find that I like him to the extent that he resembles Dunsany, which he occasionally does. (I have similar feelings about Lovecraft.) Smith's language is more ornate than Dunsany's, which is already ornate enough; and he's more caustic than Dunsany, who is already caustic enough. His plots don't quite land with Dunsany's punch. But despite Smith's esoteric vocabulary, I find his storytelling to be gratifyingly clear: I always understand where I am and what's going on, not true of many of today's highly-touted fantasy authors. My biggest problem with Smith is that, after a few impressive repetitions, I get a little wearied of his favorite recurrent plot, which is of greedy or power-mad people getting their due comeuppance in a truly nasty supernatural manner.

Though I can think of one greedy and power-mad person today who really deserves a due comeuppance in a truly nasty supernatural manner. O for a Clark Ashton Smith to chronicle it.

sports snark

This is the way I wish more commentators would write about sports (from a roundup of the new year's highlights by Dieter Kurtenbach in the Mercury News yesterday, and thanks to B. for spotting it):

Super Bowl LX - Billionaires' BBQ (Feb. 8): The Super Bowl returns to Levi's Stadium. Get ready for two weeks of national media complaining about the lack of shade in a game played at night, and the fact that San Francisco is actually a 45-minute drive from the stadium (on a good day, which this won't be). It's the biggest party in the world for a bunch of people you'd never invite to a party, hosted in a corporate office park. Fitting.
But, hey, maybe the 49ers will be in it.

technical hell again

This is technical hell, not bureaucratic hell, because the bureaucracy is not really the problem, the technology is the problem.

A few days ago our tv set stopped working. If we turned it on, we got an error message saying it couldn't connect to the wireless network. (The wireless network is otherwise fine, a point I had to keep making to the technicians I talked with.)

Having been otherwise occupied earlier, I've spent most of my New Year's Day in phone calls and chats, first with my ISP (AT&T), which had me cancel the network and try to reinstall it, which didn't work. They said they could find no problem, so it must be the tv set. The tv manufacturer couldn't find any problem with the tv set, so they said the ISP must have updated to 5G, which my tv set (which is only two years old) can't handle. I should have known enough to point out to them that we're on copper wire, which AT&T told me couldn't handle 5G, so we were on exactly the broadband width that the manufacturer told me to tell the ISP to put me on.

Impasse. AT&T is going to send me new equipment, which will come in over a week. I doubt that will help either.

the annual year-end post

Oh, it's been a quiet year. My only scholarly writings were the annual bibliography and my contributions to "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies," both in the volume of Tolkien Studies that came out in 2025 but was dated 2024. I co-edited that volume, but as I've retired that'll be the last one. Though I've signed up to do the next bibliography, and I may be back in the "Year's Work," though that's going in abeyance for the next issue.

I also had a report on the Mythopoeic Society's online conference, copied from this blog and put in the Society's newsletter, Mythprint.

And 22 formal concert reviews published online, the last in October. There will be no more of those, at least for a while until my health gets sorted out.

Places I've stayed overnight away from home:
South San Francisco, CA
Pittsburgh, PA
Ashland, OR
Brisbane, CA
Santa Clara, CA

Two overnight trips up to the City, one for a conference and one for a series of concerts in close temporal proximity, both times staying in airport hotels just outside of the City where it's cheaper; one glorious trip to my brother's wedding far away, my only plane flights of the year; one drive to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; and, sigh, another stay in the hospital.

year's last miscellanea

1. Here's an evaluation of all of Rob Reiner's movies, in which, if you follow along, you'll see that the authors consider his eight best movies to be eight of his first nine movies. (The clunker is, of course, North, and if it and The American President had been flipped chronologically, the best eight would have been the first eight.) So what happened? The authors think that the instincts that led Reiner right in his early days went wrong in his later ones.

I've seen six of the eight best (somehow I've missed The Sure Thing and I wouldn't see Misery on a bet) and enjoyed all six*; the only one of his later movies I've seen is LBJ, which was not bad but was carried mostly by Woody Harrelson's performance in the title role. The thing is that I never found Reiner a particularly good director in the technical sense - the climbing of the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride was embarrassingly clumsy - but in his good movies he was great in other ways: his versatility in genre (the guy who made Spinal Tap made A Few Good Men? Amazing), brilliant casting all around (that's what really knocked my socks off about Princess Bride in particular), and his ability to let the script and the acting shine through.

