A Couple of Quotes By and About J. R. R. Tolkien

 

Fancy Rooted in Truth

"It began in the old and golden days of England, in a time when all the hedgerows were green and the roads dusty, when hawthorn and wild roses bloomed, when big-bellied landlords brewed rich October ale at a penny a pint for rakish high-booted cavaliers with jingling spurs and long rapiers, when squires ate roast beef and belched and damned the Dutch over their claret while their faithful hounds slumbered on the rushes by the hearth, when summers were long and warm and drowsy, with honeysuckle and hollyhocks by cottage walls, when winter nights were clear and sharp with frost-rimmed moons shining on the silent snow, and Claud Duval and Swift Nick Nevison lurked in the bosky thickets, teeth gleaming beneath their masks as they heard the rumble of coaches bearing paunchy well-lined nabobs and bright-eyed ladies with powdered hair who would gladly tread a measure by the wayside with the gallant tobyman, and bestow a kiss to save their husbands' guineas; an England where good King Charles lounged amiably on his throne, and scandalised Mr Pepys (or was it Mr Evelyn?) by climbing walls to ogle Pretty Nell; where gallants roistered and diced away their fathers' fortunes; where beaming yokels in spotless smocks made hay in the sunshine and ate bread and cheese and quaffed foaming tankards fit to do G. K. Chesterton's heart good; where threadbare pedlars with sharp eyes and long noses shared their morning bacon with weary travellers in dew-pearled woods and discoursed endlessly of ‘Hudibras’ and the glories of nature; where burly earringed smugglers brought their stealthy sloops into midnight coves, and stowed their hard-run cargoes of Hollands and Brussels and fragrant Virginia in clammy caverns; where the poachers of Lincolnshire lifted hares and pheasants by the bushel and buffeted gamekeepers and jumped o'er everywhere …

   "An England, in short, where justices were stout and gouty, peasants bluff and sturdy and content (but ready to turn out for Monmouth at a moment's notice), merchant-fathers close and anxious, daughters sweet and winsome, good wives rosy and capable with bunches of keys and receipts for plum cordials, Puritans smug and sour and sanctimonious, fine ladies beautiful and husky-voiced and slightly wanton, foreigners suave and devious and given to using musky perfume, serving wenches red-haired and roguish-eyed with forty-inch busts, gentleman-adventurers proud and lithe and austere and indistinguishable from Basil Rathbone, and younger sons all eager and clean-limbed and longing for those far horizons beyond which lay fame and fortune and love and high adventure.

   "That was England, then; long before interfering social historians and such carles had spoiled it by discovering that its sanitation was primitive and its social services non-existent, that London's atmosphere was so poisonous as to be unbreathable by all but the strongest lungs, that King Charles's courtiers probably didn't change their underwear above once a fortnight, that the cities stank fit to wake the dead and the countryside was largely either wilderness or rural slum, that religious bigotry, dental decay, political corruption, fleas, cruelty, poverty, disease, injustice, public hangings, malnutrition, and bear-baiting were rife, and there was hardly an economist or environmentalist or town planner or sociologist or anything progressive worth a damn. (There wasn't even a London School of Economics, which is remarkable when you consider that Locke and Hobbes were loose about the place).

   "Happily, the stout justices and wenches and gallants and peasants and fine ladies – and even elegant Charles himself, who was nobody's fool – never realised how backward and insanitary and generally awful they might look to the cold and all-too-selective eye of modern research, and if they had, it is doubtful if they would have felt any pang of guilt or shame, happy conscienceless rabble that they were. Indeed, his majesty would most likely have raised a politely sceptical eyebrow, the justices scowled resentfully, and the wenches, gallants, and peasants, being vulgar, gone into hoots of derisive mirth.

   "So, out of deference and gratitude to them all, and because history is very much what you want it to be, anyway, this story begins in that other, happier England of fancy rooted in truth, where dates and places and the chronology of events and people may shift a little here and there in the mirror of imagination, and yet not be thought false on that account. For it's just a tale, and as Mark Twain pointed out, whether it happened or did not happen, it could have happened. And as all story-tellers know, whether they work with spoken words in crofts, or quills in Abbotsford, or cameras in Hollywood, it should have happened."

