At semester’s end, professors and teachers everywhere face one of their least favorite tasks: grading exams. Seriously, it’s hardly ever fun for anyone. J. R. R. Tolkien was no exception. In fact, one day, he got so bored that on a page that a student had left blank, he wrote what surely seemed like an inconsequential and fairly silly line: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
Little could he know then that he’d just written what was to become one of the best-loved first lines in all of literature.
Like a number of his other books, including Letters from Father Christmas, Roverandom, and Mr. Bliss, The Hobbit started out as a story Tolkien wrote purely for the enjoyment of his children. But at the encouragement of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien revised it enough to pursue publication, and it was accepted by Allen & Unwin at the recommendation of the editor’s ten-year-old son, Rayner Unwin, who grew up to become Tolkien’s chief publisher. In announcing the book’s publication in 1937, Allen & Unwin hailed it as “the children’s book of the year,” and C. S. Lewis’ first review states, “Prediction is dangerous; but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.” Yet apparently, almost no one was quite prepared for how successful The Hobbit would be or what would follow when readers clamored for a sequel—least of all Tolkien himself.
Let’s go back to the early days of the super-hero movie trend, to the 
We’ve all had our share of hard winters, and with the latest polar vortex causing record lows as far south as Hawaii, we may be in for another doozy this year. And even when the weather isn’t cold, shorter days and overcast skies can still take their toll on a person’s spirits, even with holiday cheer to provide light in the darkness. Imagine, though, a winter so severe that it lasts a full century—and a government so evil as to forbid holidays altogether, on pain of a fate worse than death. That’s the nightmarish situation in the land of Narnia when Lucy Pevensie stumbles into it from war-ravaged England through a magic wardrobe in C. S. Lewis’ classic 
Now, if The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has any emphasis aside from the Pevensies’ adventures and growth as characters, it’s on the spiritual elements. Lewis’ supposal about Aslan’s identity, on which the book and the whole Chronicles of Narnia series hinge, has been both loved and reviled since the book’s publication in 1950. (Aslan’s not a Christ figure, as would be the case in allegory; he answers the question of what incarnate form Christ would take in a world full of mythical creatures and talking beasts.) But given the state in which we currently find our society, with hysteria over global warming and efforts to eject Christianity from the public sphere, it’s not hard to imagine certain groups on the Left taking “always winter, never Christmas” as their creed. Maybe this Christmas is a good time for us to step through the wardrobe ourselves… and take heart at the idea that even when we can’t see spring’s approach, Aslan’s still on the move.
Writing to Santa is a time-honored tradition among English and American families who celebrate Christmas. But did Santa ever write you back? If so, I hope his letters were as entertaining as the correspondence “Father Christmas” carried on for over twenty years with J. R. R. Tolkien’s children, preserved with as much love as shone through their writing and published after Tolkien’s death as The Father Christmas Letters (later revised as ). Tolkien’s humor, inventiveness, and artistic talent made these letters a wonderful family tradition well worth sharing.
And such adventures Father Christmas has! Most involve his friend and helper Karhu, the Great North Polar Bear, who causes all manner of mischief and often adds marginal peanut-gallery comments in a runic-looking hand, with spelling errors that would be completely at home on 
Occasionally, however, Father Christmas has to deal with a more serious threat: goblins who live in caves under the North Pole and steal presents. Cave Bear, Polar Bear, and Father Christmas stumble upon a nest in 1932 quite by accident, and though they drive the goblins out that time, other years see the goblins return in force to try to conquer the North Pole. One attempt, not coincidentally, comes during 1941; Father Christmas tells Tolkien’s daughter Priscilla, “I expect the Goblins thought that with so much war going on this was a fine chance to recapture the North.” Other real-life concerns intrude during the Depression and the war, with Father Christmas explaining a shortage of presents several times by saying that he needs more room in his sleigh to deliver food and clothes to families that have none. On a lighter note, however, after Oxford’s hosting of a flood of evacuees during the Battle of Britain in 1940, Father Christmas writes that the North Pole has also had evacuees—penguins!
During that time, Wally West, the former sidekick Kid Flash, took over as the Flash. Wally was introduced in the late 1950s as the young nephew of Barry’s girlfriend Iris. (Unlike their TV counterparts, Barry and Iris were together from the Flash’s first appearance, and they did not grow up together.) When Barry and Iris eventually married, Barry became not only Wally’s mentor and idol, but his uncle as well.
