Jana Bokova, 'Havana', 1990

Jana Bokova, 'Havana', 1990

With little notice - and little fanfare - an extraordinary documentary from 1990 turned up on BBC4 television last Friday, May 11, 2018.  Jana Bokova's, 'Havana'.

For those with access to the BBC iplayer it is still available for a further month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b1v53c

I don't want to be involved in campaigns - but surely there is a better way of giving us access to important BBC work of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s - in this case, the important documentaries of the ARENA series?

What is important about these works is not just skill, technique, subject matter - but the ways in which these documentaries have become part of the dialogue between generations.

Filmed in Havana, and in Little Havana, Miami, in 1989, Jana Bokova's documentary is purest Bokova - the patience, the unblinking eye, the interest in ordinary, and complex, lives, the respectful regard...  And the material knitted together, most skilled film-making, with many different levels.  Most obviously, in 'Havana', the careful use of the words of the Cuban poets, the respectful use of the words - the words are given their own screen time.

Jana Bokova's 'Havana' has since become best known for the interviews with the exiled Cuban poet, Reinaldo Arenas.  The story is that a bootleg - it shouldn't have to be a bootleg - fell into the hands of Julian Schnabel, and inspired his 2000 movie, 'Before Night Falls',  starring Javier Bardem...  And now we can put the Bardem performance alongside the original Bokova interview...

There is this helpful article about Reinaldo Arenas on the New Yorker web site...

The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas

By Ann Tashi Slater December 5, 2013

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas

Some Julian Schnabel links...

http://www.julianschnabel.com/film/before-night-falls/before-night-falls-film-stills

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/06/movies/film-festival-review-retracing-a-poet-s-journey-to-despair.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Night_Falls_(film)

Some Jana Bokova links - but search the web...

http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Jana_Bokova%27s_Havana

https://dafilms.com/director/179-jana-bokova

Going back to the 1990 Jana Bokova documentary, 'Havana' - and how marvellous to be able to see it again...  There is always a sequence in a Jana Bokova documentary when the men being interviewed - usually older men, but still afflicted with that roving eye - become fascinated by the pretty girl behind the camera.  Whom we never see.

You hear her voice, and you can see the effect.

Patrick O'Sullivan

May 2018

On first looking into Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy

On first looking into Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy

1.

There is a little piece of mine that has proved popular, and useful...

O’Sullivan, P. (2004). On First Looking into Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition. New Hibernia Review, 8(4), 152–157.

It can be downloaded from my Archive at...

http://www.mediafire.com/file/pdv44q6atlon2tw/2004%2C_O%27Sullivan%2C_On_First_Looking_into_Mercier%27s_The_Irish_Comic_Tradition.pdf

It looks at the importance of a specific book, Vivian Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition, in my own life - it is part book review, part autobiography.

I could write a companion piece, On first looking into Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy.  In fact, astute readers have already spotted that Richard Hoggart is there in my Mercier article - and I will leave it to new readers to spot the relevant sections.

So...  Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy - part ethnography, part autobiography.

2.

I am prompted to think again about Hoggart and his Uses, by - at last - getting round to reading the biography by Fred Inglis...

Inglis, F. (2014). Richard Hoggart: virtue and reward. Cambridge: Polity.

The book is visible here...

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Richard+Hoggart%3A+Virtue+and+Reward-p-9780745672373

There are many reviews...  See, for example...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/19/richard-hoggart-virtue-and-reward-review

Fred Inglis's book is, in its own way, as unique a thing as Richard Hoggart's, and - as reviewers have noted - has its own oddities.  Inglis, p 228, comments on later Hoggart offering, 'the kind of thing old buffers say as they switch off the ten o'clock news...' - but himself gives us more than enough old bufferisms.  In a sense fair enough - for he clearly feels  he must at least comment on the destruction of the kind of university, and the kind of public life, that Hoggart helped shape.

3.

Looking at my own notes about Richard Hoggart...  Let me just mention Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed BBC radio programmes, Wed 26 Aug 2009...

Richard Hoggart

'Laurie Taylor discusses the life and work of leading cultural commentator Richard Hoggart, asking why his time is coming again.