The Pyrates, George Macdonald Fraser

Ian McDiarmid dancing in "Restoration" - YouTube

Friday Fiction: Maggie (The Return)

 

The Return 

            Maggie Mud-and-Snails put her luggage down and looked at the house with suspicion, hands on hips.  It certainly looked like the old place deep down in its bones, but there was a certain air about it, a sort of superficial jauntiness, that told her that her own people were long gone.  She checked the address on the grubby piece of paper in her hand.  Yes, it was the same: 558 Loop Drive.  She decided to have a look around the grounds, for old times' sake, to see what she could see.

            She wasn't worried that any new owner would notice her.  Maggie was part of that particular piece of reality called Imaginary, and as such was used to most folks not paying her any mind.  If anyone could have seen her on that late October afternoon, they would have observed a small person about three feet high, wearing a green dress that on closer examination was made of long stems of grass.  On even closer examination they would see that the grass was growing right out of her body, which was dark gray mud, flecked with pebbles and the fragments of snail shells. Her hair, which from a distance might be taken for beaded cornrows, was a cluster of snail shells, point up, thrust into the mud of her head.

            If the hypothetical observer had stuck around this long and been bold enough to get a little closer, they would have seen that this uncanny little girl was squinting her shiny black eyes and settling her molded mouth in tight judgement.  And now they would have certainly fled in anticipation of trouble as Maggie began a determined march of inspection across the front yard.

            She noted sadly that the sheltering ash trees were gone, although the pecan trees had grown statelier and were finally producing nuts.  She reached down and picked up a partly decayed pecan, the inside black and wormy and withered.  She looked at it a moment, and then popped it in her mouth and crunched it up, shell and all. 

            A burst of flavor, long untasted but never forgotten, filled her cheeks: the unmistakable tang of the homesoil, drawn up through the roots of the tree and partially released into the earth again.  This abided; this was flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, still.  Her expression softened a little, and there was a bit more shine in her eyes as she went on, cautiously, attentively, slowly tuning herself to the subtler vibrations of memory and time.

            The half-rectangle sidewalk that connected the front porch to the back was another loop of time, a hoop of turning energy that flowed like a concrete stream at Maggie's feet.  She stepped onto it, and, though it was solid to the touch, she felt something like a great wind pushing at her back, trying to hurry her along.  The little mud girl felt that if she let go, she might tumble along that stream forever.  She fought it.  Planting herself firmly, she took one slow deliberate step after another, looking attentively side to side.

            Maggie paused when she came to the crook in the pavement just where it turned at the garage.  Off to the left there was a pale, silvery light hovering over a patch of ground.  She stared at it, then reached out her palm tentatively to feel.  A wave of sorrow, anger, resignation, love, and--was it astonishment?--radiated toward her hand. 

            Something important had happened here, and the emotions lingered, but she could make nothing of it.  All she could tell was that it had mattered hugely to her people, and not to anyone else who had come after.  Maggie bowed her head, then in tribute she broke off her little finger and crumbled it to dust and tossed it toward the light.  The specks circled the glimmer as if caught in a whirlwind, turning to shimmering motes like a dust of diamonds, and were gone.  She moved on.  

Notes

Maggie was, of course, my 'imaginary friend' from childhood, named (if I'm remembering correctly) after my Mom's friend who came over to play Chinese checkers with her, but otherwise sharing no other elements. I seem to remember quite consciously making her up, never really 'believing' in her as such, but somehow thinking it would be nice to have an imaginary friend (such things featured quite a lot in popular culture, especially in family comedies in those days, like My Three Sons or Family Affair). Another element (unconscious) was that it would be something to make me stand out from the herd of brothers. Maggie might have even been the childhood equivalent of the Anima I have mentioned here before. Anyway, she has worked her way into several of my short stories (like Come Together and Friend You Haven't Met). Mud-and-Snails was a name I only added much later. There is also this poem:

Maggie Was

Maggie was

Mud and snails one day

And beautiful the next.

 

Maggie had

A birthday every day

And grass for lunch.

 

Maggie lived

Behind the mysterious door

With the water heater.

 

Maggie's friends

Were innumerable invisible mice

and Ghosty Ghost.

 

Maggie spoke

Only to me

And I told her tales to my brothers.

