69. Trying to Hold On to Something.

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: nostalgia. As a formal linguistic and technical term, nostalgia itself is only a few centuries old, but the sense of idealized pasts, ‘things were better then,’ and other forms of trying to escape, actively or passively, into a place that’s supposed to be far superior than the present has been noted in various forms for millennia and more besides. That there’s evidence of nostalgia playing out in various ways in Tolkien – most commonly, but not solely, in the Middle-earth legendarium – is perhaps axiomatic, given his own small-c conservatism on many fronts. But at the same time, a deeper dive into how these impulses are discussed and presented in his formal work shows that whatever patinas and idealizations he demonstrated, he also conveyed a certain unsureness with it as a solution or safe space for his characters and societies on a wider level. What memories do your hosts have of the times they first started reading Tolkien heavily and how do they regard them now? How do different societies like the hobbits, the elves and the men think about the past with regard to their presents, and what are the different lenses through which they experience such issues? Where does nostalgia play out in the non-Middle-earth works, as well as in his own direct writings in his letters and elsewhere? And do Middle-earth’s denizens in fact write fiction of their own?

Show Notes.

Jared’s doodle. In Lothlórien nothing lingers but the memories…

The War of the Rohirrim is just about here.

Paris Paloma’s theme song “The Rider.” 

Kung Fu Tea would love it if you had some of their Riders of Rohan Lemonade.

Ah yes the Dune popcorn bucket. Yes.

David Macaulay’s Motel of the Mysteries really is wonderful. Here’s a great 2021 article and interview.

That Ed Sheeran “Watchtower” with Devlin. (And the Battlestar Galactica connection. There’s your nostalgia!)

“To Cuiviénen there is no returning.”

Our episode on Silicon Valley has plenty of tie-in with ideas of nostalgia.

1983, a better time? Yeah, tell that to these people or these people or… (There was a minor TV movie of note that year too.)

Ned got the films slightly wrong – Comfort and Joy IS a great Bill Forsyth film from 1984, but the John Boorman film is Hope and Glory from 1987.

Bullroarer Took, orc-slayer and golf-inventor.

Our episode on the Scouring of the Shire, the restoration of Arcadia.

Our episode on the Adventures of Tom Bombadil as well as our episode on Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Drúedain.

Digenes Akritas, a noted Byzantine epic poem.

David Lynch and dreams – that goes deep.

Our episodes on Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major. 

E.R. Eddison did not serve in WWI, but C.S. Lewis and Tolkien certainly did. 

Separately, Ned’s glitching a couple of times on his literary references: Robert Graves’s autobiography title is specifically Good-Bye To All That, while “You might as well live” concludes, not a Dorothy Parker story, but a poem, “Resumé.”

George MacDonald was an early literary love of Tolkien’s, but it didn’t last…

Steven Universe IS awesome.

I Saw The TV Glow is ALSO awesome.

Strange but true: the original Battlestar Galactica series novel adaptation The Cylon Death Machine has elements throughout featuring the Adama character reflecting on a series of adventure stories he loved as a youth – an internal nostalgia!

We trust you’ve all picked up a copy of The West Passage by now!

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