Some of you are here just for my re-read of The Lord of the Rings. You might as well take me off your reading lists for the foreseeable future, because I'm finally admitting to myself that I won't be able to work on that up until the fall at least. (I can't even keep up with The Tale of Genji, and I have a hard deadline for that, our trip to Japan in August.)

Since the re-read suffers when it's spread out too far, I'll probably start again from scratch if and when I pick it back up. I'd like to; it was really educational. But I just don't know.

I meant to ask this yesterday and forgot:

( LotR spoilers )

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Look, I haven't abandoned this!

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 7: 'In the House of Tom Bombadil' )

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Stuff happens in this chapter; I've just been busy.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 6: 'The Old Forest' )

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You know, because I usually read Lord of the Rings in big chunks, I'd never had a strong opinion on the pace of the opening before now. But I've been looking at Chapter 5 for weeks now, and just not feeling like talking about it (and then work got busy). I think this is a sign that it's slow after all. =>

But here we go, back to it.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 5: 'A Conspiracy Unmasked' )

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I should put these all in one place where I can find them.

Other people's re-reads:

• "Reading Lord of the Rings: A Final Attempt", by Debbie Ridpath Ohi. Chapter-by-chapter reaction posts by a first reader. No spoilers past the chapter listed.
• "A Tolkien Virgin", by Mark-Edmond. Chapter-by-chapter reactions by a first reader. Spoiler warning: the posts are listed in reverse-chronological order, with little blurbs for each post; thus, the very post listing linked above will spoil first-time readers. I don't see any way to browse the posts chronologically.
• "Occasional notes as I go: The Black Gate is Closed", by Thomas Nephew. Spoilery re-read notes, starting from partway through (see also his original essay about re-reading).
• thomasyan's spoilery re-read notes on chapters 1-2, 3-6 of Fellowship.

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I haven't given up! Travel is hell on posting schedules.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 4: 'A Short Cut to Mushrooms' )

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At the party last Saturday, a group got to talking about books (surprise!), and it was suggested that there are some books that readers can't fully connect with if they don't share a cultural context. I regard this uncontroversial; for instance, even with all the research and commentary at reading_genji, I know I'm not appreciating it on all the levels that contemporary readers did. (Genji is still bulking on my bedside table, making me guilty every time I spot it. I swear I'll get back to it someday.)

(Disclaimer: I was coming down with a migraine during this conversation, so I am reconstructing and paraphrasing all over the place.)

Shortly thereafter, Lord of the Rings came up, and a guy raised in Japan said it didn't work for him. The reason he offered was the Ring; if I understood properly (and I may not have), he thought the concept of putting all that power into an object was strange, and possibly stupid. An English professor, who specializes in post-colonial literature and who therefore has some experience in studying cultural relationships, thought that LotR was a good example of books that worked best within a shared cultural context.

Now, the original objection wasn't necessarily culturally-based [*]; I can name a couple of people raised in the U.S. who probably have the same reaction to the Ring. And the point of this post is not to debate the validity of the objection. Instead, I'm wondering if anyone else can share reactions to LotR from those raised in a non-European-descended culture, either their own or those of others. (I have this vague memory of a newspaper article about the book being read all over the world and the different meanings that people got out of it, but that's not exactly enough to search on.)

[*] However, it is interesting to note the comment on "LotR as wuxia" by anna_wing. (And yes, I know that wuxia is a Chinese genre.)

Two unrelated notes:

1. Thomas Nephew posts about reading LotR to his daughter. Though now that I look at his post again, he talks about the Ring as a very successful part of the tale.
2. GIP! I know it should wait for many more chapters, but I couldn't resist. Yes, I am that much of a dork.

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I'm going to ease back into this re-read thing with comments on a short essay by C.S. Lewis, "The Dethronement of Power," which is reprinted in Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs.

( In which Kate is puzzled )

This was of more interest to me as a snapshot of the critical landscape at the time than as a source of new insights.

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My sinuses are giving me trouble, again, so I'm not in the most charitable mood; but regardless, I'm not finding this chapter very interesting. I'll just start talking and see what I can find.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 3: 'Three is Company' )

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Notes from two essays in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter.

This collection of scholarly essays was prompted by the completion of The History of Middle-earth, the posthumous volumes edited by Christopher Tolkien. It's split into three sections: one about HoMe as a whole; one about Tolkien's languages; and one about Tolkien as a storyteller. I've already commented on Thomas's essay, "Some of Tolkien's Narrators," for which this collection was recommended. As for the rest, I skipped the languages section, but skimmed other essays if they looked like they might be relevant here. There were two I wanted to make brief notes about.

( Bratman, 'Literary Value'; Burns, 'Gandalf and Odin' )

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It occurs to me that I probably should have, at the start of the re-read, talked about my biases and preferences when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, just so everyone knows where I'm coming from.

( spoilers )

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Yes, I've already posted about "The Shadow of the Past," but I didn't talk about how the (really remarkably long) info-dump works—both in the sense of its mechanics and in the sense that it doesn't stop me-the-reader dead in my tracks. (With the usual caveat that I've been reading this book since forever, so familiarity helps too; yet when I try to look at it now with a fresh and critical eye, it still seems to work.)

Quite a lot of this is going to be me talking out loud to myself, trying to figure this out. And yes, I resort to a table.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 2: 'The Shadow of the Past' (revisited) )

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Trying to be a bit more expeditious this time, but man, there's a lot of information here.

Once again, spoilers for anything Middle-earth might be found here.

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 2, 'The Shadow of the Past' )

[Edit: I realized last night just before bed that I wanted to talk about the structure and mechanics of the info-dump conversation more, but that I also needed to sleep, eat, and work. So that post will come tonight.]

