I Talk to a Reporter

So, this morning I had a phone conversation with a reporter who's writing a piece on JRRT and THE HOBBIT and said she'd been told I knew a lot about that topic. It was a good talk; she had clearly done her due diligence, reading several books on JRRT (e.g., Carpenter, Shippey, Letters) to get a solid footing. I hope I was able to provide her with information she can use, and look forward to eventual publication of her piece. More about this down the line, when her article appears.

--JDR

THE HOBBIT and QWERTY

So, having been to see the One Man LotR last weekend turned my thoughts back to a post I'd been wanting to make for a week.

The latest news about the Peter Jackson HOBBIT movie(s) is interesting, but not altogether reassuring. Recently he showed a ten-minute segment to film buffs at a con, and about two-thirds of those viewing it disliked what they saw.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/hobbit-48-fps-footage-divides-audiences_n_1452391.html#s907018

Not the acting, not the story, not the music: the actual film quality. For the better part of a century, films have been shot and shown at 24 frames per second. No doubt in the beginning this was because that represented the upper level of the technology of the time: running nitrate and cellulose through projectors -- just like films tend to have distinct breaks every twenty minutes, that being the size of the reel for the standard projector for decades. Think QWERTY, the odd arrangement of letters on the keyboard most of us never think about, which originated as a way of slowing down typists so they wdn't hit keys faster than the old manual typewriters cd actually process the results: it took time for each stroke to hit the paper.

What those who were lucky enough to be there in the audience for this new footage saw didn't match their expectations. Ironically, the film quality was so good that it looked fake. That is, the resolution was sharp enough that actors didn't look like characters: they looked like actors wearing make-up. Scenery looked like v. obvious sets. As with any shift in quality of resolution (lord know we've gone through enough of them in music formats, from transistor radios on down), in time viewers will adjust. But it's kind of rough for a movie I want to see so badly to be the test case.

However, the following piece (which, be warned, is full of spoilers) ends with an encouraging note: not every theatre will re-tool to the new technology by this December, meaning that those wanting to see it in standard (24 f.p.s.) format will be able to do so; likewise those who want to go for the new (48 f.p.s.) format, just as you can go to (most) movies now in standard or 3-D.

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012/04/27/55378-hobbit-footage-review-massive-spoilers-full-coverage-analysis/

I did love one line in this article that deserves to be repeated:

"be prepared to tell your non-Tolkien reading friends what really happened"

--Although I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that this piece's author thought Slyvester McCoy put in a really good performance. That thought calls for greater mental re-adjustment than processing higher-speed images.

--John R.

current reading: ALEXANDER AND THREE SMALL PLAYS; "Atalanta in Wimbledon"

Illustrating the Hobbit

So, one of the great things about being a guest of honor at the recent LEOCON I in Commerce, Texas was that I got to attend the presentations of my fellow speakers, and see Doug Anderson's slide-show* of HOBBIT art. I'd seen this twice before, most recently when the second edition of his superb ANNOTATED HOBBIT came out in 2002. But it's an ever-evolving presentation: there were pieces he showed that were new to me, as well as old ones I'd forgotten and many more I'm simply happy to see again.

One of the newer features was the inclusion of Maurice Sendak's sample illustration from the mid-sixties, at a point when he was mooted to produce an illustrated edition (that ultimately came to naught, aside from this one piece),** and he also mentioned a Frazetta HOBBIT piece I hadn't heard of before.*** It's fascinating to see different artists' interpretations, yet I agree with Doug that Tolkien himself is the best illustrator of his own works.

Afterwards, I had a question. If you could have anyone illustrate THE HOBBIT, who would it be? It has to be an artist who was actually alive at the time and theoretically could have done the job -- i.e., not Tenniel or Van Gough, who both died long before the book was published, but someone like Mucha (d.1939) or B. Potter (d. 1943) wd be fair game.

Doug, when I put the query to him, had an inspired choice: S. H. Sime doing Mirkwood. I can't compete with that choice, but after mulling if over a while I opted for Edward Gorey as someone who wd do an interesting, distinctive, and yet somehow possibly get-it-right set of illustrations. As a back-up, it'd have been fun to see what Tolkien's world wd have looked like as illustrated by Hugh Lofting.

So, if you cd pick anyone to illustrate THE HOBBIT, who wd it be?

--John R.

*although, as I think he observed in these days of no more actual slides, it'd probably more properly be called 'a multi-media presentation'. For me, who still dials a phone, 'slide show' will still do.

**cf. my earlier blog post about this one,

http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2011/03/sendaks-hobbit.html

***here's the link to a handful of Frazetta Tolkien designs; I think he showed us the one of Gollum paddling his boat with his great big-toed feet. http://frankfrazetta.org/tolkien0001.php

I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one more years back at The Tolkien Shop's online site, but it was of Gandalf & the Three Walkers meeting with King Theoden at Edoras.

