Gifts from the Girls

 

Saturday afternoon, out of the blue, my two little ones (now aged 19 and 15, but soon to be 20 and 16 next month) gifted me with two “new” Tolkien books:

 

Little One, my globe-trotting, philosophy-studying 19-year-old teacher-to-be, saw the Spark Notes version of The Lord of the Rings and immediately thought of me. “Dad, now you can read the notes after each chapter so you can fully understand the story!”

 

Patch, my 15-year-old high school junior, returned me the paperback Hobbit. Back in 2022, for my birthday, she gave me the “gift” of “giving the Hobbit a go.” Provided I bought her the book. So I did, this one, and she read about a third of it, up to the appearance of Gollum, before storing it in a desk drawer where it remained for nearly two years. Now she returned to me, all smiles, telling me to enjoy it.

 

Thanks, girls! Will do!

 

So, more syzygystic ephemera from the superaether, convincing and convicting me more and more, than I must return to J. R. R. Tolkien. Hmm. Was going to return to Middle-earth last January … now might have to seriously take that journey, re-take it, that is, the sixth journey by my reckoning, on the first day of the next new year.

A Literary Vision

 

 Last night Professor Tolkien, Oxford philologist and epic literary genre creator, appeared to me in a dream. “Hopper,” he addressed me through a cloud of pipe smoke, at ease before an old English hillside, “see this man?” 

And an image appeared before me:

 

“Y-yes,” I said, still amazed at the vision of the Professor in front of me and not really focusing on this newer image.

 

“Look!”

 

This time I did look. “Who is it?”

 

“This is Edward Gibbon. He lived from 1737 until 1794.”

 

I did a quick calculation. “56! That’s my age! … my God, do I look like that?”

 

Tolkien blew a ring of smoke and the Gibbon image faded. “Do you know this man?”

 

Gibbon … Gibbon … Yes! “Yes! He wrote about the Roman Empire. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire – ”

 

“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” he casually corrected me with a trace of a grin. “You have this book in your collection.”

 

I thought a moment, then – yes! – in my Great Books of the Western World collection, currently housed in the storage space under the staircase along with all the Christmas decorations recently put away.

 

“I read that book … twenty years ago.”

 

The Professor raised his eyebrows.

 

“Well,” I back-pedaled, “I started to read it. Maybe got a hundred pages in.” I thought further, scanning my memories. “It was in Cape Cod. My wife and I were first dating, on our first weekend away together, and I picked it up in a bookstore there.”

 

“Indeed you did, but you never finished it.”

 

What he said was true. But where was this going?

 

As if he could read my thoughts, he put aside his pipe and stared into my eyes. “Hopper, I appreciate your plan to delve back into my works, in a certain ‘internally chronologic way’ as you put it. Tell me, how many times have you read my works?”

 

“Many times, sir.”

 

“More than once?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“More than twice?”

 

“Yes.” Where was this heading? “I’ve read your works since I was ten or so. The Hobbit. Then The Lord of the Rings, as a twelve or thirteen-year-old. I stumbled a bit through The Silmarillion the next year, but then I took a twenty year hiatus until I re-read them all. This spring will be my fifth go around – ”

 

“And how many times has your daughter gone to Italy?”

 

I froze, jaw agape. I think I knew where this was going.

 

Tolkien started to meander down a muddy lane that just happened to materialize. Bales of hay dotted the fields past a wooden fence. “Your daughter is going to Italy, perhaps the heart of Western Civilization. She is going there to study philosophy, art, and architecture, and, let us not forget, literature. You’ve always did some sort of sympathetic reading with her, no?”

 

“Yes. When she was assigned The Divine Comedy freshman year I read it too. Then, on her recommendation, I started The Aeneid, but, to be honest, I never finished it.”

 

He paused in consideration. “How long will she be gone?”

 

“Four months.”

 

“I think you should take up a work related to Italy that would take you about four months to journey through.”

 

The light went off, and he smiled at me as we said, together, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!”

 

He chuckled. “Plus, if I know you as well as I think I do, Hopper, it’s also a work on your bucket list?”

 

“Yes! Yes it is!”

 

Then a hearty laugh, and he reached in to his inner jacket pocket for a pinch of tobacco and relit his pipe. “Hopper, I grant you permission to set aside a fifth re-reading of my works to spiritually walk the streets of ancient Rome as your daughter walks the modern ones, and cross another item off your list.”