Hoggart's evidence in the Lady Chatterley trial changed censorship for ever, his influence on the Pilkington Committee established the norms of public service broadcasting still in operation today and his academic work led to the invention of cultural studies in the UK.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m6gg9

Laurie Taylor is particularly nonplussed by the Uses of Literacy's attack on milk bars - and milk bars, from this distance, do seem a comparatively innocent 1950s experience.

(There is an appreciative comment from Laurie Taylor on the back cover of Inglis, Richard Hoggart: virtue and reward.)

Milk bars also haunt a nice article by Joe Moran...

Cultural Studies

Volume 20, 2006 - Issue 6

MILK BARS, STARBUCKS AND THE USES OF LITERACY

Joe Moran

Pages 552-573 | Published online: 17 Feb 2007

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09502380600973911

4.

Fred Inglis does touch, a little bit, on the international significance of Hoggart and Uses of Literacy.  He is good on Claude Levi-Strauss's appreciation of Hoggart, p 126-7, p 174.  He puts Uses of Literacy alongside Tristes Tropiques.  But, p 127, he quotes another commentator who, in 1957, praises Hoggart in order to disparage Camus (and Sartre).  The logical thing would be to put Hoggart alongside Camus.

And there is, indeed, a tradition of doing just that...  

See...

The two (or three) careers of Richard Hoggart

From the foundation of cultural studies to the appropriations of French sociology

by Claire Ducournau

https://www.cairn-int.info/abstract.php?

And I do like this thesis by William Nicholas Padfield - which outlines a French tradition of ‘intellectuels de première génération’, that is writers and intellectuals from relatively 'humble origins', and again puts Hoggart alongside Camus.  And alongside Bourdieu.

Padfield, W. N. (2015). “L”ascension sociale’ and the return to origins: reconstructions of family and social origin in the writings of Albert Camus, Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis. Manchester Metropolitan University. Retrieved from

https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617116/1/THESIS post-Viva.pdf

5.

What seems to have gone un-noticed, in discussions of Hoggart, his critiques of the 'Americanisation of British youth culture' (including those wicked milk bars), and his naming of 'scholarship boy ambivalence', is the Americanisation of Richard Hoggart...

Our entry point there is Richard Rodriguez...

There is an article, 1974, which anticipates the book of 1982...

Rodriguez, R. (1974). Going Home Again: The New American Scholarship Boy. The American Scholar, 44(1), 15–28.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41207263

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: the education of Richard Rodriguez, an autobiography. D.R. Godine.

(The book is now widely visible, and increasingly visible in the secondary literature.)

The article introduces Hoggart and the Uses of Literacy, p 17, as Richard Rodriguez tries to find a perspective on his own experience...  'For the child who moves to an academic culture from a culture that dramatically lacks academic traditions, looking back can jeopardize the certainty he has about the desirability of this new academic culture. Richard Hoggart's description, in The Uses of Literacy, of the cultural pressures on such a student, whom Hoggart calls the "scholarship boy," helps make the point...  ...he must choose between the two worlds: if he intends to succeed as a student, he must, literally and figuratively, separate himself from his family, with its gregarious life, and find a quiet place to be alone with his thoughts...'

Richard Hoggart is quoted at length in the book, and becomes a sort of guru figure, commentating from the past as young Richard Rodriguez shapes his future.

There is a Wikipedia entry on Richard Rodriguez...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez

And this recent Paris Review is helpful...

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/09/09/regarding-mystery-an-interview-with-richard-rodriguez/

And, of course, our scholarship boy is also our scholarship girl, and perhaps faces even more complexity than her male counterpart...  Let me recommend this nicely written, beautifully paced, article by Laura Rendón...

Rendón, L. I. (1992). From the Barrio to the academy: Revelations of a Mexican American “scholarship girl.” New Directions for Community Colleges, 80(80), 55–64.

https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.36819928007

'It was during my first year of graduate school at the University of Michigan, far away from the Laredo, Texas, barrio where I spent my youth, that I read

Richard Rodriguez’s (1975) poignant essay, “Going Home Again: The New American Scholarship Boy.” Reading this story of how the academy changes

foreigners who enter its culture (more than it is changed by them) inspired a powerful emotional response in me. My own odyssey through higher

education had taken me along an unusual path...'  And she quotes from Richard Rodriguez essay the very lines that I have just quoted, above, about chosing between two worlds.

