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[Anjelus_]

I'll join. I would also recommend the Lord of the Rings Reader's Companion. It's essentially what they did for the Annotated Hobbit, but for LotR, which makes it amazing by default.

 

[Rhomega Beta]

I actually did read through the prologue, since the history and culture of Hobbits is interesting, but i also felt like it was a bit of a slog.

 

[witness]

I'm in guys! I got the 50th anniversary box set for Christmas and its high time I crack them open and start reading. I only ever read The Hobbit for some reason.

 

[Loxley]

I think I'm ready.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

I'm in guys! I got the 50th anniversary box set for Christmas and its high time I crack them open and start reading. I only ever read The Hobbit for some reason.

Man I wish I could read LotR for the first time again! You're in for a treat!

 

[Daft Bird]

Ya! My brother brought my copy of Lord of the Rings to me so I can join GAF on this read along.

 

[Delicious Waffles]

I think I'm ready.

Nope.

Need to be wearing these while reading. That goes for everyone. Gets us in the mood.

 

[Grady Durden]

Here you go!

https://www.google.com/calendar/ica...8g@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Thanks so much!

 

[Purdy]

Hey, I'll join this! Been meaning to re-read it for a while now. Plus I'll get to finally crack into one of my fav purchases last year

Where'd you get these ?

 

[Loxley]

Where'd you get these ?

It's the Hobbit/LOTR pocket edition box set, it's really nice.

 

[Purdy]

It's the Hobbit/LOTR pocket edition box set, it's really nice.

Cheers

 

[Edmond Dantès]

I think I'm ready.

Nice collection of books there. I like the cover of that edition of the Fellowship.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Potential discussion topics

• In defence of Old Man Willow; hobbits and their encroachment and genocide of his fellows.
• Did the Balrog have wings?
• Merry's adventure in time; the significance of his dream in the Downs.
• The passage of time in Lothlorien.
• Lovecraft and the Barrow-downs.
• The choosing of the Fellowship and their subsequent bond.

 

[JC Lately]

Subbed. Just finished re-reading A Game of Thrones, and was looking for something more classic anyway. Plus I bought that paperback collection 15 years ago when LOtR fever was catching on due to the movies, might as well put them to good use!

 

[FUBAR McDangles]

Not sure how this will work out with my trying to read other books as well, but I might as well try and throw my hat into the ring.

I haven't read these since high school, and even then I'm not sure how far into the series I got before stopping. Should be fun.

 

[JC Lately]

Pretty sure the last time I read Fellowship was just before the movie came out, fully planning on nitpicking ever flaw to death when I went to see it, like a 20-something black comic book guy.

Never did forgive the film for actually being good.

 

[witness]

I'm very excited to see the differences between the book, and the movies which I love. I know there's a lot more to the books so I'm excited to see just who Tom Bombadil is for example.

 

[thequickandthedead]

Can we skip the Tom Bombadil chapter?

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Can we skip the Tom Bombadil chapter?

That's entirely up to you. But there's plenty of interesting discussion to be had regarding Tom, his origins and links to other characters etc.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

I read the English version last year or so, so I'm not too keen on re-reading it just yet. I'm working on Return of the Shadow though, and it's always interesting to hear discussion.

There should be a Let's Read on Discworld too, even though it's a bit harder to catch up on all 42 (eventually) books if you don't already have them. Although I'm almost done with that too.

 

[notsol337]

I would jump in, but I read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in January!

 

[Loxley]

Nice collection of books there. I like the cover of that edition of the Fellowship.

Yeah that whole set is probably my favorite in terms of cover art.

Houghton-Mifflin actually began distributing the newer editions with updated covers a few years back before I had managed to grab The Return of the King, but thankfully Barnes & Noble sells older editions of books on their website so I snagged it before it went completely out of print.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Yeah that whole set is probably my favorite in terms of cover art.



Houghton-Mifflin actually began distributing the newer editions with updated covers a few years back before I had managed to grab The Return of the King, but thankfully Barnes & Noble sells older editions of books on their website so I snagged it before it went completely out of print.

The new covers certainly lack the character of those pictured.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Oh yes, of course, we start the Fellowship today.

Week one: May 11th - 17th

A Long-expected Party
The Shadow of the Past
Three is Company

 

[Gabriel_Logan]

Oh yes, of course, we start the Fellowship today.

Week one: May 11th - 17th

A Long-expected Party
The Shadow of the Past
Three is Company

I've gotten through the first two chapters already, will read the Three is a Company either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[ScottSullivan]

One thing that's interesting is how they don't really fear being on "The road" as much in the book as in the movie. They mention it once or twice about not being scene, but the theme of the ever seeing eye and the wring wraiths being able to detect the ring long distance isn't really there.