 

I was enlightened. “Thank you, master!”

 

“There is but one master,” the devout Catholic said to me, “and I am not He.”

 

And as I was about to reply in affirmation, the vision faded and I woke nestled and comfortable in my bed.

Tolkien ’24

 

Well, I’m starting to feel that itch again. Periodically, every couple of years or a decade or two, I run out of things of interest to read about. It’s been happening to me since the end of summer. And when that happens, I eventually (re)turn to Tolkien. It’s the perfect antidote for what ails me.

 

I have a box of Tolkien’s works still in the storage closet, unpacked since our move to Texas in the summer of 2021. It contains: Two sets of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Two versions of The Silmarillion, one a hardcover and the other a paperback. One copy of The Hobbit and one of Unfinished Tales, both paperback, and one hardcopy each of The Children of Hurin and The Fall of Gondolin. Excluding duplicates, that’s something just a bit over 3,000 pages, if I had to guesstimate.

 

My most recent re-reading of Tolkien was The Lord of the Rings in the Spring of 2021, two-and-a-half years ago, just before we learned we had to sell the house and move down south. It was my fifth journey with Frodo et. al. A little over a year before that I voyaged with Bilbo in The Hobbit, my third time to Erebor. I’ve read Children of Hurin twice, in August of 2010 and June of 2017, and reviewed both reads somewhere in these here electronic pages. The Silmarillion was a three-peat, the first time down the Jersey shore in Lavallette as a middle-schooler (I understood little of it back then), then as a recuperating heart patient in 2008, and finally listening to it on audio CD and reading along in 2017. The Fall of Gondolin was a birthday gift that I haven’t yet  read.

 

So every fiber of my being feels it’s time. Time. Time to re-read the Professor again. But this time to do it right, because, hey, I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore and can realistically hope for another quarter century, which still can hold plenty of re-reads, but I want to do it right, right now.

My plan is to read through the oeuvre according to Tolkien’s internal chronology:

 

January 1, 2024: One month to read The Silmarillion.

February 1: Continue on with The Children of Hurin.

February 15: Move on to The Fall of Gondolin.

March 1: Read the first 2/3 of Unfinished Tales, which deals with First and Second Age events.

March 15: Start The Hobbit.

April 15: Commence with the magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings.

Finish by June 1 with a re-read of The Quest of Erebor, the third part of Unfinished Tales.

 

[Dates approximate]

 

To help out my reading and cement my mastery of all things Middle-earth, I have J.E.A. Tyler’s The Complete Tolkien Companion, and have given myself permission to look up anything, anytime during my reader, even in the middle of a sentence. Some of my favorite memories learning about this world were the endless hours I pored over my Uncle’s copy of this encyclopedia, researching this and that and piecing together the history through the Ages.

And if I wish to further nerd out, I picked up the 500-page Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, excellent for trivia and insight into how he thought, wrote, and created. I bought it back in 2019 and clocked 76 pages, but never finished it.

I am also allowing myself to pick up anything else Tolkien I come across in the used book shops, such as Unfinished Tales II, and Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle-earth series. I would also love to read Leaf by Niggle, Father Giles of Ham, and Smith of Wootton Major, which I haven’t seen in print in decades.

Anyway, here’s to a great 2024! Can’t wait …

 

Return to Middle-earth

 

Despite my heartiest efforts, my children are not Tolkien fans. Perhaps it’s the coarsening of our culture and the desensitization that entails; perhaps its oversaturation of all things from the pen of the Professor since the dawn of the new century. All I knew was that when I first read it forty years ago as a young lad entering high school, no one else seemed to know about it except for one uncle and one of my pals. It opened up a world of magic and hope, goodness and virtue, my first encounter with an entirely new world. After reading through the novels I’d spend hours and hours soaking up the information in the two massive Tolkien encyclopedias that were out, piecing the history of Middle-earth together, part detective, part archaeologist.

I wanted this thrill for my two daughters, for at least the past six or seven years.

But despite a passing interest in The Hobbit, and a ten-year-old Little One inexplicably forcing her Grammy to buy her a ratted and torn used copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, neither one read much of Tolkien. That fire never ignited.

So I was quite surprised when three weeks ago they suggested we do a Lord of the Rings movie marathon.

I’ll take it!

