Lord of the Rings

This fact scarred me as a child - gimme Legolas anyday

or indeed a LEGOlass

And I've never read the books.

Have the bbc radio drama on my phone atm, it's magical. Tracer otm about pronunciation too.

Loved the radio version as a kid, we had it in a big box of about twenty cassettes.

i had this weird bbc adaptation of the hobbit when i was a kid, i remember all the pronunciations seemed kind of off ('gan-DALF,' 'gol-LOOM,' etc). otherwise it was pretty awesome.

Yeah the Hobbit and LOTR BBC productions were made with a different team each, I think.

Do very much love the LOTR BBC version for sure. It's a nice blend of classically stage-y radio drama -- lots of overexplaining what the characters are seeing when a visual version wouldn't need it and all -- and good atmosphere and detail. Easily the most accurate adaptation done in terms of the actual book itself. IIRC there was a late fifties adaptation for BBC Radio as well -- wonder what that was like?

There were also American radio versions done of both the Hobbit and LOTR -- The Hobbit was passable but LOTR, ack.

What's killin me is that it's v clear that jackson had the actors take pointers from this, then the cunt goes and writes his own dialogue/scenes.

what;s killing me is Aragornth lithp come on admit it it's fucken hilarious

Im not getting it tbh? Its weird his talkin all country lord like tho

is this the OG adaptation from the 80s? i swear when i re-listened years later that lisp was all i cd hear

Check yr tape heads maybe

has anyone heard the bbc adaptation of asimov's 'foundation'?

i had the american "the mind's eye" dramatization of the hobbit that aired on npr in 1980, listened to it approx a zillion times

nv u sonbitch i can hear nothing but lithp now

soz dude, thought it was obvious

you've given me a yen to hear it again if that's any consolation, altho this Foundation adaptation sounds pretty cool

i had the american "the mind's eye" dramatization of the hobbit that aired on npr in 1980, listened to it approx a zillion times

Yeah that was the clusterfuck I mentioned. The elves sounded like they were squeaky toy dolls on helium, except for Elrond, so sounded like an old bloated Santa Claus reject.

I struggle to imagine a worse elrond than weaving tbrr

I don't think Weaving was that bad (he's pretty good at conveying the Elvish holier-than-thou attitude towards the other races), but IMO it wasn't very wise to cast an obviously balding guy to play a character who's supposed to be eternally young.

He was, tho, that bad. He was woeful. He looked like the mekon. He looked like the dudes from mars attacks. He talked like he had challenges. He played it one dimensional frosty headmaster rubbish. Jackson ballsed up every elf, goes without saying, but his treatment of elrond and galadriel are gross incompetencies of the highest order may he shit needles forevermore.

I struggle to imagine a worse elrond than weaving tbrr

Arnie or Stallone would have been worse.

I struggle to imagine a worse elrond than weaving tbrr

Trust me. It IS that bad. A little backstory:

It was produced by “The Mind’s Eye” theatre company, who at the time were responsible for numerous adaptations of classic literature for radio. The script, written by Bernard Mayes, was an abridged version of the book. Its eleven hour running time focused significantly on the dialogue, with much of the back history and expositionary narration removed.

The production was very low budget, drawing upon local amateur actors and friends of the producer. There was extensive use of library music and home made sound effects. Due to scheduling issues the cast often recorded their dialogue separately which leads to some somewhat stilted exchanges of dialogue in key scenes. The actors also had to provide multiple voices and their own accents are at times apparent. It is also clear that the production was not driven by a Tolkien scholar. The pronunciation of many names and places is often incorrect and some aspects of the plot have been reduced so excessively it leaves many questions unanswered to those unfamiliar with the story.

Oh and you get Tom Bombadil too. Rather too much.

It's all on YouTube! You've been warned, but if you want to start somewhere...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTledKaqoJ4

Oh man, so much love for these adaptations! The LOTR one in particular I've just listened to death since I was a lad. Remember being astonished years after the fact to discover that it was really Bill Nighy playing Sam Gamgee in it.

Peter Woodthorpe (aka Del Boy's dad) as Gollum is absolutely 100% spectacular the whole way through this, he walks the line between creeping villain and pitiful wretch perfectly, makes your skin crawl. And he does it in a way that rarely if ever descends into the kind of comedy space that Serkis' version sometimes ended up occupying. Special mention for Gandalf too - I love Ian Mac, but Michael Hordern is just another level, when he gets angry in this I get chills.

The atmosphere and production throughout is wonderful, I love how frequently they bring the music in, although tbf some of the soprano little-boy opera grates at times (Boromir's prophecy etc). But the circling strings --> staccato stabs --> mournful theme of the main title music haunted my childhood.

Is the BBC Hobbit version mentioned further up-thread the one with Heron Carvic (also briefly of Dick Barton Special Agent) as Gandalf? Guy's voice fascinates me, it's so soft and oily. The music in this is also quite fun, slightly odd little medieval motif that plays at the start and end of each section. And the song that the goblins sing as the dwarves and Bilbo are taken down to Goblin Town used to give me nightmares, honest to god. TERRIFYING!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10826867/Viggo-Mortensen-interview-Peter-Jackson-sacrificed-subtlety-for-CGI.html

“Anybody who says they knew it was going to be the success it was, I don’t think it’s really true,” he says. “They didn’t have an inkling until they showed 20 minutes in Cannes, in May of 2001. They were in a lot of trouble, and Peter had spent a lot. Officially, he could say that he was finished in December 2000 – he’d shot all three films in the trilogy – but really the second and third ones were a mess. It was very sloppy – it just wasn’t done at all. It needed massive reshoots, which we did, year after year. But he would have never been given the extra money to do those if the first one hadn’t been a huge success. The second and third ones would have been straight to video.

Mortensen thinks – rightly – that The Fellowship of the Ring turned out the best of the three, perhaps largely because it was shot in one go. “It was very confusing, we were going at such a pace, and they had so many units shooting, it was really insane. But it’s true that the first script was better organised,” he says. “Also, Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back. In the first movie, yes, there’s Rivendell, and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes; it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10.

Sounds right enough from here.

too easy on the clown by far obv but at least he has achieved clarity with time

Hey, smart enough to recognize a fluke was a fluke. I'm still very fond of the original three films but I'm kinda glad I kept my expectations for the new ones at the level of 'just give me a good Smaug.' Which they did, so.

nb the clown there is jackson, i dig viggo

Ha, I got that, trust me.

Zeal of a convert---from ILB's Speculative etc thread:
I finally read The Lord of the Rings--finally, that is, after putting it down in early high school--thee appointed tyme of maximum susceptibility--upon realizing that I was expected to go epically Questing with a hero who had furry toes. Apparently a lot of detractors don't get past the first forty pages, or the first sentence, about Bilbo's elevetny-first birthday, but the whole point is the pull from light to dark and back again, and the way they get mingled---leaders on all levels, incl. drafted patrol leader Frodo, are subject to temptation, corruption (in the sense of physical and psychic wounds, some of them permanent/recurring--plus of course effects on Middle-earth, "the circles of the world," as mentioned briefly, in an end in one of the Appendices of this 1990s one-vol edition: circles, like the Ring, which must have their own kind of end, limits, be something, some thing, however elusively so, 'til the reader can peer through them, as Tom Bombadil does, and see something beyond. He does it and laughs, it's all nonsense to him, seeing his unchanged turf, but he knows it's real enough to others, with real enough, inescapable consequences for all, even a victorious Quest/Anti-Quest means the Grail/Anti-Grail will both save the world and destroy it, in terms of sucking the magic out of it (no spoiler, Gandalf tells Frodo that right off, when he drafts him for the destruction of the precious, corrupting Ring, cos magic's gone as far as it can go; time for the cycles continue by secular means, and slow down the death spiral, anyway)
One limitation: we're told the significance of most things as they happen---which is better than being swamped by codes, as can happen with Gene Wolfe--but an enjoyable exception is being allowed to ponder the fate of Sauron. I think (aside from his own obsessive psycylcling through Ages) seeing though his stone has intensified his focus on the Ring---stones don't lie, but their views, the contexts they create/intensify, given the viewer's own anxieties, antagonisms, hopes and dreads, have a lasting and sometimes entrapping affect on several characters. So yeah, I disagree with those who claim Tolkien doesn't do psychology--and the effect of the stone is not so far from science fictional concerns (note also the networking of stones).
And when the ship sails, it sails, buddy. Not that it doesn't leave some real nice (and not-at-all nice) stuff behind. "There's a feeling I get/When I look the West." Eh, guess I better go listen to some more of those folk-death-or-doom-metal promos (in recent years, Wino's way ahead of the pack). Also, now I need to check out the ancient albums of Cirith Ungol. But book-wise, should I read more Tolkien, beyond The Hobbit?
PS: search "Tolkien" on The New Yorker site, get lots of good results, especially Auden, Gopnik, and Anthony Lane.

― dow, Sunday, May 4, 2014 10:54 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also the stress of leadership on all levels is a big part of the fateful psychology.

― dow, Sunday, May 4, 2014 11:05 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still awaiting advice on other Tolkien books.

But it’s true that the first script was better organised

To be fair, it was also a simpler story. One party is easier to follow than three parties. But I completely agree that it was the best of the movies.

Dow: well that's a lot to unpack! Mark S is the one who I think would lock into your read most readily and would be able to advise, so take what I'm about to say with grains of salt: If you want to read the Silmarillion as the book that some characters in LOTR would read themselves (which is how it's intended) then that'll help. If anything it'll play up the idea of cycles -- Tolkien himself went through some major revisions of Middle-earth as conceit in the last ten years of his life so if anything the final three manuscript collections -- Morgoth's Ring, The War of the Jewels and to a degree The Peoples of Middle Earth -- might be of particular interest, though I'd say you'd want to read them only after having read The Silmarillion first. The Children of Hurin expands one key tale from there in full.

Beyond that: Unfinished Tales has some of my favorite writing of his, especially 'Aldarion and Erendis,' which is as close as he ever got to a domestic drama. And of the many shorter works, Farmer Giles of Ham is a goofy-ass lark, but Smith of Wootton Major and Leaf by Niggle are complementary tales on the same idea of creativity and its worth, the latter story in an explicitly Catholic context.

what Ned said.

Silmarillion = tolkein's Kalevala basically

Great, thanks so much, guys! All those appendices in the edition I read were helpful too. Extended entries in the online Science Fiction Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia of Fantasy were what convinced me to try again: knowing what would happen just whetted my appetite for seeing how he would manage all that.
My local library has a lot of Tolkien and related material, like the mostly excellent Tales Before Tolkien, in which Douglas Anderson rounds up stories by authors JRR praised, and/or was evidently influenced by, others he might well have read, plus some cool ringers. Will indeed consult with Mark.

Yeah, the appendices were Tolkien's way of getting the then-unpublished Silmarillion material out there a bit, but even then it was only a very swift redaction. Definitely piqued my interest for sure first time through! Anyway, enjoy the further reading!

lots of great arcane lore to enjoy in 'the simarillion' and 'unfinished tales', like about gandalf and the istari etc. wish there were ten times as much

http://s5775.p9.sites.pressdns.com/istari-2/

Everyone otm nice post dow

Thanks. Wondering about his recently published version of Beowulf too.

Not quite out yet, I think! A few more weeks? Been meaning to catch up with that and the other translations/scattered efforts that Christopher T. has overseen.

dow otm. reminds me that i started rereading LOTR last year then got distracted by a move, need to get back on that.

http://dubs.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/lord-of-the-rings-completely-screwed-over-is-back-3/

just watched this rectnly

Meantime, this is really fascinating stuff to learn: a recording from the only fan event of its kind Tolkien ever seems to have attended, from 1958 in Rotterdam, has surfaced:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noble-smith/jrr-tolkien-reveals-the-t_b_5373529.html

wow, that's really awesome!

photo of tolkien there is absolutely wonderful, too.

Yeah it's great. Almost one of a kind, much like the event.

Awesome! Ready for the whole thing. Auden, one of Tolkien's students, attended a groovy Middle-Earth event in 1966: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/12/w-h-audens-defense-of-the-lord-of-the-rings.html

I'd heard about that. Amazing to imagine what that was like.

But the circling strings --> staccato stabs --> mournful theme of the main title music haunted my childhood.

in my head since I woke up

Shore's 'history of the ring' right? Awesome piece. The Rosenman stuff for bakshi also rules tho

no! the BBC theme from the 1981 radio version.

but yeah I like shores.

if Jackman took on the silmarillion in the style of the precis of the history of the ring from the movies I'd be OK with that I guess.

Hugh Jackman, definitely meant him.

he BBC theme from the 1981 radio version.

― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac)

Great theme!