LeoCon (TOLKIEN IN TEXAS)

So, I'd been holding off on posting about an upcoming event until the news went public, only to discover last week that the website of this event is already up online (http://leoconn.wordpress.com/leocon/) and it'd been discussed on Jason Fisher's blog about two weeks ago (http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2012/03/leo-con-2012-april-14-2012.html).

So, here's the news in brief: this weekend, I'm one of the guests of honor at a new little con at Texas A&M in Commerce, Texas (about one-third of the way from Dallas to Texarkana). My fellow guest of honor is my friend Doug Anderson, author of the excellent ANNOTATED HOBBIT. My own talk will be on the relationship between THE HOBBIT and THE SILMARILLION. In addition, Doug, the Dean, and I will be on a Hobbit Roundtable, and Jason Fisher will not only be moderating our two presentations but giving one of his own on Tolkien's sources. The event will be hosted by Robin Reid, for years the organizer of the Tolkien at Kalamazoo tract.

It'll be great to attend the first gathering of a brand new con, to have the chance to combine this with a family visit over in the ArkLaTex, and maybe even have time afterward for a quick (one day) research trip among the Dunsany manuscripts down in Austin (so far as I know, I'm the only Dunsany scholar to have ever made use of them, and it's a LONG time since my last visit [1987]). Maybe we'll even have time to see the famous bats.

It'll also be interesting to return to Commerce Texas, where I'm told we lived for a summer to fulfill a residency requirement while my father was getting his Masters in History (M.S.). I have no memory of the town or campus at all, having been not yet two at the time -- though I do still have a copy of the Master's Thesis he wrote to finish the degree [1960]

So, here's for a safe trip and an interesting weekend ahead. If you're in the area, drop on by and say hello.

--John R.

Mysterious Benedict Society/Riddles in the Dark

So, earlier this week (Tuesday), Janice played a little of the following NPR interview for me, with Trenton Lee Stewart, the author of the MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY books talking about the series. Two great take-aways for me: (1) his hometown is Little Rock, Arkansas, where we lived for a year when I was growing up* -- a great city, but not widely known as a writers' mecca -- and (2) one of his inspirations for the puzzles his four young characters are constantly confronted with and must overcome with their own (considerable) native resources was the chapter "Riddles in the Dark" by JRRT. He also mentions WATERSHIP DOWN (a good sign!) as another example of a book he liked growing up, and about his goal of "finding my way into a big adventure". Here's the link.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/26/149389787/mysterious-benedict-solve-a-puzzle-save-the-world

So far I've only read the first book and the opening section of the second. First came across them at the Borders in Federal Way (now defunct, alas), and introduced them to Janice (who has also now read and enjoyed them). I particularly like this as a story about oddballs finding family and friendship with other oddballs and because one of the messages of the book is that there's more than one right answer to most questions, more than one right way of dealing with most dilemmas.** One of the four has photographic memory and solves puzzles logically, by working through all the variables. Another uses physical solutions to circumvent roadblocks in her way. Another simply refuses to accept the terms of some loaded offers. The narrator, most ingeniously of all, thinks outside the box, often looking at the literal meaning of the question or direction or challenge and finding ways to side-step what seemed insoluble problems. "The world's not always either/or" is a good message for young adults to learn.

But mainly, of course, these are good because they're enjoyable to read. Recommended!

--John R.

*(at the Georgetown apartments, 1313 Nottingham Road, 'A Charming Place to Live' -- still there, and still looking much the same, the last time I swung by during one of my visits to Little Rock just last year)

**in fact, now that I think about it, the right/wrong choice implied in the very word dilemma runs counter to the message of these books.

THE HOBBIT on Antiques Roadshow

Many thanks to friend Janice S., rpg editor extraordinaire, for sending me the following link about a copy of THE HOBBIT showing up on a recent episode of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

In brief, in the most recent episode (recorded last June, broadcast on Monday [June 26th]), someone brought in a copy of THE HOBBIT. And not just any copy: a signed 1st edition, 1st printing, in mint condition, with an original dust jacket (with the mis-spelling of Lewis Carroll's name corrected by hand).

Their estimate? between $80,000 and $120,000 dollars. That's a pretty good return on the seven shillings and sixpence somebody paid back in 1937 or thereabouts.

The one thing that makes me a little sad is that to be in the condition it's in, this book has hardly been read at all in all those years. Books are to be read as well as preserved, enjoyed as well as treasured.