Rendón finds Hoggart through Rodriguez...

Oddly enough, I found Rodriguez through Irish Diaspora Studies - I was following some thoughts about nuns and Irish Christian Brothers...  And Rodriguez says, Hunger of Memory, p 122, his mother's family name is, 'inexplicably Irish', Moran.

Patrick O'Sullivan

April 2018

Note
September 2018

My attention has been directed towards Joe Moran's web site...

The full text of his article,
Milk Bars, Starbucks and the Uses of Literacy

is available there...

https://joemoran.net/academic-articles/milk-bars-starbucks-and-the-uses-of-literacy/

Open Access, Collaboration, Interdisciplinarity...

Open Access, Collaboration, Interdisciplinarity...

The Universe and I are working towards a better relationship, in some areas at least.  For example, I am trying to persuade the Universe that if it wants me to read something it must not put too difficult obstacles between me and that text.  Money is an obstacle.

So, we look for useful things in Open Access resources, useful books and articles - though sometimes those Open Access resources are hard to find, hidden deep within academic or commercial publisher web sites.  Come along, Universe, make things easier...

And, of course, funding bodies need to think again - is it really Open Access if it is so hard to find...?

I have already mentioned two aggregating web sites, OAPEN and DOAB, and you can browse those web sites, and, back-tracking, see how funding decisions and scholarly decisions have made books available there - very often through European academic publishing houses and funding bodies...  But the net is spreading wider...

'The OAPEN Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation based in the Netherlands, with its registered office at the National Library in The Hague. OAPEN is dedicated to open access, peer-reviewed books. OAPEN operates two platforms, the OAPEN Library (www.oapen.org), a central repository for hosting and disseminating OA books, and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB, www.doabooks.org), a discovery service for OA books...'

http://www.oapen.org/home

https://www.doabooks.org/

Directory of Open access Books is provided by OAPEN Foundation

Very often we can find material of Irish interest, and Irish Diaspora interest, within DOAB and OAPEN - and I will return to that at a later date.  Again, I have already mentioned here on Fiddler's Dog the lovely (money-saving) discovery of Mícheál Briody's lovely book about The Irish Folklore Commission, and Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Delargy) - which became freely available on OAPEN just when I needed to cite it...  Thank you, Universe.

The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970: History, ideology, methodology Briody, Mícheál Finnish Literature Society / SKS, Helsinki 2008

http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=617192

Let me now cite something from an overlapping area of interest - interdisciplinary studies.  Often, usually at the funds-seeking part of a project, I get asked to advise on the 'interdisciplinary' part of the bid - and I tippy-toe in. 

Noting, for example, a remark by Amy E. Earhart - about p.28, 'The blurring of interdisciplinarity with collaboration...'

Challenging Gaps: Redesigning Collaboration in the Digital Humanities

in

The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age Edited by Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell

Series: Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism

http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/etlc.9362034.0001.001

(This book is free to read and download on yet another Open Access site, digitalculturebooks, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press...  Not that easy to find, unless you already know it is there.)

But let me look briefly at an 'interdisciplinary' moment, one that is almost the opposite of collaboration - I can look briefly because the text is open access on the OAPEN web, and you can read it at your leisure.

I read this splendid book by Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall as a study of that moment when we try to be interdisciplinary, but realise that first of all we have to be critical - one discipline must offer a critique of another discipline.  In this case Widerquist and McCall ask how and why do modern philosophers use and perpetuate myths about prehistory?  (I might add that economists and theologians do it too...)

Widerquist, K., & McCall, G. (2017). Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Retrieved from http://www.oapen.org/record/625284

Would I have come across this book if it were not for DOAB, OAPEN and Open Access?  Thank you, Universe.

Patrick O'Sullivan

25 years of the Irish Studies Review

25 years of the Irish Studies Review

There is to be a reception to commemorate 25 years of the Irish Studies Review, plus a presentation of postgraduate prizes from the British Association of Irish Studies at the Embassy of Ireland, London, on 23rd May 2018.