Also like Shore, probably the best of the current heroic movie composers.

reading fellowship again with my children and it becomes clear to me - and them - that despite his status as like the dirk pitt of middle earth, strider manages to fuck up just about every part of the journey from bree to rivendell

hes kinda dropped in it and admits as much many times

And whose idea was it to take the Caradhras Pass, eh?

that sense of being hunted and lost, the "behind enemy lines" vibe of the first book through rivendell is so great.

i think strider being somewhat obscure in his abilities- capable, trusted by gandalf, sure, but unsure, imperfect, certainly not up to taking on the forces hes up against and knows it- is critical to the shift from hobbit-sized danger to a story that becomes a young adult/adult touchstone.

ppl will refer to lotr as a work that birthed every cliche going but there's something quite striking in how useless direct confrontation is with a powerful enemy is, and how *badly* it turns out time and time again.

only second tier characters want to fight, gandalf and strider are the most powerful respectively in magic and arms of the fellowship and they spend large parts of the story avoiding having to demonstrate this and the story makes a point of demonstrating why, imo

of course, the movie glorying in special moves like a final fantasy cut scene gets this utterly wrong also.

might read it again with this new-sprung take tbh

'What will happen?' said Merry. 'Will they attack the inn?'

'No, I think not,' said Strider.

but two grafs later Butterbur is telling Nob to bar the doors and the hobbits not to go to their rooms - and the next morning they find their appointed beds to have been knifed in the night

which attack strider avoided

this is a witch hunt

they make for Weathertop even though the Riders 'are likely to make for Weathertop themselves'. even though they tramp 5 days through the Midgewater Marshes to avoid the Riders they're now heading straight for the place the Riders probably are too!

he allows Sam and Pippin to trample the ground of the dell behind this key staging post, essentially wiping its browser history, and says 'I wish I had waited and explored the ground down here myself'

of standing on the actual tippy top of Weathertop itself, he says he was 'too careless on the hill-top. ... It was a mistake for three of us to go up and stand there so long.'

as they build a campfire, scared out of their minds, Strider says 'there is little shelter or defense here' - thanks, Strider - 'but fire shall serve for both.'

the Riders promptly attack them anyway.

'Is this troll country?'

'No!' said Strider.

two days later they find a door built into the rock of a hillside. Strider: 'It is certainly a troll-hole.'

all i'm saying is, teach the controversy

in a terrible scenario its very ilxy of you to focus all your judgement of the guy on your side trying to do something to avoid almost inevitable disaster who is already too hard on himself for the imperfections inherent in the attempt

imo

xp no im enjoying it

fresh lotr takes are good. the book is quite vague in a lot of aspects!

lol i'm not mad at strider. it's just that as a kid i'd imagined him as kind of impossibly competent - the quiet hero who could follow any trail, who could suss out any danger. and now i'm reading it and just see him making all kinds of bad calls! just straight up wrong about stuff.

Strider is running up against the limit of the usefulness of the guidance he received when he was captain of a stolen Nazi U-Boat and his master chief advised him “Don’t ever say ‘I don’t know!’ Those words will kill a crew, dead as a depth charge!”

Now Strider finds himself on land, in charge of completely untrained amateurs, he realizes he still can’t say “I don’t know,” even though he really absolutely does not know. Except about which fights they are guaranteed to lose.

There's a deep cut.

Anyway thank you for potentially contributing a subject to a future episode of the podcast hey did I mention I have a Tolkien podcast thanks great you're all wonderful people.

the quiet hero who could follow any trail, who could suss out any danger.

i think tolkien in LOTR is big on even these guys being fuck all use against a cohort of witch kings who know where you are going while you are carrying four gravy babies who think they are on a daytrip to bath.

also fwiw and iirc strider is v much aware that hes heading where hed rather not go but its gandalf fucked that up

its all good general/sergeant comment on how it is once the feet hit the ground

ofc silmarillion and legends in lotr and elsewhere are full of the heroes that just did it and were legends (obv) or even whose failures were grand, decisive simple events

imo thats him being a bit meta about nature of legends and distilled tales and what they are used for vs "oh fuck we're here now and its not beowulf its wilfred owen oh fuck oh fuck ohfuck"

dulcimar et decorum est pro patria moria, as i shall title the essay on the topic

nb none of my apologies for strider should be taken as discouraging the continued attacking tracer, this court martial is v invigorating imo

pippin is for the fuckin noose if we're going to be consistent, mind

Imagining if Gandalf just threw him down the guard room shaft.

strider/aragorn's transcendent heroism is something literature can't convey, implies one of the greatest 20th century professors of english literature. see 1) all the references to post-hobbit - pre-fellowship northern ranging, 2) however the hell he and the phantoms commandeer the ships of the corsairs to win the day at the battle of the pelennor fields, and 3) he and faramir taking it to the dregs of mordor and the southrons in the return of the king appendices detailing the dawn of the fourth age

helms deep worth a mention youd say

that and 2 & 3 all disasters (albeit heroic doomed-to-fail let's try anyway attempts) salvaged by deus ex machina resolutions mind you

lucky generals and all that

To be fair he is revealed as a master aromatherapist toward the end of the last volume, is there no lack of strings to his bow? He probably gives a great massage too.

wait had he a bow

Deems is a big LOTR fan, eh? Surprising.

that sense of being hunted and lost, the "behind enemy lines" vibe of the first book through rivendell is so great.

Yes, that harrowed, paranoid, doomed flight from The Shire is my favorite Tolkien, no, favorite fantasy sequence, of all time (with the possible exception of The Children of Turin).

i think strider being somewhat obscure in his abilities- capable, trusted by gandalf, sure, but unsure, imperfect, certainly not up to taking on the forces hes up against and knows it- is critical to the shift from hobbit-sized danger to a story that becomes a young adult/adult touchstone.

I think another element in Strider and Gandalf's approach is that by revealing oneself, you give Sauron the ability to move directly against you. This limits his options to basically, run, quickly, as your little Hobbit legs will carry you.

the war of the ring was primarily a guerrilla campaign, in thus lecture i-

Insurrection of the rings, you were going to say

whole escapade is a black op, the only reason the reader doesn’t catch on at first is because you start in a place so removed from the emperor’s touch that he’s forgotten about it. Everything else is just moving from one supposed safehouse to another until the game is up. The Bourne movies? Ronin? Just remakes of fellowship with some acronymic mooks in place of orcs

Office of Reclamation of the Claims of Sauron

playing D&D is what taught me rangers are garbage

That’s some ouroboros right there

playing dundee taught me the same thing

tracer

i appreciate that you have a lotnon your plate right now

but tbh i was somewhat expecting another aragorn competence review by now and am a little put out

I did think that Théoden sorted himself out a bit sharpish, all Gandalf needed to do was unleash his staff and say "remember you're a womble king" or whatever, and then Théoden's all like "begone Gríma I am Lord of Rohan" and the problem's solved. Far be it from anyone to say the books should have been even longer, but I think JRR could have padded that sequence out a little.

sorry, that was meant to be womble, oops

lol darragh i've been saving those up. my kids make it about 5 minutes before they conk out. this is the longest council of Elrond EVER.

thats one of the moments in the book that may actually be helped by the visuals of the movie, bernard looks right fuckin pasty at the start and hes a new man be the time the magic words are through

tolkien has a lot about the power of words, but its possibly fair to say that his dialogue doesnt quite carry the load he thinks it does so those passages that rely on stirring-do fall a bit flat

plenty of "and it seemed to all who watched that his majesty shone through and all were in awe so they said yes to his plan" which yknow is a handy resolution

xp

oof and the council of elrond is one you really wanna get over quickly

mind u, no blame on them for falling asleep during tbh.

'and then he softly began to chant a song...'

GROANS

'do you expect me to remember all these NAMES??'

i hope you're giving it the full peter falk throughout

for a thousand page fantasy, LOTR is actually light on names tbh

frustratingly little is said about Cirdan The Shipwright

im not one of our scholars of the rest of the legendarium but he may well show up in some of the other scraps

shipwrong moar laik

círdan does very little iirc, basically arrives in the shipyard in the [whateverth #whocare] age, starts building ships to leave again, sucking air in over his teeth any time an elf turns up to say i'm going back west in june have a ship for me then

also he looks after one of the three elven rings until gandalf arrives then hands it over pronto (which again is not a wearisome task imo)

i need to write these things down on my hand in biro for when my kids ask

mark s with the typical bourgie disdain for the overheads and planning schedule required for oceanic travel imo

i am merely following tolk's lead here

the elf payment plan is cloudy at best, everyone has treasure hoarded or weed for sale

everyone else i mean

Are the elf ships reusable? I forget.

everybody's tolkien don't @ me

i imagine when they reach the blessed west they just fall apart like a clown car in the circus, seeing as at a key point in the voyage theyve had to FLY

also who is going to bring them back, after the istari there is no traffic whatsoever in the other direction

See those ships? I built those ships with my own two hands. And do they call me Cirdan The Shipwright? Do they fuck. But you shag just one sheep...

Well, the things I miss when I'm asleep.

thread

1) A stranger than fiction Roman ring mystery thread: this enigmatic Roman gold ring was found in a ploughed field near Silchester in 1785. The square bezel has a portrait of the pagan goddess Venus, inscribed backwards SUNEV for use as a signet ring by the owner. Curiously... pic.twitter.com/Ls0QcDVNzq

— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) July 10, 2020

Yeah we were just discussing it over in our blog network channels -- an interesting supposition but not a conclusive argument I think.

watched the first film last night with my other half (she'd never seen it). Very strange seeing this again 20 years after it first got released(!). I remember thinking it was absolutely marvellous when it first came out, like the future of epic entertainment was spooling out in front of me.

I have to say, while some of the seams are a bit more visible than they used to be (certain scenes look very green-screened/super-imposed, and the bit where Cate Blanchett's character is declines Frodo's offer of the ring now comes across as unintentionally hilarious), it does hold up for the most part. I still found the scene in the Dwarf mines with the Balrog very exciting.

I was much more aware this time round of a lack of female characters and no people of colour (save, as my partner pointed out, from the Orcs, which is certainly problematic).

as well as the orcs the getup of the sallow-skinned human followers of Sauron is sort of a pan-asian hodgepodge. samurai bedouins. id assume this is an issue with the source material, though ive never read LOTR.

i watched the trilogy for the first time 2 years ago at christmas. i enjoyed them very much but there is a bit of an issue with overlong battles in the second and third films, did find my mind wandering a little bit when it just becomes monotonous. i do think the films also do look very shit in parts, but there's some millennial nostalgia in me for the early 00s visuals so i wasn't too bothered by it

the orcs and their “black speech” very turkish/central asian to my ears in the book

gollum is often called a little “black” fellow

it’s not great

iirc the nazgul are often called “Black men” by fearful naive hobbitses who don’t know who they are; when i read the story to my kids i translated as “Black rider” in real-time which still isn’t great but at least to my mind emphasises the rider-ness, the horses, the black cloaks etc rather than their actual bodies (of which there is none actually iirc apart from the GLOWING EYES) (no, not “gloin” eyes quiet in the back)

Definitely an issue with the source material - I imagine the offending passages are easily findable online with a simple search for “Tolkien racist”.

I personally don’t find Tolkien’s eurocentrism too problematic; given his era it’s very mild, IMO. But as a middle-aged white guy, I’m happy to be overruled on this.

I like the recent trend of race-blind or race-positive casting in historical & fantasy movies, but 20 years ago the approach/context was very different. I’ve heard that the upcoming Amazon “set in the world of middle earth” series will take the contemporary approach.

Tracer Hand OTM

I have to say, while some of the seams are a bit more visible than they used to be (certain scenes look very green-screened/super-imposed, and the bit where Cate Blanchett's character is declines Frodo's offer of the ring now comes across as unintentionally hilarious)

All true and notable at the time tbh

Yes the other peoples and lack of girl warriors is from the fantasy book written in the early-middle last century by an aulfella

I would say that "black men" for nazgul is v v v readable as in fallen/evil members of the overall race of men tbh tho

Wheel of time series looks to be addressing the inbuilt issues here as they develop for screen, tho obv the issues jordan wrote in between the genders are legendary to readers too

Galdalf kills the Goblin King in the Soviet version of THE HOBBIT, 1985. pic.twitter.com/7Mp2pRHKJo

— Humanoid History (@HumanoidHistory) January 18, 2021

Lol how have we not heard about this til now

It's exactly like I always imagined as a kid. ;_;

watched the second and third films back to back last night. noticed how the orcs coded a lot "whiter" by the third film, but they managed to go unnecessarily orientalist in the final epic battle scene with the oliphaunts and their riders

Forgot to chime in on this earlier! But suffice to say, yeah, issues are existent while at the same time the source material could have been a lot worse. (His big 'out' in many ways was the flash of thought about the dead Haradrim warrior that Sam has in TTT, transposed in the film to a short speech by Faramir -- basically wondering if said dead warrior was truly evil, had been threatened to participate, etc. I read that as mostly a war veteran (from the winning side, of course) thinking back on his experiences and what he saw.)

Our next podcast episode will be about orcs in general and my cohost Oriana, who is leading the discussion, has thoughts and a half. The last one she led was on Eowyn and it's one of our best episodes, I think.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/20

That glorious Russian epic is here with subtitles. Best Smaug Ever.
https://archive.org/details/TheFantasticJourneyOfMr.BilboBagginsTheHobbit

Just watched the first one (extended) with one of my kids. Wouldn't change a frame. I maintain it is some sort of miracle that these movies turned out as well as they did.

Would agree. *sense deems's wrath* Would still agree. But would also definitely say that the first film is the one that works best on its own.

Why on earth (middle or otherwise) would you need any of them to work on their own?!