The book seems to focus on them asking/threatening hobbiton residents and smelling for the ring bearer

 

[Edmond Dantès]

One thing that's interesting is how they don't really fear being on "The road" as much in the book as in the movie. They mention it once or twice about not being scene, but the theme of the ever seeing eye and the wring wraiths being able to detect the ring long distance isn't really there.

The book seems to focus on them asking/threatening hobbiton residents and smelling for the ring bearer

The Nazgul were slightly misconstrued by Peter Jackson and the writers of the film. Fear was their greatest weapon and only one of the Nazgul really had a heightened sense of the One; Khamûl. The only one of the Nazgul named in the Legendarium and in the film it's him who we predominantly see stalking the hobbits.

 

[Delicious Waffles]

I've gotten through the first two chapters already, will read the Three is a Company either tonight or tomorrow.

Same for me as well.

 

[Vashetti]

The Nazgul were slightly misconstrued by Peter Jackson and the writers of the film. Fear was their greatest weapon and only one of the Nazgul really had a heightened sense of the One; Khamûl. The only one of the Nazgul named in the Legendarium and in the film it's him who we predominantly see stalking the hobbits.

That's interesting, you'd think it'd be the Witch King. I'll start reading maybe today, but most likely tomorrow.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

The will of Bilbo is interesting. It's amusing for me to compare hobbit laws with UK legislation.

For a will to be valid the formalities of S9 of the Wills Act 1837 have to be adhered to;

• In writing;
• Intention by testator to give effect to the will;
• Signed by the testator;
• Signed and attested by two witnesses in presence of testator (rather than seven for the hobbits and in red ink no less);

Of course the testator should be 18 or over (unless certain special exceptions apply), which Bilbo certainly was.

(Probably different for hobbits considering when they 'come of age')

Not only that but 'mental capacity' in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the test in Banks v Goodfellow. Did Frodo coerce Bilbo into making the will?

Did Bilbo revoke all previous wills? It certainly seems like it.

Clearly Bilbo made provision for his whole estate to be distributed effectively, without a partial intestacy arising. Specific legacies certainly and the gift of Bag End to Frodo. Frodo clearly was appointed as executor, but I doubt a Grant of Probate was needed. As for inheritance tax, well, you never know. Did hobbits have the equivalent of a Nil Rate Band? What was their rate of tax? And what of Family Provision for those who felt that the will did not provide for them in a satisfactory manner?

Did the hobbits have an equivalent of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975? And could Otho have had a claim? Only under the ordinary standard if he was been maintained by Bilbo and was dependent on him. Highly doubtful indeed.

Lobelia did however get what she wanted in the end.

Yes, very amusing.

 

[DuffDry]

Finished the prologue and first two chapters today. One of the reasons I consider Fellowship Tolkien's best work is the sheer variety found in it. Each chapter feels so very different, while also important and pertinent. I'll be back to run through with more details once I've wrapped up Chapter 3. I've highlighted several passages so far and will probably start jotting down some notes.

 

[Gabriel_Logan]

Finished the prologue and first two chapters today. One of the reasons I consider Fellowship Tolkien's best work is the sheer variety found in it. Each chapter feels so very different, while also important and pertinent. I'll be back to run through with more details once I've wrapped up Chapter 3. I've highlighted several passages so far and will probably start jotting down some notes.

Shadow of the Past might be the greatest info dump of all time.

 

[DiddysKongQuest]

I'm starting my first ever read of LOTR right now. Pretty excited for some late night reading.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Speaking of the Shadow of the Past; one of the more subtle changes in the film involved the time at which the information was relayed to Frodo. In the book, during the daylight hours and in the film during the night. Some may prefer the manner in which the film depicted that sequence, others in which Tolkien portrayed that sequence.

Another thing to note is the fact that Gandalf refers to Sauron as "the Great". Others referred to him him in less than nice terms, but Gandalf, of course, was well aware of Sauron's origins and his fall from grace. Two angelic beings of the same order, older the planet itself. Of the first of Eru's (god) creations. Sauron was great once, before his Master's discord turned him from the Light.

 

[Garryk]

So I'm reading through the prologue last night and I find it very interesting that there were Hobbit analogues for all of the major races. Harfoots and Dwarves; Stoors and Man; and Fallohides and Elves. I assume the Stoors are whom Deagol and Smeagol were descendants since they were the "river folk." Were the Shire Hobbits descendants of the Harfoots? That would make sense to me since Gandalf aligned the dwarves with Bilbo in There and Back Again.

I wonder if Hobbits were a mutation of the other races. The less fortunate children that were hidden away. Maybe that would explain why none of the historical texts from the other races make much mention of them.

