Lord of the Rings Re-Read
Dec. 13th, 2011 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liptonrm_backupSometimes it’s nice, when you’re in fannish free fall, to return to the things you’ve always loved. I’ve been meaning to do a re-read of Lord of the Rings for a while now and watching the films over the Thanksgiving weekend kicked me from intent to actual practice. And since I need something to put up on my LJ, I’ve decided to share the re-read with all of you. Because I’m a giver like that, or something. ;-)
A part of me has really missed Tolkien’s world and always will. So enough with the introductions and let’s dive straight into it.
Prologue
This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history. Further information will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has aleready been published, under the title of The Hobbit. …
Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today, for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth; a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. … Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of ‘the Big Folk’, as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements.
OMG I want to skip around the office and clap my hands! HOBBIIIIIIIIITS!!!!!! Oh how I’ve missed you! I can’t even describe the sensation I had when I started reading, how I felt like I’d come into a comfortable room that I love, nestled down into the couch and curled up in a warm blanket. It’s been too long.
I first read Lord of the Rings when I was a fourteen year-old high school student. My parents had given me a copy of The Hobbit a few years before but I had never been able to get past the second chapter, that long one with the dwarves. But at the urging of my High School BFF I gave Tolkien another try and once I started reading I couldn’t stop. I would take my Dad’s battered copies to school with me and read during lulls in class and then I’d read from the time I got home to the time I finally passed out. I read The Lord of the Rings in three days and then I turned right around and read it again. I couldn’t get enough.
What hits me here, nearly twenty years later, is how seriously Tolkien presents his world. His choice of wording gives it a weight of academic depth that most other fantasy novels try and fail to recreate. The Prologue reads like any number of history books I read as an undergrad, it has the same weight, the same references to primary sources, the same cerebral language. Except he’s talking about little people with big, hairy feet.
This book only exists because Tolkien spent years, probably his entire life, creating the world in which it resides. And that is what, even more than Tolkien’s incisive use of language, that makes this story fly. There’s so much depth in everything he does, every song has a history, every constellation has a name. We’re given just enough of a glimpse into it to know that it exists but we’re not bogged down in it. Tolkien knew how to use his encyclopedic knowledge to enhance the story, not drown it.
It’s impossible for me not to love how Tolkien took his Sekirt Pretend World and made it real, made it live and breathe for millions of people. And what a Sekrit Pretend World! Like I said, awestruck.
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Mater of Buckland), … his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.
‘… The men of Gondor call it sweet galenas, and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers. From that land it must have been carried up the Greenway during the long centuries between the coming of Elendil and our own days. But even the Dúnedain of Gondor allow us this credit: Hobbits first put it into pipes.’
Pipe-weed! Clearly Tolkien means us to infer that pipe-weed is what we know today as “tobacco,” but I’ve always enjoyed the idea that it’s actually marijuana. Because heh, no wonder the Hobbits had the munchies. *rimshot* I kind of love how Tolkien put all of the things he loved into his created world, whether or not they would have existed there in the first place. Tolkien was creating a mythology for England, a place that had lost whatever lore it might have had before the Romans, Saxons, and Normans invaded, so Middle-earth is more European than not. Regardless, there is a plethora of New World plants seeded throughout the story: tobacco, tomatoes, corn, potatoes. Because if you’re creating your perfect world it needs to have everything that makes life worth living.
Also, way to spoil your own story, jerkface! If you, like me, skipped right over the Prologue to get to the story then you did just fine. But think of all of those people who read the Prologue and cruelly found out that Merry survived for long enough to write a herblore of the Shire! That was a dick move, Professor.
Nah, just kidding. Nobody reads prologues anyway. It’s cool. ;-)
But in all seriousness, what a great way to start a story. The Prologue sets the stage, introduces the world, and gives us context for how this story fits into that world’s wider history. Most importantly, it introduces us to Hobbits, of whom “[y]ou can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you.” An observation as applicable to Hobbits as it is to Fandom.
Next Time: Fellowship of the Ring Book I—Chapter I: A Long-Expected Party. Bilbo’s throwing a party and we’re all invited.
comments at http://liptonrm.dreamwidth.org/39146.html.
A part of me has really missed Tolkien’s world and always will. So enough with the introductions and let’s dive straight into it.