 

Maggie's still

A part of me

And never really left.

 

 

October 21, 02015

Coming in September: More Details

 

The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien: Three-Volume Box Set Hardcover – September 17, 2024

by J. R. R. Tolkien 

World first publication of the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, spanning almost seven decades of the author’s life and presented in an elegant three-volume hardcover boxed set.

J.R.R. Tolkien aspired to be a poet in the first instance, and poetry was part of his creative life no less than his prose, his languages, and his art. Although Tolkien’s readers are aware that he wrote poetry, if only from verses in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, its extent is not well known, and its qualities are underappreciated. Within his larger works of fiction, poems help to establish character and place as well as further the story; as individual works, they delight with words and rhyme. They express his love of nature and the seasons, of landscape and music, and of words. They convey his humor and his sense of wonder.

The earliest work in this collection, written for his beloved, is dated to 1910, when Tolkien was eighteen. More poems would follow during his years at Oxford, some of them very elaborate and eccentric. Those he composed during the First World War, in which he served in France, tend to be concerned not with trenches and battle, but with life, loss, faith, and friendship, his longing for England and the wife he left behind. Beginning in 1914, elements of his legendarium, “The Silmarillion,” began to appear, and the “Matter of Middle-earth” would inspire much of Tolkien’s verse for the rest of his life.

Within The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien almost 200 works are presented across three volumes, including more than 60 that have never before been seen. The poems are deftly woven together with commentary and notes by world-renowned Tolkien scholars Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, placing them in the context of Tolkien’s life and literary accomplishments and creating a poetical biography that is a unique and revealing celebration of J.R.R. Tolkien. - Amazon

Into the Archive: Strange Tales, Indeed

I watch the BookTube videos of a guy in Boston named Steve Donoghue. He is a real reading enthusiast and works as a book critic, has worked in several large bookstores, and has a house just crammed with books that he is always adding to, giving away, and rearranging. Lately he has started his annual bookshelf inventory. Though I don’t always agree with his opinions, he never scorns any genre and is always enlightening about the books he discusses. Sometimes he reminds me of books that I have forgotten about, but more often he covers books that I immediately feel an interest in. Lately he showed a Penguin Classic book, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a selection from a multi-volume work by Pu Songling (1640 -1715) a collection of odd, weird, and supernatural stories, selected and translated by John Minford. Most of them are only a page or two long, and they are supplied with many classic woodblocks. I ordered it and it got here Tuesday. I only meant to dip into it to see what it was like (I am already reading The Gulag Archipelago and only about a fifth of the way through), but it was like eating peanuts and I was up to page 142 when I went to bed last night. Thanks, Steve, for the recommendation! “Exquisite and amusing miniatures regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.” – Amazon.

Happy 150th Birthday, GKC!

 

“Gilbert Keith Chesterton  (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English author, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic.

“Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. His writings were an influence on Jorge Luis Borges, who compared his work with that of Edgar Allan Poe.

“He was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of University College London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but he did not complete a degree in either subject. He married Frances Blogg in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to Anglicanism, though he later considered Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered in full communion with the Catholic Church in 1922.

“Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.

“Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location, writing such things as "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home". Chesterton was part of the Detection Club, a society of British mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928. He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936. 

"The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified. The Bishop Emeritus of Northampton, Peter Doyle, in 2012 had opened a preliminary investigation into possibly launching a cause for beatification and then canonization (for possible sainthood). but eventually decided not to open the cause. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man contributed to C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity.” – Extracted from Wikipedia

Well. Today would have been Chesterton’s 150^th birthday, and I had to mark it somehow. I have tons of books by and about him, and a new one, The Everlasting Man: A Guide to G.K. Chesterton’s Masterpiece , is high on my wish list.

A First Look at a Rather Grim and Grimy Tom Bombadil from Rings of Power Season Two

 

He's also said to be in Rhun, which is way out of his canonical Old Forest boundaries, but I seem to recall it being said somewhere that his territory was shrinking, so ... a pass?

