Fortunately this last impediment has been resolved! I recently had a profound motivation for creating content for this blog. The Special Collections at UCR runs an annual book collection contest which asks its participants to put together a small collection of books with a unifying theme and short explanations of how each book fits. This seemed very similar to what I have already been doing here but with a bit more structure and the added motivation of laurels plus a $500 prize. I just submitted my collection last week and won't know the results until late May, but I've decided that this would be the perfect forum to share my collection a bit more publicly. It only includes about thirty books (and other materials) but they represent what seems to me to be a central theme of my larger collection. I will try to post an entry every week for the rest of this year, beginning with my collection's opening essay. Enjoy:
There and Back Again:
Narratives of Departure and Return, a Collection
Near the outset of the journey that will
span all three books in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo Baggins recalls some wisdom given to him
by his uncle Bilbo, “’It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your
door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your
feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.’” (83). Though
Bilbo’s words convey a sense of wariness, if we remember Bilbo’s own adventure
in Tolkien’s earlier novel The Hobbit,
we know that, despite the twists and turns that are inevitable when one departs
from one’s own home, it is that journey that comes to define the individual.
Indeed, a long literary tradition from Homer’s epics through the chivalric
romances of the middle ages and even up to modern adventure and science
fiction, characters develop most when the leave a place of comfort and travel
through a world that offers new perspectives, perilous obstacles, and most
importantly, a story to tell when they return. The same is true outside of
fiction; when we depart and return we often bring back with us fascinating
stories, some of which we can tell and others that we can quite literally carry
with us, bound tightly within the pages of a book.
This collection contains a number of
books that contain narratives of departure and return. These books tell stories
of characters that stepped out of their doors, sometimes kept their feet, and
sometimes did not. Sometimes these characters returned with stories to tell,
but not always. But it is not only the characters in these books that have made
the journeys; sometimes the books themselves have made significant journeys.
This collection has developed over the course of my lifetime. Many of these
books were gifts given by people who were and often still are very important to
me. Others I have acquired in the courses of my own journeys. Accordingly, I
have chosen to arrange these books in the order that I acquired them in an
attempt to convey an overarching narrative that spans my nearly three decades
of departing and returning.
