 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Once upon a time in Middle Earth, otherwise known at the time as San Francisco, a rather large number of Americans went around in fringed, leather or tie-dyed garments and called themselves Bilbo Baggins, Frodo, or if they were really egotistical, Gandalf. They were, in general, art school dropouts, high school students on the razzle, or runaways. Most of the Bilbos, Frodos and Gandalfs were boys; the girls tended to be generic elves, since the Tolkien girl names tended to be in Tolkien’s personal Elvish language and nobody really wanted to deal with the pronunciation.
In neither case was the fault J.R.R. Tolkien’s. The very picture of the mild-mannered English don, unworldly in spite of having been in World War I, Tolkien was not the sort of a dude to set off a fad. Not intentionally. Tolkien’s stunningly dull, thuddingly boring, way too long, rather poorly written Lord of the Rings seemed to have very little to do with the burst of colorful costumes and adopted hobbity monikers in 1968. This time a glossy, perfectly executed movie has started the second round of Lord of the Ringiness. The movie folks have succeeded in pushing vast, specially designed racks of Hobbit-oriented books, both paperbacked and hardbacked, illustrated lush special editions, Elvish dictionaries, rune-covered knick-knacks, and fictional atlases to the fronts of bookstores. The hobbits are once again unavoidable, this time even in the most remote villages of our land, let alone San Francisco. I have called Lord of the Rings boring and dull and poorly written and I stand by that judgement. I can’t avoid comparing Tolkien’s unsatisfactory prose to the graceful English sentences of his pal, C. S. Lewis, whose somewhat similar quest books positively sparkle, especially in comparison, but have never, to my knowledge, caused any widespread costume craze. However, I have to admit, something about the Lord of the Rings triology has lasted. People keep reading it. And buying it. Even I have continued to read it, more than once, though I never liked it much. I think its popularity rests not in its bloodthirstiness and battle-gear but in its very lack of conflict. For a book with hordes of nasty-looking goblins, ghostly, chilly Black Riders and zillions of bad guys called Orcs, the Lord of the Rings is extremely soothing, even aside from its soporific prose. I have been musing over Tolkien’s mysteriously appealing qualities while I pick through an enormous, brand-new copy bought in the local supermarket. The appeal, I am almost certain, is that there is probably no book ever written in English with less ambivalence. I include all romances, tracts, and software manuals. There is no chance that even a single orc will ever be converted to a better way of life. Therefore, one can smack any number of them and never have a doubt or regret. The orcs are born bad and they stay bad. The cave-dwelling mean-spirited whip-wielding balrog is never going to change. The goblins are not running banks, they are being bad, day in and day out. That’s their job. It isn’t only orcs and balrogs which are a bit one-dimensional. The girls, while frequently described as attractive, are curiously without personality. They range from those unpronounceable elf babes who basically stand around looking pretty to my personal favorite, the warrior’s prize wife, a kind of dopey, love-struck Amazon type. Not like Xena. None of these ladies are really central to the story. The lack of robust female companionship helps keep the book quiet and devoid of certain kinds of -um- ah- er- tension. The most decidedly passionate female character in the book is a smothering, multi-eyed, hungry, very round spiderish monster, whose very roundness is her most disgusting characteristic. We wonder what Tolkien was thinking, exactly, when he wrote about that lady spider. It comes off as one of the liveliest parts of the book, but also probably one of the most perversely innocent passages outside H. P. Lovecraft’s descriptions of his equally squishy monsters. Once past the spider lady, the lack of subtle under or overtones makes the book very calming, like an endless, monotonous seascape. The seascape may have electric eels and whatnot swimming around in it, but we needn’t worry about treating them as equals or thinking about their personalities, their rights, or their motivations. Just because it is modelled on old English epics does necessarily mean it has to be so flat. The dragon in Beowulf has plenty of conflicts and even a plausible motivation. It has a job - guarding the treasure - which it tries to do within its limitations. We can respect that dragon, however formidable and frightening it might be. The Lord of the Rings, for all its elves and orcs, has smothered all human complexity just as surely as that lady spider wrapped up our Frodo, It is, like the made-up language of the Elves, ultimately artificial without being artistic. Nevertheless, I’ve bought two copies in my lifetime and will probably end up reading it several more times, very slowly, as I fall into a lovely, peaceful, false trance, imagining a world completely free of nuance, dotted with quaint thatched cottages, genial wizards, and furry-footed hobbits. I will, of course, be thoroughly ashamed of myself for doing so. On the other hand, the movie is really cool. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