Here's the story:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/201102A52.html

--John R.

current reading: GOD'S DEFENDERS: WHAT THEY BELIEVE AND WHY THEY ARE WRONG by S. T. Joshi [2003]

Tolkien Among the E-Books

So, one of the v. first (indeed, I think THE first) e-books I bought when we first got the Kindle, several years ago now, was THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT, quickly followed by THE SILMARILLION and THE BOOK OF LOST TALES (vols. I & II).

I'd been wanting a searchable copy of Tolkien's books for years, and here they were, available at last. At that time there were relatively few books on/about Tolkien available either as e-books or as audio-books. And, oddly enough, they tended to be not the great classics of Tolkien scholarship -- Carpenter, Kocher, Shippey, Flieger, &c -- but Xian interpretations of Tolkien's work (Kreeft, Wood, Rutledge, Arthur). By and large that still seems to be the case, but a quick check of Amazon's Kindle store shows that a lot more titles are becoming available, both by (SIGURD & GUDRUN) and about (the Jason Fisher collection, to which I'm a contributor).*

Which made the following paragraph appearing in the newest BEYOND BREE particularly interesting. Coming at the end of a piece about e-books and Tolkien, David Brawn (who oversees Tolkien publishing at HarperCollins), while not divulging sales figures, says that

". . . THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS

are . . . two of the best-selling backlist ebooks

on the market . . . Tolkien's books are once again

experiencing a period of growth as we approach

the 2012 HOBBIT movie . . . while ebook sales are

increasing, so are the sales of the physical books",

concluding that while for some authors ebook sales come at the expense of their tradition books, this does not seem to be the case with Tolkien, whose ebooks seem to be selling both to those who already had the book as well as new readers -- "which is good news for the author".

--BEYOND BREE, current issue, p. 8

So, taken in conjunction with my last post about Tolkien having written not one but two of the best-selling books of all time, add in that for the present sales show no sign of slacking; he remains ubiquitous in our culture, for now and hopefully for a long time to come.

--John R.

still in Grand Prairie, Texas

*indeed, some Kindle-only books on Tolkien can be found there now; I'll have to check some of these out to see if any are worthwhile. Some look potentially interesting, while about others I am doubtful. We'll see.

Tolkien Among the All-Time Best Sellers?

So, many thanks to Allan G. who sent me the link to a blog (Punkadiddle*) which is doing a countdown of the ten best-selling books of all time, as determined by Wikipedia.** Both the blog entry, on THE HOBBIT (which ranks #4 in their listing) and the list itself (and the means by which they determined it, leaving out giveaway books like Gideon Bibles) are of interest. But what particularly struck me was not the gob-stopping news that JRRT wrote the fourth best-selling book of all time (keeping in mind the disclaimers just mentioned) but that he also wrote the third all-time bestseller as well!

That is: THE HOBBIT ranks fourth on their list, with 100,000,000 copies sold. That's one hundred million copies. Which is a lot of books. But it's a distance second among Tolkien's works on the list, THE LORD OF THE RINGS having sold half again as much: 150,000,000 copies (whether sets or individual volumes they did not say). That's a quarter of a billion copies altogether for those two books.

I'm reminded of something Janice said, years ago as we were leaving a Half-Price Books up on the Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee, about imagining how our civilization wd appear to archeologists of the distant future, who wd decide that we had v. few books but really, really liked them.

I'm also reminded of the famous Locus poll (circa 1987/88, I think) of all-time favorite fantasy works, in which Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS came in first. Followed by J. R. R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT as number two. Followed, I think by Le Guin's A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA as a rather distant third. The poll's compiler I remember went to lengths to point out that the winner of the fantasy poll outperformed the winner of the science fiction poll they ran at the same time (this being after all a science fiction journal) by a magnitude of degree.

The dual placement of both books on the Wikipedia list, which together take up a third of the list of all books that have sold 100 million or more copies, is what's really staggering, and re-inforces once again that THE HOBBIT has an audience of its own. If Tolkien had written only THE HOBBIT, I'd argue, he wd still be remembered as one of the great writers of his time.

Not just King of the Mountain: without him, there'd be no recognized genre of fantasy literature, and the people who wrote what we'd call modern fantasy wd be talented eccentrics following their individual muses, like James Branch Cabell, E. R. Eddison, and Hope Mirrlees.

All hail not the King Under the Mountain but The King Up On The Mountain, for letting us share the view.***

--John R.

