MythCon Memories, Part 2

Sunday, August 1

After chasing goblin-heads 'round the grassy sward until the wee hours of the morning, I slept in and missed the first few events on Sunday morning. Too bad. The Linguistic Landscape of the Shire might have proved interesting, as might Appropriation and Myth-Building in Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I regret missing the "Mere Christian worship service", if only because Christianity was such a central part of CS Lewis's work that it seems disrespectful to attend a conference in his memory without explicitly acknowledging it.

The "Khazad-Dum Book Toss" might have been interesting, too, but as a librarian and bibliophile, perhaps I'm better off not knowing what happened there.

At the Society's auction that afternoon, I bid desultorily on a few items, but not energetically enough to wrest them out of the hands of people with more fanaticism and more money. One item I regret not getting: a gen-yu-wine Gandalf For President campaign button.

I was a bit startled to see the prices drawn by certain Tolkien-themed calendars from the 1970's, while other calendars, very similar in appearance, attracted no bids at all. I suppose this is one more object lesson in the unpredictable quirks of highly specialized antiquarian marketplaces.

I stopped by a discussion panel on Dorothy Sayer's fiction, and found the discussion vivid enough to inspire me to delve back into the Lord Peter Wimsey stories. I read Have His Carcase a couple of years ago, and was fascinated by the detailed explanation of the cryptographic techniques used to decipher a crucial piece of evidence, but neglected to follow up by looking for other books in the series. Carlos may find it interesting that some participants suggested that Lord Peter and his loyal servant Bunter were inspired by P.G. Wodehouse's stories about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. (Best C.S. Lewis quote: saying he enjoyed Sayers' company "for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation--as I like a high wind.")

My recollection of Neil Gaiman's talk to the assembled Mythopeians is largely of his discussion of the effect that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He spoke of encountering the Narnia books at the age of six, and of feeling somehow vaguely betrayed at the age of twelve when he recognized their religious allegorical nature. (This oddly parallels the comments of one of the student workers at one of my previous employers, who commented favorably about the Narnia books and then, when I commented on their religious significance, got a puzzled look on her face. "Wait a minute... Is Aslan some kind of... Jesus figure or something?" Pause. "Ohhhhh....")

I found it particularly intriguing when he mentioned having contributed a footnote to Christopher Tolkien's ongoing series of his father's unpublished material on the History of Middle Earth which explains a connection, albeit a tenuous one, between the decidedly un-ironic Tolkien and the stylishly hyper-ironic James Branch Cabell. (It reportedly has something to do with both of them referring to this old rhyme.)

The evening's entertainments, back at the hotel, were less physically strenuous than those of the previous night. This lady presented some video clips of a ballet for which she had composed the libretto. On the bus the previous day, I had had a chance to hear her discuss this work and the intellectual property issues involved. She had originally hoped to create a work to be titled The Silmaril, which would have been based much more closely on the story of Beren and Luthien. The Tolkien Estate's lack of interest in licensing use of the names and characters forced her to write a different story, with different characters, but one still likely to interest Tolkienophiles. More discussion here.

There was of course the obligatory convention Masquerade, with costumes including multiple Galadriels, a lovely, dancing Polychrome (daughter of the rainbow from the Oz books) properly bedecked in shimmering multicolored gauze, no less than two Hermiones (one equipped with cat, the other with attendant Quiddich-player) and an Evil Queen determined to get her proper due for having inspired so many fairy tales and fantasy stories. Good clean fun all 'round. The next contestants, the Gormless -- Derision, Disorganization, Dipsomania, Dementia, Depravity, Delinquency, and one other whose name escapes me -- can't exactly be called good, or clean, but with the authorial guest of honor serving as one of the costume judges, some such reference to this dysfunctional bunch of siblings was both inevitable and funny.

I decided to participate in the Bardic Circle later in the evening, and, as usual at such events, I was favorably surprised and impressed by the ability of human beings to entertain and inspire each other with their own minds and bodies and voices when they choose to do so rather than surrendering to the omnipresent telescreen. With a little help drawn from Arthurian legendry, Gordon R. Dickson, Tom and Kris Kastle, and Stan Rogers, I managed to survive without, I hope, embarrassing myself too badly.

Monday, August 2

I slept late and missed most of the papers presented, but I did show up in time to buy a T-shirt and copies of a few presenters' papers that I wanted to read in more detail or had missed hearing in person, and to attend the members' meeting and closing ceremonies. Won a couple of books in a drawing: Tolkien and the Great War, by John Garth, and Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede. Despite my low expectations, the latter proved to be an entertaining bit of light fantasy.

With that and a few dozen verses of "What do you do with a drunken hobbit?", the MythCon was over. (And now, at last, I can blog about something else!)