 

[AbsentMindedProf]

I've gotten through the first two chapters, and a re-watched the movie on Saturday. Two comparisions have stood out to me so far. The first is that Jackson was very true to the first chapter. Much of the dialogue and action is straight from the book. The second chapter is where the movies start to diverge, and it's perfectly understandable. Chapter two is a real info dump with a lot of dialogue, which would really have slowed down the movie. Jackson did take a lot of the important/good quotes from that chapter and moved them to other places in the movie, and when he moved quotes he left them almost entirely intact. Another divergence in chapter two that I had remembered but forgotten was surprised by how different it was. The time between Bilbo's party and when Frodo sets out. In the movies in seems to be a relatively short time, maybe a year or so. In the book it's around 25 years between the party and when Gandalf and Frodo have their discussion about the ring, what it is and what should be done. I think it really highlights how resistant hobbits can be to the power of the ring. During that entire time Sauron is growing in strength, and the power of the ring is probably growing as well. I have to imagine that most men and elves would have been thoroughly corrupted by the ring in that time, but it seems to have minimal affect to Frodo.

One final tidbit that I found interesting is that Gandalf actually physically handles the ring in the second chapter, and he's the one that tosses it into the fire.

I'm really enjoying this reread. These are some of my favorite books of all time, and it's been too long since I've read them.

 

[VistraNorrez]

Haven't read the books since prior to each movie coming out. So it's very interesting going back. Halfway through Chapter 2.

I figured I would cast th characters as their movie counterparts, but only Ian Holm has felt definitive. McKellan is there at times, but not always. I don't picture Elijah Wood at all. The dialogue is largely intact comlaring scenes, but I read them quite differently, well except for Bilbo. I don't thin this makes the film bad of course, just different.

As it's been 10+ years reading the books and having seen the films multiple times since, I'm really enjoying this reread a lot. It's like dusting off my brain. And being nearly 30 and not a teen of course I have a better appreciation for what I'm reading. The history elements are far not engrossing.

And I wonder how LotR was anticipated at the time. The Hobbit had been around quite a while at that point and I wonder what people thought when they first learned of this "sequel". Was it a surprise? Was there anticipation? Skepticism? In today's age people react so extreme to sequels. It's rapturous or complete derision. EdmondDantes, any insight on that?

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Haven't read the books since prior to each movie coming out. So it's very interesting going back. Halfway through Chapter 2.

I figured I would cast th characters as their movie counterparts, but only Ian Holm has felt definitive. McKellan is there at times, but not always. I don't picture Elijah Wood at all. The dialogue is largely intact comlaring scenes, but I read them quite differently, well except for Bilbo. I don't thin this makes the film bad of course, just different.

As it's been 10+ years reading the books and having seen the films multiple times since, I'm really enjoying this reread a lot. It's like dusting off my brain. And being nearly 30 and not a teen of course I have a better appreciation for what I'm reading. The history elements are far not engrossing.

And I wonder how LotR was anticipated at the time. The Hobbit had been around quite a while at that point and I wonder what people thought when they first learned of this "sequel". Was it a surprise? Was there anticipation? Skepticism? In today's age people react so extreme to sequels. It's rapturous or complete derision. EdmondDantes, any insight on that?

You have to take into account that it was the fifties. As such, the building of anticipation, buzz etc. were handled very differently back then (articles in newspapers, radio broadcasts, worth of mouth etc.). It wasn't seen so much as a surprise, more of a "what took so long?"

The critics of such fantasy were skeptical as always, writing it off as more childish nonsense. But in terms of its reception, there was a split. Some adored the Fellowship on its release, Tolkien's harshest critics (some in academic establishments) poured scorn on it.

The following is WH Auden's review of the Fellowship of the Ring, first published in 1954:

Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called "The Hobbit" which, in my opinion, is one of the best children's stories of this century. In "The Fellowship of the Ring," which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults, to those, that is, between the ages of 12 and 70. For anyone who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present. All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure etc.; normally this is a good Object which it is the Hero's task to find or to rescue from the Enemy, but the Ring of Mr. Tolkien's story was made by the Enemy and is so dangerous that even the good cannot use it without being corrupted.

The Enemy believed that it had been lost forever, but he has just discovered that it has come providentially into the hands of the Hero and is devoting all his demonic powers to its recovery, which would give him the lordship of the world. The only way to make sure of his defeat is to destroy the Ring, but this can only be done in one way and in one place which lies in the heart of the country; the task of the Hero, therefore, is to get the Ring to the place of its unmaking without getting caught.

The hero, Frodo Baggins, belongs to a race of beings called hobbits, who may be only three feet high; have hairy feet and prefer to live in underground houses, but in their thinking and sensibility resemble very closely those arcadian rustics who inhabit so many British detective stories. I think some readers may find the opening chapter a little shy-making, nut they must not let themselves be put off, for, once the story gets moving, this initial archness disappears.