Looking back, those of us who were there at the beginning of the Irish Studies Review, and the founding of the British Association of Irish Studies...

I have put most of my Irish Diaspora Studies material on my MediaFire archive...

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

There is a little cluster of items which first appeared in Irish Studies Review, from 1992 onwards.

A number of writerly names are perhaps over-represented in the early issues of Irish Studies Review. 

The Founding Editors were, in those years, still finding their way - seeing quite where to pitch the journal - and a number of us were supportive, and did what the Editors asked us to do.

For example, the Editors decided to publish a short story of mine, 'The Fiddler's Apprentice' - the text, as published, complete with errors, is in that MediaFire archive.

I am told that the Editors were later to bitterly regret publishing that short story - for, they say, they were thereafter swamped by unsolicited short stories.

What can I say?  Not my fault, not my fault...

That story, 'The Fiddler's Apprentice' was later picked up by BBC Radio - I have put an audio file here...

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/lckrf8paym1n9/Music_%26_Audio

Later Irish Studies Review was to morph into a standard academic journal...  Quite right, too...

And here is an opportunity to congratulate the Irish Studies Review team...

Visualising the Emigrant Letter‪ ARTICLE FREE ONLINE

Moreton, E., O’Leary, N., & O’Sullivan, P. (2014). ‪Visualising the Emigrant Letter‪. Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales, 30(3), 49–69.

This article is now freely available on line...

Specialists will recognise that there is, as it were, a 'ghost article' in there, waiting to be written - the more firmly Irish version of our work on Emigrant Letters, looking at our historiographic tradition, Arnold Schrier, Kerby Miller, David Fitzpatrick and so on.  This would also now look at more recent developments, which I still track - for myself and on behalf of Emma Moreton and her networks.  Yes, looking at our tradition, and specific Irish problems - always that issue of looking at only Irish material, in isolation.  So, also connecting with the wider literature, and with other interests of mine, like literacy/orality, writing as an exploration of the self, writing as a creation of the self, identities, language choices.

But it is nice to see that Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales (REMI) article online - and see how they have displayed the visual material.  Note all the work that goes into the creation of Digital Humanities visualisations.  One question for me, as we explored that Digital Humanities approach to Irish material, was:  Does all that work pay dividends, does it open up new approaches to existing research questions, and open up routes to new research questions?  The answer is, Yes.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visualising the Emigrant Letter

Propositions pour une visualisation graphique de correspondances de migrants

Propuestas para una visualización gráfica de las correspondencias de emigrantes

Emma Moreton, Niall O’Leary et Patrick O’Sullivan

http://www.cairn.info/revue-europeenne-des-migrations-internationales-2014-3-page-49.htm

Emigrant letters are a rich resource for teaching and learning, transcending disciplinary and methodological boundaries. They are expressive and indicative of correspondents’ identities, values, preoccupations and beliefs, providing a powerful source of information about migration issues and shedding light on processes of language change and variation. Although many emigrant letter collections have now been digitised, not all are properly archived; some are reduplicated and others are in danger of being lost. The documentation and preservation of such letters is, therefore, a particularly pressing need. In 2013, an AHRC research network was established to look at ways of improving interconnectivity between digital collections of migrant correspondence. This paper reports on work carried out so far, focusing on how emigrant letter projects might move beyond the digitisation stage to exploit text content and enhance usability and searchability through the use of visualisation tools.

Index terms

Keywords :correspondance, lettres de migrants, TEI markup, outils de visualisation graphique, TEI, visualisation graphique de données, geotagging

Keywords :correspondence, emigrant letters, TEI markup, visualisation tools, TEI, data visualisation, geotagging

Further information, about policy - to make the contents of the journal available to a wide range of readers (researchers, teachers, students, etc.), and to promote the accessibility of the journal to the Anglophone public through the International Cairn platform...

https://www.cairn-int.info/about_this_journal.php?ID_REVUE=E_REMI

Tolkien in Oxford - 50 years ago

Stuart Lee, Merton College, Oxford, has written to me, noting that it was exactly 50 years ago this week - 5th to 9th February 1968 - that the cameras and crew came to Oxford, to film Tolkien, in Oxford.