--writing from what turns out to be Grand Prairie, Texas

*link:

http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/2011/12/top-ten-all-time-best-selling-books-4-j.html

**link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#More_than_100_million_copies

***(cf. Tolk's allegory of the tower in The Monsters & The Critics).

---------------

UPDATE (Jan. 27th): thanks to Allan for pointing out that 250,000,000 is a quarter-BILLION, not a quarter-million, as I'd mistyped. I've corrected this above. Thanks Allan! -- JDR

THE ART OF THE HOBBIT

So, the second new Tolkien book to arrive this past week was THE ART OF 'THE HOBBIT', by Wayne and Christina. I'd known this one was in the works for a few months, and even got to see a preview of some of its highlights this summer. It's a beautiful book, and one that anyone interested in Tolkien, Tolkien's art, or in THE HOBBIT, will want to get their hands on it as soon as possible (I got mine via amazon.co.uk). Their previous JRRT: ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR [1995] was a major work that shd be on every Tolkien scholar's shelf, and this is a worthy, if more narrowly focused, successor.

Basically they've brought together every known illustration, map, or rough sketch Tolkien made for THE HOBBIT,* arranged them into order of where they fit into the story, and added a page or so describing each piece or set of closely related pieces. One particularly nice feature is that they've been able to use multiple gatefolds to bring together sequences, where Tolkien went through a series of attempts to capture a particular scene, like The Hill at Hobbiton, or the Elvenking's Gate, or Smaug flying 'round the Mountain.

I did my best to demonstrate the importance of Tolkien's art to the story in THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, but there I only had twelve plates and two frontispieces to convey what they've used 144 pages to get across. And it's wonderful to see (particularly for those of failing eyesight, like myself -- the community of Tolkien fans and scholars alike being an aging one) the pieces are, as Wayne & Christina point out, "reproduced . . . as large as possible" [p.17], rather than shrunk down (as I needed to do to 'stuff every rift with ore', as Jn Keats wd put it). It helps that this is an oversize square-format book (ten & a half by ten & a half inches) in a handsome slipcase, resembling the original edition of PICTURES BY TOLKIEN more than it does ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR.

The results are, I repeat, wonderful. Tolkien didn't have much confidence in himself as an artist, but like Thurber and Lofting (fellow artistic autodidacts) his work is distinctive and instantly recognizable; it's part of the tales.

And this is a definitive collection: there are a few pictures here even I've not seen before -- for example, the more detailed picture of Elrond's house [#18], or the rough sketch of Eagles' Eyrie [#40], or the first version of The Three Trolls Are Turned To Stone [#14] (I find I prefer the trolls' faces here to the final version). And many more here reproduced in sharper detail than ever before -- e.g., all the dwarven activity at The Back Door [#69]. Others I've seen at some point but not paid much attention to; here they stand out much more when placed in the right context (like #35: The Misty Mountains, which had previously been tucked at the end of the index of ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR [H-S#200]).

This book is relatively text-light, compared with ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR, which is as it shd be: here the focus shd all be on presenting Tolkien's art as clearly as possible. Their introduction does a good job of covering a great deal of territory in relatively little space: only eighteen pages to discuss the origins to the book, explain how the art came to be created, and comment on the "rich visual experience" of the results. I particularly admired the economy with which they addressed various complex and thorny issues -- as, for example, dating when Tolkien began and finished the story:

". . . around 1930 (the evidence is too contradictory to give a precise date), [Tolkien] began to write [The Hobbit]" [p.9]

". . . It may have reached substantially its published form by the time Tolkien lent it to C. S. Lewis around the start of 1933, or it may be that its final chapters . . . were not composed until Allen & Unwin showed an interest in the work in 1936" [p. 10]

--While I think the 1930 date is pretty firm, that's a great way of getting a lot of information judiciously into v. little space (even the choice of the word write is significant, given speculation about oral tales); likewise, they acknowledge but do not take a position re. the Carpenter hiatus. Anyone who's delved into the complexity of the evidence re. these two points can appreciate how difficult it is to clearly explain them without oversimplification: here I think there's just the right amount of simplification for this context (where the emphasis is, and shd be, all on the art).

Finally, I'm envious of one thing. They've pulled off something I wanted to do in RETURN TO BAG-END but in the end wasn't able to: assemble all eight known pictures of Bilbo** onto one spread. In my case, I simply ran out of space, and in the end agreed w. my editor at HarperCollins that it'd be better to include two more new pieces rather than devote a page to reproduction of pieces already appearing elsewhere in the book, esp. given how small the eight pieces wd have to be to all fit onto one (nine-inch by six-inch) plate. Freed of that restriction, Wayne & Christina reproduce enlargements of them all. Looking at these side-by-side is illuminating: it's clear that Tolkien had a v. clear image of what Bilbo looked like; despite his difficulty with drawing faces there's a recognizable likeness in BB's features in the majority of the portraits. It's also interesting to note that Bilbo wears some sort of footwear in four of the eight pictures (Tolkien having meant to insert a passage re. Bilbo's getting shod at Rivendell before heading up into the mountains but never having gotten around to doing so). Well done!

--John R.

.................................