For over a thousand years the hobbits have been living a peaceful existence in a fertile district called the Shire, incurious about the world outside. Actually, the latter is rather sinister; towns have fallen to ruins, roads into disrepair, fertile fields have returned to wilderness, wild beasts and evil beings on the prowl, and travel is difficult and dangerous. In addition to the Hobbits, there are Elves who are wise and good, Dwarves who are skillful and good on the whole, and Men, some warriors, some wizards, who are good or bad. The present incarnation of the Enemy is Sauron, Lord of Barad-Dur, the Dark Tower in the Land of Mordor. Assisting him are the Orcs, wolves and other horrid creatures and, of course, such men as his power attracts or overawes. Landscape, climate and atmosphere are northern, reminiscent of the Icelandic sagas.

The first thing that one asks is that the adventure should be various and exciting; in this respect Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, "The Fellowship of the Ring" is at least as good as "The Thirty-Nine Steps." Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory. Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one's own childhood.

Lastly, if one is to take a tale of this kind seriously, one must feel that, however superficially unlike the world we live in its characters and events may be, it nevertheless holds up the mirror to the only nature we know, our own; in this, too, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded superbly, and what happened in the year of the Shire 1418 in the Third Age of Middle Earth is not only fascinating in A. D. 1954 but also a warning and an inspiration. No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than "The Fellowship of the Ring."

The following is a review of the Two Towers by Donald Barr.

In 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit," intended for a children's book but touched here and there with terrors which had the darker involvements of myth, and at times even with that "clang and groan of great iron" which Chesterton heard in the medieval chansons de geste.

Now, in a trilogy called "The Lord of the Rings," Mr. Tolkien continues somewhat differently his story of the third age of Middle Earth, a world inhabited by wizards, men, hobbits (courteous little oddities, like English householders three feet high with long hairy feet), elves and dwarves; and by the gorging orcs and blind Black Riders and their lord. It is a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world. It seems, as any very distant age does, to be especially sunlit, and to be shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness.

"The Two Towers" is the second part. The Dark Lord of Mordor has begun his assault on the sanity and grace of the world. The Fellowship of the Ring, the tiny band on whom rests all the hope of the resistance, is scattered; the hobbit Frodo plunges toward the frontiers of Mordor itself, carrying the fatal Ring that must be unmade in the fires of the Enemy domain. This, whatever that summary may sound like, is not for children; nor is it for whimsy-lovers and Alice quoters. Neither is it a dead moral apparatus festooned with poesy, like "The Faerie Queen." It is an extraordinary work-pure excitement, unencumbered narrative, moral warmth, barefaced rejoicing in beauty, but excitement most of all; yet a serious and scrupulous fiction, nothing cozy, no little visits to one's childhood.

This work is much admired by certain critics who have always practiced a highly conscious and proud intellectualism. Mr. Tolkien's fantasy is not metaphysical like E. R. Eddison's, nor theological like George MacDonald's; his appeal to the intellectuals is therefore interesting. After the first World War serious fiction tended toward literary Platonism or Berkeleyism. With a kind of brilliant tedium (called "sensitivity") novels refined on mental states. The authors assumed that the thought was the real act, of which the action was only a dubious copy. Plots gave way to insights. The clashing of multifarious big rhetorics, which had made Dickens and Scott, was replaced by the inner voice, very small but not still. Never had the distance between the popular appetite and serious art been so great as it then inevitably became. Many people, of what we might call the middle taste, turned to detective stories, which at least had plot; recently they have been reading science fiction, which has strong action. That "The Lord of the Rings" should appeal to readers of the most austere tastes suggests that they too now long for the old, forthright, virile kind of narrative.

Mr. Tolkien is a distinguished British philologist, and the language of his narrative reminds us that a philologist is a man who loves language. His names are brilliantly appropriate; the tongues he has devised for the elves and orcs perfectly express, just by their rhythms and phonemic systems, the natures of these races; his style is full of joy, the joy that follows the making of a perfect gesture. But more than this, the author has had intimate access to an epic tradition stretching back and back and disappearing in the mists of Germanic history, so that his story has a kind of echoing depth behind it, wherein we hear Snorri Sturluson and Beowulf, the sagas and the Nibelungenlied, but civilized by the gentler genius of modern England.

And finally WH Auden's review of the Return of the King:

In "The Return of the King," Frodo Baggins fulfills his Quest, the realm of Sauron is ended forever, the Third Age is over and J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" complete. I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments. Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion: either, like myself, people find it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it, and among the hostile there are some, I must confess, for whose literary judgment I have great respect. A few of these may have been put off by the first forty pages of the first chapter of the first volume in which the daily life of the hobbits is described; this is light comedy and light comedy is not Mr. Tolkien's forte. In most cases, however, the objection must go far deeper. I can only suppose that some people object to Heroic Quests and Imaginary Worlds on principle; such, they feel, cannot be anything but light "escapist" reading. That a man like Mr. Tolkien, the English philologist who teaches at Oxford, should lavish such incredible pains upon a genre which is, for them, trifling by definition, is, therefore, very shocking.