Just as Wally is starting to feel comfortable as the Flash, the man he always saw as “the” Flash seemingly returns from the dead. Barry Allen shows up on his doorstep, alive and well, if a bit disoriented. At first, Wally loves having his uncle back. Sure, he starts to feel a little redundant as the Flash, but that’s a small price to pay. But then Barry’s behavior becomes…erratic. He soon snaps, leaves Wally to die in a hi-tech trap set by a new criminal organization, and announces himself as the one, true Flash. Wally escapes, of course, but he has to process the fact that the man he’s dedicated his life to has turned out to be anything but heroic.
It’s great stuff, one of the best comic book storylines of the early 1990s (which, admittedly, is not saying a lot. Those were dark, dark times for comic readers.)
Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
Avengers stories are at their best when the stakes are both huge and personal, and that’s what we get in the “Ultron Unlimited” storyline that ran in The Avengers (vol. 3) #19-22 in 1999, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by George Perez—two top, veteran talents in the comics industry.
This story draws on the 35-plus years of Avengers continuity that comes before it, something the movies simply don’t have time to do. While it enriches the overall experience, it also bogs down some parts with exposition so the newer readers aren’t lost.
Ultron, as he explicitly points out here, has always been something of a “family man,” and he is connected to an impressive family tree. In “Ultron Unlimited,” he kidnaps his “father,” Pym; his “mother,” the Wasp, who at this point is Pym’s ex-wife; his “son,” the Vision, whom he programmed with the brainwaves of the then-deceased Wonder Man, who’s alive again and also gets kidnapped; his “daughter-in-law,” the Scarlet Witch, who was married to the Vision for a while, though they’re long since divorced here; and the villainous Grim Reaper, the brother of Wonder Man.
This storyline can be read by tracking down the individual issues or the out-of-print trade paperback Ultron Unlimited. Your best bet, however, is probably the Avengers Assemble vol. 2 trade paperback, which includes several other issues that come before (just make sure it’s written by Kurt Busiek. There’s another Avengers Assemble series by another writer, which I haven’t read). You can also subscribe to Marvel Unlimited’s digital library, which has this as well as most, if not all, of the earlier storylines it references.
As I write this morning, the baseball world is still in shock over the sudden death of 22-year-old Cardinals rookie 
Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Marlowe’s best known for his 1588 masterpiece, 
Yet the displays of Faustus’ power that Marlowe shows on stage are hardly the stuff of nightmarish necromancy or of the grand dreams of empire that drive Faustus to embrace sorcery. Rather, once the bargain is struck, Faustus seems more interested in feasting, carousing, and enjoying popularity with nobles and students alike. He plays childish pranks on the Pope and various rubes who cross his will, conjures ghosts like Alexander the Great purely for the spectacle, takes Helen of Troy as his lover, and has Mephistopheles bring a pregnant duchess a plate of out-of-season fruit. It doesn’t seem like the kind of life and power that would be worth selling your soul for—and that’s the point. Whatever Marlowe himself thought on the matter, the story of Faustus has always hinged on one simple question: “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
The problem Swift identifies in “A Modest Proposal” was very real. At the time, the Irish were suffering heavily under English rule, and soul-crushing poverty was rampant in Ireland. But knowing how often straightforward argument had already failed to convince the absentee English landlords to change their ways, Swift turns the form on its ear at the beginning of the solution section and makes a statement so outlandish, so outrageous, so over-the-top that only Hannibal Lecter could approve:
And then, in the reply to objections, Swift springs his trap. “Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients,” he says—and proceeds to list his real recommendations, ranging from taxes on absentee landlords to what William Wilberforce would later call “the reformation of manners.” Swift then closes this section by repeating his admonition that no one should offer such options “till he hath at least some glimpse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.” By pretending to dismiss these ideas as wishful thinking and renewing his recommendation of a more drastic and barbaric solution, Swift prompts the reader to reconsider how quickly the aristocracy had brushed aside truly ethical and humane reforms as folly.
convention prevents him from changing the most important points of the plot, Chaucer rejects the tendency of every other version—later including 
Chaucer hints at this ruthlessness toward the end of Book II, when Pandarus takes Criseyde a letter from Troilus. She tries to refuse it, but he brushes off her objections and stuffs the letter down the front of her dress. When she succumbs to his insistence that she reply, Troilus pressures Pandarus into pushing the courtship even further… until at last, one dark and stormy night, Pandarus all but throws them into bed together and sleeps outside the door to ensure the tryst is both secret and successful. Criseyde curses Pandarus the next morning for putting her in this position, but she has finally convinced herself that she’s in love with Troilus.
But Criseyde’s father prevents her from leaving camp to meet Troilus, and Diomedes decides to win her love for himself, offering her friendship and service at first. He doesn’t press when she tells him she can’t consider accepting a Greek lover, although he does continue to court her. And while Chaucer argues that she’s never really in love with Diomedes, he has to concede that she does eventually begin to favor Diomedes with gifts that had belonged to Troilus.