Toys to Note: Mythic Legions, Skeletons, Dwarves and Goblins

Wideo Wednesday: 'Old' Music

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJl6nSVVrlg Riu Riu Chiu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP97n0MOpao Tae the Weavers

Aequilibrium. Medieval Tune. Hurdy-Gurdy With Organ - YouTube

"Gnaal" - the bowed lyre (taglharpe) "Funeral march" - YouTube

Duduk Meditation Memories of Caucasus Armenian Flute - YouTube

Tatar Folk Music - Cicha & Pałyga - Tatarska / Tatar Album - YouTube

The Skye Boat Song - Clamavi De Profundis - YouTube

I think the first time I heard Riu Riu Chiu was on a record of medieval music Dr. Laird lent me back in college. During those same years we constantly listened to Tae the Weavers on The Folk Box. And I'm not sure where or exactly when I heard the haunting and beautiful Skye Boat Song, but I'm willing to say it was sometime in grade school.

Dodie Smith

 

The endpapers for The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Press to embiggen.

Dorothy ‘Dodie’ Smith (b.1895) had quite a career, writing novels, plays, screenplays, and at least four volumes of autobiography. I knew her mainly for The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) of course, which was adapted into a Disney movie in 1961 (animated) and 1996 (live action). What I did not know was that she had written a sequel to Dalmatians in 1967, called The Starlight Barking. Going back to research this author and her work for Basic Reading, I found out about this crazy sequel that I would never have guessed from reading the original work. Here is the synopsis from Wikipedia, which must be read to be appreciated:

“The Dearly family and most of the Dalmatians of the first book still live in Cruella de Vil's old manor house in Suffolk, as do many of the other rescued Dalmatians and a married couple of White Persian cats. Mr. Dearly has allowed some dogs to go to new masters, including giving Cadpig to the Prime Minister.

“One morning, the dogs find all other living things besides dogs cannot be wakened. No dog is hungry, thirsty, or weak. Doors, gates, and machines operate on command, and the dogs are able to communicate via "thought waves" to others many miles away. Cadpig, now acting Prime Minister in the humans' absence, orders her parents to come help her in London, where hundreds of dogs are arriving awaiting her advice.

“The dogs discover they can "swoosh", or hover at tremendous speed over the ground. Pongo and Missis select a squad of fifty Dalmatians, including their adult sons Patch, Lucky, and Roly Poly. They "swoosh" to London and are escorted by Police Dogs to 10 Downing Street. Cadpig and her Cabinet (the human Cabinet's dogs) hold a meeting with Pongo and Missis to decide what to do next. Roly Poly makes a friend of George, the Foreign Secretary's Boxer, and the two set off to adventure together.

“Two Fox Terriers hear the General (the Old English Sheepdog) barking; he reveals he will soon be arriving with his owner's little son Tommy, the farm tabby Mrs. Willow, and the female White Persian Cat. These three are also awake, thanks to being named "honorary dogs" after the events of the first book. Upon arrival in London, the White Persian Cat suggests Cruella, now back in London, must be behind the mysterious sleeping. She leads a group of dogs to Cruella's house to kill her. However, Cruella and her husband are just as fast asleep as anyone else, and the animals see she is now obsessed with metallic plastics instead of fur coats. They spare her life and return to Downing Street, where the television comes on and a strange Voice orders them to make sure all dogs are in open, starlit spaces by midnight. The Dalmatians accomplish this via Twilight Barking and thought waves.

“In Trafalgar Square, Tommy, the cats, the Dalmatians, and the General meet with thousands of other dogs to wait. At Midnight, after a strange euphoric moment followed by a moment of terror, Sirius, the Lord of the Dog Star, appears on Nelson's Column. He explains to all the dogs that he is lonely and is offering them the chance to avoid the pain of possible nuclear war in the future. However, they must come with him of their own accord. He assures them the world, when it wakes, will not remember dogs ever existed, and that all dogs will be free and know true bliss in the stars.

“Pongo is chosen to make the final decision. He consults with the Cabinet, Missis, and the General. Three stray dogs approach, and tell Pongo that no "lost" dog wants to give up their last chance of finding special humans of their own by leaving Earth. This convinces Pongo and the others to choose their masters over Sirius. While Sirius commends their loyalty to humankind, he is sad that he will have to return to space alone. The dogs promise they will look out for him on nights when the Dog Star is in the sky. Sirius grants them the ability to "swoosh" to their own homes before daybreak, at which time everything will return to normal.