Thrifting is one of their hobbies, which they normally do with their mom. Now that we’re here in Texas, they’ve discovered about a half-dozen quality stores to hunt at. The last one they dragged me to one Sunday afternoon. I go in with them initially, for two reasons: to make sure the place ain’t sketchy, and to see if there are any used books for sale. This place was borderline acceptable, and they did sell books. They also sold DVDs. So, for a dollar, I picked up a three-DVD set of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings theatrical releases. Nine hours and twenty minutes of Tolkien. I found the movies acceptable interpretations, not without fault but with some certain charms, when I first saw them in the theaters nearly two decades ago.

I hadn’t watched them in at least a decade, so I figured I’d do a marathon of all three on a day I found myself alone should the ladies go out for the day.

A week or two after this the Mrs. had her sales meeting come up. She’d be flying up to New York City for six days, and I’d be watching / entertaining / chauffeuring my two teenaged hellions, in a new land navigating a new job. So it was to my utter surprise and delight when they suggested the marathon.

It took us eight days to get through the trilogy. Usually because we only had an hour a night to watch it after homework was done and dinner was prepared, eaten, and the kitchen cleaned. We do maintain a strict 9:30/10:00 curfew for them (basically electronics get turned off at that time). And the girls prefer showering before bed. Factor in a late night dining out over the weekend, and that’s the reason it took eight days.

And they were into it, right away! Didn’t hurt that as teenage girls they had certain crushes on certain actors and / or teased each other about potential crushes. Even the Mrs. infatuation with Viggo Mortensen was brought up several times, with various “Ews!” and “I can see that.” But even better, they got into the story. Patch was a little rusty on the geo-politics going on in the background, so I’d have to explain that to her on her early morning school drop off, which told me she was ruminating about it over the night.

[… clenches fist in glee …]

But what a wonderful eight days! Imagine spending such a drawn out time in Middle-earth! The Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Rohan, Isengard, Fanghorn Forest, Helm’s Deep, Rauros, the Dead Marshes, Gondor, Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, … Cirith Ungol, Mordor, and Mount Doom, ... and then the Grey Havens.

I hope they got an appreciation for the physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal Frodo went through. I hope the message of courage, perseverance, loyalty and friendship sunk in. I hope they got a sense of the wide-scale cold war between Good and Evil that occasionally erupts into hot war in our current contemporary culture, as seen in metaphor in Tolkien’s writings. I hope they can decipher the hidden Catholic imagery in the story. I hope …

Right now the best takeaway is a possible budding interest in the Professor’s works. Little One is not a reader at this stage of her life (the only non-school-assigned book she’s read recently is Stephen King’s The Stand, which she’s been working her way through over two years, which translates to a rate of about two pages a day). But Patch is a reader. Her most recent notch was Dean R. Koontz’s Lightning, which I bought for her as a birthday present two months back. I can see her wending her way through Middle-earth. She’s about the age I was when I first did.

So that was my highlight early in November. Perhaps this time of year, when the sun sets noticeably early, when the frost first drifts over the Texas plains, when the cold bright moon casts wraithlike shadows … maybe I’ll have to start a new tradition of watching and re-watching some Tolkien with the girls

(But not The Hobbit trilogy!!!)

Tolkien Redux

 

Last week I finished my fifth cycle through Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. What struck me most was the fact that each time I read the 1,100 page novel, I take away something different.

The first time, as a lad entering high school in the fall of 1981, I entered a truly mystical world that astounded me. I spent the next year reading through Tolkien encyclopedias and the appendices, discussing the book with friends, trying to piece this and that out of the histories of Middle-earth. It elevated me out of the sea of difficulties I swam in during that age.

Nearly thirty years passed before I braved my first rereading. That time, Christmas of 2010, I finally read it as an adult and was amazed at the coherency and technical depth of the tale.

Two years passed and I read it through it again – this time while listened the audio CDs of The Lord of the Rings. I gained appreciation as the narrator actually sung the songs Tolkien wrote. What started off cringey I grew to respect and doubtless enjoy. Those poems and songs could actually be quite touching, and the talented narrator sung them in melodies far beyond that which my run of the mill mental ears heard on their own.

I travelled Middle-earth again in 2016, the summer starting my current job. What amazed me with this reading was Frodo’s spiritual journey, or Tolkien’s meta-metaphors for it. When Frodo at last strips himself of his orc shield and Bilbo’s Sting as he treads the stairs up to Mount Orodruin, a pilgrim clad only in rags to dispose of the One Ring (a metaphor for … sin), I found myself emotionally overwhelmed.