ReasonTV put out a great short interview with Charles Brownstein, the head of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund that they shot at the San Diego Comic Con. The whole interview is worth a look, but the key takeaway is that comic books are, today, just as they were in the early years of their existence, among the most censored and challenged forms of expression. Two comic book series, the bizarre and often hilarious fantasy “Bone” by Jeff Smith, and of all things, “Captain Underpants” by Dav Pilkey, which actually won a Disney Adventures Kid’s Choice award in 2006, are among theg the top 10 most challenged books.
Facing a wave of attacks from the government, the comic book industry took a cue from the Motion Picture Association of America, and created its own preemptive censorship board known as the 
It’s important to understand here that while it was technically the industry “self-censoring”, it did so purely as a result of repeated threats from a government which had by that point a well-established history of censoring “undesireable” speech in numerous forms – a government, it should be remembered, that is legally constrained by the 1st Amendment, which expressly prohibits the creation of laws abridging the freedom of individual speech, or of the press.
The restrictions on comic books, films, and other entertainment media are one small piece of a very scary picture where the government of the country which is supposed to be the beacon of freedom for the rest of the world is continually grabbing more and more authority to control what people say. A world where ideas and art cannot be shared if a vocal minority of nannies deems those ideas “unsuitable” is a world headed for collapse.
Coleridge and Charles Lamb revived his reputation among the Romantics. Contemporary Thomas Carew went so far as to claim in an elegy that English poetry had died with Donne because no other poet would dare achieve the same level of originality and creativity. Nor was Donne renowned only for his poetry. After he was named a Royal Chaplain and later Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, he became known as one of the greatest preachers of his day. And 
No matter what we write, we write for an audience, even if it’s only an audience of one. It doesn’t matter whether you immediately close the document without saving or burn the paper you’ve just written on—you wouldn’t put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard unless you wanted to say something to someone else. And audience awareness becomes all the more critical when you publish, regardless of medium.
Audience awareness doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be afraid to say something. It does mean you have to figure out the best way to say it and be willing to defend your choices if and when you receive any backlash. I know, for example, that some people in my hometown will pick up Look Behind You simply because I wrote it and be Shocked! at the fantasy elements (especially a Christian writing about Nazi necromancers!!!), generally because they’re unaware of the history I’ve incorporated. So I try to give fair warning when I talk to people, and I’ve written 
There are limits, though, to which caveat lector applies. One is the point at which it runs up against “show, don’t tell.” A long-winded digression on why people can’t just do the right thing isn’t going to be nearly as effective as Merry challenging the Ents to take action against Saruman in movie-verse 
How could free people willingly subject themselves to a monstrous tyranny? That’s the question Swiss author 
Biedermann’s bluster falls flat, however, when a homeless former heavyweight wrestler named Josef Schmitz politely forces his way into Biedermann’s house and asks permission to spend the night. Even though Biedermann has just read a newspaper article stating that the arsonists’ MO always begins this way, he’s too terrified that Schmitz will hurt him—or worse, think ill of him—to throw Schmitz out or call the police. Schmitz even gets material for emotional blackmail when the inventor asks to see Biedermann and Biedermann tells him either to sue or to kill himself. Using a mixture of sentimentality, flattery, and appeal for trust, Schmitz manipulates Biedermann into letting him sleep in the attic and hiding the fact from Babette.
The local fire department serves throughout the play as a chorus, commenting on the action and even breaking with classical convention to speak directly to Biedermann and warn him of his danger. Despite the ominous tone of their contributions, however, their point is that the entirely foreseeable end of the play is also entirely evitable. Even when Biedermann has to admit his suspicions to himself and to the audience, he clings to the desperate false hope that if he just stays on the firebugs’ good side, they’ll spare him. But then he turns the tables on the audience at the end of his soliloquy by asking, “What would you have done, dammitall, if you were in my place? And when?”
An adequate summary of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s is far beyond the scope of this post. There are too many 
Already fighting a fever and crippled with guilt over seeing the logical, practical consequences of his philosophy, Ivan suffers a major psychotic break. Alyosha nurses him through the night, but when Ivan finally appears at Dmitri’s trial the next day, he’s so incoherent that even his revelations of the truth are dismissed out of hand. Without another witness to confirm any of what Ivan says, the peasant jury convicts Dmitri, and the judge sentences him to twenty years in Siberia. Ivan has already arranged for Dmitri to escape to America, and he tells Alyosha he could never kill himself; but his repentance has come too late and at the cost of his health and sanity.