The difficulty in presenting a complete picture of reality lies in the gulf between the subjectively real, a man's experience of his own existence, and the objectively real, his experience of the lives of others and the world about him. Life, as I experience it in my own person, is primarily a continuous succession of choices between alternatives, made for a short-term or long-term purpose; the actions I take, that is to say, are less significant to me than the conflicts of motives, temptations, doubts in which they originate. Further, my subjective experience of time is not of a cyclical motion outside myself but of an irreversible history of unique moments which are made by my decisions.

For objectifying this experience, the natural image is that of a journey with a purpose, beset by dangerous hazards and obstacles, some merely difficult, others actively hostile. But when I observe my fellow-men, such an image seems false. I can see, for example, that only the rich and those on vacation can take journeys; most men, most of the time must work in one place.

I cannot observe them making choices, only the actions they take and, if I know someone well, I can usually predict correctly how he will act in a given situation. I observe, all too often, men in conflict with each other, wars and hatreds, but seldom, if ever, a clear-cut issue between Good on the one side and Evil on the other, though I also observe that both sides usually describe it as such. If then, I try to describe what I see as if I were an impersonal camera, I shall produce not a Quest, but a "naturalistic" document.

Both extremes, of course, falsify life. There are medieval Quests which deserve the criticism made by Erich Auerbach in his book "Mimesis":

"The world of knightly proving is a world of adventure. It not only contains a practically uninterrupted series of adventures; more specifically, it contains nothing but the requisites of adventure... Except feats of arms and love, nothing occurs in the courtly world-and even these two are of a special sort: they are not occurrences or emotions which can be absent for a time; they are permanently connected with the person of the perfect knight, they are part of his definition, so that he cannot for one moment be without adventure in arms nor for one moment without amorous entanglement... His exploits are feats of arms, not 'war,' for they are feats accomplished at random which do not fit into any politically purposive pattern."

And there are contemporary "thrillers" in which the identification of hero and villain with contemporary politics is depressingly obvious. On the other hand, there are naturalistic novels in which the characters are the mere puppets of Fate, or rather, of the author who, from some mysterious point of freedom, contemplates the workings of Fate.

If, as I believe, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded more completely than any previous writer in this genre in using the traditional properties of the Quest, the heroic journey, the Numinous Object, the conflict between Good and Evil while at the same time satisfying our sense of historical and social reality, it should be possible to show how he has succeeded. To begin with, no previous writer has, to my knowledge, created an imaginary world and a feigned history in such detail. By the time the reader has finished the trilogy, including the appendices to this last volume, he knows as much about Tolkien's Middle Earth, its landscape, its fauna and flora, its peoples, their languages, their history, their cultural habits, as, outside his special field, he knows about the actual world.

Mr. Tolkien's world may not be the same as our own: it includes, for example, elves, beings who know good and evil but have not fallen, and, though not physically indestructible, do not suffer natural death. It is afflicted by Sauron, an incarnate of absolute evil, and creatures like Shelob, the monster spider, or the orcs who are corrupt past hope of redemption. But it is a world of intelligible law, not mere wish; the reader's sense of the credible is never violated.

Even the One Ring, the absolute physical and psychological weapon which must corrupt any who dares to use it, is a perfectly plausible hypothesis from which the political duty to destroy it which motivates Frodo's quest logically follows.

To present the conflict between Good and Evil as a war in which the good side is ultimately victorious is a ticklish business. Our historical experience tells us that physical power and, to a large extent, mental power are morally neutral and effectively real: wars are won by the stronger side, just or unjust. At the same time most of us believe that the essence of the Good is love and freedom so that Good cannot impose itself by force without ceasing to be good.

The battles in the Apocalypse and "Paradise Lost," for example, are hard to stomach because of the conjunction of two incompatible notions of Deity, of a God of Love who creates free beings who can reject his love and of a God of absolute Power whom none can withstand. Mr. Tolkien is not as great a writer as Milton, but in this matter he has succeeded where Milton failed. As readers of the preceding volumes will remember, the situation n the War of the Ring is as follows: Chance, or Providence, has put the Ring in the hands of the representatives of Good, Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn. By using it they could destroy Sauron, the incarnation of evil, but at the cost of becoming his successor. If Sauron recovers the Ring, his victory will be immediate and complete, but even without it his power is greater than any his enemies can bring against him, so that, unless Frodo succeeds in destroying the Ring, Sauron must win.

Evil, that is, has every advantage but one-it is inferior in imagination. Good can imagine the possibility of becoming evil-hence the refusal of Gandalf and Aragorn to use the Ring-but Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself. Sauron cannot imagine any motives except lust for domination and fear so that, when he has learned that his enemies have the Ring, the thought that they might try to destroy it never enters his head, and his eye is kept toward Gondor and away from Mordor and the Mount of Doom.

