The Second Age Read Along - Part 3 - Week 5: HoMe9: The Notion Club Papers - Intro/foreword

#What we’re reading today

Welcome back! We’re jumping into another work related to Númenor, this time it can be found in HoMe IX: Sauron Defeated, from Part Two: ‘The Notion Club Papers’, the first two sections: ‘Introduction’ and ‘Foreword and List of Members’. These are halfway through this volume of HoMe; we’re stopping right before the section ‘The Notion Club Papers Part One’.

#Resources

Images from the text:

• Title page of The Notion Club Papers

Other:

• Timeline of the discovery of the papers and explanation of the two theories

#Before you read

The Notion Club Papers is the next step in the evolution of the Fall of Numenor after The Lost Road was abandoned. As we will see, a lot of features from The Lost Road appear here, but the framing narrative is different, and the story is more developed. However the Notion Club Papers opens as just a light parody of the Inklings, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis's Oxford-based literary group. The story of Númenor doesn’t begin to work itself in until later. One of the things that should be stressed, as it may not be as immediately apparent as it would seem, is that this is still a work of fiction. Once you reach the Foreword, there may be specific dates, people, and places mentioned that sound like they’re Tolkien’s contemporaries, but this is all still part of a story. It may get a little confusing, keeping track of which group is Tolkien’s real life literary group and friends and which are his fictional parody of them, but hopefully the way Christopher lays it out in the Introduction will make things clear.

As a side note, “Six Years’ War” almost certainly refers to World War II (it was six years and a day long; it also is the only thing that makes sense in the context). In one of the earlier drafts Tolkien used the phrase "Second German War".

#After you read

Christopher’s introduction gives some insight into the different versions of the texts he had to work with, some of the reasoning behind his father’s motivations for writing this particular story, and the timeline for when these texts were written. Following this was the start of ‘The Notion Club Papers’ beginning with a foreword within the context of the story.

The Notion Club Papers is a collection of minutes from the meetings of a group of (mostly) professors at Oxford that would gather to discuss various things, but primarily writings that members of the group had worked on for the group. Tolkien writes this story as if it was a later publication of these minutes, found many years after the event. This fictional foreword is of a bunch of academics arguing about when these discovered minutes were written based on several factors, including the phrasing of the writing, the fact that it was written by hand, and the type of paper it was written on. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the factors previously listed suggest a date of writing much earlier than the dates given in the writing. If that wasn’t enough, the writing makes reference to in-story events even in the future from the dates given in the writings. This whole discussion of the period of writing for the discovered minutes leads to several different conclusions from the various academics, such as the idea that the document was rewritten later to correct false predictions or that it is a work of fiction with some element of precognitive knowledge. A list of club members is then given, as well as short descriptions of the characters and their interests.

#Discussion questions

• Between the introduction and the Foreword, we get a transition from Christopher discussing the actual textual history of the work to Tolkien himself discussing the (fictional) textual history of the work. Can you notice a difference in style between the two Tolkiens? Which do you prefer?
• If you are familiar with the Inklings, can you spot any additional “hidden puns and jokes” in the list of members? (As an example, in the introduction to the following HoMe volume Christopher thanks u/DaLB53’s dad for pointing out to him that “In the Old Testament Moses' father-in-law is named both Jethro and Reuel (Exodus 2:18 and 3:1); thus John Jethro Rashbold = John Reuel Tolkien”)
• Before even reading the story proper, do you have any guesses as to which ‘solutions’ regarding the nature of the writing is correct?
• Tolkien says that this manuscript was found in the summer of 2012, and the title page shows that the second edition was published in 2014. What do you suppose has happened in the five or six years since then?