This last read-through I had another realization: Gimli, the dwarf, is fiercely proud of the accomplishments and identity of his “race,” the Dwarves. Legolas, the elf, is fiercely proud of the accomplishments and identity of his “race,” the Elves. Eomer, of the Rohan, a Man, is fiercely proud of the accomplishments and identity of his people. As is Aragon, a descendent of the Kings of Númenor, fiercely proud of the accomplishments and identity of his people, mistakes such as Isildur not destroying the Ring notwithstanding.

What, tell me, is wrong in being proud of the accomplishments and identity of one’s own people? It is such a revolutionary concept from today’s venomous, bitter hatred of anything and everything. It’s almost so refreshing that I wonder how long until Tolkien is canceled? (Note: there are attempts to “cancel” him right now, and have been going on for quite some time, some nonsense claiming Tolkien uses Orcs to denigrate people of African descent.) Would the movies be made in today’s acidic environment?

That realization hit me so hard I actually put the book down. I think it came to me during the Fellowship’s interlude in Lothlorien.

Anyway, just a remark on a personal observation.

Looking forward to new revelations with another re-reading, though that’s not scheduled for quite a few years.

However, I am thinking of binge-watching all three Peter Jackson movies in one day – ten or twelve hours of Tolkien, unfortunately mixed with modern day tropes, but Tolkien nonetheless.

Maybe that’ll happen before the end of the year, maybe on a hot summer day when all the ladies are at the beach and I’m chilling home alone.

Tolkien Describes 21st Century America

 

“The Men of Númenor were settled far and wide on the shores and seaward regions of the Great Lands, but for the most part they fell into evils and follies. Many became enamoured of the Darkness and the black arts; some were given over wholly to idleness and ease, and some fought among themselves, until they were conquered in their weakness by the wild men.”

 

  - Faramir speaking to Frodo, Chapter 5 “The Window on the West,” Book Four of The Two Towers

458 Miles to Rivendell

 

I’m not a big Facebook guy. Maybe log in a few times a week, mainly to see what’s up among my childhood friends and extended family scattered about the US. However, I noticed that whenever I do log in, I am bombarded with three types of ads:

– Dog-related products

– Keto diet food products

– Virtual walks

Now, I can understand the first two. I’m sure I posted something at some point about my dog and about my on-again off-again love affair with keto. But these virtual walks? I don’t know.

These are promotional gimmicky things where you can virtually walk the length of Hadrian’s Wall or the Camino del Santiago or some other noted historical length. Hadrian’s Wall is the winding barrier in Northern England established by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. And the Camino is the walk Catholic pilgrims take from France to Spain, with markers along the way. That might not be a bad thing to put on the bucket list.

Anyway, I got to thinking. Now that I’m two-thirds into The Fellowship of the Ring, my fifth foray into Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in forty years – why not do a virtual walk of that? Accompany Frodo from his comfortable home in the Shire, Bag End, all the way to Mordor and Mount Doom, a walk that takes place in the story over six months (with ample rest in Rivendell and Lorien).

Superb!

Then, after a bit of research, I found out that the journey is something of the order of 1,800 miles. At my leisurely pace of 1.5 miles a day, that’d take me over three years. Ugh. These hobbits can walk, man.

So then I decided to shorten my trek with Frodo. How about only to Rivendell? How far is that?

Turns out, per the title of this post, it’s 458 miles.

Up here in northern New Jersey we’ve had a very cold and snowy January and February, particular last month. So my 2021 mileage has been a mere 10.5 miles. That puts me still firmly within the bounds of the Shire. But now that the thaw seems to be leaving, and if I can average 10 miles a week (that’s my route, slightly increased, five times weekly), I can get to Rivendell in 44 weeks, or sometime the middle of next January. If I up my daily walk to 2.5 miles, five times a week (doable for these old bones), I can reach Rivendell by Thanksgiving.

I texted out to the family my desire to walk to Rivendell.

To which my oldest daughter replied with a nerd emoji.

Sigh.

But at least it gets me out walking in the sunshine!

 

N.B. One of the most interesting references for the devout Tolkien fan is The Atlas of Middle-earth, by Karen Wynn Fonstad. I bought it about a decade ago and was astounded by the degree of detail found within its pages – distances, geography, elevations, it is a legitimate atlas of a wonderful, though imaginary, world. Once I’m through with this re-reading of Tolkien (probably by mid-April) I plan on taking a walk through the atlas again.