Stuart says, 'I am sure you knew...'  Well, I did not.  Thank you, Stuart...

Now, on to the next rescue...

Patrick O'Sullivan
February 2018

Alison O’Sullivan explains corporate parenting

I have mentioned the work of my wife, Alison, in a number of places...

Like, on this blog - where she is The Spouse.

Friends will be interested in this Blog entry on the NHS web site, which gives some idea of Alison's recent thinking and current projects...

Alison O’Sullivan

Blog

Corporate parenting for children in care with mental health needs: commissioners in action

29 November 2017  Alison O’Sullivan

Children and young people

Commissioning

Mental health

In this blog, Alison O’Sullivan explains what corporate parenting means in practice and why it is so important for children with mental health needs in care.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/corporate-parenting-for-children-in-care-with-mental-health-needs-commissioners-in-action/

Visiting Scholar, New York University, 2017-18

I am pleased to be able to report that New York University has renewed, for a further year, 2017-2018, my Visiting Scholar relationship with the University.

My thanks to the University.  Special thanks to the team at the Glucksman Ireland House, New York University, who choreographed and supported the procedure.  And special, special thanks to Miriam Nyhan Grey, Director of Graduate Studies at Ireland House, and Eli Elliott, Department Administrator - who coaxed me into writing an up to date CV.  I am not good at CVs - complicated life.

It was very good to, briefly, touch base with my Glucksman Ireland House colleagues at the Global Irish Diaspora Congress, in Dublin, August 2017.  As all the world knows, I am not a good traveller - but I can get to Dublin.

I do feel privileged to have this continuing relationship with NYU.  There are a number of projects, in the scholarly, academic parts of my life, that I would hesitate to take on if I did not have ready, and quality, access to the research record.  So, for a further year, I can feel comfortable about that. 

Also, people who know my work will be aware that in recent years I have given myself the task - life has given me the task - of rescuing and making sure that the research record knows about past projects.  Rescues have included the Tolkien in Oxford BBC film, 1968, The Irish World Wide series, 6 volumes, 1992-1997, my song lyric archive, including the publication of a selection of lyrics in book form, Love Death and Whiskey, 2010, the archive of the Irish Diaspora List, 1997-2017.  And so on...  A forthcoming rescue involves the oral history stage play, Irish Night, 1987-1988.

So, different kinds of rescue, from different mediums, in different technological forms, spread over many decades.  (Go on, then - you try writing the bloody CV...)  But all benefitted, enormously, from the support of NYU, and, through NYU, access to research material.  For example, the rescue of the stage play, Irish Night, involves placing that 1987 project within the subsequent history of the oral history, documentary history stage play - and within the research record on the experiences of Irish people in England.

Thank you to the Glucksman Ireland House, and to New York University...

Patrick O'Sullivan

FREE ONLINE Irish Literary Supplement March 1982 - September 2016

Another new, free resource...

Go to...

http://newspapers.bc.edu/

You will find a link there to the Irish Literary Supplement, and the full archive of issues from 1982 onwards...

'Title: Irish Literary Supplement

Available online: 1 March 1982 - 1 September 2016 (70 issues) The Irish Literary Supplement is a twice-yearly publication of reviews of books of Irish interest and occasional articles and poetry. Founded in 1982 and edited by Robert G. Lowery, the ILS has been published in association with Boston College’s Irish Studies Program since 1986. Digitization of issues through 2016 was funded by the Brian P. Burns endowment, John J. Burns Library.'

There is more detailed information about the project in 'Irish Studies', the newsletter of the Center for Irish Programs, Boston College - and a web search will find more online discussion, no doubt...

So, there we have the discourse of Irish Studies, from 1982 onwards, in an archive, in a database - we should be able to find a way to ask it questions.  Like, I wonder when the word 'diaspora' was first used in its pages?

Patrick O'Sullivan

FREE BOOK Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970: History, ideology, methodology

The link, below, should take you to Mícheál Briody's lovely and important book about The Irish Folklore Commission, and Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Delargy) - now freely available on OAPEN...

