vivdunstan

I have commented, in another forum, that one of the basic questions to ask of the various posthumous books "by JRR Tolkien" is, to what extent is it actually by JRRT. In the particular case of The Bovadium Fragments, this is an unusually easy question to ask.

The book is 124 + xx pages long, which is to say 144. Of these pages, there are 44 which could, with complete legitimacy, have been published as a chapbook by JRRT, with minimal notes by Christopher Tolkien (CJRT). Another ten pages could well have been added to that chapbook as an appendix.

The remaining ninety pages are apparatus. The xx include the usual vi of title page, copyright notices, table of contents, that sort of thing; another v of a Publisher's Note by one Chris Smith; and an Introduction by CJRT. With the possible exception of the Publisher's Note, this material could also have fit legitimtely into such a chapbook, amking it 74 pages long -- so, slightly over half the length of this admittedly slim volume.

The remainder is taken up by an essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," by Richard Ovenden, "Bodley's Librarian," meaning the head of Oxford University's most important library. It is, basically, a history of the incursion of the motor-car into the geography and culture of England in general and Oxford in particular, with special discussion of the decades of debate that went into attempting to find a solution to the destruction of Oxford's traditionally tranquil nature by said incursion taking over Oxford's High Street, or "the High."

Occasionally, and especially towards the end of the essay, Overton discusses how this bears on JRRT and his composition of the Fragments.

Which brings me to the Fragments themselves.

The Bovadium Fragments are, I think, the closest JRRT could ever have come to writing actual science fiction. The conceit is that, in some distant(ish) future, archaeologists excavating "Bovadium" (which is a Latinish sort of name for Oxford itself, meaning, more or less, the Way of the Ox) find these fragments and decipher them into their tongue.

Aside from the actual historical facts about motor-cars in Oxford, the springboard for the Fragments is a 1914 poem by A.D. Godley, an Oxford scholar himself, called "Motor Bus," a very early satire on motor culture whose primary point of amusement is its careful utilization of, and rhyming with, the various declensions of a Latin backformation of the word "bus" (which in fact comes from the Latin word omnibus).

JRRT takes this conceit to a much higher level of satire. "Bovadium," it seems, was a place of two languages, which equate, roughly, to demotic English and scholarly Latin. The Fragments, then, are translated from the scholarly language, and so motor-cars are, in them, referred to as motores. They are introduced into Bovadium by a "Daemon," for the purpose of destroying peace among the people thereof: a purpose which succeeds fully.

An important part of the satire is the introduction of a factory for the creation of these motores, taking its cue from the actual creation and growth of the company which came to be known as Morris Motors in the greater Oxford, which not only brought more cars to Oxford, but caused a massive population explosion as workers (not all English) came to build the cars, tend the factory, and run the business.

In the end, the civilization of Bovadium is destroyed in what may be the first appearance in fiction of the Terminal Traffic Jam.

There are three Fragments. The first is a short piece in Latin; the second, a longer piece which -- beginning with a rough translation of the first -- tells the entire sad story of Bovadium and the Daemon; and the third, a sort of postscript. There is also a bit of scholarly apparatus by the people studying the Fragments.

Is this a book by JRR Tolkien? Well, about half of it is; the other half ought, perhaps, to have been published in a scholarly journal. Overton's essay is not overly scholarly -- certainly easy enough for a lay reader like me to follow -- but I can't help feeling that it was largely added to provide the semblance of a full-sized book.

Eight out of ten stalled vehicles.

Pretty much what the title says, a collection of the correspondence of Teresa de Jesus, the foundress of the Discalced Carmelite order, in the later years of her life after her Reform was pretty firmly established, though there was still some opposition among various factions in the Catholic Church.

If one has (as I do) a degree of devotion to this Saint, it provides glimpses into her daily life as she continues to establish convents of her order across Spain, at a more quotidian level than what appears in her autobiographical works, the Life and the Foundations.

One frustrating feature of the particular edition I read is that the letters are in no particularly discernable sequence: certainly not chronological. While the letters to a particular correspondent are sometime grouped together, this is not always the case, and even when they are, no strict chronology is imposed upon them.

Nor am I at all clear who the translator, in this ebook of Teresa's complete works, actually is. I have the impression that (a) this is not a complete Letters, and (b) the order in the original Spanish edition -- though probably no more helpfully ordered than this version -- is different from what is seen here.

Seven out of ten incorruptible bodies.