Further, his worship of power is accompanied, as it must be, by anger and a lust for cruelty: learning of Saruman's attempt to steal the Ring for himself, Sauron is so preoccupied with wrath that for two crucial days he pays no attention to a report of spies on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, and when Pippin is foolish enough to look in the palantir of Orthanc, Sauron could have learned all about the Quest. His wish to capture Pippin and torture the truth from him makes him miss his precious opportunity.

The demands made on the writer's powers in an epic as long as "The Lord of the Rings" are enormous and increase as the tale proceeds-the battles have to get more spectacular, the situations more critical, the adventures more thrilling-but I can only say that Mr. Tolkien has proved equal to them. From the appendices readers will get tantalizing glimpses of the First and Second Ages. The legends of these are, I understand, already written and I hope that, as soon as the publishers have seen "The Lord of the Rings" into a paper-back edition, they will not keep Mr. Tolkien's growing army of fans waiting too long.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Edmund Wilson was one of the harshest critics. His review from 1956:

n 1937, Dr. J. R. R. Tolkien, an Oxford don, published a children's book called The Hobbit, which had an immense success. The Hobbits are a not quite human race who inhabit an imaginary country called the Shire and who combine the characteristics of certain English animals - they live in burrows like rabbits and badgers - with the traits of English country-dwellers, ranging from rustic to tweedy (the name seems a telescoping of rabbit and Hobbs.) They have Elves, Trolls and Dwarfs as neighbours, and they are associated with a magician called Gandalph and a slimy water-creature called Gollum. Dr. Tolkien became interested in his fairy-tale country and has gone on from this little story to elaborate a long romance, which has appeared, under the general title, The Lord of the Rings, in three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. All volumes are accompanied with maps, and Dr. Tolkien, who is a philologist, professor at Merton College of English Language and Literature, has equipped the last volume with a scholarly apparatus of appendices, explaining the alphabets and grammars of the various tongues spoken by his characters, and giving full genealogies and tables of historical chronology. Dr. Tolkien has announced that this series - the hypertrophic sequel to The Hobbit - is intended for adults rather than children, and it has had a resounding reception at the hands of a number of critics who are certainly grown-up in years. Mr. Richard Hughes, for example, has written of it that nothing of the kind on such a scale has been attempted since The Faerie Queen, and that for width of imagination it almost beggars parallel.

It's odd, you know, says Miss Naomi Mitchison, one takes it as seriously as Malory. And Mr. C. S. Lewis, also of Oxford, is able to top them all: "If Ariosto", he ringingly writes, "rivalled it in invention (in fact, he does not), he would still lack its heroic seriousness." Nor has America been behind. In The Saturday Review of Literature, a Mr. Louis J. Halle, author of a book on Civilization and Foreign Policy, answers as follows a lady who - lowering, he says, her pince-nez - has inquired what he finds in Tolkien: "What, dear lady, does this invented world have to do with our own? You ask for its meaning - as you ask for the meaning of the Odyssey, of Genesis, of Faust - in a word? In a word, then, its meaning is 'heroism.' It makes our own world, once more, heroic. What higher meaning than this is to be found in any literature?"

But if one goes from these eulogies to the book itself, one is likely to be let down, astonished, baffled. The reviewer has just read the whole thing aloud to his seven-year old daughter, who has been through The Hobbit countless times, beginning it again the moment she has finished, and whose interest has been held by its more prolix successors. One is puzzled to know why the author should have supposed he was writing for adults. There are, to be sure, some details that are a little unpleasant for a children's book, but except when he is being pedantic and also boring the adult reader, there is little in The Lord of the Rings over the head of a seven-year-old child. It is essentially a children's book - a children's book which has somehow got out of hand, since, instead of directing it at the « juvenile » market, the author has indulged himself in developing the fantasy for its own sake; and it ought to be said at this point, before emphasizing its inadequacies as literature, that Dr. Tolkien makes few claims for his fairy romance. In a statement prepared for his publishers, he has explained that he began it to amuse himself, as a philological game: the invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'. » He has omitted, he says, in the printed book, a good deal of the philological part; « but there is a great deal of linguistic matter... included or mythologically expressed in the book. It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic esthetic,' as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what it is all about.'... It is not 'about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, religious or political. » An overgrown fairy story, a philological curiosity - that is, then, what The Lord of The Rings really is. The pretentiousness is all on the part of Dr. Tolkien's infatuated admirers, and it is these pretensions that I would here assail.