 

2675 Tolkien

 

One of the more pleasant surprises I love receiving is the shock of synchronicity. I’ll see something in one area I’m interested in that will instantaneously correspond to another seemingly unrelated area of study. A synchronicity event just happened to me last night.

If you’ve been reading the last couple of posts, you’ll note that I’ve gotten the itch to read some Tolkien again. I decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings beginning on March 1, once I’m finished with the current epics I’m working my way through. You’ll also note that while out shopping last Sunday in preparation of the blizzard I bought the current copy of Astronomy magazine on a whim. It’s become a pleasant habit to read an article or two in bed before lights out every night this week.

Last night I read an article that mentioned asteroids, and I looked up the entry on asteroids in Wikipedia on my cell phone. Skimming through it I see a link for notable asteroids. I click on that and soon it’s revealed that, out there some two hundred million miles distant, is an asteroid floating in the inner region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, called 2675 Tolkien.

2675 Tolkien!

Normally, an asteroid is designated by a number and a name. The number originally was assigned in the order of discovery. Thus, the first asteroid discovered over two hundred years ago is known as 1 Ceres. Since over 100,000 asteroids have been discovered to date, I assume this numbering convention has been modified. Anyhoo, the discoverer is allowed to choose a name, which is then either approved or rejected by the International Astronomical Union.

2675 Tolkien was discovered on April 14, 1982, by British astronomer Martin Watt. It orbits the Sun every 1,202 days, and rotates about itself once every 44 days. A lumpy potato thing with dimensions something like 6 miles by 7 miles, it resembles, to my mind as I can’t find a photo of it anywhere, to be something like a rocky Rubik’s cube. It tumbles rather than rotates. It’s dark and has an absolute magnitude of 12.2, which means it can’t be seen by human eyes. You’d need something 100,000 times more powerful, like a 12” telescope.

I’ve read in several places (might be the same citation) that “Tolkien” was chosen because of the author’s lifelong interest in astronomy. I’m not so sure of that, never having read or heard of it before. There’s not much astronomy in his legendarium. So it seems to me the naming was more likely fan tribute. About a week after 2675 Tolkien was discovered Mr. Watt discovered another asteroid. It’s now known as 2291 Bilbo.

This is not 2675 Tolkien, but this is what it looks like in my mind ...

 

Return to Tolkien

 

Well, out of the blue yesterday a strong urge to re-read Tolkien swept over me. I kinda know that this will happen when I find myself dissatisfied with “life out there,” as well as when I’m looking to recharge my reading activity. Yes, I have some hard SF paperbacks on deck, and yes, I still want to read them. I am getting ready to crack open Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, again, for the first time in two decades, tomorrow. And after that, I’ll probably check out the John C. Wright book I mentioned in an earlier post. I am looking forward excitedly to those two reads, in light of my enjoyment of the hard SF I read in November and December.

But Tolkien beckons. Yes, I did re-read the Hobbit this time last year. Due mainly because the family bought me a special leather-bound Hobbit/Lord of the Rings set. So after a couple of hard SF’s are put in the can (and I can get back “into the feel” for SF to pen my outlined novel), I will venture back to Middle-earth. It’s going on nearly five years since I journeyed with Frodo and Aragorn et al, so the time is right.

Oh, and I have been watching a fair amount of Tolkien videos out there on the web, something I never really have done before. One thing I particularly noticed is the gusto with which these guys attack Tolkien pronunciation. What zeal! What zest! I mean, the Scottish guttural ch’s, the sibilant and ululant Finnish / Quenya syllables, the sturm-und-drang of Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves. How did this all elude me in the numerous readings and re-readings of the Master?

Sadly, and horrifically, I realize I read Tolkien with a New Jersey accent.

Now, it’s not like Tony, Paulie, and Richie Aprile are sitting round the counsel of Elrond like they did outside that butcher shop in Carlstadt.

But what I’ve heard interiorly is but a far, far cry from the sounds that must have resonated in Tolkien’s mind.

So with this re-reading, my goal is to speak the languages, the names of people and places, as Tolkien would, in my head.