Prologue
This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history. Further information will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has aleready been published, under the title of The Hobbit. …
Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today, for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth; a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. … Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of ‘the Big Folk’, as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements.
OMG I want to skip around the office and clap my hands! HOBBIIIIIIIIITS!!!!!! Oh how I’ve missed you! I can’t even describe the sensation I had when I started reading, how I felt like I’d come into a comfortable room that I love, nestled down into the couch and curled up in a warm blanket. It’s been too long.
I first read Lord of the Rings when I was a fourteen year-old high school student. My parents had given me a copy of The Hobbit a few years before but I had never been able to get past the second chapter, that long one with the dwarves. But at the urging of my High School BFF I gave Tolkien another try and once I started reading I couldn’t stop. I would take my Dad’s battered copies to school with me and read during lulls in class and then I’d read from the time I got home to the time I finally passed out. I read The Lord of the Rings in three days and then I turned right around and read it again. I couldn’t get enough.
What hits me here, nearly twenty years later, is how seriously Tolkien presents his world. His choice of wording gives it a weight of academic depth that most other fantasy novels try and fail to recreate. The Prologue reads like any number of history books I read as an undergrad, it has the same weight, the same references to primary sources, the same cerebral language. Except he’s talking about little people with big, hairy feet.
This book only exists because Tolkien spent years, probably his entire life, creating the world in which it resides. And that is what, even more than Tolkien’s incisive use of language, that makes this story fly. There’s so much depth in everything he does, every song has a history, every constellation has a name. We’re given just enough of a glimpse into it to know that it exists but we’re not bogged down in it. Tolkien knew how to use his encyclopedic knowledge to enhance the story, not drown it.
It’s impossible for me not to love how Tolkien took his Sekirt Pretend World and made it real, made it live and breathe for millions of people. And what a Sekrit Pretend World! Like I said, awestruck.
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Mater of Buckland), … his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.
‘… The men of Gondor call it sweet galenas, and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers. From that land it must have been carried up the Greenway during the long centuries between the coming of Elendil and our own days. But even the Dúnedain of Gondor allow us this credit: Hobbits first put it into pipes.’
Pipe-weed! Clearly Tolkien means us to infer that pipe-weed is what we know today as “tobacco,” but I’ve always enjoyed the idea that it’s actually marijuana. Because heh, no wonder the Hobbits had the munchies. *rimshot* I kind of love how Tolkien put all of the things he loved into his created world, whether or not they would have existed there in the first place. Tolkien was creating a mythology for England, a place that had lost whatever lore it might have had before the Romans, Saxons, and Normans invaded, so Middle-earth is more European than not. Regardless, there is a plethora of New World plants seeded throughout the story: tobacco, tomatoes, corn, potatoes. Because if you’re creating your perfect world it needs to have everything that makes life worth living.
Also, way to spoil your own story, jerkface! If you, like me, skipped right over the Prologue to get to the story then you did just fine. But think of all of those people who read the Prologue and cruelly found out that Merry survived for long enough to write a herblore of the Shire! That was a dick move, Professor.
Nah, just kidding. Nobody reads prologues anyway. It’s cool. ;-)
But in all seriousness, what a great way to start a story. The Prologue sets the stage, introduces the world, and gives us context for how this story fits into that world’s wider history. Most importantly, it introduces us to Hobbits, of whom “[y]ou can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you.” An observation as applicable to Hobbits as it is to Fandom.
Next Time: Fellowship of the Ring Book I—Chapter I: A Long-Expected Party. Bilbo’s throwing a party and we’re all invited.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-12-13 08:43 pm (UTC)That's it, exactly! And what a rich, multi-layered world it is.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 07:08 am (UTC)Imagine me, lying on my bed and sobbing while Imrahil carries a wounded Faramir into the White City on the back of his horse. I used that memory when I wrote Winter Fire, many years later, but it was not Noerwen who mourned Denethor's son, it was me.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 03:07 am (UTC)JFC, I never knew that! You're an insane person. Of course, my process was held up when I thought Pippin was dead and I threw the book across the room and refused to pick it up for days, but whatever.
found out that Merry survived for long enough to write a herblore of the Shire!
hahaha I don't think I even realized that - I was too busy trying to determine if it was tobacco or pot in their pipes.
you can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you
Just reading the line, makes me smile stupidly.
My heart for Middle-Earth!