Well the first one in particular absolutely had to sell the whole thing to start with. Which it did, and I think the ending scene, particularly between Sam and Frodo, is astonishingly well done. As for the middle one, that was more the creative team going nuts about how best to create a film that had a 'proper' ending, so they sure felt it had to end on a particular note. Not the one I think I would have done but hey, I'm not a filmmaker.

That glorious Russian epic is here with subtitles. Best Smaug Ever.

71 mins! That's how you do a Hobbit film, Mr. Jackson.

I agree from now slightly dusty memory that the first LoTR is the best, and also has the best extended edition.

Look

Its the best of the three, and maybe its almost as good as you couldve hoped for (hobbiton through to reaching rivendell, moria, sundering are miraculous tbh)

But anything with elves is not just not-great, it's bad. Add in the terrible darby o'gill banshee on blanchett (seriously that scene has to be up for future correction) and youve already got enough to say that "wouldnt change a frame" is gushing beyond what's sensible

Its the kind of easy management that let him off to do the rest the way he did- increasingly unbothered by performances or plot/pacing from the books (which, while possible to improve upon for a trilogy, were never going to be improved upon by jackson & partners tin ears) and focused more on director's ego and his SFX company

Im not here to berate ilxors, honestly im not, but the end result of praising forays into shite when a limited-but-useful clown like jackson is given power is what you got with the hobbit

And the cost isn't having to watch the hobbit, because what moron watched the hobbit, its the movies that you can see us having had if someone had taken a good hard grip on his neck during an initial showing of his first well-padded cosplay elf scene and hissing "cut. yr. kiwi. amateur. dramatics. out"

I think you’re understating the amount that Viggo Mortensen sells the whole thing; his entrance (iconic!) and the death of Boromir are two of my favourite scenes in the trilogy.

xp you’re right and you should say it

Viggo is absolutely *critical*

Aragorn, sam, frodo, gandalf- all nailed. Thank god because very quickly out of that lot you start to get into tbh the poorer harry potter movies territory

Mortensen himself agrees with me obv. Cool guy.

Sean bean is here to do a job and does it well, as he pretty much always does tbfttstbc

I’m pretty biased on this because I love Hugo Weaving but I liked him as Elrond even though I feel he was a bit miscast...? Idk, all the elves are terribly weak sauce as you say. Also, Christopher Lee was great.

You can pick out lots of good casting, highlights etc even after FOTR (wormtongue, david wenham, all of rohan is good imo, i like that the elves is cockney sleeeegs, etc) but agreed that as soon as hugo weaving feys on set you immediately get the message that jackson hasnt gotten elves qua tolkien, hes in a very different elf place and is pawing for air before going off and making up scenes with zombies and werewolves to make himself feel better

I mean the frustrating thing is that sam neill was right there, ffs. and at least quasi antipodean

and id agree w/u that even saying that he is as good as we get with elves like

Josh in Chicago: drops rock into bottomless well just to see

Ned: pls do not-

Me, from depths: did some cunt just praise peter jackson

I like Sam Neill, but idk where you’d situate him! HW is also quasi antipodean lol? He’s spent like half his life in Australia.

See we’re getting along so well itt, makes u think. Unless you’re going to start on how Tom Bombadil should have been included, cos my book challop is fuck that guy, I’m so glad he got left out.

Honestly the Hobbit is shockingly bad, I had to stop watching it after about 45 minutes and it’s absolutely shocking despite the amounts of money lavished on it. That they stretched it out to three films is among the worst of his crimes.

Pfffft

I know weaving is antipod, I'm suggest he out regardless and sam in as elrond. Hugo can find another gig (not denethor he was fine, but of that type)

I can live without bombadil for practical reasons, now that there is distance. A movie that introduces the likes of that extraneous-to-plot detail/power without having him come in and save things at the end would bamboozle the kids.

And its easy to get on when we're both criticising stuff, we're irish

xp i was well gone by the time hed gotten approval for multiple hobbits, short of casting michael keaton as bilbo he'd never have enticed me back

I actually wasn’t that impressed by Éowyn, but it’s been a while since I watched so idr why. He had a very different idea of her than I did, and that killed me cos she’s like one of two female characters in the books worth mentioning and almost by default (but also not) my favourite.

Well he boosted arwen but the marketing around that was opportunistic and icky, so yeah it was galadriel and eowyn left (and i think both were cat well, and of the two then eowyn was at least left alone to do a job)

Im aware this is not high praise of the effort, like.

https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/1/13/orcs-britons-and-the-martial-race-myth-part-i-a-species-built-for-racial-terror

Re: the orc stuff from last week, I liked this essay about the anti-Mongolian sentiment inherent in Tolkien's orcs. The below is a quote from one of his letters

The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

Ned, definitely let me know when the Orcs episode is up, it's definitely something my partner and I were talking about when we watched the films (she hadn't seen them before, so was only seeing it through a 2021 context)

I agree that the elves are weak, but ... who cares, it's not a movie about elves. And I like Blanchett's banshee turn, it's cheap but it keeps it grounded. I don't know if I made it past one "Hobbit" movie, or if I even finished that one, but those movies alone show how good these movies are, because they fail at practically every single thing these movies succeed at. They are more high tech, yet look cheap. They're indulgent and childish. They feel gratuitously padded whereas the skeletons of these movies are so solid they seamlessly supported the addition of *more* material after the fact (imo). The "Hobbit" films are the ones akin to the "Harry Potter" movies, which, as the AV Club's awesome columnist recently underscored, rarely come off as more than mediocre product. I dunno, thanks to one of my kids I've had to watch all those "Harry" movies again, and at their very best they're competent with glimmers of inspiration. But those moments are fleeting and far between and not enough to elevate the movies above their serviceable purpose. But "LotR," yeah, they *could* have been that bad, but they were not, and I suppose credit must go to Jackson. I think even the effects have aged well, but so has the acting/casting, the script, the editing, the score, etc. Just the way it handles such dark material but doesn't come off a grim slog like so many other big budget films in its wake. It's always got a sense of adventure to it and, well, fantasy. Here's that column (about the third one, but also the others):

https://film.avclub.com/the-return-of-the-king-was-the-last-time-a-blockbuster-1846074880

Of course, Jackson has made literally nothing but crap since. He's 0/5 for subsequent blockbuster spectacles, though I guess the WWI doc found a different way to wow.

Well we disagree about everything just posted but that's ok

Ha! Different strokes, etc. But I've seen enough shitty blockbusters to recognize one that gets shit right, let alone one that's just as good (imo) 20 years later. Most movies aren't good two *hours* later! Then again, I have no allegiance whatsoever to Tolkien or those books beyond my love of Led Zeppelin, so maybe that is a factor.

If the framing is LOTR trilogy vs just about any other successful box office movie franchise since then id agree it holds up, btw

If the framing is vs the book (and the promising start in FOTR) thats where i start to pick major faults

And i do think it has that platform to build on (a coherent trilogy plotted out) where most franchise efforts dont

But yeah, look, if they only actual comparison (and i cant think of another) is harry potter then jackson looks great, granted

I actually wasn’t that impressed by Éowyn, but it’s been a while since I watched so idr why. He had a very different idea of her than I did

Mirando Otto gave a good, coherent performance, I thought, but they kind of softened Éowyn compared to the image I have of her in the books. Also, she didn't get to deliver her best lines.

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.

Another general gripe about the movies is that a lot of Tolkien's high-flown dialogue is dropped (or brought down to earth). Personally, I love that stuff.

Not sure everyone saying things like "ere long didst I tarry in that fell place" all the time would have worked in a Hollywood blockbuster tbh. Also every time Liv Tyler comes on screen I start singing "Dude Looks Like a Lady" to myself, kind of takes you out of the story but that's my fault I suppose.

oh what an elvish lady

about 70% of the books is detailed description of natural detail, wind direction, the particular angle described by a ridge meeting a defile, the direction a path takes in relation to landforms. frankly reading them again with my kids the specificity was stunning. ned probably knows one way or the other, but i think tolkien must have made detailed drawings or even models of the environs he was describing, and seemingly had a grasp of seasonal weather patterns and how those intersected with the above

it's been a long time since i've seen them but apart from a few montage-ish long shots of the hobbits traveling through some stunning landscapes i don't remember jackson even seeming to try at enmeshing the characters (or the audience) into the physical world in that way, which to me is the biggest departure from the books even more than the various plot deviations or ridiculous elves or the unconscionable omission of bombadil (though speaking of enwebment in the natural world, bombadil is the ur-figuration of this, so makes sense that jackson would drop him i guess)

I watched them all again recently and totally agree Fellowship is the one that stands up. I don't particularly like what they did with the elves (the lighting, the earnestness) and the longer the hobbits are around the more it becomes too saccharine and samey (I found myself forwarding Sam and Frodo in Return). Also agree Viggo and McKellen carry it though I think Bernard Hill gets all the best lines.

"Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell?"

(curious why @ndy s3rk1s has yet to be mentioned in the +/- columns, is he rated neutral?)

Josh in Chicago: drops rock into bottomless well just to see

Ned: pls do not-

Me, from depths: did some cunt just praise peter jackson

I knew.

Ned, definitely let me know when the Orcs episode is up

Will do -- I usually post updates on the podcasts thread on here. Should be up by Feb. 8 at the latest.

Also, she didn't get to deliver her best lines....Another general gripe about the movies is that a lot of Tolkien's high-flown dialogue is dropped (or brought down to earth). Personally, I love that stuff.

It's one of those hard calls; honestly I'm surprised as much got in as it did. Two of Aragorn's best hero moments -- his short declamation to Sam and Frodo as they ride past the Argonath/into Nan Hithoel and the 'draws sword in front of Eomer to underscore he is not fucking around' bit when they first meet -- didn't make the cut, but I'm not surprised they didn't.

Anyway this also serves as a reminder that while the 4K version came out a couple of months ago we're due some sort of overall everything-and-the-kitchen-sink edition in a few months with all sorts of things (the blooper reels? the library scene? newly recorded stuff? who knows). But you have to buy the Hobbit films with it so that may not appeal to all, shall we say.

Oh and Tom Breihan's Popcorn Champs series hit ROTK the other week and it's a pretty good read on the film(s) and the impact

https://film.avclub.com/the-return-of-the-king-was-the-last-time-a-blockbuster-1846074880

Oh whoops, just saw that was posted earlier! Well, to repost.

Also I do love that Russian Hobbit -- there's also the Finnish LOTR, sorta, from 1993:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHFKdgjEugs

The big thing here was limiting the story to just Frodo/Sam and eventually Gollum after the breaking of the Fellowship, which in terms of scope/budget probably wasn't a bad idea.

the score on these films is absolutely superb. the Ring theme and the Hobbiton theme especially - instantly recollectible

Great post Tracer, i was wondering how yr read was going

The dialogue is a hard one. personally, it reads well most of the time because im in that space, but out of the wrong mouth it absolutely clangs (even place names can jar in a way they simply dont on the page).

Id have to say that weaving is the start of where this happens for me, and from there its up and down- hill certainly absolutely nails his part and the speech sounds perfect coming from him so thats a good shout.

Hated serkis/gollum for the most part, with exceptions. Dont even have suggestions as to how to improve it except that it was too giddy, too quick in delivery. But its hard to beat tolkiens readings, or the bbc radio version there.

Yeah Shore just did a ridiculous, RIDICULOUS slam dunk throughout on that front, he deserved every accolade. When our podcast did an episode on the LOTR musical from the 2000s, my conclusion was that for all the firepower they had -- Vartiina and A R Rahman -- on that score, Shore simply created a better 'musical' all around just via the soundtrack.

up and down- hill

No puns pls

ned probably knows one way or the other, but i think tolkien must have made detailed drawings or even models of the environs he was describing, and seemingly had a grasp of seasonal weather patterns and how those intersected with the above

He absolutely got into a lot of specifics when he could -- he did do a variety of drawings and illustrations along the way, most of which have been published in the art collections, but his primary foci were the maps; while Christopher drew the standard versions of them for publication, he in turn was drawing on his father's maps, which were heavily revised and insanely detailed. In terms of weather, moon phases, etc. he mentions doing such research when possible in letters to Christopher. It was all part of the absolute grounding of the story in something understandable and 'real,' and Tolkien absolutely wanted that when possible. (It's one reason why the various stories in the appendices feel like just that -- there's a lot of talk of personalities but very little of place beyond generalities; one of the biggest 'what if' moments that was showcase in the Unfinished Tales were various key battles in Gondor's history and the founding of Rohan, where we get some striking descriptions leading up to big events but no events themselves, whereas there's a hell of a detailed, vividly described story where Gondor's steward grants the lands that would become Rohan where the setting is crucial.)

Which in turn lends itself to those fossils and the appendices serving perfectly as found history tbf

Dry, officialese documents, descriptions of the admin work around events, tolkien working himself up to the big field events but always perhaps shying away and shaving another piece off the prep-and-fit first to set his nerve or just as sheer procrastination

One thing working on the podcast has reminded me of is how often Tolkien would just randomly introduce a character or an idea and then just obsess over it sooner or later. Or how with Smith of Wootton Major he was writing a preface to a George Macdonald story, started dreaming up a story of his own as an illustrative example for it, then abandoned the preface immediately and just wrote that instead!