The most distinguished of Tolkien's admirers and the most conspicuous of his defenders has been Mr. W. H. Auden. That Auden is a master of English verse and a well-equipped critic of verse, no one, as they say, will dispute. It is significant, then, that he comments on the badness of Tolkien's verse - there is a great deal of poetry in The Lord of the Rings. Mr. Auden is apparently quite insensitive - through lack of interest in the other department.- to the fact that Tolkien's prose is just as bad. Prose and verse are on the same level of professorial amateurishness. What I believe has misled Mr. Auden is his own special preoccupation with the legendary theme of the Quest. He has written a book about the literature of the Quest; he has experimented with the theme himself in a remarkable sequence of sonnets; and it is to be hoped that he will do something with it on an even larger scale. In the meantime - as sometimes happens with works that fall in with one's interests - he no doubt so overrates The Lord of the Rings because he reads into it something that he means to write himself. It is indeed the tale of a Quest, but, to the reviewer, an extremely unrewarding one. The hero has no serious temptations; is lured by no insidious enchantments, perplexed by few problems. What we get is a simple confrontation - in more or less the traditional terms of British melodrama - of the Forces of Evil with the Forces of Good, the remote and alien villain with the plucky little home-grown hero. There are streaks of imagination: the ancient tree-spirits, the Ents, with their deep eyes, twiggy beards, rumbly voices; the Elves, whose nobility and beauty is elusive and not quite human. But even these are rather clumsily handled. There is never much development in the episodes; you simply go on getting more of the same thing. Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form. The characters talk a story-book language that might have come out of Howard Pyle, and as personalities they do not impose themselves. At the end of this long romance, I had still no conception of the wizard Gandalph, who is a cardinal figure, had never been able to visualize him at all. For the most part such characterizations as Dr. Tolkien is able to contrive are perfectly stereotyped: Frodo the good little Englishman, Samwise, his dog-like servant, who talks lower-class and respectful, and never deserts his master. These characters who are no characters are involved in interminable adventures the poverty of invention displayed in which is, it seems to me, almost pathetic. On the country in which the Hobbits, the Elves, the Ents and the other Good People live, the Forces of Evil are closing in, and they have to band together to save it. The hero is the Hobbit called Frodo who has become possessed of a ring that Sauron, the King of the Enemy, wants (that learned reptilian suggestion - doesn't it give you a goosefleshy feeling?). In spite of the author's disclaimer, the struggle for the ring does seem to have some larger significance. This ring, if one continues to carry it, confers upon one special powers, but it is felt to become heavier and heavier; it exerts on one a sinister influence that one has to brace oneself to resist. The problem is for Frodo to get rid of it before he can succumb to this influence.

NOW, this situation does create interest; it does seem to have possibilities. One looks forward to a queer dilemma, a new kind of hair-breadth escape, in which Frodo, in the Enemy's kingdom, will find himself half-seduced into taking over the enemy's point of view, so that the realm of shadows and horrors will come to seem to him, once he is in it, once he is strong in the power of the ring, a plausible and pleasant place, and he will narrowly escape the danger of becoming a monster himself. But these bugaboos are not magnetic; they are feeble and rather blank; one does not feel they have any real power. The Good People simply say « Boo » to them. There are Black Riders, of whom everyone is terrified but who never seem anything but specters. There are dreadful hovering birds-think of it, horrible birds of prey! There are ogreish disgusting Orcs, who, however, rarely get to the point of committing any overt acts. There is a giant female spider - a dreadfu1 creepy-crawly spider! - who lives in a dark cave and eats people. What one misses in all these terrors is any trace of concrete reality. The preternatural, to be effective, should be given some sort of solidity, a real presence, recognizable features - like Gulliver, like Gogol, like Poe; not like those phantom horrors of Algernon Blackwood which prove so disappointing after the travel-book substantiality of the landscapes in which he evokes them. Tolkien's horrors resemble these in their lack of real contact with their victims, who dispose of them as we do of the horrors in dreams by simply pushing them or puffing them away. As for Sauron, the ruler of Mordor (doesn't the very name have a shuddery sound.) who concentrates in his person everything that is threatening the Shire, the build-up for him goes on through three volumes. He makes his first, rather promising, appearance as a terrible fire-rimmed yellow eye seen in a water-mirror. But this is as far as we ever get. Once Sauron's realm is invaded, we think we are going to meet him; but he still remains nothing but a burning eye scrutinizing all that occurs from the window of a remote dark tower. This might, of course, be made effective; but actually it is not; we never feel Sauron's power. And the climax, to which we have been working up through exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine large close-printed pages, when it comes, proves extremely flat. The ring is at last got rid of by being dropped into a fiery crater, and the kingdom of Sauron « topples » in a brief and banal earthquake that sets fire to everything and burns it up, and so releases the author from the necessity of telling the reader what exactly was so terrible there. Frodo has come to the end of his Quest, but the reader has remained untouched by the wounds and fatigues of his journey. An impotence of imagination seems to me to sap the whole story. The wars are never dynamic; the ordeals give no sense of strain; the fair ladies would not stir a heartbeat; the horrors would not hurt a fly.

Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes as those above? The answer is, I believe, that certain people - especially, perhaps, in Britain - have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted in Elsie Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy and which seems to have made of Billy Bunter, in England, almost a national figure. You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched.

