Isegoria

I stumbled across Bestseller Lists 1900-1995, and I’m astonished by a few things I quickly noticed while looking at the lists for the 1900′s, 1910′s, and 1920′s:

• I recognized only the tiniest fraction of the titles and authors on the list.
• Winston Churchill had numerous bestsellers early in the century — although that’s probably not the Winston Churchill you were thinking of.
• H.G. Wells had numerous bestsellers too — that I’d never heard of.
• The year 1917 had fiction, general nonfiction, and war categories.
• Zane Grey — a name that sounded vaguely familiar — had a lot of bestsellers.
• A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young was a nonfiction bestseller in 1925.
• Diet and health fad bestsellers go way, way back: Diet and Health by Lulu Hunt Peters was the number 1 nonfiction bestseller of 1925.
• I’m not sure what to make of this 1931 bestseller: Boners: Being a Collection of Schoolboy Wisdom, or Knowledge as It Is Sometimes Written, compiled by Alexander Abingdon; illustrated by Dr. Seuss.

What does it mean when almost none of the bestsellers of yesteryear are in print, let alone well known and well read?

I wouldn’t normally find myself drawn to a “sacred texts” site, but Sacred-Texts: Sources of Lord of the Ring lists a number of Tolkien’s influences from myth and early fantasy literature:

J.R.R. Tolkiens’ Middle Earth did not come out of thin air. Tolkien, an academic linguist, drew on the following source materials to inspire his world-building exercise. The texts presented at this site are complete and in some cases in the original languages.

The Kalevala. [English]
The Kalevala. [Finnish]
This Finnish saga, replete with battling wizards and heroes, quests and magical objects has been cited as one of the early inspirations for Tolkien. The languages of Middle Earth also have more than a passing resemblance to Finnish.

The Elder (Poetic) Edda.
The Younger (Prose) Edda.
These Icelandic collections of epic poetry are key sources for the study of Norse mythology. Our plane of existence is called ‘Middle Earth’ in this mythology. Tolkien also took many of the names of key characters from this text; particularly one sequence early on in the Voluspo, including Gandalf, and all of the Dwarves from the Hobbit. Also found in the Eddas is the forest of Myrkwood; Bilbo’s party traversed the vast Mirkwood forest in the Hobbit.

Wagner’s Ring of the Niblung
The Volsung Saga
The Nibelungenlied
The Volsung saga is the Icelandic version of the story which was later re-told in the Germanic Nibelungenlied. This was the basis for Wagner’s Ring cycle. The cursed ring of doom is likewise a central theme of Tolkiens’ mythology.

Heimskringla or The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway
by Snorri Sturlson. tr. Samuel Laing [1844]
Gandalf is not only mentioned in the Voluspo, but in the Heimskringla Sagas: Gandalf was the name of the last king to rule over Alfheim, He was killed by Harald Harfagra in the year 866. Gandalf gets mentioned in The Ynglinga Saga, Halfdan, the Black Saga, and Harald Harfager’s Saga.

Beowulf [Modern English]
Beowulf [Anglo Saxon]
Tolkien was a distinguished scholar of Middle and Old English. The Beowulf saga is one of the treasures of this branch of literature, and Grendel, the monster of this tale, is a prototype for many of the darker creatures that populate Middle Earth.

Modern Fantasy
The Wood Beyond the World
by William Morris [1895]
One of the recognized forerunners of Tolkien was William Morris, skilled artist, pioneering Socialist, translator of Icelandic sagas, and fantasy writer. The Wood Beyond the World is one of Morris’ masterpieces which he originally published using hand-set type.

The Worm Ouroboros
by E. R. Eddison [1922]
“The greatest and most convincing writer of ‘invented worlds’ that I have read” — [letters of Tolkien, p. 258]

I could have sworn that I’d blogged on The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection, but I guess I hadn’t. Here’s a taste:

Glen Larson (creator and producer of Galactica) is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and many parallels between his church’s and the show’s mythologies can be found.

The main characters in Galactica are the last remnants of the Twelve Colonies, which were founded by twelve tribes of humans who left their home planet of Kobol, which had become inhabitable because of either natural or man-made contamination. There was a “lost thirteenth tribe” who went a different direction than the rest and, as the story goes, ended up colonizing Earth. Commander Adama once delivered the following speech about their origins: “Our recorded history tells us we descended from a mother colony, a race that went out into space to establish colonies. Those of us assembled here now represent the only known surviving Colonists, save one. A sister world, far out in the universe, remembered to us only through ancient writings…” He goes on to assert that the “lost thirteenth tribe” colonized Earth. Something called “The Book of The Word” described the journey of the tribes of man away from Kobol.

In the Mormon church, The Book of Mormon describes the journey of a “thirteenth tribe” There were twelve tribes of Israel and the prophet Lehi took a remnant of the tribe of Joseph (creating a “lost thirteenth tribe”) and somehow travelled from the middle east to North America around 600 BC. They ended up splitting into two tribes, one of whom flourished and according to the book are the descendants of the American Indians. Additionally, the name Kobol is made up of the rearranged letters making up the word Kolob, which is the star “nearest unto the throne of God,” or the name of the planet where the Mormons’ god, Elohim, is from.