*Though I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally, I bristled at Harry's contention that all men are like him. If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that people are different. Reiner and Nora Ephron may have based Harry on himself, but I am not like that and neither are most of the men I know.

2. Saw an article somewhere in which Sam Altman was quoted as saying that you can't raise a child without the help of A.I. Here's not the original article but a more critical commentary. Apparently the A.I.'s job is to reassure you that you're not screwing up. Dr. Spock said pretty much the same thing; why don't you just read him? Because you can be sure that, though he might be wrong, he's not just making crap up, which A.I. is prone to doing. When ChatGPT first showed up, I experimented by asking it some tough musical questions I knew the answers to, and it only seriously messed up some but rarely got everything totally right.

Once I learned what it does, I would never ask A.I. for advice on anything real. In practice, I use it only to remind me when I need a word I know but which has slipped my mind, which happens depressingly often these days, maybe once a month. The last one was "foyer." At least then I know the answer is right when I see it.

I certainly wouldn't ask it to draft any writings for me. I wonder if I would ask it to do so if I still had to write anything that I struggled with the wording of. But the writing I had most trouble with was job application letters, and that requires personalized stuff the A.I. wouldn't know. So probably not.

3. But one technical advance I am very happy with is the U.S. Post Office's "Daily Digest" which sends you an e-mail early each morning showing the envelopes you're expected to receive that day. (Mailers, magazines, and packages are excluded, though it does tell you how many packages to expect.) So if a bill doesn't come, that's because your delivery person is running behind, and if it doesn't come the next day, that's when you call the biller and ask them to send another copy.

children's classics

British newspaper article by Anna Bonet, listing "The 14 children's classics every adult should read." Most of them British, of course. Organizing them by my experience with them, they are:

Read in childhood
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Hobbit I encountered at 11, and it changed my life. I would not be most of the things I am today if I had not read The Hobbit. The Railway Children I remember enjoying at about the same age, but I haven't seen it since. I know Nesbit mostly through adult introduction to her as a foundational children's fantasist. Alice and The Little Prince were OK, but didn't really grab me. Watership Down wasn't published in the US until I was 17, but that was the perfect age to find it. Not even excepting Earthsea, which has a different feel, it is the only post-Tolkien epic fantasy with the same sweep and power. (Most of them are utter crap.)

Failed to read in childhood
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
One of two classics I was given in childhood that I utterly bounced off of; the other was one of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. I did like Tom Sawyer.

First read in adulthood
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Wind in the Willows, which I picked up at about 24, is the one children's classic that I didn't encounter until adulthood that has become as dear to me as my childhood favorites. I read the entire Narnian saga when I joined the Mythopoeic Society at 18, having previously ignored Lewis; I found them thin and not particularly appealing. The other two I don't remember when I read them, but only once each. They were OK, but I find I rather preferred their cinematic adaptations.

Not read
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
I think I may have picked up the Durrell at one point, but I didn't read much if so. I had a different encounter with Streatfeild, as I had another book of hers as a child, The Children on the Top Floor, which I did like very much (and still do, actually). Enid Blyton was completely unknown in the US in my childhood, though she's seeped in a little since then. I'd heard of Anne of Green Gables but never ran across it.

and it contained ...

The huge 'wine country gift box' I brought home from the Christmas gift exchange measures 23 x 12 x 10 with the lid closed, which was only possible to do after I removed all the wine bottles and those snacks I wouldn't care to eat (which I gave to B., figuring correctly that she'd like most of them, and the rest she could take to the snack table of her orchestral rehearsals). It was also so heavy that I shouldn't have carried it intact from the car into the house. It proved to contain:

6 bottles of wine (4 reds, 2 whites including a sparkling; 3 from Sonoma County and one each from Napa, Paso Robles, and Oregon)
8 boxes of various cookies
3 of biscuits, one with fruit filling (some of the cookies were also labeled biscuits, apparently in French)
6 of various crackers and hard breads
3 pastries
3 veggie snacks (2 asparagus, 1 olive)
1 each of madeleines, brownies, snack mix, kettle corn, jellies, ginger chews, lemon cakes, dip mix, dipping sauce, olive oil, hummus, and spreadable cheese

Most of the wine is probably destined to be regifted, but when will we manage to eat the rest of this stuff?