Boy, would I love it if Tom expanded and compiled all his various AVClub essays into a book.

Speaking of expansion, I can't even remember when I last saw the theatrical versions of these films. I've always felt the expanded versions were an improvement in every way, or at least that there was nothing added that I would take back out, but I honestly can't recall what's new or not. Is there anyone that prefers the theatrical versions?

As tolkien himself said, the only criticism of the books is that they are roo short, makes sense that the movies expanding with legit content improves them *no bonus warg/zombies ffs

Well tolkien said "too short" but in the movies jackson obv had to put a twist on it for they tourism board money

Is there anyone that prefers the theatrical versions?

AFAICR, the Fellowship EE does nothing but improve, the Two Towers extra scenes are hit and miss, and the Return EE mainly just pads out an already overlong movie.

I prefer the theatrical FOTR, it’s not that good a film that I want to watch more of it, even as someone who had read all the books multiple times by the time it came out. Actually I hate when there is only the extended edition available somewhere.

Killer in the return is how long they have for the rubbish, and how they cut the absolutely critical scouring of the shire

*watch that much more of *, ffs. My own scouring, isn’t it

the scouring of the shire might be my favorite part of rotk the book. i liked how bleak it was, and how it showed that things weren't just sunshine and rainbows in the shire during the war like the hobbits imagined it might be. also, gave the hobbits a chance to demonstrate how formidable they became as a result of their adventures.

i get why they cut it, though it echoes with my main criticism with the trilogy as an adaptation: the increased focus on battle sequences diminished the role of the hobbits in the final two films.

Iirc, the only part of King that really drags is the ending(s), and given I don't think that's what's (further) padded out in the extended cut - it's *already* extended in the theatrical - I don't remember anything else dragging the movie down further. For some reason I recall the second and third movies in particular gaining conclusions to various storylines, establishing otherwise absent motives, that sort of thing, all improvements to the story if not necessarily improvements to the films.

I think Tom's observation in his column that the series benefitted from being shot all at once was otm. There was no fiddling with tone or pacing or pleasing test audiences or whatever in between films, and even as far as the extended stuff goes, needed or not it's all of the same quality and fits right in.

I think it serves well as the antidote to the saccharine/comedy flavour the hobbits mainly inhabit as pointed out above too

Its the heartpiece of the entire story four each of the four central characters (and in three very different ways) and as a story of war written by a veteran it hits home very strongly indeed and to drop it for any reason is imo leaden at best but obv actually unforgivable

"Scouring of the Shire" is wonderful as a reader, as a last conflict during those bittersweet chapters as the book is finally winding down. Working it into a long movie would have been a challenge.

(xxp)

Viggo has surprisingly few lines, especially in the first film, I noticed. But he is definitely a strong presence

They definitely did adjust things in response to audience reactions over time -- thus while the two 'big' Legolas moments in TTT were part of the original filming (Legolas getting on the horse, though they had to figure that out in post, and the shield-as-surfboard), the 'that still only counts as one!' sequence in ROTK was specifically dreamed up for the final touch-up shoots on that in summer 2003 precisely because of how well those TTT moments had gone over. But yeah, it's generally consistent.

As I'm sure deems will agree, this is one reason why the radio series works so well -- the Scouring is there in depth, if not in full.

idk jmm, there's many decent templates for how to run a "returning home" close to a war movie and there's not much different to this

My friend & I are doing a mini bookclub re-reading of the LOTR series

The thing that def stands out is whats been noted above re specificity of weather, environment, geography etc. And i did see something somewhere that tolkien essentially started w the map/s and wrote the story according to the map

Also his style of writing feels confounding at times, like x thing happens that is then retold by other characters in a following chapter, or like starting Two Towers with...walking
Where you’d normally be “well why would a writer do that” but he’s drawing on medieval storytelling and he’s also chronicling

The thing that I have found most enjoyable about the books is the slow, gentle pace combined with the underpinning (or overpinning) of utmost dread & grim tidings. And the sense of history, the ancient lands theyre journeying upon & the constant reminder that time is a wheel, etc

The characterization of Merry & Pippin, or at least Merry, in the movie is v different. Merry is not at all comic relief, very intuitive & clever & at times almost a leader of the hobbit group early on, Pippin is foolish at times yes but both of them far from slapstick idiots.

And Aragorn not at all conflicted about being King the way they play it up for emo- drama in the movie. he embraces it very matter of factly but is just seeming to sort of want to be of use in his Strider role & have some adventure before he has to do the boring job of ruling (vastly over simplified obv - we joked Aragorn in the books is basically enjoying his “gap year”)

I understand ~most~ of the choices for the LOTR movies & dont personally feel crazy strongly about the differences for the most part but I appreciate Deems holding the line
(I dont disagree on the elves)

Btw, still blows my mind that Viggo was once married to Exene from X.

LOTR is about four english lads from a pretty well off village well entrenched in the victorian class system pulled to war they dont understand and coming back stronger, wounded, wiser

Jacksons LOTR is about orlando bloom surfing a cgi elephant

The characterization of Merry & Pippin, or at least Merry, in the movie is v different. Merry is not at all comic relief, very intuitive & clever & at times almost a leader of the hobbit group early on, Pippin is foolish at times yes but both of them far from slapstick idiots.

✓✓✓✓✓✓

Viggo role that kills me is his carlitos way blink-and-miss-it

Mainly because carlitos way always, always lives in my head as a movie made in 1979 tbh

igh i guffed this part up

Also his style of writing feels confounding at times, like x thing happens that is then retold by other characters in a following chapter, or like starting Two Towers with...walking
Where you’d normally be “well why would a writer do that” but he’s drawing on medieval storytelling and he’s also chronicling

My garbled point was that he is approaching fantasy as a medieval scholar so as a reader my own kneejerk modern desire for narrative & dramatic tension eventually get wrestled to the ground & i really very much enjoy his style where hes almost writing for his own enjoyment & edification, and me the audience just go along for the ride rather than being grabbed by structural tricks etc

again oversimplified but i love him is the upshot

Tolkien a v big walker iirc?

There's something to the heft of the books that many emulators dont manage and the movie misses also in his expertise being language and his hobby being rambling.

Tolkien's days spent on the march, his having bilbo and frodo as walking explorers as a pastime, his orc-driven nightmare runs and the limbo hopelessness of following in its wake, the ashy trudge across mordor which may as well be a continent in the timeless impossibility of it- this is a guy that knows walking like the proverbial eskimo knows snow, this is a guy who could describe gait and step like a wine writer

totally

every now and again he says that the hobbits are “running” and i’m like.. damn. with those packs! just running for hours nbd

he is approaching fantasy as a medieval scholar

Very key. An element which emerges in interesting fashion is his deep love of the Icelandic saga form, which famously generally has its characters and main figures described externally -- IOW, you don't get what makes a character tick from an omniscient narrator sharing internal thoughts, it's all done via outside observation of action and speech, sometimes very flatly. (Characters will die suddenly or brutally and it'll seem like you're just reading along without a change in tone.) Obviously this isn't the entire case -- we get a lot of Sam's internal thoughts the closer we get to the end, for example -- but other characters we're never 'inside' in ways we're more familiar with. Boromir is never a POV character, for instance.

xpost otm

also no one is at his level for giving you specific plant names in any given environment, to the point where if you are up on your botany you can literally see what he’s telling you is being seen

Request lotr board tbh

Someone else do it im cooking

xpost You have reminded me this book is a beautiful indulgence:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/flora-of-middle-earth-9780190276317?cc=us&lang=en&

Father/son team, dad's the academic botanist, son is the hardcore Tolkien fan, and the whole thing is a detailed but also sober-minded treat, suggesting real world analogues as needed and so forth. I learned a lot!

the Icelandic sagas def helps understand his style of storytelling

re medieval stuff, its funny bc both me and my bookclub friend studied Tolkien’s translation of Gawain in college etc & minored in middle english but until now never really pulled all the threads together between the medieval stuff and LOTR etc #lifelonglearning

wow that Flora book looks awesome

We did the Gawain translation for the podcast back in June -- it was good to go back to that, there was a lot I'd forgotten. A very strange work!

I'd say offhand the key non-Tolkien-written books that serve as useful/informative addenda are Carpenter's biography -- though a deeper and more complete study with material and facts that weren't in there is long overdue -- Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth -- Christopher Tolkien used it himself! -- Fonstad's editions of The Atlas of Middle-earth and Wayne Hammond/Christina Scull's editing of Tolkien's artwork and the reader's companion to LOTR. But the Flora book is a real treat too.

i am def interested in reading the biography at some point

Obviously this isn't the entire case -- we get a lot of Sam's internal thoughts the closer we get to the end, for example -- but other characters we're never 'inside' in ways we're more familiar with. Boromir is never a POV character, for instance.

The only POV characters are the hobbits I think? We follow the chase party after Merry & Pippin are kidnapped, but there's nothing internal there, just external description of what's happening. Actually we might get some of Gimli's POV in the Paths of the Dead sequence, but other than that the whole saga really is (largely) written in hobbit-view.

i’ve been reading the nibelungenlied (nbd) and that feels like a big source - german originally but with a scandinavian offshoot that preserves more of its archaic original story than the german version which permuted more. a ring of power, a small creature who forswore love to possess it etc. (lots more women in the nibelung saga tho!)

Tolkien knew it well and translated some portions of it. But when asked about more specific connections he famously replied, "Both rings were round, and that is all."

Yeah but he dismissed everything tbf, i think he rather showily disliked speculation on the meanings of it all

In a few letters i read of his to Auden & others etc, he seemed to have be v self-conscious about his writing, like he was adverse to ascribing highminded motivations & talking about his “craft” bc he didnt want to seem like he was putting on airs

or that was impression i got

at least as far as LOTR etc went

He was definitely cautious, per deems. I think part of him was still surprised the outgrowth of his 'secret vice' turned out to be such a phenomenon. (Which itself is interesting because he'd already had a substantial hit with The Hobbit in the first place.)

for reasons i’m not entirely clear on i started reading the fellowship of the ring the other day.

1 the early conversations between gandalf, bilbo and frodo etc are really charming. i make this observation because of how bad the films are at this tone, managing a sort of imbecile joviality or theatrical menace. one of the pleasant things in the book is the adult to adult conversation between the two and exchanges like this on gollum:

‘

No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’

‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.

now maybe to read the thread lol. i didn’t realise there were so many posts from today.

nice in a sort of yes! otm! way seeing both deems and VG making the same point about the ambulatory pace (and yes the writing by detailed map is v evident if agree)

Tracer covered the snoozeworthiness of the council of elrond upthread tbf

The cloak-and-dagger feeling of that pre-Rivendell section is some of my favourite stuff - evading the shadowy enemy agents to smuggle the secret weapon out of the country.

The movie absolutely nails it, too

Tracer covered the snoozeworthiness of the council of elrond upthread tbf

Fonstad's editions of The Atlas of Middle-earth

I still have my first edition hardcover of this with the dustjacket. It played such a huge role in my love of Middle Earth because I loved maps and they were so insanely detailed. The white, brown, black scheme also made little me think the maps were somehow insanely old. You could just spend an afternoon looking at the travel maps and it was like reading the trilogy over again in a couple of hours.

Agreed that the flight from the Shire is best part of the books and movies.

Gandalf and then Bilbo in turn leaving the young hobbits totally underprepared works beautifully for the adolescent reader, feeds into the success of the narrative unfolding in a manageable way

I still have my first edition hardcover of this with the dustjacket. It played such a huge role in my love of Middle Earth because I loved maps and they were so insanely detailed.

I had that as well, and what a treasure. I do wish there'd been hardcovers of the updated ones. (Fonstad's other atlases, even for series of less-than-notable stuff, were also treats -- she passed too early but I'm glad she got to see the films and appear in some of the supplements.)

Gandalf and then Bilbo in turn leaving the young hobbits totally underprepared works beautifully for the adolescent reader, feeds into the success of the narrative unfolding in a manageable way

I’d just like to chime in that Ned’s podcast is a delight — some eps are more interesting to me than others bcuz of my stronger connection to Hobbit-world & not so much the Silmarillion & all the apocrypha — but definitely something everyone should check out. It’s a nerdy ‘cast, but the 3 hosts take great pains to keep the conversation moving & not get sucked into whirlpools of ultra-nerdery.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater

Well thank you kindly, that's quite nice of you to say! Won't disagree with any of that! If people want to take a dive but aren't sure where to start, I'd suggest the obvious with the first episode just because the three of us introduce ourselves, in essence, and explain why we're fans. But we got better technically after a couple of episodes so beyond that, I might go for:

4 -- Aldarion and Erendis
6 -- Friendship
8 -- Tom Bombadil
11 -- Dwarves
14 -- Tolkien adaptations (our general introduction to our eventual episodes about such things, whenever they appear)
18 -- The Ents
20 -- Eowyn

We have a lot of episodes on more open topics like fanwork as well as non-Middle Earth Tolkien things as well, and I certainly haven't listed all the core episodes as such either. I will say that two of the most fun episodes where I chose the topic were 13 -- my April Fool's to my cohosts where I made them read the most egregious thing ever, Dennis L. McKiernan's LOTR sequel in all but (changed) name The Silver Call Duology -- and 16, which was on the LOTR stage musical from the 2000s.