The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970: History, ideology, methodology Briody, Mícheál Finnish Literature Society / SKS, Helsinki

2008

http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=617192

The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.  Mícheál Briody's book has heretofore been a little difficult to get hold of, but - now - there it is, freely available online at OAPEN.

The blurb on the web site has clearly been written by someone who knows the book, and knows the background.

The Irish Folklore Commission was always underfunded.  Nevertheless it shaped how Irish folk cultures should be studied, collected and preserved - very important, in my view, was the decision to seek mentors and methodology, not in the USA or in England, but in northern Europe, especially in Sweden, but also in Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Germany.  There was also in that time, in those disciplines, in those countries, an understandable privileging of the oral - which is of interest to those of us who study the orality/literacy interface...

In something that I drafted recently, thinking about Irish Emigrant Letters, I wrote this...

"The approach of the Irish Folklore Commission privileged the study of the people of rural Ireland, mostly the rural poor. This focus on the ‘ideal peasant’ seems to come from at least three directions. First, there is Ireland’s use of the ‘ideal peasant’ for political and literary purposes (Hirsch 1991 and Markey 2006). Second, there is the guidance, philosophical and methodological, given to the founder of the Irish Folklore Commission, J. H. Delargy (Séamus Ó Duilearga) by wider European scholarship, especially by ethnography, and especially by his mentors in Sweden, Finland and Estonia (Briody 2007). And third, there is that curious imbalance within scholarship, especially within European scholarship, which privileges the oral above the written. There are many ways to unpack that imbalance – but the simplest might be to cite Derrida’s critique of Levi Strauss (Petrovi 2004). (We are not the first to have brought Derrida to a crux within Irish scholarship. See Duddy (1996). The exception to this pattern is of course the privileging of writings in the Irish language by representatives of the rural Irish, notably the Blasket Islands autobiographies (Quigley 2003 and Ross 2003).  It remains a strange imbalance – a privileging of ‘the people’, or the ‘peasantry’, which ignores the people’s own writings, and when, as Arnold Schrier points out, the vast majority of the people were literate (Schrier 1958, 22). And all these methodologies involve the creating of secondary texts, notes taken by interviewers, transcriptions of tape recordings..."

Arnold Schrier is not mentioned in Mícheál Briody's book, but the Irish Folklore Commission were helpful partners in his study of Irish Emigrant Letters, and his rescue of the letters themselves, the material letter.  See Schrier, A. (1997). Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850-1900. Dufour Editions.

Originally 1958, but my copy is the reprint.

And Arnold Schrier's pioneering work was developed further, and expanded, by Kerby Miller, in books and many articles - and many acts of kindness to younger scholars.  We have a tradition.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Mendeley Again

Major crisis with my bibliographic software - which is, of course, an extension of my brain...

I have long, loyally, supported Jabref - which is free, open source, sturdy and forgiving.  Jabref is a graphic interface for a Bibtex file.  We pick up our reference material from all sorts of places, with all sorts of encoding junk slotted in to it - but with Jabref we were able simply to ignore the junk, and stay true to UTF-8.  Until now...

This makes it sound as if I know what I am doing...  I am just a loyal, trusting, naive user...

Generally it is nice to see open source projects get active.  But...  A recent upgrade by the Jabref team has created major 'special character' problems.  'Special characters', like the special characters you find in Irish family names.  French family names.  Spanish family names.  Portuguese family names...

And this happened at a bad point in my backup regime...  I had let my guard down, I admit it...  Jabref, sturdy and forgiving...

Suddenly I had a bibliographic database that was full of visible coding junk.  I do keep back up routes open - through NYU I have access to Refworks, and I keep accounts open with Zotero and with Mendeley.

So, after thought, I took my Bibtex file into Mendeley, for a tidy up - and have rediscovered why I dislike Mendeley...  First the good thing...  That big clean screen has made tidying out the junk easy.  My database needed a good preen anyway...

But Mendeley, Mendeley...

It has all been said before...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-seTYixNf0

And this, by singer Kit Nelson, is really good - chewing those 30s/40s vowels...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCeMQEKfvOU

Interesting to see, from the comments on Kit Nelson's page, that people now do this monologue for drama examinations...

