Tolkien on CD

A few weeks ago I finished my third reading of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Each time was significantly different. First I read the masterpiece as a youth over three decades ago. That experience is well-chronicled and well-alluded to here at the Hopper. Then I re-read it for the first time nearly two years ago, Christmas-time 2010. I’ve also written plenty about that time, too.

My first reading took the entire summer. I read it in a variety of locales: trees, cars, a rowboat, the stock car races, the garage roof, my grandmother’s basement, beneath the dining room table. The second go-around took five weeks, and I read it primarily on two couches: one in Hilton Head at my in-laws, the other the cozy catcher’s mitt in my living room. I came up with a line that succinctly summarized my Tolkien voyages after the second reading: the first time through I could not see the forest for the trees; the second time I could not see the trees for the forest.

Perhaps that reflects a mature world-view, one interested in great historical strains. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.

Early this summer I was struck with a thought that seemed to come straight from out of the blue. What if, that little nudge inside me began asking, you re-read Tolkien again – a third time! and again barely a year-and-a-half later! – but this time read along the masterpiece to one of those books-on-CDs?

Intriguing. Never done it before. But I was irresistibly hooked.

I began my read-along on June 30 and finished three months later, September 29. These were the audio CDs recorded sometime in the 90s (forget when exactly) by performer Rob Inglis. Each of the three books had its own CD case; all in all there were about 40 CDs to listen to. (I did not listen to the last 4 CDs of The Return of the King, being the lengthy appendices Professor Tolkien, er, appended to the novel.)

What did Hopper think, and what did he learn?

Well, initially, reading along in the book while it was being read to me was … agonizingly slow. However – and it’s a big however – the glacial pacing definitely grew on me. At first I had a difficult time following along (ie, keeping my wandering eye on the sentence being spoken instead of greedily foraging ahead), but once I settled into the comfortable drift of the story, I was pulled in.

I must admit I liked the majority of Inglis’s vocal characterizations; he imbued each and every character with a rich personality – particularly and especially Gandalf, Sam, Merry and Pippin, Treebeard, and, Gollum par excellance. However – yes, another big however – I didn’t like Legolas (too high-pitched), Saruman (too whiny), or Aragorn (too lunkish).

The songs were embarrassing to listen to at first, but they also grew on me. So much so that, though I can’t recall them now, I did hum a few now and then in the immediate afterwards.

Pronunciations were odd to my mind’s vocalizings, and more often than not a different syllable was stressed. That kind’ve freaked me out. For thirty-plus years Pelennor, for example, though it’s not the only one, manifested in my mind as PELL-an-or, and Mr. Inglis comes along pronouncing it pe-LAN-or. (Note: this matters only to a true Tolkien geek.)

Pronunciations up in the air were finally defined to me … ie, “Caradhras” as “Carathras” Never thought to speak the “dh” sound as a “th”, though no doubt the Professor stashed it somewhere in his Appendices.

Listening to / reading along with The Lord of the Rings became a daily (mostly nightly) ritual I looked forward to, though the investment in finding a hiding spot, getting the CD player and headphones and book all aligned, often made me skip nights (more than I’d expect retrospectively). But I must say I enjoyed the experience immensely, so much so that I’m thinking of doing it again to another childhood masterpiece (Watership Down, perhaps?).

And that tree-forest dynamic? Not sure, but this third time around I’d put it at a 60/40 ratio.

When it ended … as always, with reading these books … I wished it to continue …



PS – I took a lot of heat on this from a close friend, my wife’s best friend, who was also bitten by the Middle-earth bug a decade ago. When I explained that I was reading Tolkien for a third time in conjunction with listening to it on CD, well, this started a chain reaction of busting Hopper’s chops. She wondered whether my fourth time I’d read it dressed up like a hobbit with holograms – or cardboard cutouts, at the very least – of Ian McKellan and Viggo Mortensen standing about me as I read the book out loud …