There’s another article on Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism by Michael Lorenzen. Read both.

Edit: The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection no longer has its own link; it’s on Dr. Squid’s articles page.

Every Man a Demiurge presents an amusing take on the Matrix trilogy:

If you want to understand the Matrix trilogy, think of it as a capsule history of baby-boom rock. The original Matrix is a three-chord riff of a movie: a simple, familiar idea — “What if reality is a great big fake?” — amplified and transformed into an irresistible hook. The Matrix Reloaded is a 1970s prog-rock concept album: sprawling, pretentious, and ultimately incoherent, but brimming with ideas and virtuoso displays. And The Matrix: Revolutions is an over-the-hill pop star recycling someone else’s material — the sort of music you’d hear on a Michelob commercial, circa 1987.

Even if Revolutions weren’t already slated to be the final installment, its chilly critical and commercial reception should guarantee we won’t find ourselves awash in ads next year hyping The Matrix 4: This Time, It’s Personal.

I hated both of the recent Star Wars movies — or, at least, I was sorely disappointed by them — but I’m enthralled by the new Clone Wars five-minute, animated shorts on Cartoon Network. (You can watch them on-line too.) I had a similar reaction to the toys; they were much, much cooler than the movies. (I didn’t buy any of the toys, but seeing them at Target did get me excited to see the movies.)

Harry Knowles, on his Ain’t It Cool News site, describes The World of Tomorrow as a must-see deco sci-fi masterpiece with giant robots. That caught my attention. One of his readers caught a few unfinished minutes of it in New York, and “apparently it was shot entirely against blue screen on digital video by a first time director.” Interesting. Here are some more in-depth comments:

And, even in rough form, it looks fantastic.

Like “Down With Love” was a 60s-style movie shot like a 60s movie, World looks almost exactly like a 1930s sci-fi flick. The fact that the backgrounds and other elements look hand-drawn actually adds rather than detracts from the appeal. This could be the first example of a movie in which the stiff and artificial look that the blue screen creates actually improves the overall effect. It reminded me of an Alan Moore comic come to life (Giant robots walking down the streets of Art Deco Manhattan? Awesome)

Since I’d seen and heard nothing about it, I looked it up on Yahoo! Movies and found out some technical details:

The Los Angeles Times has revealed that Kerry Cornan is a CalArts graduate, and his software is a CGI program that allows him to shoot his entire movie against blue screens, and fill in the backgrounds later with images he’s been working on for years, which are mostly already done. What this allows Conran to do, which is what is so revolutionary, is to have an already existing 3-D storyboard of every scene, with stick figures in place where the actors are supposed to be. Now, all he has to do is stick in his cast, and he’s basically done, it sounds like.

Beyond face values reviews Portraits: A History — and shares some amusing art history:

For example, until the 19th century the only permissible way an artist could paint a naked female portrait was for the sitter to pretend to be a goddess. Even Rubens’s blatant celebration of the sexiness of his young second wife was rendered respectable by deriving her pose from an ancient statue of Venus. Diane de Poitiers, posing starkers as the virgin goddess Diana, must be the cheekiest. She was both widowed and the mistress of Henry II at the time.

It was Goya who broke the convention with his Naked Maja, “the first purely profane, life-sized female nude in Western art”. The picture was commissioned by a Spanish politician for his secret erotic collection, only gossip identifying the subject as the Duchess of Alba — a slur which so rankled with her family that 150 years later, in 1945, the duke had his ancestor’s remains exhumed, unfortunately to no conclusive proof.

Chick Lit Keeps on Clicking succinctly enumerates “chick lit” genre conventions:

Like all genres, chick lit has its conventions. Its protagonists tend to be attractive women in their 20s or 30s; they’re educated, self-aware and quick with a snarky retort or a wise aside; they live in New York, San Francisco or London; they work in publishing, advertising, media or entertainment; they lament their single status; their families appear every few chapters, Greek chorus-style, to shake their heads in synchronized dismay; in the end, a Cinderella ending makes everything right. Chick lit is marketed like the candy it is. The books are wrapped in brightly coloured covers with girly typography, often treated as a point-of-sale impulse purchase. Titles are often child’s book simple, like See Jane Date or Run Catch Kiss.

From Casting For The Wallace and Gromit Film Is Underway:

Oscar-nominated stars Helena Bonham-Carter and Ralph Fiennes will lend their voices to the first ever feature length Wallace And Gromit movie. The project, titled Curse Of The Wererabbit, will begin shooting in Bristol, England this week at Aardman Animations’s studio. The movie sees the studio’s popular characters Wallace and Gromit hunt down the mysterious beast which has been rampaging their village’s prize marrows and potatoes just days before the giant vegetable growing contest. Helena will voice new character Lady Tottington, and Ralph will provide the sound for Lord Victor Quatermaine. Curse of the Wererabbit — with a budget in excess of $80 million — will take 18 months to make and is expected to be released in 2005.

Actually, 18 months doesn’t sound that long for a claymation movie.