March 1st would be a great embarkation date …

Christmas 2019

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

Ah, Santa must’ve known Hopper was thinking about a Tolkien Silmarillion – Hobbit – Lord of the Rings reread. After all, it’s been four years, and I’ve been restless in my readings of late. That’s why, out of all the clothes that were desperately needed and deeply appreciated, this was my favorite Christmas gift:

Thank you ladies!

The girls made out as well, as did the Mrs. and the even the dog. We’ve had our ups and downs over the past twelve months, but we’re grateful to have each other and to be where we are at this point in time.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Sixteen

That’s the number of languages J.R.R. Tolkien understood: Ancient Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Norse/Old Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Anglo-Saxon/Old English, Middle English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, and Finnish.

Seventeen, if you include Esperanto, which he taught himself as a young teen.

He is credited with constructing in his works anywhere from fourteen to twenty-one languages. The discrepancy depends on how one defines a “language” – do a few lines etched in a runestone qualify? Off the top of my head I count seven – Quenya, Sindarin, Numenorean, Hobbitish, Dwarvish, the Black Speech, and, uh, did the Eagles speak their own language? Not sure. It’s been about a year and a half since I cracked upon a book written by the Professor.

Anyway, this small but wonderful bit of trivia regarding Tolkiennish linguistics reminds me that I still have The Fall of Gondolin, a birthday gift, waiting patiently on deck. And I have an unused Amazon gift card waiting to be spent. Maybe I should take the plunge and pick up something off my bucket list, something from The History of Middle-earth perhaps? Hmm? I think so.

I’ve also just begun another bucket-list book, about which I’ll have more to say in an upcoming post.

Tolkien and Dickens

So, adult me discovered about fifteen years ago that I really enjoy reading Charles Dickens. A thousand years ago, back in high school, my class was assigned A Tale of Two Cities to read but I, either through laziness or indifference, decided to wing it and only read the Cliff Notes the night before the test. Think I got something like a B, but the incident rested heavily on my heart for many years. So much so that I decided it would be a good way to equilibrialize the karmic multiverse to finally read the book cover-to-cover on my daily train commutes into NYC.

I did, and relished it so much I may have actually kicked myself for faking it twenty years prior.

Recently I started reading a Dickens story every Thanksgiving. I did the Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, and now I’m about a quarter through David Copperfield. I enjoy this new tradition of mine immensely.

Now, just a few nights ago I read the following passage and thought immediately of J.R.R. Tolkien. See if you can figure out why:

“Oh, what do you want?” grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine. “Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!”

I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated –

“Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, goroo!” – which he screwed out of himself with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.

“I wanted to know,” I said, trembling, “if you would buy a jacket.”

“Oh, let’s see the jacket!” cried the old man. “Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!”

That’s right. Gollum.

Oh, goroo, goroo!

… a kind of rattle in his throat …

“show the jacket to us!”

I wonder: did a young Tolkien read David Copperfield (published in 1850) as a lad and did this scene subconsciously imprint itself upon his wondrously imaginative mind, till years and years later the poor pitiable creature once called Smeagol drew itself out upon the printed page, 87 years later in The Hobbit?

An interesting piece of literary archaeology, no?

N.B. Above scene occurs near the beginning of Chapter XIII, where young David decides to flee his degrading employment at Murdstone and Grinby’s to travel uplands to throw himself upon the mercy of his never-seen miserly spinster Aunt. David is all of ten years old.

Revisiting Húrin

Over the past decade I’ve read through one of Tolkien’s works every year, year-and-a-half. It’s a nice, grounding, satisfying ritual. I encourage anyone who’s ever held a childhood love of the Professor to regularly revisit his tales. I find it overall one of the best antidotes to the daily culture smog.

I’m not an expert on Tolkien – more like a very well-versed acolyte, based on the following pilgrimages I’ve taken:

2016 – The Lord of the Rings

2014 – The Silmarillion (book on CD)

2014 – The Hobbit (book on CD)

2012 – The Lord of the Rings (book on CD)

2011 – The Lord of the Rings

2010 – The Children of Húrin

2008 – The Silmarillion

1994 – The Fellowship of the Ring

1981 – The Silmarillion (partial)

1981 – The Lord of the Rings

1980 – The Hobbit

I’ve read the other non-Middle earth works by Tolkien, too. Father Giles of Ham and Smith of Wooten Major back in the 80s, and Leaf by Niggle and On Faery Stories within the past five years. Also put away many books about Tolkien and his mythos, such as The Philosophy of Tolkien by Peter Kreeft, Master of Middle-earth by Paul Kocher, Tolkien’s Requiem by John Carswell, Exploring Tolkien’s Hobbit by Corey Olsen, JRR Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth by Bradley Birzer, and Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards by Michael Stanton. Oh, and almost forgot to mention the Christopher Tolkien-edited Lost Tales as well as the two very thorough encyclopedias of Middle earth by Robert Foster and J.E.A. Tyler.

