They went in single file along hedgerows and the borders of coppices, and night fell dark about them. In their dark cloaks they were as invisible as if they all had magic rings.
Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
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| Frodo Sam and Pippin Set Out | Cor Blok |
Actually it's Matthew Sullivans fault this time. He started a "read along with Lord of the Rings" on his blog, under the premise that it might shed light on the origins of some gaming things. But I expect that's just an excuse. Matthew is an erudite host - anyone who name checks Umberto Eco whilst reviewing the classic 1980s Robert Harris / Gary Chalk fantasy board game Talisman is doing something right.
So I find myself once again re-reading The Lord of The Rings, something I seem to end up doing do every few years since the age of 10 when I first read it, and much like the work of Mark Rothko, who I saw probably at the age of 16, also seem to return to. The work changes every time. Not that the work really changes of course, discounting Vladimir Umanets and Peter Jacksons contributions - it's really just the viewer's life experiences.
I'd already convinced myself that Tolkiens biography has far more influence on his text than he'd ever admit to and while I'm fully committed to la mort de l'auteur I'm also open to an intertextual reading of biography and fiction, and I think in this case with good reason, keeping in mind that both Tolkien and his wife have his fictional characters names on their gravestones - these stories held meaning to these people beyond what we as readers, standing on the outside of their lives can know.
Adding comments to Matthews blog as we go - on Tolkien as a proto-postmodernist, complete with metanarrative diversions around the folkloric figures of Black Riders (who will be transformed into Ring-Wraiths and Nazgûl at some point) and The Shire as politically progressing towards an Arts and Crafts Romantic Socialist Utopia - his faux historic framework and deconstruction of mythological themes being rather a rejection of modernity and movement towards increasing fragmentation, particularly of history and place, almost to an account of a ruralised psychogeography. And we're only on Chapter 4.
Grab a copy, jump in.
You guys are going to get everyone rereading these. Not like that is a bad thing though. ;)
ReplyDeleteI just have so much other stuff going on at the moment how will I fit it all in! LOL
Well, there are certainly worse books to read, although Mrs. Zhu would claim not many!
DeleteThe pace is good at the moment - two weeks between chapters, so it's easy to squeeze a bit of a read and a bit of 'thinking' time in.
Good stuff! LOTR is on my perennial to do list =) Matt's page is def good reading!
ReplyDeleteYep. And he does some nice old-school mini painting too.
DeleteThere are some books like these, for me It's some of Dino Buzatti's, I just can't say if it's my evolving life that sheds a new light on the book or if it's the book that acts like a beacon and which shows me the reflection of my changes...
ReplyDeleteBut like St Exupery's "petit Prince" or others the Lord of the Rings and many others are made of so many layers one coudl read them a hundred times and still find something new with a nother way to see it.
It's a more a "every ten years" thing for me to read those but I might be tempted not to wait another 5 years now...
Ah Le Petit Prince is a firm favourite of Mrs Zhu and the small ones, but I was introduced only after the little Zhu's arrival, it's good stuff.
DeleteJust because they share a shelf, that reminds me that Moorcocks Epic Pooh perhaps isn't based on a misunderstanding of Tolkien, rather a misreading of Milne, but maybe not.
But, if you wait another 5 years, we should be about finished with this read-through and ready to start again! The road goes ever on...
Excellent post, Zhu! Could not agree more that "Tolkiens biography has far more influence on his text than he'd ever admit to".
ReplyDeleteIMHO, his quotes often seem to paint himself in a progressive light, but I find he's very much a product of the traditional mores of his era. Not sure how much is posturing, and how much is wishful thinking, but (like Hemingway) it's hard to read LotR without contextualizing it within his world experience - no matter how much (unlike Hemingway) he denied the stories were anything other than stories.
That's one of the great things about joining along with a read-through is that we get to point at particular instances in the text that informs a given reading. Of course LoTR is socially progressive. Sam, the proletariat becomes the democratic leader of the Shire, and every character who holds a position of power at the start of the book - be they good or bad - is overthrown, and if replaced, done by someone holding a lower social status at the start. But we're a long, long way off that!
DeleteWell I'll be jiggered! Thanks for the big shout out. I really can't tell you how gratifying it is to see people get into the muck of the Lord of the Rings with me. You're post certainly inspires me to keep going.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I agree with you and Tiny B. about contextualizing the book in Tolkien's world and biography. Just tonight I was working on the next installment, and -- as I write about Sam -- I find myself rubbing up against Tolkien's expectations about class and social status. It's fascinating stuff - although I feel as a non-Englishman, I have poor insight into the complexities of the English class system. Well, hopefully others will be able to give me some guidance in the comments...
Good stuff! I look forard to reading your thoughts
DeleteI don't know if Tolkien wrote specifically about class issues in Letters or elsewhere, but there is definitely a set of attitudes to social roles that emerges from the text. The Free Peoples are the 99% :-)
Somewhat related, I find the cosmology put forward in Lord of the Rings strongly parallels the Chain of Being, and is perhaps a combination of Tolkiens class-ism, his Christianity and Medievalism. He does, however, have some mobility going on.
Strangely A Conspiracy Unmasked got me thinking about gaming and imperialism - which Dr. Bargle recently touched on, and William Morris.