“Roly Poly returns from his adventure in Paris with George. He reveals Sirius appeared there as well, and Missis surmises he appeared everywhere at once, as a star is not bound by earthly time. All owned dogs return home, while the "lost" dogs take the opportunity to get in to Battersea Dogs Home, where they will be fed and cared for while awaiting new owners. Pongo talks to Sirius one last time before the dawn and says someday dogs may be ready to leave Earth with him, but for now they will be content to be owned by loving humans, which, for him, is "bliss" enough.”

I am flabbergasted. Dodie Smith only died in 1990, so I suppose I might have had a chance to write her a fan letter. If I had known about The Starlight Barking, I think I might have asked her a few questions as well (I may have to buy a copy yet before I believe it). Her 1948 semi-autobiographical novel I Capture the Castle was made into a 2003 film. She owned quite a few Dalmatians herself, as one may have guessed.

C. S. Lewis on "Basic Reading" and Why

 

"They accuse us of arrested development because we have not lost a taste we had in childhood. But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things? I now like hock, which I am sure I should not have liked as a child. But I still like lemon-squash. I call this growth or development because I have been enriched: where I formerly had only one pleasure, I now have two. But if I had to lose the taste for lemon-squash before I acquired the taste for hock, that would not be growth but simple change. I now enjoy Tolstoy and Jane Austen and Trollope as well as fairy tales and I call that growth; if I had had to lose the fairy tales in order to acquire the novelists, I would not say that I had grown but only that I had changed. A tree grows because it adds rings; a train doesn't grow by leaving one station behind and puffing on to the next."

--from "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," (1952).

 

"I spent the afternoon and evening...beginning to re-read The Well at The World's End. I was anxious to see whether the old spell still worked. It does--rather too well. This going back to books read at that age is humiliating: one keeps on tracing what are now quite big thing's in one's mental outfit to curiously small sources. I wonder how much even of my feeling for external nature comes out of the brief, convincing little descriptions of mountains and woods in this book." ---C. S. Lewis, All My Road Before Me.

 

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.”

― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

The Lord of the Rings: Shelob’s Lair (Part One)

 

The Tale

They move on up the path under a sky perhaps only just a little less than ‘utterly black,’ Frodo and Sam side by side and Gollum going on before, through twisting pillars of stone towards a great grey wall looming ahead. As they approach it, Sam comments on the stench, growing stronger and stronger.

At last they come right up to the looming stone wall, and there is a cave. ‘This is the way in,’ said Gollum softly. ‘This is the entrance to the tunnel.’ Here is the origin of the stench; it flows out, ‘a foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within.’ Frodo asks if this is the only way through and Gollum insists that it is.

Sam suspiciously asks if Gollum has really gone through this foul hole? But then maybe he doesn’t mind bad smells. Gollum’s eyes glint. They don’t know what he minds, do they? But Gollum can bear it, and he’s been all the way through. And now the hobbits must. It’s the only way. Sam still wonders about the smell. It’s like a hundred years of Orc ‘filth’, piled up and stored. But Frodo says if it’s the only way, they must take it. They take a deep breath and enter.

In just a few steps they are in utter darkness, darker even than when they passed through Moria. There, there was a sense of space and of air moving. Here it is stagnant and close and echoless, as if the darkness were a black vapor, pouring over them and being breathed into their lungs, covering over even the memory of light and color in their minds. But they can feel the tunnel. Surprisingly smooth and going upward. But it is so wide that, each keeping a hand on the opposite wall, Frodo and Sam are separated in the dark. For a while they can hear Gollum going ahead of them into the dark.

But that fades away as their senses grow duller in the dark. Every now and then their outstretched hands feel other passages gaping, left and right, and sometimes something like ‘hanging growths’ brush them unseen in the darkness. And the smell gets worse and worse until it seems the only sense left them, ‘and that was for their torment.’

They walk on for a crawling, breathless eternity. Sam leaves the wall and he clasps Frodo’s hand for comfort, and they slog on.

Suddenly Frodo feels a void gaping in the rock wall, bigger than any they’ve felt yet, with a blast of foulness and malice that almost knocks him over. Sam does fall forward, but Frodo drags him up and urges him on. All their peril is flowing from this gap. They must pass it. They stumble forward, six hard-fought steps, then they seem to have passed the gaping void. But a new difficulty appears.