_Fonstad's editions of The Atlas of Middle-earth_

I still have my first edition hardcover of this with the dustjacket. It played such a huge role in my love of Middle Earth because I loved maps and they were so insanely detailed. The white, brown, black scheme also made little me think the maps were somehow insanely old. You could just spend an afternoon looking at the travel maps and it was like reading the trilogy over again in a couple of hours.

Ned, any First Age esp Children of Hurin (my absolutely favorite Tolkien story)?

We haven't done Turin and company yet -- we definitely will though. But as for the First Age in general, here and there -- episodes 2 and 3 are about death in Middle-earth and about Melian, so you may find things to chew over there though again we hadn't quite figured out our best format until episode 4. 5 on Galadriel and 7 on Ghan-buri-Ghan touch on elements as do others in lesser degrees; at some point we'll get around to grappling with that material more in discussion. It's all down to our continuing whims! (The smartest thing we did out of the gate was decide NOT to simply march through a close reading of any of the books.)

As a teenage fan, I enjoyed bits of Unfinished Tales; I did buy a few of the other posthumous books but I honestly can’t remember a thing about them beyond being bored silly.

Which of the posthumous books are of most interest / contain actual complete stories / aren’t basically drafts of the Silmarillion?

Children of Hurin, for me. As absolutely vicious and devastating as Tolkien got, like Greek myths.

Though it is more an expansion of the Turin Turumbar parts of The Silmarillion. It is absolutely a self-contained story.

xxpost You can ignore the first four books in the History series, then. The fifth one, The Lost Road, is of interest because it's where he was with Middle-earth development right before getting into writing LOTR -- a number of paths not taken, some interesting material there about Numenor. Six through eight cover LOTR but the ninth, Sauron Defeated, has the Notion Club Papers and related material that is as meta as Tolkien ever got, lots of meditations on what exactly he was doing or trying to do. The remaining three books, while covering later Silmarillion material, has a LOT with him late in life starting to question and heavily revise his original mythologies -- the last fifteen years of his life is almost him, not quite pulling a Le Guin with later Earthsea move, but him definitely giving lots of things a rethink. The forthcoming Nature of Middle-earth collection may have more in this vein too.

Yeah, I would emphasize The Silmarillion contains excerpted/summarized/streamlined versions of many finished/unfinished First/Second Age stories. Most of the books that came out over the last couple of years expand The Silmarillion versions into full-fledged versions.

versions>versions

Tracer covered the snoozeworthiness of the council of elrond upthread tbf

yeah we normally do 3 or 4-chapter sections a week for bookclub bc chapters are usually quite short

mid-read that week we realized council of elrond was fuckin HUGE so we called it & just did that one chapter that week lol

But as exposition goes, its what allows the glorious mad "evil comes to derbyshire" of everything after the birthday party to that point

Get through that (and tbh if you dont have to read it aloud selon chez hand its not *that* bad) and you're out the door and headlong to moria again

my lore-obsessed ass loved the council of elrond chapter lol. also love it when bilbo (or another character, but usually bilbo) breaks out into a song that lasts multiple pages.

About 40 pages, to be fair. I think it's fine. It puts the rest of the book on sure footing, and helps the reader to buy into the necessity of the quest.

If anything, three whole chapters in Lothlórien is the slog for me.

I’m reading some Wikipedia pages to confirm some half-remembered things and Jesus Christ

Originally, Tolkien intended for Éowyn to marry Aragorn. Later, however, he decided against it because Aragorn was "too old and lordly and grim." He considered making Éowyn the twin sister of Éomund, and having her die "to avenge or save Théoden". He also considered having Aragorn truly love Éowyn and regret never marrying after her death.

Fantasy stories are easy to start- witness the many, many followers-on to the story in question- but at some stage exposition must come in and you're either balls-out with it or you are dribbing and drabbing it and either way its almost impossible to not be either aping or overaware of Tolkien while doing so rly- the council was prob revolutionary enough in its day as an approach and this way we dont become a fantasy tale so in love with its court intrigues that we're stuck with bloody grandkids before things move on again

xp aragorn is ninety in the film also

Thats just what a ninety yr old aragorn looks like

Me: why was Aragorn so old, why did he live to be 210, was it legit just “he’s Numenórean, fuck you”
Google: it’s because he’s Númenorean, fuck you

I was gonna thread in something about how (according to one of the prefaces anyway) tolkien had been working on the story- in fact the entire prehistory and the lot, rly- for decades before the books themselves had to be assembled and how this i think tells in the delivery, feeds into the maps/walks above, the patient knowledge of the bits he has told before ans now leaves out, the sense that not just bombadil but behind every path not taken there are tales you arent hearing this time but may again, the joy in reading it and imagining him as your grandfather and imagining that you have heard those tales, that versions arent reworked nor facts changed so much as the old man tells the story as he remembers it now kr focuses the piece *thusly* in this telling because it pleases him to or because he had thought more on it since the last time we sat with him.

ive always loved that feeling, which it has given me since my first re-read, after id devoured the appendices and read even a bit about how long hed been putting it all together and constantly working it. One half archaeologist of an imaginary world and one half linguist piecing it all together as fragments come back or are discovered or are framed anew when another piece falls into place to cast it so. The lack of a definitive, only what was printed in the moment, adds to the feel of lore and not engineered fiction imo.

Because im currently reading steven erikson and lemme tell ya a ten-book grueller spun out as fast as mavis beacon could whip him based on a fucking card game he invented in college does *not* achieve the same sweet maturity

xp yeah I thought similarly when reading some of the appendices about the languages; they weren’t gibberish or a hobby, they were something he spent time and thought constructing and even if it was only to please himself he adhered to his own rules while writing it. You do get the sense of the story unfolding not merely as an imagining from his mind but as if it was a dear object that had been washed and ironed and folded and mended and taken out many times, and that what you see in the books was only a small fragment of the world he had constructed for himself.

Good comparisons all. The fact that it really was a lifetime's pursuit absolutely shows -- by the time readers would have first encountered as much of the backstory as was set when LOTR first emerged, the basics of the mythology were already almost forty years old. Tolkien himself had hoped for a longer life than he did (and he had a long one) and it does raise the question of what eventually would have come of his later revisions. But the alternate history in my brain is the one where The Hobbit never finds a publisher and he just settles into a career of public academia, private pursuits and his children eventually are bemused at all his old writings and what they might have meant.

Seeing the exhibition at the Morgan two years ago was very lovely on those fronts, and underscored how he just had these literal artistic visions -- the thematic illustrations and more that he worked on as a young man show that much -- and how that might have translated as he could those thoughts into language. More than once it reminded me that while he was never alone per se -- he always had his younger brother at least, and found his friends and colleagues and community -- there was a deep experience of loneliness when young after his mother died that percolates throughout the work.

Most of the books that came out over the last couple of years expand The Silmarillion versions into full-fledged versions.

Kinda, but Children of Hurin is the only one that's a straight read through. Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin collate and demonstrate the various versions of the story over time (and I still so wish he had done that full revision of the latter that he only got an initial way through -- it was shaping up to be a hell of a detailed story and it does have some of my favorite descriptive passages of his; if he had applied it to the original draft of the story which was strong and vivid enough in its own right, that would have been something).

The other story I wish he had finished was "Aldarion and Erendis," and I'm still pretty convinced we'll see at least some of that in the Amazon series. I've said for a while that a standalone publication of that away from Unfinished Tales, even if it's a short book, wouldn't be a bad idea. It really is unique out of all the core stories.

boring bits of LoTR = all bits wiv elfs, JRRT just too horny to edit at such moments is how i break it down to an extent

(old-skool mark s-style post for yr delectation there)

(up to the comma anyway)

Council of Elrond is where I stalled out as a child, but later realized it's an absolutely critical chapter. It's extremely heavy on exposition, but goes so deep into the lore of Middle Earth and the greater world that was mostly unknown to the Hobbits at that point. It is really the point where the main plot starts to get it's foundation, and it takes off from there.

horny but manifested as a countermotion away from the messy bombadilness of horniness into some ostensibly higher realm

elves are when he goes all art nouveau

werkstaette without the weiner, as it were

Oh dear.

I am a massive Council of Elrond fan. I just like history, and this feigned history is kinda amazing -- but also how it subtly notes that not everyone at the table has the same perspective (which of course is amped up in the film version).

Well i mean is it subtle in the book? Not sure.

Subtler than the comedy dwarf hacking at the wardrobe with the rachel hairdo, yes, granted

I agree that the descriptions of landscapes and travel, and the maps, are Tolkien's greatest strength. Even as a kid I felt that more deeply than the characterization. I never bothered to see the movies because, even from the trailers, I could tell that wasn't where Jackson's interest lay; I guess my ideal director for the trilogy would have been Bela Tarr.

Getting into Dungeons and Dragons at about the same time as I first read the books, the adventure modules fascinated me in a similar way - not as narratives, but with maps and descriptions of places (often dungeons) and creatures (such as dragons) in stasis, waiting for the disruption of an adventuring party.

Two years ago we visited the west coast of Ireland. We went for hikes in the Burren and in Connemara and (especially in the former) the entire time I was just imagining that this was what Middle Earth looked like. For me, the Burren is now the Barrow Downs and no one will convince me otherwise.

Mar dhea and you kept that quiet

I enjoyed the Council of Elrond too - i really enjoy all the lore-talk, plus the backstory of why everyone came to Rivendell was really enlightening, esp Gimli & Boromir, bc in the movie there’s not a ton of backstory given there

Knowing that he wanted the Simarillion to be part of LOTR and the publishers were like LOL NOPE makes me kind of want that version, just because he refers so often to previous ages of men & lore & history that it makes sense that he would have wanted it to be a complete chronicle
But: i have not yet read the Simarillion so maybe thats a careful what u wish for situation lol

Trying to convince my bookclub compatriot that we should try to read the Simarillion together after we are done w the trilogy. The nerd in me is dying to dig into some of these backstories
But I also have a v limited capacity for places & names so also slightly afeared of whats in store

But otm xp

https://i.imgur.com/Zol9Rwy.jpg

[Removed Illegal Image]

https://i.imgur.com/6wtZzOe.jpg

Manys the bad misty day id to go chasing cows across the bog and even if mordor wasnt quite right the mood would be on me

wow yes feeling that!!

xp silmarillion is a different kettle of fish than a fleshed out book now tbh

What deems said. Best way to think of The Silmarillion to keep Tolkien's later framing of it in mind: translations by Bilbo from elvish lore. So, not so much a uniform dramatic story as it is a mythology learned about by a much later figure and attempted to be conveyed in another language. Call it a Bible equivalent if you like, or a Kalevala or a Mahabharata, though not really like any of them. The difference in tone and structure from LOTR is apparent, and best not to expect anything like LOTR.

the bible reads like a christopher tolkien when you'd hope for a jrr tolkien tbh

― k¸ (darraghmac), Thursday, September 16, 2010 7:30 AM (19 minutes ago)

Now with that said, how did you enjoy, for instance, the appendices and all that from the end of LOTR?

Because bthe silmarillion is a lot more of a told narrative than that

Say that its chris telling you the story but its raining and he's looking for a filling station and is rather running through the motions a bit

i havent read any appendices yet *ducks*

Hang on a sec

Ned, can you get two other strong fellas over here, i wanna throw the book at her

I'll have to make some calls. *fires up palantir*

ANYWAY, once you have READ THE APPENDICES, VG, etc.

Anyway- if you want background then the silmarillion has it, and its not *that* dry.

I wouldnt make it book club tho

Among other things you will learn about hobbit month names, like Blooting.

[backs out of thread]

Wait come back there's a breakdown of all the tengwar characters

lol “blooting” ok im down for that

love the silmarillion, would be a disastrous book club book

thx for the info on Simarillion, def sounds more like an extra-curricular read than bookclub

and i promise i will read the appendices when we finish Return of the King this time

Dont come back here quoting them

Nothing more painful than a case of appendice-citeus

In my recollection of the Silm it runs like the “begats” section of the bible.

“And then Mellinlon smote Ainuliar firmly upon the skull with his sword that was named Albrag which means “oath-reminder,” and the skull was clove in twain, and thusly poured out the knowledge of the races of men and elves upon the field of battle; namely the knowledge of all the races of men and elves that had gone before, which I recount here: that Ainular son of Aimular son of Aemular had been born in a place long ago of which I shall tell...”

xpost lol

I mean that's a nice Belgariad fanfic thing you've got going there.

I thought of eddings today when half considering one or another of my blurts above

Grand stories but ooof so american

Very!

Anyway im sad that tracer didnt keep up with his posts to this thread during his reread, some nice hot takes that shook up some good debate including this good not bad pun

ofc silmarillion and legends in lotr and elsewhere are full of the heroes that just did it and were legends (obv) or even whose failures were grand, decisive simple events

imo thats him being a bit meta about nature of legends and distilled tales and what they are used for vs "oh fuck we're here now and its not beowulf its wilfred owen oh fuck oh fuck ohfuck"

― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:48 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

dulcimar et decorum est pro patria moria, as i shall title the essay on the topic

― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 23:49 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

we have ofc had the discussion about where to go after tolkien if its the adventure and not just more middle earth detail you're after

For my money its still jordan, from all contenders. Wolfe never ignited for me and the other pretenders never brought me back again (save robin hobb, whose books are very different nb absolutely read them)

Should we have a fantasy book club tho nb im bad at reading

Could be interesting...

