One of these days... (was?: Re: Who would YOU spend a weekend with? (was: And *I* met...))

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Iggy McSnurd" 
<coyoteschild at p...> wrote:


Iggy:
> 
> One of these days, when I have the time between classes and taking 
care of
> my dughter, I'll actually get to read the LoTR trilogy... (I saw 
the old
> animated movies, but not much more, other than about the first half 
of the
> first fo the recent movies on DVD...)  I've read the Hobbit, and 
have it and
> all three of the LoTR books... I just never got more than about 5-6 
chapters
> in to book one before something demanded my attention for so long 
that I had
> lost track of what was going on in the bok and would have had to 
start
> over...
> 
> Oh well... One of these days.
> 

Geoff:
Not very often I get around to looking at OT - it seems to be a full 
time job keeping up on FGU.

But I would agree with one of the other posters - "The Hobbit" is not 
the best book to start with.

I first read LOTR in 1955 or 1956, just after publication when I was 
in my mid-teens. I went into my local library in South London and saw 
this hardback book with a very attractive and simple cover (the early 
editions were a silver grey with a stylised "red eye" in the centre). 
I looked at it, read part of the first page and thought "What an odd 
book." and replaced it on the shelf. The next week, I did precisely 
the same! The following week, I looked and thought, "Well, let's give 
it a whirl" and took it out. That was dangerous. From there I was 
hooked. I read the book (like Christopher Lee) almost every year for 
about 20 years and became something of a consultant on it. One of my 
friends used to test me by throwing quotes at me and seeing how long 
it took to find the relevant page. It was only when the family 
started growing up and the posthumous books began to flow that the 
annual read moved to longer intervals.

I read "The Hobbit" many years after first finding LOTR and was 
disappointed. OK, it is a children's book but JRRT adopted a 
narrative style which swings between being patronising and jollying 
the young ones along with awful puns etc.

If you read Humphrey Carpenter's 1976 biography, you are told how the 
children's book sequel turned into the adult epic and how Tolkien's 
niggling over detail kept it from publication for so long.

I have to admit that I find the Silmarillion intersting but heavy 
going. Again, if you read Carpenter, you will see why. JRRT never 
really intended the book for publication when he started writing back 
about 1915. It was for his own pleasure -  a vehicle for his 
linguistic invention. After LOTR, he began to try to move it towards 
a finished state but was still working on bits which didn't match up 
when he died. Christopher Tolkien, his third son and literary 
executor, worked for three years  trying to iron out some of the 
inconsistencies before it was posthumously published in 1976.

Two other very good background books if you are interested  are the 
newer biography "Tolkien: a biography" by Michael White and "J R R 
Tolkien:author of the century" by Tom Shippey which is an excellent 
critique of Tolkien's works. Michael White is a well known newspaper 
commentator in the UK.

I always said I didn't want to see a film of LOTR (especially after 
the 1978 cartoon), probably because I couldn't see it being done by 
real actors. I have since eaten my words. It took me some while to 
get my head round TTT because of some extra ideas being introduced - 
Aragorn going over the cliff, the elves at Helm's Deep but I think I 
am now comfortable with them. The only bit which leaves me cold or 
possibly puzzled is the face to face encounter between the Nazgul and 
Frodo on the battlements of Osgiliath.... However, I eagerly await 
17/12/03 and the arrival of ROTK.

It continues to occupy pride of place next to HP1-5 on my bookshelves.

Geoff