As for me, if we must read about imaginary kingdoms, give me James Branch Cabell's Poictesme. He at least writes for grown-up people, and he does not present the drama of life as a showdown between Good People and Goblins. He can cover more ground in an episode that lasts only three pages than Tolkien is able to in one of this twenty-page chapters, and he can create a more disquieting impression by a reference to something that is never described than Tolkien through his whole demonology.

Philip Toynbee said the following:

There was a time when the Hobbit fantasies of Professor Tolkien were being taken very seriously indeed by a great many distinguished literary figures. Mr. Auden is even reported to have claimed that these books were as good as “War and Peace”; Edwin Muir and many others were almost equally enthusiastic. I had a sense that one side or the other must be mad, for it seemed to me that these books were dull, ill-written, whimsical and childish. And for me this had a reassuring outcome, for most of his more ardent supporters were soon beginning to sell out their shares in Professor Tolkien, and today those books have passed into a merciful oblivion.

 

[kess]

That Edmund Wilson review is the perfect, sniveling form of the kind of review one might have read in a American political journal deigning to review a popular (and very British) fantasy. So snide, patronizing, and condescending, this literary tradition lives on today in the form of websites like Gawker.

 

[Erevador]

And finally WH Auden's review of the Return of the King:

Thanks for sharing that. Fascinating to hear Auden's take on Tolkien. It is pleasing to see that he seemed to understand Tolkien's work and made the effort to approach it on its own terms.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Thanks for sharing that. Fascinating to hear Auden's take on Tolkien. It is pleasing to see that he seemed to understand Tolkien's work and made the effort to approach it on its own terms.

Yes indeed. It is however a shame that he never got to read the material of the First and Second Ages that he referred to in his review of the Return of the King. He died four years before the publication of The Silmarillion. One wonders what he would have made of it.

 

[Any Questions]

Omg. This thread is packed with treasure

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

I'm in!

I'm also still kicking myself for not picking up the millennium edition back when it was available. It would be so rad to have this in seven volumes. It's weird to me they haven't republished it in that format since.

 

[Loxley]

Finally found time to start reading a bit today, these first few chapters of Fellowship are like a literary warm hug to me. Reading The Return of the Shadow alongside them is very interesting.

You know, even though many people have him pegged as some sort of old curmudgeon for protecting his father's works so vehemently, Christopher Tolkien has a pretty wry sense of humor. His apparent annoyance with his own inability to decipher what the heck his father was trying to do or say with certain characters or events is pretty amusing. You can almost hear him throw his hands up at certain points and say, "...at least I think that's what he was trying to do/say? I think that's where he got the name from? I don't know, I probably never will. Moving on..."

 

[DuffDry]

Finished chapter 3 last night and placed a hold on The Return of the Shadow at my local library. Will be picking that up tomorrow and hopefully joining in the discussion.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Finally found time to start reading a bit today, these first few chapters of Fellowship are like a literary warm hug to me. Reading The Return of the Shadow alongside them is very interesting.

You know, even though many people have him pegged as some sort of old curmudgeon for protecting his father's works so vehemently, Christopher Tolkien has a pretty wry sense of humor. His apparent annoyance with his own inability to decipher what the heck his father was trying to do or say with certain characters or events is pretty amusing. You can almost hear him throw his hands up at certain points and say, "...at least I think that's what he was trying to do/say? I think that's where he got the name from? I don't know, I probably never will. Moving on..."

Yes, the flak Christopher receives from some is highly unnecessary. Those who know him or have known him speak very highly of him as a person.

 

[Rhomega Beta]

Read the first three chapters myself. First two chapters have lots of exposition to give. I'm surprised to see Gandalf telling the whole story of Smeagol then and there, mostly because I'm so used to it being at the beginning of Return of the King. The third chapter threw me for a loop, since this is practically nothing like in the movie, save the first encounter with the Nazgul.

I also have to ask: where the heck are they going? The book say they were heading west, then southeast. I've been looking at a map of the Shire, and I can't find this Brandybuck place anywhere.

 

[DuffDry]

Read the first three chapters myself. First two chapters have lots of exposition to give. I'm surprised to see Gandalf telling the whole story of Smeagol then and there, mostly because I'm so used to it being at the beginning of Return of the King. The third chapter threw me for a loop, since this is practically nothing like in the movie, save the first encounter with the Nazgul.

I also have to ask: where the heck are they going? The book say they were heading west, then southeast. I've been looking at a map of the Shire, and I can't find this Brandybuck place anywhere.

The Brandywine river is to the east of Hobbiton, which is where they're going.

Here's a map detailing the journey as it's been traveled so far:

It's a quick snap shot from Fanstad's Atlas of Middle-Earth, which is an awesome companion piece for times like this.

 

[Loxley]

Bump.