All of the posts about the new sun stuff on ilx make me want to go at it again but i found it sawdust-dry and the wrong kind of acid/trippy for me.

But as i said, erikson is actually sticking this time so never say never

Went to wiki there to even remind myself how far i got into it and jesus, nope not for me. A collection of random events happening, very US SF mag stuff sorry lads

Anyway, Twitter is undefeated

denethor making denethor making
breakfast for breakfast for
boromir faramir pic.twitter.com/N7Kl9XJdI3

— eli ceo of frodo (@enbyfrodo) January 26, 2021

Bear facts bruv

The Rolling Speculative threads over on ILB might provide some palatable fantasy series, but LOTR, which I read in one volume, is one of thee few extended fantasy-tagged experienced that's stayed with me---otherwise it's mostly Leiber, Vance, urban fantasy in some collections edited by Datlow and Martin-Dozois, DG Hartwell, and one I already mentioned way upthread, Douglas A. Anderson's Tales Before Tolkien (ones JRRT read and mentioned, ones he might well have read, and excellent ringers). Also Naomi Novik's Uprooted and Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip, some anthologized stories of hers, some of Peter S. Beagle's as well.

XP Ned that tweet is fire

I liked the NK Jemisin broken earth trilogy pretty well. Definitely worth a read if you’re a fantasy fan (I’m not, particularly, outside of LOTR & Earthsea & Narnia & Pullman & ... ok, maybe I’m a fantasy fan?)

I mean that's a pretty good range. Would definitely include Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books in that clutch (in fact frankly I'd replace Narnia with them) and yes to Jemisin.

Oooh, I LOVED the Prussian books.

Dammit autocorrect

*Prydain

To the best of my knowledge I have never read a Prussian book

I was thinking of giving Zelazny a try as my next fantasy read.

Dunno if I want to spend time on Eddings after finding out about his conviction.

first eddings series is fine, if wholly predictable. zelzany's amber is shorter and much more fun

little bit too drunk to fully parse the last 50 posts, but:

patricia mckillip's riddlemaster is better. laurel has my back

Yup, it's great.

Dunno if I want to spend time on Eddings after finding out about his conviction.

Well, prompted by this I just looked that up and yeaaaaaahhhh they sure hid THAT.

(Though I will also say that in strict terms it really is David and Leigh both -- in terms of coauthorship of all the books AND the convictions.)

One of my prized possessions is a first edition printing of The Silmarillion. TIL you have quite a podcast on LotR lore, Ned.

I also just re-watched the Jackson trilogy recently and had some interesting observations from it. For all hand wringing of the latter two films, only a few scenes really got to me - and I kinda feel that had they merely been edited out, you'd have a significantly better experience:
- Aragorn's "temptation" of the ring at the very end of Fellowship
- Aragorn's fall and fake death during the warthog skirmish before miraculously arriving at helm's deep right before battle
- The elves coming to help at Helm's Deep
- Faramir taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath before "coming to his senses" and letting Frodo go...
- Denethor throwing himself off the front face of Minas Tirith.

I love the history and lore of it. It's what got me obsessed with history in general. The Fall of Gondolin would make an incredible movie experience I think, if done right.

I was also struck by how the journey and the bleakness of the vibe for most of the films truly echoed our current collective experience. Boromir's fear and hopelessness. The corruption of men. The faceless, yet ubiquitous and all encompassing enemy. The end of an age, etc. The recent election and now vaccines starting to be administered feels like that moment at the end of Two Towers, when Aragorn and Denethor ride out and meet Gandalf just as hope and survival is about to be extinguished. Still a long way to go, but there's hope. Anyways... in the past, this connection didn't go as deep when watching the films. I had not lived through WW1 or WW2 (which no doubt inspired the content, despite Tolkien's denials, how could it not?), but it sure hammers home how significant these times are.

It's not some sort of prophetic moment, but the fact that the film Fellowship ends on Frodo remembering the exchange with Gandalf re "I wish none of this had happened" etc., shortly after it was clear the 21st century wasn't going to be like the 1990s (in American terms, at least) is one of those things that resonates a lot year after year now.

Woof, eddings

Luckily by the time i was 15 the wheel of time was already three books in and i never looked back

yes yes but in the films aragorn gets to kiss a horse

Barrow Downs:

http://i.imgur.com/hR3QfWW.jpg

The road goes ever on:

http://i.imgur.com/GbFMoqg.jpg

I love this thread.

We're about an hour or so into "Two Towers." So far my kid (13) likes it better than the first one and yeah, so far I wouldn't change a frame. Gollum fx hold up, as do the sort of surreal puppets/stop-motion/whatever is going on with the tree people.

It's cheating, since this is actually New Zealand, but here is an enormous hawk on a funny looking rock in front of snow-capped mountains, clouded in mist:

https://i.imgur.com/bIOOXlV.jpg

Josh is peter jackson imo

Anyway while we're doing all this, legal Twitter is on one:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eswamv9U0AAp0c6?format=jpg&name=large

Inspired by this thread, I just read The Hobbit for the first time in 30+ years. What a great little book! I’m sure Tolkien had his regrets, like the characterization & names of the trolls & a couple of tonal blips, but otherwise it’s pretty unimpeachable. There are episodes and passages of genuine menace & genuine wonder. The shift to a less immediate narrative voice after Smaug gets pissed off & leaves is probably its biggest flaw, but it’s not a fatal one.

Jackson ought to be sued for the violence he inflicted on its integrity.

Now: on to LOTR proper.

Hobbit is pretty magnificent

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry? I don’t think I’ve ever skipped it, from my first reading at age 10 or so til now, but I never remember, from reading to reading, that it’s how the book begins. Does the way the preamble winds from an explanation of hobbits, thru a little dissertation on the origins of pipe-weed, and the (perhaps necessary) recounting of how Bilbo got the ring from Gollum, & then bangs on for some pages about the various history-books that were derived from Bilbo & Frodo’s writings & then presumably used as source material for LOTR itself actually add anything, or set us up properly for what’s to come? Or is it an authorial indulgence? On re-reading I enjoy it as a bit of suspense, knowing I’m about to be plunged into a fully absorbing story, but on first reading do people just skip it? Is it a weeding-out tactic (if you can’t hack this you’re not gonna make it to the third volume, sonny)?

I wonder what the Dwarves cocks are like
― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, November 15, 2001 8:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

xp it is a hobbit writing like a hobbit, wrapped up in local affairs, stuffy, finicky

Tolkien's tonal shifts arent random accident imo, even if i wouldn't claim they were planned, but he is a master storyteller and storytellers change voice instinctively as required

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry?

I don't think there's a sentence wasted in the early chapters, it's a masterful piece of worldbuilding that humanises (hobbitises?) its subjects by grounding the descriptive passages very firmly within the hobbits' society. One of the most egregious pieces of writing advice you see nowadays is to begin a story with 'action', which all too often means some kind of violent conflict. Tolkien's 'action' is to draw the reader into an unfamiliar world by examining the minutiae of his characters' lives, thus laying a solid foundation for the story to come.

We're talking about the "Prologue," right? I don't personally consider it essential to a complete reading of the book. I've read LOTR 8 or 9 times and the "Prologue" many fewer times.

otoh, it's very important to make sure the reader has all the information on pipeweed

The Prologue is key and always a lovely treat, for the reasons outlined above. Heck, the film even had a brief nod to it in the extended version.

And yes The Hobbit still works in its own right. I do find it interesting that he attempted an early sixties rewrite to make it tonally more like LOTR but after a couple of chapters a friend read it and said that while it was good it just wasn’t The Hobbit — he took it as a sign and abandoned it. Some things you shouldn’t mess with.

We started the third (extended) film last night. Stand by what I said, wouldn't change a thing ... about the first two. This one, though, a few things irked pretty immediately, but mostly the Extra Evil One-Eyed Orc, which the film clearly tries to elevate to Big Bad status, no doubt because in the (theatrical) version there is no follow-up with Christopher Lee and Sauron is still just a big eye. Extra Evil Orc annoyed me the very first time I saw the movie, in fact.

Even so, for being the most over-stuffed, relatively speaking, there were a couple of really striking, iconic scenes I was reminded of, like Liv Tyler seeing her son in the future, or the gross king feasting like a monster during the hobbit hymn scene. My daughter keeps asking questions that I am not qualified to answer, like how Gandolf can apparently die and come back but not Christopher Lee, or why Sauron can't just make another ring, or what even *are* the rings, anyway? What can the One Ring even do besides turn you invisible? I know these things have answers, and some of them are pretty convoluted, but it's kind of a testament to the writing and acting that the focus remains on the characters, and the magic and the ring specifically is almost a MacGuffin. There's a lot of weeping and whining, but as has been said it's really largely Sam's story, and Sean Astin sells it pretty well.

It’s a smart question she asks because there’s no true answer. The protean nature of the Ring is what is truly key about it. The only specifically ‘magic’ thing it does is invisibility and even then the result is, per the book, something that makes you feel horribly and uniquely visible. Beyond that, everything scales, though the book makes this clearer by example than the movie.

Gandalf won his industrial tribunal and was reinstated, whereas Saruman was bang to rights, is how I break it down

The ring is kind of like Blairite "third way" centrism, once you've pretended to be all things to all people and it turns out you're a sinister control freak and not actually anything anyone likes at all, you can't just fool them the same way again a couple of years later

Also, Sauron put his will, anger, power into the ring, linking himself to the ring, so that without it he is diminished, with it, his power is magnified, and with it destroyed, so he is.

it's a remote control for all the other rings, is how i break it down to an extent

Yes, that too.

little bit too drunk to fully parse the last 50 posts, but:

patricia mckillip's riddlemaster is better. laurel has my back

― mookieproof, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 4:15 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

u get me. New McKillip is good, but old McKillip is magic.

Gandalf was considered fit for upcycling by the powers that sing the world

We can only presume that Saruman was fit for the skip only

Note that in corporal death Gandalf was revealed as a strong being of purity

Saruman melted immediately into the semblance of a corpse long dead iirc

Standard enough christian message on the caretaking of one's soul, really

i remember when reading as a teenager i was kind of obsessed with the wizard judo belts.

is there a specific section that deals with that or is it all just inferential?

cos reading it now, i just think yeah radagast is brown because of the trees and nature and stuff. not because he's still learning.

Yeah i reckon assignation not grade

The Blue Wizards do not feature in the narrative of Tolkien's works; they are said to have journeyed far into the east after their arrival in Middle-earth, and serve as agitators or missionaries in enemy occupied lands. Their ultimate fates are unknown.

Saruman's a traitor, Radagast's a simpleton, the Blues are off god knows where. Gandalf is like the only Maiar doing his job.

Work colleagues thread

the relationship of the ring to power isn't that it has it. it is it.

a shot in the first movie i like (tho could respect others finding a lil on the nose) is the hisperidian image of the quarreling (suddenly racist) council reflected in the inert surface of the ring. it's the distress caused by this image that seems to make up frodo's mind to take on the burden to destroy it. immediately the council, on the volcanic point of fission, fuses into fellowship. i don't read this as the ring's malign influence literally casting a spell of discord. yet its influence is there.

when we see people covet the ring we don't necessarily understand what they would physically do with it. possibly they don't either. (possibly gandalf does.) yet we understand that they all have problems they know it would solve. instead of weeping and whining and swallowing loss, they would sweep aside obstacles like sauron in the movie prologue, absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

in this sense it is a macguffin-- but the word macguffin only refers to a role an object plays in a story. the ring, in addition to (irl) being a macguffin, is (in middle-earth) literally power. no less and (more crucially?) no more. the limits of power are indicated to frodo in the gandalf line fizzles quotes upthread-- "can you give it to them?"-- and in a line i think is in the same conversation: "he hates and loves the ring, as he hates and loves himself". this is why, in the places where you would expect the story to put demonstrations of the ring's abilities, we really only see people's desires. often, the desires seem to make them angry. one exception is (again) gandalf, the world's wisest man. he seems frightened.

on those few occasions when we do see someone (always a hobbit iirc?) put on the ring, what they desire is to disappear. (to keep their nose out of trouble, so no trouble will come to them.) yet instead-- in the context that matters-- they appear. the ring is a trap disguised as an escape. the only person for whom it isn't a trap is the person whose desire is a world made-- like the ring-- coterminous with himself. the only effective strategy against him is fusion and renunciation. it's difficult because renouncing the possibility of exerting your will unimpeded can even for a hobbit be like cutting off a part of the self. but if you're not sauron, or final-stage gollum, it's not very much of the self. it is a strange thing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.

Lovely post.

these are background themes tho obv. as correctly indicated above this is mostly a book about going for walks.

when we see people covet the ring we don't necessarily understand what they would physically do with it. possibly they don't either. (possibly gandalf does.) yet we understand that they all have problems they know it would solve. instead of weeping and whining and swallowing loss, they would sweep aside obstacles like sauron in the movie prologue, absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

This is one the greatest scenes, to 7 yo PBKR, in the Rankin-Bass animated ROTK: Samwise the Strong. They to a great job of illustrating how great the temptation must be to use the ring and how great the spirit it takes to resist it.

great

lol yes i almost linked to that! memorable for me as well. tho i can't say i remember the melody, whereas i doubt i'll ever be free of "when there's a whip there's a way". similar theme i suppose.