*with the possible exception of the tracings of the two hasty sketches of Gandalf's hat that appear in the end of the new one-volume H.o.H. [p.901]

**at the doorstep of Bag End, inside Bag-End smoking, in the bushes by the trolls, barrel-riding (two images from different versions of this scene), bowing to Smaug (in silhouette), resting in the Eyrie, and in the sketch he drew for Houghton Mifflin, this last having first been reproduced in H.o.H.).

Lewis Loved Being Read To . . .

So, yesterday I had a wicked thought.

I was working on something else, and came across some print-outs from an online discussion I'd taken part in a year and a half or so back about C. S. Lewis's response to the ending of THE HOBBIT. My main point was that we simply don't know what about it he didn't like and can only make more or less well-informed guesses. But in passing I had suggested, somewhat light-heartedly, that maybe Lewis just had trouble reading Tolkien's handwriting and this irksomeness got in the way of his enjoying the final part of the book (that is, the handwritten conclusion to the composite typescript/manuscript Tolkien circulated among his friends between early 1933 and mid-1936) -- forming a barrier between him and full 'secondary belief' submersion in the text.

Re-reading this, and taking into account a new idea I'd had recently regarding the two missing pages from the DARK TOWER manuscript, it suddenly clicked with something Tolkien once said, which I now saw cd be taken in a whole new light. In a 1965 letter to Dick Plotz, Tolkien wrote how

". . . C. S. Lewis was one of the only three persons who have so far read all or a considerable pan of my 'mythology' of the First and Second Ages, which had already been in the main lines constructed before we met. He had the peculiarity that he liked to be read to. All that he knew of my 'matter' was what his capacious but not infallible memory retained from my reading to him as sole audience . . ." (LETTERS p. 361)

What if Lewis's preference that Tolkien read aloud all his works to him stemmed from an aversion to making his way through JRRT's notoriously bad handwriting? Obviously this can't be the whole story -- we know he sometimes borrowed manuscripts, as when he made such detailed commentary on "The Lay of Leithian" and when he inadvertently destroyed the only copy of one of Tolkien's stories. But I know I'll be on the look-out now, reading memoirs of Lewis and the like, for accounts of others besides Tolkien whom he invariably preferred aloud read to him.

--John R.

just finished: NIGHT ON THE GALACTIC RAILROAD by Kenji Miyazawa.

just starting: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON by Edmond Hamilton.

Filming Begins on Peter Jackson's HOBBIT

So, Janice had shared this with me a few days ago the following promo clip about the start of filming on THE HOBBIT. Now, thanks to another Janice (this time Janice Bogstad), I've seen a link for those of us not on Facebook. So, for any of those semi-Luddites like me who are (a) on line but (b) not on Facebook, yet (c) obsessed w. all things Tolkien, here's the piece:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150223186041807&oid=141884481557&comments;

It's nice to see old familiar scenes (Bag-End, Rivendell) and faces (Jackson himself, McKellan, Alan Lee, Serkis, the final voice-over from Ian Holm), and to have a chance to see new cast members (Martin Freeman, the dwarves). Jackson mentions how walking around in the rebuilt sets gives him the odd feeling of being inside a movie -- and of course he is inside a movie, making a documentary at the very moment he's speaking. It's also odd, from my point of view, that Jackson now looks younger to me than he did a decade and more before due to all the weight he lost: it takes me a moment to recognize him when he re-appears. The Maori blessing-of-the-soundstage seems a bit stagey, but it was interesting to learn that they're apparently going to start filming the best scene in the book on Day One: Bilbo's encounter with Gollum.

We wants it, my precioussss.

It's going to be a long twenty months between now and then . . .

--JDR

The Art of The Hobbit

So, here's a welcome announcement: Wayne & Christina, authors of J. R. R. TOLKIEN: ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR [1996], will be doing a book devoted entirely to JRRT's illustrations for THE HOBBIT -- more than a hundred of them, all told. I learned about this via the MythSoc list*, but for the full announcement see Wayne & Christina's website:

http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-art-of-the-hobbit/

No release date yet, but it'll be part of the Big Event that will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of THE HOBBIT's first publication next year, which shd segue smoothly into promotion for the upcoming HOBBIT movie(s), the first of which has just started filming and is due out at the end of next year.

In any case, given how good ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR is, this shd be something anyone w. any interest in Tolkien's work at all shd be on the lookout for.

--JDR

*message #22100 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/22100)

Sendak's HOBBIT

So, thanks to Janice, who got it from Wolf, here's the link to an interesting piece by artist extraordinaire Tony DiTerlizzi --who I remember back from his first major TSR project, the third edition MONSTER MANUAL (I being one of the four-man Monster Selection Committee for that book, along with Tim Beach and Jeff Grubb and, I think, David Wise); I prize the medusa he drew in my (now rather battered) copy when I asked him to sign it. Later he really made a name for himself doing the iconic art for PLANESCAPE (true confession time: the only thing I liked about that setting was the DiTerlizzi art, which was wonderful) -- the associated BLOOD WARS collectable card game (by Steven Schend) is almost a pocket-sized gallery of his 'greatest hits'.