So it’s kinda like my literary religion.

Anyway, I’m feeling again that twelve- to eighteen-month itch, and I think I’ve settled on revisiting The Children of Hurin.

I first read it in August of 2010. My review of it back then is here, but I am not going to re-read the review. Not until I’m finished with the second go-round with Hurin in a week or two, then I’ll compare impressions in a follow-up post.

To be continued …

Hullo Old Friend!

Life is good! I’ve been re-reading The Lord of the Rings since for the past three weeks, and whether its in the early light of the morning, the hot sun of lunchtime afternoon, or in the late evening when the house is quieting down, my time with the Professor is just about the highlight of my day.

As exceptional as a visit from your childhood friend, a visit that happens erratically, spontaneously, every couple of months or years. And as you can imagine, not only is the reacquaintance fond and heartfelt, but every time you visit you learn something new about your old pal.

This is my fourth go-round with the greatest piece of fiction of the twentieth century, over a span of 35 years. This time, though, I have no agenda other than pure enjoyment, a way of celebrating a very grim and dark period in my life. As a result, the pages are whirling by in a blur, and the hands of the clock spin round so fast when I’m reading of Middle-earth that I think Einstein must be involved somehow.

Anyway, what’s different this time?

Good question.

What completely struck me unawares is the weaknesses just below the surface in Aragorn. All of Tolkien’s characters are fully enfleshed, wondrous shades of gray in full spectrum. No one is fully good, no one if fully evil ("not even Sauron, in the beginning," saith Gandalf in The Fellowship). No one is all-knowing, no one is a foolhardy oaf. No one is the consummate hero, no one – er, hang on. Aragorn. I think my past experiences with Aragorn erroneously led me to consider the heir of Isildur the all-good Prophet Priest and King. Faultless, courageous, benevolent.

But wait. How did I miss his tortured agony over the failed decisions he made in the wake of Gandalf’s demise? The self-doubt, the railing against fate, self-recriminations over choices that he thinks could have been made better, though we know differently. I had not seen this Aragorn before (or at least it never stuck in my memory), and it is truly refreshing.

Though not a new observation, I never cease wondering about the number of creepy events that sprinkle The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s not something Tolkien’s noted for, yet it’s an outstanding element of the book. Consider:

　

- the eerie, otherworldly wail of the Nazgul in the forest at night … answered by another cry miles distant, both interrupting the hobbits’ campfire song

- the glowing eyes Frodo sees – or thinks he sees – in the mines of Moria and later in the relative safety among the elves in the woods

- the soft patter of feet as the company moves through Moria … that lasts a step or two longer than any echo should

- when Pippin startles Gandalf by dropping a stone down the bottomless well in the mines, ending in a plop after almost too much time has elapsed – then answered, a few minutes later, with an ominous tom-tap, tap-tom …

- the apparition of the old man appearing to Gimli during his night watch on the plains of Rohan … is it Saruman, or something else?

　

Three weeks in I’m up to Chapter Three of Book Three. That’s about twenty percent finished with The Two Towers. At this rate I’ll probably finish earlier than planned, somewhere around the middle of August.

Must slow down! Must slow down!
 

Ataremma

Átaremma i ëa han ëa,
na airë esselya,
aranielya na tuluva,
na carë indómelya
cemendë tambë Erumandë.
Ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma,
ar ámen apsenë úcaremmar
sív' emmë apsenet tien i úcarer emmen.
Álame tulya úsahtienna
mal ámë etelehta ulcullo.

Násië.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Starting to feel those pangs again … perhaps a fourth reading of The Lord of the Rings is just over the near hills? There is so much to do, though, so much other stuff to read, to digest, to write upon. Also the strong urge to move past this limbo, to get my life in some sort of profitable, regimented order. And so I will postpone this youthful calling, for a few more weeks and months, allowing only small sips such as the Ataremma or the ae Adar nín to quench this thirst.