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas

The downpour was severe most of the way up, and all the way back, to/from our niece T's house for Christmas dinner. This and the lighter rain we've been getting for the past week have been the first precipitation in over a month, so we ought to be glad to have it, local flooding nonwithstanding.

Inside, it was warm and cozy, though a bit underpopulated due to various constraints. Still, T's husband and both of their sons were there, including the one who's attending university a couple thousand miles away, and so were my brother and his wife, visiting from their home which is even slightly farther away. Another visitor was C., a supervisee of T's from work who's from Singapore and had no chance to celebrate with relatives, so she invited him over to her house.

T. insisted that we all participate in the all-food white elephant gift exchange, promising B. that she wouldn't get stuck with an assortment of hot sauce as happened one year. Most of the gifts were chocolate and/or wine. C. was mystified by opening presents in the presence of the giver, which is not the custom among his people. I got the last item nobody wanted to take, a huge 'wine country gift box' that T. was given as a reward for some professional service. It appears to have crackers and olive oil, among other things, in addition to wine. But I don't know what else is in it, because it's still out in the trunk of my car. Although it's wrapped in plastic, I didn't want to struggle in with it in the rain. Tomorrow is supposed to be lighter and the rain goes away after that.

For the dinner, I made my broccoli with garlic and cashews that had been such a success at Easter, and it was mostly devoured, despite being a large batch. So that was gratifying.

But now we're glad to have gotten safely home, and so are the cats, who'd been wondering when they were going to be fed.

on Rob Reiner

45-minute CBS documentary on Rob Reiner. Really thoughtful and insightful views of the man, mostly from actors he directed in his films. A couple of them (both men, by the way) even break down in tears while talking about him. Also plenty of clips from interviews with Reiner, the movies, and All in the Family. Very much worth watching if you're at all interested in Reiner or his movies. It's amazing that the makers were able to put together such a polished and substantial piece of work in such a short time.

fame

John Scalzi is still on the comfort movie circuit, and last night's entry was Notting Hill. I've seen that movie, but only once when it was new, but Scalzi's essay is mostly about a principal topic of that movie, which is the effects of being famous, and I do have some thoughts about that.

I wouldn't go up and speak to a famous person I saw just because they were famous, but a couple times I've been in the presence of an actor or author I admired in a position where I ought to say something. So I just said, "I admire your work; thank you for doing it," because I couldn't go into any more detail without burbling.

By author I mean outside the sf/fantasy field, because there we're both parts of the community and can converse on a more equal basis, and some of them I'm friends with anyway. There are 3 or 4 notable fantasy authors, all women by the way, whom I was already friendly with before they'd ever published anything.

When I lived in Seattle in the early 80s, there were several authors who were part of a fairly close-knit fan community: F.M. Busby (who was called Buz), Vonda N. McIntyre, Joanna Russ. One time when I was visited by friends who were fans but not part of this particular community, I took them along to a fan-community party. I didn't tell them until we arrived that it was at Joanna Russ's house, and they were properly croggled. (I had of course gotten Joanna's permission to bring guests along.)

I've had one brief experience at being famous, within the environment I was existing in. I define topical fame as a situation where everybody's heard of you but few of them know you personally. This was when I was an invited guest speaker at a Tolkien conference at Marquette University, which holds his papers, in 2004. (And which gave rise to this proceedings.) Unlike at a Mythcon, where I know most of the attendees and consequently didn't feel "famous" even when I was Guest of Honor, here I didn't know much of anybody except the other presenters, but they all knew me.

It was a deeply weird experience, I found. People I didn't know kept wanting to come up and talk with me. It was within the context of the conference, so they weren't random accosters like the guy Scalzi describes making a pitch to Tom Hanks. And they had no self-aggrandizing agenda, they just wanted to talk about Tolkien, which I'm happy to do. I kept fretting inwardly over whether I was being polite enough. I'm rather introverted and not very socially adept, so I wasn't sure if I was being good at this. My biggest relief was when I left campus by myself and wasn't famous any more, which - as Scalzi points out - is exactly what the truly famous can't do.

It occurs to me that, instead of a movie about a famous person dating a random everyman, as in Notting Hill, we could have a story about a relationship between two famous people from totally different walks of fame. And we do: it's Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau. (I suppose Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce might qualify, too, though a sports star's fame isn't as different from a pop singer's as a politician's is, and I'm not sure how walk-down-the-street famous Kelce was before he and Swift started dating.)