And now DiTerlizzi, who's since made a name for himself with the Spiderwick Chronicles as well, has posted an essay about the failed project in the mid-1960s to have Maurice Sendak illustrate THE HOBBIT:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/03/25/the-hobbit-illustrated-by-maurice-sendak-the-1960s-masterpiece-that-could-have-been/

Reading over this, I'm glad to see the one piece with Bilbo and Gandalf, which I rather like. It's nice to know that the copy of THE HOBBIT with Sendak's little thumbnail sketches in it survives and is now at the Beinecke; I hope these will be published someday. But I don't think it's a tragedy that this edition never took place. I like Tolkien's own illustrations better than those of any other artist I've seen tackle the job. Even when they're artists I like and the results are really impressive; Tolkien's art is part of the book for me in a way that even really good art by someone else can't be. And if we were going to get a talented children's illustrator of the era to do THE HOBBIT, I'd rather it have been Mercer Mayer than Sendak, whose work is too idiosyncratic for me.

But now that I've seen this, and the context, I find myself wanting to see DiTerlizzi's TUOR someday . . .

--JDR

POSTSCRIPT: Wayne Hammond, over on the MythSoc list, has posted a message with some more information on this collaboration-that-never-was, as recorded in publishers' records (as opposed to the word-of-mouth (Sendak > Maguire > DiTerlizzi) account:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/22008

--John R.

PPS: If you follow the link to DiTerlizzi's site, you might find it amusing to click on the second link to the right ("Thrones") near the picture of Peter Jackson with hobbit-pipe, which leads to a puff piece about THE GAME OF THRONES and how it's totally way better than Peter Jackson's LotR because it's got boobs and beheadings and stuff, and one of the characters likes to go to brothels. Oh, and one of the script writers finds that "[A]t this point in my life as a 40-year-old man, I am much more excited by [Martin]'s stories than I am by "Lord of the Rings". Which, I think, says it all.

As for me, I like Sean Bean, but not enough to watch ten to twenty hours out of The Book That Never Ends -- I'd want to try reading A GAME OF THRONES again first, and see if I cd get all the way through it this time.

Among the Classics

So, today I was walking by a table marked "Classics" in the local Borders Bookstore when my eye was drawn by the sight of a familiar book: THE HOBBIT. Since I'm always interested in the context in which Tolkien is presented -- e.g., whether he's shelved in Fantasy/Sci.Fi. or Fiction or Literature or given his own little section -- I stopped and jotted down the titles of the other books sharing the table. Here they are, in no particular order:

1984

Animal Farm

Emma

The Great Gatsby

Crime & Punishment

A Lesson Before Dying

The Stranger

Treasure Island

The Hobbit

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; bound with Through the Looking Glass

Frankenstein

The Once & Future King

To Kill a Mockingbird

Catch-22

The Grapes of Wrath

East of Eden

Les Miserables

The Catcher in the Rye

Franny & Zooey

Brave New World + BNW Revisited

Wuthering Heights

And Then There Were None

Dracula

Fahrenheit 451

Robinson Crusoe

Invisible Man (Ellison)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

So there you have it: twenty-six books, chosen I suspect more or less at random. Only three by living authors, so far as I cd tell on a quick check. Some are literary (in the sense that everyone admits they're part of the canon, taught wherever there are lit. classes), like the Austen. Others are modern classics that, although in newer genres, have shown staying power over decades, like the Bradbury and I suppose the Christie. A few are children's classics, like the Stevenson, or have now been re-assigned to children's literature although originally written for adults, like the Defoe. And which of these categories does THE HOBBIT belong in? I'd say the second and probably also the third.

And how many of these have I read? Sorry to say, only fifteen. And how many of those would I re-read again? Perhaps half, maybe as many as two-thirds.

And what book wd I most want to be added to that table, given my druthers? Something by Twain -- maybe LETTERS FROM THE EARTH or perhaps a collection of humorous tales and sketches (he was a better tale-teller than novelist).

--John R.

A Fragment, Detached

So, last month I mused over some comments C. S. Lewis made about THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS in a 1958 letter, during the course of which he said

[CSL:] "THE HOBBIT is merely a fragment of his myth, detached, and adapted for children, and losing much by the adaptation."

The significance of this, I argued, was its revealing that CSL felt that

[JDR:] "THE HOBBIT originated as part of the legendarium, not as an independent work later incorporated within it. And this from the point of view of someone who read Silmarillion texts before reading THE HOBBIT as well as the first person outside the immediate family to read THE HOBBIT as soon as Tolkien finished it. A good witness to have on the side of those of us who emphasize THE HOBBIT's connections to the legendarium versus those who stress the stand-alone nature of the work."

