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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I finished Nasr Abu Zayd's Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics. It's a short essay, but very valuable.
Zayd's hope is to fight against that outcome in Middle East/Western relations, which 'hostility' he sees as being supported by the adapting of Islam to resistance.
I just finished the Silmarillion. I've had the book for decades, and had read most of the stories out-of-order at one point or another (with the rest being filled in by wikipedia dives and the occasional lore video on youtube), but this was the first time I actually committed to reading the whole thing front to back. This is also the first time I've read any of it since reading George RR Martin's Fire and Blood, the only other book I'm aware of in this particular genre of "not quite a fantasy novel, not quite a history book." It's a fascinating contrast, and a handy reminder that Tolkein is still the undisputed king.
The central conceipt of Fire and Blood is that it's an in-universe history book drawing from multiple unreliable sources, with the fun coming from noticing the various biases and trying to piece together "what really happened." Something I didn't realize until now, however, is that the Silmarillion is doing basically the same thing, but never tells you. You may notice as you read that some stories are told as detailed accounts inlcuding dialogue and a more-or-less full recounting of events, while other important events and even entire centuries get glossed over in a single paragraph. If you read particularly closely, you'll notice a pattern where the stories involving Gondolin and Doriath are told in longform with lots of details, and the more removed from these kingdoms you get, the more sparse the prose becomes. The sons of Fëanor and their realms, for example, recieve almost zero attention in the text. This is because the "author/editor" of the Silmarillion was clearly a refugee from Gondolin who moved to the mouths of Sirion where their people mingled with refugees from Doriath (this is confirmed by Tolkein in the Unfinished Tales, yough nowhere made explicit in the Silmarillion itself). We have no stories from Himring or Thargelion or Ossiriand because those people never had the opportunity to share them with Tolkien's source.
Now, we know that the real reason for this is that the Fall of Gondolin, the Children of Hurin, and the tale of Beren and Luthien are the three main First Age stories Tolkein wanted to tell (and the only ones he'd get even somewhat close to completing), and his son had to cobble together the Silmarillion from a bunch of unorganized and contradictory notes after Tolkein died. But this almost makes it better? Unlike Fire and Blood, with its manufactured inconsistencies and clear authorial intent, the Silmarillion really is a lost book of fragmented histories requiring careful historigraphical analysis to fully understand. Just like with his languages and other aspects of worldbuilding, Tolkein presents the real thing where other fantasy authors only present a facsimile. I get the same joy of discovery reading the Silmarillion as I get reading Le Morte d'Arthur.
Yes! It’s a beautiful, unique work. Not even imitated all that often.
Despite being killed off remarkably fast, Fëanor is one of the characters of all time.
My copy has this crazy painting of an exploding castle on the cover. I was able to trace it back to “The Fall of Numenor” from this calendar. No; I have no idea why that rated the cover. If you haven’t seen those, enjoy.
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