Mendeley...  Mendeley...  Secretive and silent...

Listening to BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, Tolkien the Lost Recordings

Tolkien:  the Lost Recordings was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday August 6 2016, and is still available on the BBC web site...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mvd5z

The Producers are Anna Scott-Brown and Adam Fowler.  It is an Overtone production for BBC Radio 4.

http://overtoneproductions.co.uk/

Well, yes, I now feel that, as far as this project is concerned, my work is done.

Nunc dimittis - cue image of Oxford towers, and plaintive music. 

And on to the next rescue.

I thought that the programme worked very well, and that the decision to pitch it to the Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien enthusiasts was the right one.  So, for me, the calming discoveries were the contributions of Dimitra Fimi and Tom Shippey.  With that, and Stuart Lee's forthcoming article, we can now say that Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' has its appropriate place in Tolkien Studies.

The technical solutions to the presentation problems were fun - like the Joss Ackland character, the bemused and only slightly interested interlocutor.  It was like something from Louis MacNeice, and the glory days of radio 'features'.  Well done, Adam and Anna of Overtone...  Very brave...

But, of course, we have simply created or postponed yet further need to delve in archives.  So, yes, Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' now has its appropriate place in Tolkien Studies.  But do we now need a study of the place of that 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' in Megahey Studies?

Somewhere in the Overtone archives, there is a bit where Patrick O'Sullivan outlines, so succinctly and elegantly, the cinematic techniques of Leslie Megahey - as discovered in 'Tolkien in Oxford' - and their development in the subsequent career.

But, as Tolkien said - or was it Marx? - we make history, but not in circumstances of our choosing...

Patrick O'Sullivan

August 2016

Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, Tolkien - the Lost Recordings

I have gathered and tidied this information, below, about the forthcoming Archive on 4 programme on BBC Radio 4, about the 1968 Leslie Megahey BBC film, 'Tolkien in Oxford'.  This Archive on 4 is an Overtone Productions Ltd. Programme for the BBC...

http://overtoneproductions.co.uk/

Regular readers will know that a number of us, led by Leslie Megahey, have worked to restore and mend the film, and to explore its place in Tolkien Studies.  My colleague, Dr. Stuart Lee, Oxford, is writing the academic article about the film and the background, and - as can be seen - he is a lead player in the Archive on 4 programme.  So, as regards this project, the work is done...

There is a delightful symmetry in bringing Joss Ackland into this project - I have remarked before on what a lovely job he did on the readings in the original 1968 film.  

One ring to rule them all...

Patrick O'Sullivan

Glucksman Ireland House, New York University http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/page/faculty

Tolkien - the Lost Recordings

Archive on 4

6 August 2016

8pm BBC Radio 4

Joss Ackland narrates a quest through BBC archives for unheard gems from JRR Tolkien, as Oxford Academic, Dr Stuart Lee, discovers the un-broadcast offcuts from an interview given by the author of the Lord of the Rings. 

Tolkien gave the interview for a BBC film in 1968, but only a tiny part of it was used in the broadcast programme. It was one of only a handful of recorded interviews he gave, and was to be his last. Dr Lee’s search for the un-broadcast rushes takes him to the depths of the BBC film archives, and back to the making of the original film: ‘Tolkien in Oxford.’

For the director, Lesley Megahey, only 23 at the time, this was his first film, and the one that launched a prestigious career. The programme reunites him with three others: researcher, Patrick O’Sullivan; Tolkien fan, Michael Hebbert - and critic Valentine Cunningham, who describes how he was brought in to be the voice of dissent challenging the burgeoning Tolkien cult spreading from America.

What emerges is a picture of a playful academic, whose fiction was little respected by adults at the time and looked down on as a lesser form of literature. But he is robustly defended by Professor Tom Shippey and remembered fondly by his colleague Dr Roger Highfield.

Stuart Lee presents the results of his search through the archives to Dr Dimitra Fimi who considers any new words from Tolkien’s mouth as ‘gold’. While, for Dr Lee, the real ‘dragon’s hoard’ is the privilege of hearing Tolkien in relaxed mode reflecting on his life as never before.