The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Sorry, J.R.R.: I am going to review the three volumes separately, but it’s really more of a running commentary of what’s on my mind. I don’t actually see The Lord of the Rings as three separate books; the volumes just provide a good place to pause and take stock. And there’s always a lot to take stock of, when you’re reading these books: Tolkien made sure of that. This isn’t the first time I’ve read them for pleasure since my Tolkien module during my MA, but that aspect of my reading is maybe a bit further behind me right now. Still, I can’t not appreciate the extra richness that reading gave me, the breadth of Middle-earth. There’s so much I want to know more about — the Barrow Downs, the world Tom Bombadil first walked in… and not as glimpses, but the way we see them through the eyes of the hobbits or other members of the Company.

One thing that’s easy to forget is the sheer scale of the landscape they cross. People complain that it takes whole pages to get anywhere, but rarely the opposite: that the whole journey between Rivendell and Hollin is done in a page, that Hollin is just a stop on the way to Caradhras and Moria, when again, there’s so much more we could know about Hollin. Two things contributed to me thinking about that this time: one, I play LOTRO. Now thankfully, Lath has a war steed now, so I can cover a lot of ground, but the first fetch quests in the Shire drove me nuts. So much running! And even that is necessarily scaled down, else you’d have to sit back and take literally a day to run across the Shire. Not ideal for an MMORPG. Secondly, I’m part of a Walk to Mordor challenge, and wow. The miles it takes us to get anywhere — we’re barely progressing faster than the Company did, despite the fact that we’re adding everyone’s miles together.

One thing I do feel is the lack of a real Welsh influence here. This is “a mythology for England” (or is it “of England”? I’ve forgotten the exact quote now), not Britain, and all the focus is on the Anglo-Saxon kind of world. You can tell me about the Welsh influences until you’re blue in the face, but what gets me about Tolkien’s world is that absence. The troubled Welsh background is pushed aside — perhaps there in the Dunlendings’ struggle with the Rohirrim, but it’s not like that is a major theme, or that they’re treated with much sympathy.

Which is fair enough, but it does make me sad that Tolkien didn’t fold those issues into his mythology. I would’ve liked to see more of those tensions, that complex history, echoing through Middle-earth as it still does through modern Britain.

Rating: 5/5

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Yesterday — or, by the time this goes live on my blog, the day before yesterday, the 22nd — was Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, so naturally that constituted the final bit of excuse I needed to reread Lord of the Rings. And it never quite feels right without starting with The Hobbit. It doesn’t have quite the same cleverness that I enjoy with Lord of the Rings — Tolkien hadn’t come up with, or didn’t see the need to explain, his complicated text provenances, for example — but I still enjoy the narration, the sense of being told a story, and the fact that he expects you, dares you, to be on the ball. As a kid, I didn’t notice some of the flaws in Bilbo’s plans at all, but Tolkien’s narration gives you the benefit of the doubt there. Self-deprecating, almost.

I think the reason I dislike the Hobbit films so much is because they are adapting the book I love to blend with the films they’ve made already. I can see why they’re doing that, and why people enjoy it, but I don’t feel the desperate need to rationalise the difference between the tones of the two books. I like my dwarves goofy, the hero’s journey a little less blatant; I like that Bilbo makes his way through all the adventures because he’s a hobbit, with hobbit-sensibilities, not just a hero in hobbit form. I love that hobbits are basically Tolkien taking aspects of himself and letting them run around in this fantasy world without the illusion that of course he’d be the heroic type. It’s still wish fulfilment, but it’s a kind of wish fulfilment where the hero probably would be better off as a grocer or something else quiet, and manages despite that.

I mean, I bet a very small percentage of self-insert fanfics have the sense to admit that in reality, they’re more like the hobbits than the typical heroes. I really enjoy that Tolkien quite blatantly did that with his layers of authorship and the characteristics of hobbits as a race, and didn’t give in to the urge to over-romanticise it — while still making hobbits endearing, funny, brave, worth reading about, still pulling out aspects of character from even the most countrified bumpkin that could make them a hero.

And, let’s be honest, I just don’t understand people who don’t see the skill in Tolkien’s writing, in the way he builds up the world. Even here, where it isn’t taking the main character very seriously, he still takes the world seriously, shadowing it with the threat of the Necromancer, the Ring, the great alliances of the orcs — hinting at twisted dwarves and the complicated history of the elves, deftly bringing in little bits of lore so that they’re natural when we come to them in The Lord of the Rings. Not because he was planning it, but because he knew his world and knew how to show it to the reader.

Rating: 5/5