The next day, I got a comment which asked

['Ardamir':] "Of course THE HOBBIT, as it stands today, is 'merely a fragment of his myth, detached'. But I am not sure if the statement tells us anything about the thoughts C. S. Lewis would have had about it when it was in the early stages of composition. Would you care to elaborate a bit why you think this is a comment 'that THE HOBBIT originated as part of the legendarium, not as an independent work later incorporated within it?"

In the hurry of getting ready for my Wheaton trip, I didn't have time to revisit this, but would like to do so now.

It essentially comes down to Lewis's word choice. A 'fragment' might just be an unfinished work, like Tolkien's LOST ROAD or Lewis's own DARK TOWER. But a work would only be described as 'detached' if it was once part of a whole and has now been removed from its original context, like a leaf torn out of a book. Taken together with 'adapted . . . and losing much by the adaptation', it's clear that Lewis felt THE HOBBIT was essentially part of the legendarium in inception, rather than an add-on or later addition.

This is borne out by another piece by Lewis, the TIMES obituary,* one passage from which reads

"Thus the private language and its offshoot, the private mythology, were directly connected with some of the most highly practical results he achieved [in scholarship and in academia], while they continued in private to burgeon into tales and poems which seldom reached print, though they might have won him fame in almost any period but the twentieth century.

"THE HOBBIT (1937) was in origin a fragment from this cycle adapted for juvenile tastes but with one all important novelty, the Hobbits themselves . . .

"They soon demanded to be united with his heroic myth on a far deeper level than THE HOBBIT had allowed, and by 1936 he was at work on his great romance THE LORD OF THE RINGS, published in three volumes . . . "

If anything, the use of 'from' rather than 'of' strengthens the case. So, from both these statements, I put Lewis down firmly in the Hobbit-originated-as-part-of-the-legendarium school. A well-informed witness to help bolster that case, though of course not the last word.

--John R.

*I have taken my text here from that reprinted as the first item in Salu & Farrell's memorial festschrift, TOLKIEN: SCHOLAR AND STORYTELLER [1979], page 14; emphasis mine.

The HOBBIT Movie

So, it's been a while since there was much news on THE HOBBIT movie. Kristin Thompson's website continues to have updates from time to time, but these have mostly been "where-are-they-now" snippets about current projects for alumna of the Peter Jackson LotR films and the occasional report on the ongoing lawsuits.

Then, starting about a month or so ago, new news has been beginning to show up. It seems that the studios are going ahead with the assumption that the Tolkien Estate's lawsuit (insisting they be paid their share for the last films before the next are made) will be resolved.

Earlier this year, reports about the two films would have it that the first would focus on THE HOBBIT and the second on filling the gap between Bilbo's return from his journey and Gandalf's arrival for Bilbo's Long-Expected Party many years later. The obvious problem with this plan is that while we know a good deal about what happens during that gap, from flashbacks in LotR and the invaluable Appendices, Tolkien never wrote the story of that period. Which means that the scriptwriters would have to forge a narrative out of the bits and pieces available -- "The Deeds of Young Aragorn", as it were. Such a film would no doubt focus on bringing in as many characters as possible from the LotR films, so they could draw back audiences and capitalize on the star power of those actors & actresses. But the prospect of scriptwriters creating a story on par with THE HOBBIT or THE LORD OF THE RINGS to stand between them is a dubious one.

That's why the recent news posted on Kristin's site (http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/?p=637) is particularly welcome. According to a recent Peter Jackson/Guillermo del Toro interview (http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=24610), the plan is now to do a two-part HOBBIT movie, rather than THE HOBBIT plus a filler film.

Horray!

This is especially good news because it means THE HOBBIT won't get cut up to fit into a single three-hour time slot -- folks dazzled by the richness of THE LORD OF THE RINGS often forget just how full of adventures Bilbo's journey is, and almost all his encounters on the way out feed into the grand climax of the Battle of Five Armies.


What will the Jackson/del Toro HOBBIT look like?

Well, we know what a Peter Jackson Tolkien movie looks like.

We know what a del Toro fantasy movie looks like (cf. HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY).

Therefore, we have a pretty good idea of what THE HOBBIT movie shd be like.

We know that Ian McKellan has agreed to return to play Gandalf, and the Andy Serkis has agreed to play Gollum. We know that Weta Workshop will once again be supplying the special effects. We know that Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens will again be doing the script(s) -- apparently with del Toro also contributing (that's a LOT of scriptwriters). We know that Alan Lee and John Howe will once again be doing concept art. We know that Howard Shore will NOT be returning, since working with Jackson on four straight films was apparently for him like Tenniel's working with Lewis Carroll on the ALICE books, despite the admirable results of those collaborations in both cases.