/nerdgasm

9 out of 10 Cats Agree

Little One needs to start reading The Hobbit, like, now!

Eonwë

A few years back when I was re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I studied a book which pointed out the numerous examples of Christian symbolism that proliferate throughout the novel if you but look with open eyes.  I blogged about it, here. 

Last night I was listening / reading the Akallabêth, one of the two twenty-page codas to The Silmarillion, and I found another instance all on my own.  The Akallabêth is basically Tolkien’s take on the Atlantis myth, the island of which he calls Númenórë, and it fits right in to the history of Middle-earth.  Four paragraphs in I came upon a sentence which features Eonwë, a Maiar (angel) known as the herald of Manwë.  Though not God Himself (in Tolkien’s world), Manwë is a sort of demi-god, like the Greek Olympians, the most powerful of this subset of beings.  Eonwë is the greatest of the Maiar, a St. Michael the Archangel.

“Eonwë came among them and taught them [the Númenóreans]; and they were given wisdom and power and life more enduring than any others of mortal race have possessed.”

Whoa!

My first discovery of a Christ-like reference in Tolkien! 

Consider me well-pleased, and on the hunt for more …

A Course of Tolkien

So the Tolkien bug bit me (again) last week, and now I’m halfway through listening to the audio book of The Silmarillion as I read along with it.  A pleasurable distraction, one whose 45 minutes every day I truly look forward to.  Anyway, it got me thinking.  This being my second time through The Silmarillion, and having read The Hobbit twice, The Lord of the Rings three times, The Children of Hurin once (but the audio CD of that is on deck), and with Little One ready to crack There and Back Again for the first time, I got to wondering (again) at the best order to read Tolkien’s works.

A most logical starting point would be to read them in the order Tolkien (and later on, his son Christopher) published them: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and The Children of Hurin.  I agree.  The Hobbit can be read by children no younger than ten; The Lord of the Rings I think should wait until Middle School, ages eleven or twelve.  I was twelve when I read it, and it absolutely changed my life.  The latter two works are probably best left for high school or adulthood.

Okay.  You’ve read all four books, all 2,100 pages / one million words of them.  Here’s where the fun begins.

You pick up two reference books: Tolkien’s World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth by Robert Foster and The Complete Tolkien Companion by J. E. A. Tyler.  If you are a true Tolkien fanatic, you can spend hours thumbing through them.  I have, and still do every couple of months. 

Now you reread the books in the true chronological order Tolkien intended.  That is, The Silmarillion is read first, as it begins with the, er, Beginning, and goes right on through the First and Second Ages and the start of the Third.  Then, read The Children of Hurin to get some supplemental First Age Tolkienna fleshed out.  Follow that with informed readings of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  All the while adding to your knowledge of Middle-earth with Foster’s and Tyler’s reference guides.  You need not have to worry about spoilers.  More important at this stage are backstories and seeing the characters and plotlines in the greater scheme of Tolkien’s history.

Congratulations.  You are now an official Tolkien expert.

But let’s go a little wild, shall we, and throw caution to the wind! 

The next step is to expand your knowledge of Tolkien’s world that did not necessarily make it into Tolkien’s books.  For starters, try Unfinished Tales.  It’s a thick paperback with several long chapters on various aspects of Middle-earth, divided by Age.  This is a good initial point to begin filling in those holes and answering those unanswerables.  It was in this book, for example, that an enormous riddle from my youth, which no amount of searching Foster and Tyler helped, was finally resolved: who were the other two Istari? Read Unfinished Tales.

And then, read Christopher Tolkien’s twelve-volume work The History of Middle-earth, culled from just about all of his father’s notes and writings.  I have perused two from the library, but would not be adverse to purchasing the volumes as I come across them (or buying them all at once should I have a financial windfall allowing for a semi-major discretionary purchase).

Two bonus books worth seeking out: The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad and The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.  I own one and borrowed the other from a local library on more than one occasion; both are fascinating, informative reads.  Get them, read them, learn them.

You are now a Tolkien Scholar.

Final assignment: read through The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and The Children of Hurin again, though this time while listening to the audio book on headphones.  A slow, almost transcendent and enriching experience.  Once I complete Silmarillion in this fashion I intend to move straight on to Hurin.

I myself have not strictly followed this course, but I have stayed close enough to fully appreciate its soundness.  But as for Little One, whose starting the journey with Bilbo next month …