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I spent a while going through John Howe's web site, and have three Lord of the Rings icons behind the cut.

( three icons from John Howe images )

Critical essay: Paul Edmund Thomas, "Some of Tolkien's Narrators," in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter.

The thesis of Thomas's essay is simple: the opening of The Hobbit is told by a very intrusive narrator [*], but as the book gets more serious toward the end, the narrator recedes; and by the start of The Lord of the Rings, the narrator has become impartial and self-effacing, presenting many more viewpoints than at the start of The Hobbit.

Thomas develops this by discussing The Hobbit's narrative voice at length, showing how it fits with the nature of the opening as a children's story. He discusses the initial drafts of LotR, which were unsuccessful attempts to return to the intrusive voice of the start of The Hobbit. He then back-tracks to say that this shouldn't actually be a surprise because of the change of voice at the end of The Hobbit as things got more serious, and the evolving seriousness of LotR itself.

This essay makes a good point, but since I'd pretty much forgotten the voice of The Hobbit, it didn't answer a question I had. Also, I think it probably could've been made just looking at the published texts, without resorting to the drafts. I will be on the lookout for any times when the narrator actually intrudes now, though.

[*] Thomas recounts a system from Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction that characterizes narrators on a scale between unintrusive and intrusive, based on three factors: their revelation of information, their interpretation of the stories they tell, and their self-consciousness of their roles as tale-tellers. This is probably familiar to a lot of people already, but I found it useful in a "hey, labels for stuff I instinctively recognized!" way.

( Note on the collection: )

Thanks to calimac for recommending this essay.

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I think I'm going to start each chapter post with a bare-bones "What Happens" section, just for reference. I'm not going to commit myself to structure beyond that; let's just see what happens.

(Besides taking me forever to compose, that is. Also, reminder: spoilers for anything Middle-Earth are fair game for these posts.)

( Fellowship Book 1, Chapter 1: 'A Long-expected Party' )

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As I re-read The Lord of the Rings, I intend to also read critical essays and other commentary. rushthatspeaks recommended the first of these, the Le Guin essay I discuss below; I also borrowed from the local library Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, which looked to have a good range of material. I have some meta essays at lotrfic_crit bookmarked for later reading as well; other recommendations are welcome. (I do have access to a college library via Chad, though I should note that my background in literary theory is not strong.)

(Oh, and I think I forgot to say this earlier, but there may be spoilers for everything Middle Earth in these posts. If you haven't read the books yet, these posts will not be safe for reading along with. Via calimac, here's a blog with chapter-by-chapter posts during a first reading; The One Ring.com has a similar list of articles by "A Tolkien Virgin," but the site's down until July.)

( Le Guin, 'Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings' )

Note: I decided to read this and then go back to Chapter 1, because the pacing of the entire opening is often criticized. Chapter 1 thus follows after dinner (and, possibly, a plea for fashion advice).

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I've been meaning to re-read The Lord of the Rings for a while, after enough time had passed after the movies. I was thinking about listening to the audiobooks as a fresh way of coming to the text, but that didn't work so well with The Hobbit, so I'm taking a different route: my plan, at present, is to post thoughts on each chapter, to give myself incentive to really read closely. I don't know whether I'll actually stick with this, or if I'll be able to see the text fresh after all this time—for several years, I read this annually (literally; we'd go on vacation to a timeshare and I'd check the trilogy out of the school library), and quite frequently thereafter, and I have a very good memory for text. But, we'll see how it goes.

I'm reading paperbacks I bought in the UK on a term abroad, because I wanted something to read on the plane back, my fancy one-volume edition isn't very user-friendly (a mistaken purchase, really), and I really liked the covers by John Howe (the editions: one, two, three). Alas, I didn't get a matching Silmarillion.

Some notes on the prefatory material behind the cut, and a list of things I'm going to be looking for. Additions to the list are welcome.

( introductory notes )

I have notes on chapter one, but I also have an amazing headache, so they will have to wait.

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Well. It's been a while.

Saturday, December 11, Chad went off to a physics conference in Canada, leaving Emmy and I to our own devices until Tuesday afternoon. This would have been fine except for the crushing headache I developed Saturday night which kept me awake all night.

The next weekend was the weekend before Christmas, so we went out to my parents' for holiday celebrations. My aunt and her husband did dinner at their house, with my grandmother and a family friend I haven't seen in years, and that was lovely. The weekend after that was Christmas, so we went to Chad's parents for a Polish Christmas Eve (oplatki and oyster cracker fights [*] and soup and fish and pierogi; no vodka shots this year, but sangria again—why does sangria not give me a headache, but regular red wine does?).

[*] Oplatki (or oplatek) are Communion-like wafers; everyone goes around and shares, oldest first down to youngest, and wishes each other a Merry Christmas. This takes a long time, so the kids used to get in surreptious fights with the oyster crackers that go with the soup. The cracker fights are now a tradition to the point that we have a wedding picture of relatives coming up to Chad and dumping handfuls over his head.

The next weekend was New Year's, and we went to a party in the neighborhood thrown by the organ-builder of the open house and spouse. A good time, and I didn't turn into a pumpkin until after midnight. I gave myself the gift of a day not doing work New Year's Day (having spent considerable time at Chad's parents holed up with a laptop), and dozed for a long time and then watched ( the extended edition of Return of the King )

This week, I went out to Syracuse on Tuesday for a court appearance, and am pretty wiped from that appearance, the five hours' drive, and the work generated by it both before and after. However, I was so very incredibly sick of law tonight that I decided to bang this out and then go to bed a little early, to gear up for working through the weekend, again.

And we close with ( 2004 Books )