Same hear, actually.

It's funny, in some way, Sam resists the ring more completely than Frodo ever and ultimately does, though Sam (a) hasn't had to bear the ring for so long as Frodo, and (b) isn't required to resist at the moment of the ring's ultimate destruction.

The one ring has a mind of its own, it decides its fate, it wants to be possessed, it's why it abandoned Gollom when he was skulking in his cave for decades... even the ring's size shapeshifts to its owner (Sauron, Isuldur, Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo).

re: motivation in dlh's post, I had to recall Galadriel's temptation rejection:

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

“I pass the test”, she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.”

Tolkien is pretty explicit here that her temptation was indeed related to its power. And to refuse it was beyond noble.

the melodramatic elf version of

A spasm of anger passed swiftly over the hobbit's face again. Suddenly it gave way to a look of relief and a laugh.

'Well, that's that,' he said. 'Now I'm off!'

(jackson movie has bilbo say "i've thought of an ending for my book!" here, which isn't bad either. of course in both book and movie he has his most gifable "spasm of anger" yet to come.)

Actual unprompted quote from my daughter as we finished the third movie: "Wait, how many endings are there? This is like 'Clue: The Movie'!"

Probably would be best ending with the "you bow down to no one" line, but the rest of the stuff is fine. It's like the final side of "Sandinista!" Necessary? Nah. But I'm glad to have it all the same.

Off to google "coterminous."

i was remembering this by jonathan schell about nixon i post on ilx whenever i can find an excuse (sadly idk if this is a clemenza-attracting thread)

Had he remained in power much longer, he would surely have put an end to such disruptions once and for all. Then no unexpected sights would have offended his gaze... His communion with himself would have continued uninterrupted, and the world he saw would have become co-extensive with his thought processes. There would have been only the sound of the programmed enemies and the sound of the surrogates praising him in words of his own devising. And, at the center, a perfect closed circle, in which he talked to his tapes and his tapes talked to him.

—only i misremembered co-extensive as coterminous, thus, gotta say, improving both passages, which both involve circles. anyway, that’s what the ring does imo

(just don’t google “hisperidian”, which is 1. made up 2. spelled wrong and 3. possibly about the wrong apples.)

Xxp

hat tip parenting for yr daughter pulling that reference

Please don’t encourage him with this stuff, he does it on so many threads.

It's funny, in some way, Sam resists the ring more completely than Frodo ever and ultimately does, though Sam (a) hasn't had to bear the ring for so long as Frodo, and (b) isn't required to resist at the moment of the ring's ultimate destruction.

"you bow down to no one"

The single most tin-eared jackson/boyenism moment in the movies

'Praise them with great praise"/translation of same is perfect, quasi-biblical and elegant. The entire sequence is dreamlike, relief, you can pretty much feel our reader's eye pulling back as the narration becomes at once more distant, slightly formal, back to a descriptive tone more akin the mathom house book we originally picked up discussing hobbits and pipeweed

Its a sequence well-earned, our hobbits back central amongst the great and powerful and still a wonder to them, as we get probably the real ending of the war ("too many endings" is as much a criticism of later life as it is a narrative that tries to situate war relative to the lives that carry on afterwards)

Jackson hadnt the patience nor ear so he had a softlit gurning circle of closeups of our leads as viggo (who upon becoming king seems to have turned into a simpleton- and mrs mac cannot abide the sight of him *clean*) speaks to them like they were children.

Not having it.

Xp sam "alone" or sam "only"?

Also dlh that post was as good as a pint, post more pls

xp yeah only is probably better

and Mrs mac is otm, he’s only a ride when he’s filthy

D. D. B. Tolkien nest pas

isn't it funny that aragorn's appeal diminished by like maybe 15% when he took a shower. imagine being horny for him for three movies then by the end of the third, he takes a bath and you go.. oh... erm...

— MARS 18TH (@solosclark) May 14, 2020

Setting a marker here for when im not making porridge- come back to sam being the only hero

absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

Fine if you're using an actual hurl tbh. And so is the great elf king Slîeot Iaur remembered still to this day..

Don't think Sam is the only hero imo, but he is the ultimate hero of the quest itself and of the books.

Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that, but he is the most immune to the call to dominate anyway (tho arguably in eg sméagol the lure of the ring was purely for possession, so again maybe what we are seeing is Sam as the purest in all middle earth or w/e).

The class awareness comes in here too imo, aside from a general christian message of want not for yourself etc

I don't think it chance that our everyman hero has the only name in the stories that i can think of that wouldnt raise an eyebrow in everyday life.

Not saying anything new here obv but the thread is a nice sat morning diversion

but he is the most immune to the call to dominate anyway

But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”

100% otm take re the ending, its a quiet triumph of known contentment and again im hardly saying anything new by thinking that a veteran choosing it that way adds heft

Maybe (removing sam the person to some degree) the importance of a refreshed backup to take on the burden anew for a while is the other aspect so?

Look sorry jrr but lookit mordor is the trenches, cmon lad

Yeah that makes sense especially in his context, as you say. The importance of friendship, even through the worst and most trying of times.

It’s a bittersweet ending, but it’s the sweet that comes through a bit more in the long run. It feels quite “well then” but that’s not what it is at all.

‘Well, I’m back,’ he said”

final line in a book called THE RETURN OF THE KING = tolk's equivalent of tweeting the 👑 emoji at sam, this is mark s canon

(also mark s canon: the lord of the rings is gollum not loser-melt sauron)

Sauron is basically fuck-all to do with it tbh

The real villain is peter jackson and the mouth of peter jackson philippa boyens

It’s a bittersweet ending, but it’s the sweet that comes through a bit more in the long run. It feels quite “well then” but that’s not what it is at all.

― scampish inquisition (gyac)

"Nah lets cut all that, we need another elephant fight for balance"

Just the absolute worst

Only cos it came up in the tv thread lately, but in many ways willow shows what LOTR movies should have done tbh

*warming to my theme and leaning into the challops*: the hobbit trilogy is the only good product of this entire franchise, book or film or lego figurines or game

EXCEPT… this is hott shelob in the game SHADOW OF WAR

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es7r8MuXIAcDaiP?format=jpG

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es7r8MuXIAcDaiP?format=jpg

Aware that for anyone who has just seen the movies and thinks "these were good movies" this probably comes across as the worst kind of nerd nitpicking

But that is their fault for not reading the books tbh

Xp *meta comment redacted*

my feeling is all the very right things said above mean that sam and frodo split the bill for the hero slot. you can’t quite be a hero without a flaw or two that gravely tests and transforms you. sam is constant. but you also can’t quite be a hero if the reader doesn’t really empathise with you and for all of frodo’s qualities and personal struggle with the Ring there’s something not really grippy about him as a character. he’s The Bearer but what more? he stole some mushrooms one time? alert theresa may!!

frodo's recessiveness as an identification character for some (me) absolutely locks into JRR's unending 2horny4elfs problem = f is tolk's depressive pixie dreamboy

Frodo, as local hobbyist proddy landlord, is the nearest circle of that which is passing from the world.

Wizards, then elves, then bagginses- tolkien is doing the dwindling-proximity circle thing again but as gyac posts so well about above, its a mature look on loss and a celebration of what is still left to us

No shortage of heroes and different people will identify more or less with em all (tolkien not least himself, the he was hardly ever strider) but the reader is most likely going to feel most in common with sam almost from the off (even if he is cast as the typical manservant role on first reading)

Farmer Maggot did brexit obv

Frodo is very much exactly that; he is reserved and thoughtful and guarded and almost an archetype in some ways. I think he benefited greatly from Sam’s reflective love and loyalty.

"mature look on loss and a celebration of what is still left to us" -- i absolutely agree with this (yet as a reader i will likely never be mature abt it myself)

As readers we have no obligations, tg

sam’s fight goes further than frodo’s. for frodo it was about the destruction of the ring. but in that burnt-out last mile in mordor, sam realises that’s not enough for him. the saving of all of middle earth not enough! he needs rosie, and a fire, and dinner waiting. the job remains undone until we reach that last sentence.

He was still capable of those things because he wasn’t burned out from the inside by the ring. Frodo could never live a normal life because he was destroyed afterwards and it makes me think of Tolkien’s friends he saw return from the war in a similar state. You read about his service and the scars it left on him throughout his life and he’s both Sam and Frodo: he can never forget the things he’s seen, but he was able to return and love and be loved and live.

yeah hard to argue with that.

great stuff gyac and dmac:

Yes and no. I will basically go to my grave resisting the idea that Sam alone is the hero of LOTR. Frodo carried it the longest, you read about what it does and is doing to him. Only at the very very end does the Ring overwhelm him, and that’s at the centre of Sauron’s power, no less.

Which I definitely acknowledged! Frodo had the hardest, longest job, and paid the biggest price! That's why he gets to go to the West even though he is not an elf.

dmac said what I was trying to get at (re Sam):

he is the most immune to the call to dominate anyway (tho arguably in eg sméagol the lure of the ring was purely for possession, so again maybe what we are seeing is Sam as the purest in all middle earth or w/e).

The class awareness comes in here too imo, aside from a general christian message of want not for yourself etc

I don't think it chance that our everyman hero has the only name in the stories that i can think of that wouldnt raise an eyebrow in everyday life.

Also agree with the observations that Tolkien wanted to leave a sense of peace after all of the toil, war, and grandeur. But the other thing I always found interesting about the scouring of shire is while the Hobbits are triumphant and it affirms their experience gained in the war of the ring, Tolkien also makes it clear, and the hobbits (both the main characters and the people) realize, that they can restore the shire, but they can never go back to the pre-war of the ring shire, can never truly get back to the innocence and sheltered life they previously had. There is a bit of the apple of knowledge/growing up thing here.

Frodo was, from the start, loaded with intent and responsibility. He never expected to return, and didnt want anyone coming with him. Aside from everything else it's the two perspectives (and how they meld and support each other in the actual struggle)

Frodo- how we win

Sam- why we fight

xps yeah to all of it

I mean you can hang pretty much anything on it, and the beauty is (imo) Tolkien (both in how he lays it out but also in what we know of him biographically) allows us to do that, it doesn't sag nor stretch at all under the weight of any of this

100%. That war changes and you are changed by it, that you can repair but never. I think of how strongly his views come across in this wherever I’m looking at some jingoistic shite about the glory of war. Tolkien is very blunt about the fact that it’s still shit even if you’re on the winning side.

And xps yeah my point wasn’t addressed specifically to you, don’t worry, it is a point I have been stubborn on since I first read the series in my late teens. It’s been a long time since I read the books but I clearly still feel strongly enough about them to have all these opinions and maybe I should reread and see how I feel about them now.

*repair but never restore

Fucks sake i read you wrong in my usual rush through first time gyac

I thought you were *arguing for* sam as the only hero

Anyway its good discussing of a weekend imo whichever way

He was still capable of those things because he wasn’t burned out from the inside by the ring. Frodo could never live a normal life because he was destroyed afterwards and it makes me think of Tolkien’s friends he saw return from the war in a similar state. You read about his service and the scars it left on him throughout his life and he’s both Sam and Frodo: he can never forget the things he’s seen, but he was able to return and love and be loved and live.

― scampish inquisition (gyac), Saturday, January 30, 2021 7:53 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

great post

Interesting too to think of how the burden (toxicity?) of the ring seems to increase with the knowledge of the nature of it

Bilbo, tho not untouched obv, was a safe receptacle for it for many decades

There's also the (Gandalf's?) angle that a resurgent Sauron's call activates some element of this corrosive influence, but nonetheless those most aware of what the ring is are those most fearful of/desirous of/affected by it

Meant to post this earlier. My copies of the books in question:

http://i.imgur.com/EU0sh2G.jpeg

Was my aunt's from 1970 and obviously well-read.

Tolkien imo whispering that doughty yeoman classes are the safest seat of power, but look

XP good idea

Id the early 90s unwin (iirc) paperback of the three books + silmarillion but how would the man himself put it, lost to fire and flame or whatever, so now i rock:

https://i.imgur.com/lC40S6b.jpg

That looks so nice and proper.

This discussion has me ready to tackle some Tolkien I haven't read when I finish my current book. Maybe I'll read Beren and Luthien?

I was given this set of them at the time
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/510DQ2D1RJL._SX346_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

And I know everyone is going to be UGH FILM VERSION U PLEB but the appendices being separate as a volume you can dip into is really good

The appendices detailing the rest of the characters' lives would make a good low-stakes tv series, in an All Creatures Great and Small vein.

the trope that intellectuals be in more peril of losing their soul than doughty burgers working men or even yokels -- that deeper knowledge is a portal to mortal danger -- is all over the fantasy lit of the late 19th and early 20 century (see m.r.james passim for example)

in the UK some of it is burkean-chestertonian but tbh it goes a long way back and has several variants (it's also what the faust myth is largely about)

it's also -- super-hesitant to go far into this as i don't feel adequately equipped except i just finished the most recent hilary mantel, which delves a lot into the 16th century world of this -- a somewhat maybe catholic outlook? catholic of the period? as in, leave the deep stuff to those who've been properly trained, self-taught is self-doomed and so on, incuriousity is a kind of armour (hence sam > bilbo > frodo etc)

tbh not at all sure how much weight id want to put on this reading tho (well aware that the person likely to fall through the thin ice expounding it in present company = me)

https://www.mytolkienbooks.com/books01/pics/lotr28.jpg

I have these uh characterful late 70s Unwin paperbacks I got from the 2nd hand bookshop on the road I grew up on

Those are cool. I've never seen those covers.

