Salon reports on Kirill Yeskov’s novel The Last Ringbearer, an alternative (read: fake) history of the battle that ends Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The novel was published in his native Russia in 1999 but has only recently been translated into English do to a realistic fear of the Tolkien estate’s litigious nature and Christopher Tolkien’s ability to transform himself into a huge flaming eye able to detect copyright infringement.
Good News For People Who Read Bad News
Soothsayers from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency issued a heartening report last week that’s worth a read (or a re-read if it’s been a rough Monday). According to a bunch of numbers they found while conducting research, the written word may be in better shape than the dour popular report holds
“As a novel it makes concrete the difficulties and joys of reading, of telling stories, and of being told.”
“I think everyone should sort of have that branded on their arm: that you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t know what’s happening.”
“In Zero History, the future feels more like the now than ever before.”
“It is a strange thing to find a book with no sense of humor, and stranger still to realize just how important and comforting even trace elements of a comic sensibility can be.”