About two weeks ago, I started reading “” a collection of essays, speeches. interviews, and newspaper articles written by Hayao Miyazaki. For those of you who don’t know, Miyazaki is one of the biggest reasons artistic animation is taken seriously in the U.S. Miyazaki animated several blockbuster hits such as “
Akira Kurosawa’s 
Caponsacchi denied it. The court sent Pompilia to a convent in Rome until her health failed a few months later, then allowed her to return to the Comparinis’ house. By December, however, the reason for Pompilia’s flight and breakdown became clear: she was pregnant. The Comparinis arranged for friends to hide the baby, fearing Guido’s reaction. And on the night of January 2, 1698, Guido and three accomplices broke into the Comparini villa, killed the Comparinis, and fatally wounded Pompilia. The attackers were arrested later that night, caught literally red-handed.
The climax of the poem is Book X, in which the Pope reviews the case. He admits that none of these narrators are reliable, but their testimony has revealed enough about their character for him to discern the truth. Thus, he acquits Pompilia of infidelity, praises Caponsacchi for his courage, and denounces everyone who failed to help Pompilia. He then confirms Guido’s death sentence because he sees no other way for Guido to understand his soul’s peril and repent. And in Book XI, once Guido’s alone with the friendly priests who’ve come to hear his last confession, his mask comes off, revealing the unrepentant sadistic psychopath beneath. Not only does Guido renounce his faith and confess to having hated Pompilia all along, he even rages against the idea of his son supplanting him.
But let’s focus on books. That’s what lately.
3 – Are you willing to invest your own money? True, Amazon charges you nothing for putting your book up for sale. But unless you’re also a talented graphic designer who also possesses the rare skill of being able to objectively edit your own work, you’re going to need to engage the professional services of freelancers. Be ready to shell out hundreds of dollars for editing, and at least another hundred (probably more) for a quality cover. And then you’ll probably want to set aside some money for marketing, too.
This plot sounds like it’s ripped from the headlines, and it could have been—twelve centuries ago. The rampaging enemy in this case is the Viking horde, and the story itself is 
subject. Twenty of these appear in . Apart from specific reviews of and tributes to authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, H. Rider Haggard, and Dorothy L. Sayers, the collection examines what story is and what makes it work. It thus contains useful advice for any writer, regardless of religious or political persuasion, especially those who want to write works with any kind of message.
Malone’s 
Tolkien defines human creativity as sub-creation. Only God can create something from nothing, and Tolkien calls the world God created the Primary World. Yet humans, made in God’s image, have the right to use our sub-creative powers, defined as Art, to form Secondary Worlds from the material we find in the Primary World. Here Tolkien quotes from his poem “Mythopoeia,” which appears in full in recent editions of Tree and Leaf. Written for C. S. Lewis shortly after the famous conversation on Addison’s Walk in 1931, “Mythopoeia” attacks Lewis’ assertion at the time that myths are “lies breathed through silver.” Tolkien counters not only that myth is a vehicle for truth but also that myth-making is a human right—“we make still by the law in which we’re made.” And “Leaf by Niggle,” Tolkien’s only deliberate allegory, celebrates the idea that God may someday grant us the great gift of seeing our Secondary Worlds given primary reality.
Fantasy is the most difficult genre, in Tolkien’s view, because it’s characterized by “arresting strangeness” and is vastly different from the Primary World. Yet that’s also what makes fantasy worthwhile and is a consolation in itself. It carries with it Recovery, not just renewed perspective but renewed mental and spiritual health from “regaining a clear view… ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.’” Fantasy also allows Escape, not from reality as a whole, but from the elements that stifle our spiritual health and growth, and thus can offer the consolation of satisfied desire. Best of all is the Consolation of the Happy Ending, the good turn Tolkien calls eucatastrophe:
The one objection to which Sidney grants any credence is that poetry can be, and often is, abused to encourage the audience to embrace vice rather than rejecting it. This debate continues today, whether we’re discussing the sexual content of television or music, railing against pro-statist movies, or arguing whether violent video games encourage violent behavior. The problem, as Sidney sees it, is not “that poetry abuseth man’s wit, but that man’s wit abuseth poetry.” He distinguishes between two types of poetic imitation: eikastike, “figuring forth good things,” and phantastike, “which doth contrariwise infect the [imagination] with unworthy objects…. But what!” he adds, “shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?” Even what we call fantasy—The Lord of the Rings comes to mind—can be eicastic in Sidney’s sense in that it encourages virtue. Lines do need to be drawn; the trick is drawing them in the right places.
Given that it only made about $3.3 million at the box office, according to imdb.com, that’s probably the only 
That sounds like just a throwaway storyline, but, without giving away any details, it becomes rather personal for Veronica. Her character growth (or perhaps it’s regression to some extent) continues right where the movie left off, and we see her father Keith trying to get her to confront what it means to be an adult P.I.