I suspect a major goal will be to look as much like FR/TT/RK as possible -- from the studio's point of view, why mess with success? In my heart of hearts, I find it hard to believe that Jackson will maintain his hands-off approach, but we'll see.


In any case, at this stage I'm curious about what we might call The Known Unknowns and the Unknown Unknowns. We know, given our experience with the LORD OF THE RINGS films, that Jackson et al. will feel no compunction about cutting scenes or changing characters if they think it will make a better movie. Balanced against that is the lesson learned from the earlier films that the closer they stay to Tolkien's text, the more the fans like it.

The part that's hard to remember is that it's not so much a matter of trying to guess which scenes will stay in* as in not being able to anticipate what they'll add. Given Jackson's track record, there will almost certainly be a number of new scenes added, or changed beyond recognition, to create 'cliffhanger moments' or achieve some cinematic effect.

One guess: I think the film will open with Smaug's attack on Dale & The Kingdom Under the Mountain.

Two details we do know: they'll bring some off-screen moments into the main story, including Gandalf's exploration of Dol Guldur and the meeting(s) of the White Council (which in turn will provide a good excuse to bring in Galadriel and Christopher Lee's Saruman).

Three big questions to which we don't, at this point, have even the glimmer of an answer:

#1: Who will they cast as Bilbo? Ian Holm would be ideal, but at his age he might not be up the rigours Mr. Jackson likes to put his cast through. If I had my choice, I'd tap Hugh Laurie, who's not only the right age to play Bilbo (fifty-ish) but has shown he can both play silly Bertie Wooster and smart, efficient Doctor House. I suspect, however, that they'll go for someone with tween appeal -- another Elijah Wood, so to speak.


#2: Will they include all thirteen dwarves? I'm sure the temptation will be there to trim Thorin & Company a bit, leaving out characters who have few if any memorable moments (e.g. Nori, Ori, Oin, Bifur, Bofur, perhaps Dwalin). I suspect in the end they'll include them all, but making them all distinct and memorable will be quite a challenge, especially under all that make-up.

#3: THE HOBBIT has not a single speaking part for a female character. Will they feel this is a shortcoming they have to fix? Enhancing Arwen's role in LotR is one thing -- Tolkien himself might well have done so had he created the character earlier than he did in the drafting (though not along the lines they did!) -- but converting male characters to female or inserting new female characters into the film(s) both seem like bad options. I suspect they may play around with options a bit but in the end just tell the story more-or-less as they find it.

Finally, where will they split the story between the First and Second films? Kristin suggests the break will come just at the point where they're preparing to enter Mirkwood. My own choice would be just before their arrival at Lake-Town: I think the line "The Lonely Mountain! Bilbo had come far and through many adventures to see it, and now he did not like the look of it in the least" makes for a beautifully ominous parting note.

We'll see.

--JDR


..............
*though I'm as prone to temptation on that point as anyone, and plan to make a future post giving my guesses.

Ents & Clarinets

So, the day before yesterday a batch of back issues of MALLORN arrived. It'll be a while before I have time to sit down and read them properly, but I have begun browsing, starting with the reviews of the first installment of the Peter Jackson movies (MALLORN 40, Nov. 2002). Rather surprising to see balanced, mostly positive comments, some of them from people who went on to become harsh critics of the whole series. It'll be interesting to trace the evolution of their stances through the next two issues, which respectively cover the second and third installments of the film.

One article did catch my attention, because one aspect of it hinged upon a point in THE HOBBIT, and not surprisingly THE HOBBIT rather dominates my mind these days. In "Treebeard's Voice" (volume 40, page 28), John Ellison goes beyond the obvious that the ent sounds like a woodwind (as stated in LotR itself) and asks what kind of woodwind. In passing, he makes the (to me) interesting point that the clarinets Bifur and Bofur bring to Bag-End are anachronistic, since these are 18th-century instruments. I should have remembered that, since I'm a clarinet player myself (or was, back in junior high and high school--I actually had a band scholarship my first year in college), and commented on it in my discussion of the anachronisms (real and perceived) in that chapter.

As for what Treebeard sounds like, if C. S. Lewis's claim that he was the model for Treebeard's voice is true, then the old ent sounds like Sean Connery impersonating Alfred Hitchcock -- at least that's what CSL's voice sounds like on the surviving tapes I've heard (THE FOUR LOVES, his inaugural lecture, his talk on Bunyan, &c). It certainly does give me a whole new perspective on one of my favorite characters.


--JDR

current reading: BEHIND THAT CURTAIN by Earl Derr Biggers [1928]