Mark i think that could be read, without necessarily being placed in there

Ive also had a few different paperback versions of varying ages and origin over the years, tho i like the current shiny/weighty tomes

I first read these editions which I borrowed off my best friend and kept failing to return (hence getting gifted my own set of books):
https://www.tolkienbooks.be/tolkien-book-store/images/CLP0298b.jpg

when im back from shopping i will take photos of my dad's now exceedingly ancient (and sadly tatty) hardbacks

I rocked the Darrell K Sweet editions here in the US re my first copy:

https://external-preview.redd.it/0sMAKjGlZicmiqe9nE4fOFqiyAyoH2fUIU4UA3-OEyY.jpg?auto=webp&s=88578030d93f23440e35ec26f40534a589502c17

This has since...changed. Will post a photo later showing how.

the relationship of the ring to power isn't that it has it. it is it.
...
the ring is a trap disguised as an escape. the only person for whom it isn't a trap is the person whose desire is a world made-- like the ring-- coterminous with himself. the only effective strategy against him is fusion and renunciation. it's difficult because renouncing the possibility of exerting your will unimpeded can even for a hobbit be like cutting off a part of the self. but if you're not sauron, or final-stage gollum, it's not very much of the self. it is a strange thing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, January 30, 2021 1:52 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

*white guy blinking.gif*

DLH is on fire and all y'all are GOOD itt.

Is this where I admit I never warmed up to Tolkien? Not my jam. ilxors talking about it is WAY more my jam. :)

I wish I were at home because I also, somewhere along the way, picked up a verrrry 1970s paperback fantasy trilogy clearly modeled on LOTR? Straining to remember the details but I'm about 80% the wizard's horse was ALSO named Shadowfax?

The covers were trippy iirc.

I am currently living the samwise dream of stove on, teapot steaming, feet up and about to open the red book of westmarch (ed. tolkien, from notes collected by b. baggins)

Oh never mind, it was this:

https://i.etsystatic.com/9030433/r/il/df6eee/1136028440/il_794xN.1136028440_7qc4.jpg

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-completely-bonkers-world-of-niel-hancocks-circle-of-light/

Its no duncton wood tbh

"Hancock was a veteran of the Vietnam war and used his experiences in writing his fantasy books. His world, however, does not seem to have the automatic weapons and helicopters of that war.[citation needed]"

There’s something strangely, weirdly subversive about the original cover art
Created by the author’s wife, the original covers are just… well. Take a gander at the cover for the second volume, Faragorn Fairingay. Look at those tiny bedroom slippers on the floor—for the otter in the bed—and feel reality slipping away from you.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/wp-content/nas-uploads/sites/4/2015/01/faragornfairangay.jpg

lol

faragorn 🤔🤔🤔

Ned, I remember those versions from either the bookstore (Waldenbooks RIP) or library.

https://i.imgur.com/4q0fHzT.jpg

those were my dad's and they are OLD: he was in on the ground floor as a teenager tolkwise and two of them are in fact first edns, plus all three endpaper maps have by a miracle somehow survived

they are also as you can see extremely er pre-loved and thus extremely non-valuable as heirlooms: the pictures in the hobbit have been "coloured in" aka scribbled on by some aunt or uncle as a tot and the three lovely deep crimson covers of LotR (paper jackets long lost) still bear the quickly wiped-up splashmarks of where mark s as a tot (with whooping cough) threw up all over his bedroom oops

(just between us if i ever try and sell them on ABE i will probably say it is spilled water)

That's awesome.

I have the same edition as gyac, but never actually realised that they form a triptych! Partly because the fronts also continue on to the spines and backs:

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/tolkien-book-store/images/CLP0298.jpg

The appendices detailing the rest of the characters' lives would make a good low-stakes tv series, in an All Creatures Great and Small vein.

I mean, detailing is very much what they don't do - something that slightly complicates the Sam story is that one of the Appendices says that 61 years after he returns home, later in the year that Rosie passes on, Sam goes to Grey Havens and (rumor has it) over the sea. It's all presented as a chronological record, so you can read it that Rosie's love overwhelmed the PTSD, or that this was simply an option always available to him but not her.

(also of course the last chronological event is that Legolas goes to the Havens, builds a ship singlehanded and stripped to the waist and goes on one last gay cruise with Gimli)

I’m already 1/3 of the way through Fellowship (they’re just parting with Bombadil to skirt the Barrow-Downs). I meant to take it slow & actually think about the books as they progressed this time, but I find I can’t help myself hurtling through them — I feel myself fairly dragged along, compelled to page-turn.

I have, however, forced myself to actually read all the words mostly, as opposed to my usual habit of skimming long descriptive paragraphs & landing on the next bit of dialogue or action. Can’t stress enough what others observed upthread, that this book about walking is situated in a landscape so thoroughly imagined that it might as well be describing an IRL place.

Ok easy on the spoilers pls tho?

when i called sauron a loser-melt it was just my opinion of his politics not me giving away the final score

Hmmm maybe a thread for those of us that havent read it?

as opposed to my usual habit of skimming long descriptive paragraphs & landing on the next bit of dialogue or action.

And I oop!

fwiw my dad (book-owner cited above) was a professional botanist who also often taught practical geology to university students: he had a very high opinion of tolk's observational knowledge of types of landscape and the plants and tress you find in them

non-botanists refer to them as trees, a rookie error

Hey! Sing derry-dol! Easy on the spoilers!
Some haven’t read it yet! Don’t you mention plot points!

favorite quality of sam from the books is that say for example, when he selfconsciously says to Faramir in Two Towers “i’m no poet but this is what Galadriel’s like” he proceeds to drop ~the~ purest poetry

every doubt he has about his ability (and obv that is mixed in with his perceived lower social status/class), he proves outwardly to possess in spades (no gardening pun intended)

in the books he also has a great ongoing capacity for brief moments of wonder, or to enjoy small new experiences despite being far from home and often in danger

he is also jrr’s mary-sue for elves a bit tbh

rewriting the "down down to goblin town" song except its spoilertown

Ho ho, mark s

thats right

adding: sam is the xander

If you've only read one of those early paperback sets, particularly Ace Books, you've encountered many errors---this 50th Anniversary edition (the "trilogy" in one volume, as intended) has a different cover than the one I read, but the same or similar fast, dense, clear account by xpost Douglas A. Anderson (who describes it as "a single novel, consisting of six books, plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes," which are incl., along w other materials provided by JRRT) of the garble introduced by "corrections", also typos, and how the author tried to get true corrections (and some revisions!) in for pretty much the last decade of his life (some of them finally made it into posthumous editions), He recommends Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth (soke of which is also in this edition) for a complete history of the novel itself, allll the stages of writing, incl. much later revisions mentioned above, 'til this 2005 edition, which may or may not be the true book (aside from the one in readers' heads and discourse, of course).
You can Look Inside this on its Amazon page and read Anderson's
whole intro.
Giant paperback, also Kindle and hardback if want something less slippery:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51eq24cRtRL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Anderson does indicate that some errors came from trying to decipher author's handwriting in margins of manuscripts, as w Balzac, Proust, dog knows how many others.

I owned the very AD&D influenced box set, possibly early 80s if I were to guess... let me img srch

https://i.imgur.com/Ja1yfN7.jpg

(1981 Ballantine)

Yup, the Sweet set; posted that above. Sweet also did all the Wheel of Time covers so he's had an impact!

abs <3 mark s heirlooms

(joyce was a terrible man for rewriting and just straight out adding material right there on the galleys at the printers)

(luckily in finnegans wake no one can tell you typo)

whoops, sorry Ned. your pic post didn't trigger my nostalgia for some reason.

Yeah Balzac and Proust would fuck with the galleys too, not sure about T., been a while since I read that intro, but Ballentine was where things started to get better, according to Anderson.

But when somebody consulted w T about a word etc., he might come up with a whole new set of ch-ch-changes, look out ye rock n rollers! (sry)

i bought a set of houghton miflin paperbacks bc they were cheap & on sale & god the cover art is so ugly

This thread is brilliant and very much making me want to re-read the trilogy (only read it once, about 20 years ago).

I remember my parents had the pirated Ace Books editions:

https://www.tolkienguide.com/uploads/newbb/1_5b5cc13d2ff58.jpg

The Two Towers: Dark Pegasus

(TBF the Rankin-Bass ROTK made the same mistake.)

Anyway, as I promised/threatened: my collection of the books and everything else related to them and/or the films:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50891825966_e2657fb3d2_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50891114613_26c1fab2ec_b.jpg

Though TBF there's also the WETA art books for the Hobbit films in another bookcase plus a shelf with the various Jackson productions and Tolkien's own readings on CD and etc.

And yes that does mean I own three physical copies of LOTR...plus one on Kindle. You know, just to have around.

Woof

"You can't be too careful!" < / Jackson Bree guard voice, for that extra elan >

No shame in that Ned, I own multiple editions of Oscar and Lucinda & Black Beauty.

I hope Deems won’t count this as a spoiler, but I’m just gonna say that of all the scenes where the books shit all over the movies from a great height, the Council of Elrond might be first among them.

Also greatly enjoying just how many scenes there are where Sam gets the last word in.

Im allowing it for political convenience

Feeling wonder at Ned's collection like seeing Smaug's treasure.

nerd city lol <3

Indeed and If you even took one item from it I would react like Smaug and seek to burn you alive. Whether or not I do so while speaking like Benedict Cumberbatch is debatable.

Anyway let us celebrate the poetry of the films.

sam’s response always breaks my heart into a million pieces pic.twitter.com/gYmQPXtSpi

— Nariman△⃒⃘ (@slytherinus) January 30, 2021

Since folks were sharing their LOTR editions, these are mine from mid-70s. They have Tolkien's paintings on the covers. (hoping the formatting works)

https://i.imgur.com/OFluQHW.jpg

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.

this was one of the great literary predictions by big Phil Toynbee (Polly's dad) just before they couldn't print them fast enough to fill the shelves in bookstores in the US and subsequently everywhere else in the world!

cool covers!

behold the hideously ugly cover art from these 2004 paperbacks i got for cheap. i hate the covers so much, one day I will swap them out for a nicer edition

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/6EgAAOSwwbdWImTK/s-l500.jpg

https://2f96be1b505f7f7a63c3-837c961929b51c21ec10b9658b068d6c.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/products/061486.jpg

https://2f96be1b505f7f7a63c3-837c961929b51c21ec10b9658b068d6c.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/products/061485.jpg

I would like to find this version of the Hobbit illustrated by Tove Jannson:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2696/4448/products/9789510427927_frontcover_final_original_large.jpg?v=1522525558

oh hell yes

beautiful colour sense there. All the others are ugly, overworked mud and gravy!

only downside is the text is in Finnish but that's fine with me (I have the Jannson-illustrated English-language versions of Alice in Wonderland the Hunting of the Snark and they are awesome)

My version of The Hobbit is the same version posted above by that's not my post, but I've never seen the LOTR's from that version. They're really great.

https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2017/09/Tove-Jansson-Hobbit-original-2_2.jpg

"moomin characters"

^^^correct

Love the Jansson take on Gollum:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/e7/32/bfe7329a2137d3a7199ac2c51f6651f1.jpg

Caption conteeeeest!

All I can think of is a minimalist shittynewyorkercartooncaptions type one where Bilbo is just like "ah,fuck"

norse riddles where the answer is "an asshole"

"a sphincter says"

"wheres zig?"

I find I've come to resent the notion espoused by the likes of Terry Pratchett that if LOTR is still your favourite book when you're an adult you must have something wrong with you (this goes hand in hand with the unfortunate realisation despite the humanitarian concerns expressed in his work, Pratchett could be a bit of an unpleasant cynical old git at times). It's not even my actual favourite book, but it's this idea that you instantly jettison things that were a formative experience once you become a supposedly mature adult that can see things for what they really are that I take issue with.

I mean, I guess if your experience of reading ended there it could be a problem. But for me(and I'm sure many others) LOTR was my transition from children's books to adult reading, a massively significant stepping stone. I had a tatty copy of the complete trilogy that went everywhere with me (it didn't start off tatty much to my dad's chagrin) and I read the fuck out of that thing. I remember comparing the size of "Fellowship" to the number of pages in something I'd been reading prior to that(which was probably around 120 pages) and my mind boggling at the difference in scale.

Well the general idea that you can tell anything about anyone based on anything is flawed afaict

Who are your favorite fantasy novelists?

O.K., I give in. J. R. R. Tolkien. I wrote a letter to him once and got a very nice reply. Just think how busy he would have been, and yet he took the time out to write to a fan.

I'm not entirely convinced of merit-via-weight, I'd have to say.