The tunnel has forked, left and right, into two equal paths, with no indication of which to take. ‘[A] false choice would almost certainly be fatal.’ They have been struggling so hard just against the darkness they have not noticed their guide has disappeared.

Frodo calls for Smeagol, but the name falls dead, echoless and flat. There is no answer. Sam mutters that this must have been Gollum’s plan all along. Sam threatens the absent creature that if he ever lays hand on Gollum again, he’ll be sorry.

They try the left-hand way, but find it blocked by stone: right or wrong, they must take the right-hand path. ‘And quick,’ Sam panted. ‘There’s something worse than Gollum about. I can feel something looking at us.’ They have not gone far up that way when suddenly they do hear something behind them: a long, venomous, bubbling hiss. They turn at bay and stare into the blank darkness behind them, waiting for they know not what.

As Sam’s hand goes to the hilt of his barrow-blade, he thinks of old Tom Bombadil, and wishes he were near them now. Then in his anger and black despair a memory of light and color comes to him, and he seems to see, distant and clear, ‘as in a little picture drawn by elven-fingers’, the memory of Galadriel giving the Fellowship gifts, and he hears her voice as she presents Frodo with his gift.

The bubbling hiss, a creaking as of enormous joints, and the hideous stench grows ever nearer. In desperation Sam finds his voice and cries out to Frodo to remember the Lady’s gift. ‘The star-glass! A light to you in dark places, she said it was to be! The star-glass!’

‘The star-glass?’ muttered Frodo, as one answering out of sleep, hardly comprehending. ‘Why yes! Why had I forgotten it? A light when all other lights go out! And now indeed light alone can help us.’

Bits and Bobs

The narrator notes that Gollum does not mention the tunnel’s name, Torech Ungol, which is Sindarin for ‘spider’s lair,’ or more colloquially ‘Shelob’s Lair.’ Shelob was originally going to be named Ungoliant, like the giant spider in The Silmarillion, but was changed to be Ungoliant’s 'last unhappy child'. ‘Shelob’ is simply ‘she + lob’, lob being an English dialect word for spider (see Bilbo’s taunting ‘Lazy lob!’ in The Hobbit); cob is a related word, as in cobweb. How or even if Gollum really knew the Elvish name is unknown.

The black vapors and blinding darkness still recall the shadows that Ungolint spews forth to snare and entrap her prey in the old tales, woven of 'Unlight'. ‘Gross, palpable darkness’ as Tolkien expresses it in The Hobbit.

A hundred years of ‘orc-filth’ rather delicately hints at piled orc excrement as an indication of how bad the stench is.

The tiny picture of a memory, ‘as if drawn by elf-fingers’, does not indicate the tininess of the fingers but of the skill and delicacy of the artist.

That the name ‘Smeagol’ falls dead in the darkness may be a subtle hint that in bringing them to Shelob’s Lair, the better part of Gollum has died.

Basic Reading: The Breisemeister Bump

 

Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

And then there came the Briesemeister Bump (straddling the end of 1974 and the beginning of 1977). So much Mythology, Lore, and Fantasy discovered; so much of my path set. I was out of the gregarious little social pond of grade school and swimming almost anonymously in a slightly bigger social pond, finding my own way of reading and branching out from the narrow stream of reading that grade school dictated.

I dipped into but did not actually read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’m vaguely surprised that I read The Wind in the Willows but did not read Alice in Wonderland. I read The Sword in the Stone waiting for class to start in Mr. Fleming’s room. I was reading The Story of King Arthur and His Knights in the parking lot during football practice when Billy Castleberry tried to make me leave the car. I shared the runes from The Hobbit with my friend Steve Jones. The Dark is Rising, The Crystal Cave, An Enemy at Green Knowe, The Wizard in the Tree, A Wizard of Earthsea, all led to me following their series and authors, some for years. Beowulf the Warrior and The Children of Odin took me into the stark legends of the North, where before had been stories from Greece.

And, of course, this was mainly the time that I read The Hobbit, and The Tolkien Reader, and Mike brought me The Lord of the Rings trilogy from high school. That is a journey that is still going, ever on and on. And it was the beginning of my own individuated road and heralded the end of Basic Reading.