hobbit toes

i don't remember exactly when i read The Hobbit. i know that it was during elementary school, that i got the book from the school library, that the weather was cold. i do remember crouching over the heat vent behind the living room couch to read it, and i remember the edition, blue spined, a compact library bound version of what was probably originally a paperback, covered with Tolkien's illustration of Bilbo floating on a barrel. the picture is titled "Bilbo comes to the huts of the raft elves." we have the print beside the kitchen door now.
i loved the Hobbit. i'm pretty sure i picked it up after some exposure to the Rankin Bass animated film. funny how i still cringe when i think about those rude dwarves messing up Bilbo's tidy house (especially if you've seen my not so tidy one), but pony-eating dragons don't move me. that year for xmas, my parents got me a paperback box set of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. that January i stretched out in front of the woodstove (until i was hot to the touch and the book was hot to the touch and the dog was hot to the touch and mom made me move) and dove into Fellowship. i kept flipping back and forth to and from the appendices and puzzling over elven pronunciation and missing Bilbo and wanting more history. the sad truth is that i tanked in the middle of the Two Towers. Sam and Frodo's interminable wanderings were too much for my speedy little brain to take. the Lord of the Rings was probably the first book after my stab at the complete bible that i failed to finish. (a lot of the christian bible is composed of rules and lists, and is repetitive. i was more interested in the footnotes about the composition of the stones the priests were supposed to wear than the actual instructions about how to set up a temple and how women should be defiled for so many days for this and that. i would have given up much earlier without those modern footnotes. i digress.) i tried skipping into Return of the King, but it didn't work either. i set the book aside as a culturally important crowning bore. later i tried the Silmarillion, since i had such a strong interest in the tantalizing bits of backstory i had read. oops.

more than ten years later, i'm married to someone who had a John Howe poster above the head of his dorm room bed. when the buzz started about the impending films, C insisted that i read the entire book, and then go see the films. i dug my heels in. not only was the book boring, but its ponderous size had inspired ton upon ton of cromulent fantasy trilogies. awkward dialogue, thin characterization, boring travelogue, all male casts, linguist's excuse to make up a fake language and wallow in an english mythos because it's the one thing they never managed to have, NO. he appealed to my romanticism, and insisted that he would read it to me. and only the good parts.
thus began my very own Princess Bride version of Lord of the Rings at bedtime. at first it knocked me out every night. but against my will i became caught up in the slow tension leading up to the journey to Bree, the mysterious stranger Strider, and the horror of the Black Riders. each evening C patiently backtracked to the last bit i could remember before nodding off, neatly summarizing prophetic dreams, skipping verses and verses of poetry (keeping the choicest), turning page upon page of council deliberation or travel into tight montages containing the information required to forward the plot. eventually i was fighting to keep my hands off the books, so that i could snuggle back into bed and just listen. but it was hard, mostly because all the parts without Frodo and Sam were so incredibly good. i especially loved Gimli and Legolas' playful bodycount competition, and every word of every scene with the Ents. still, i knew little enough of the outcome that i could imagine brave steady Sam taking the ring all the way alone, thrill at the last moments of Gollum at Mt Doom, and feel utter surprise and horror at the scouring of the Shire. and of course there was Eowyn, who seemed to be created of every little romantic fantasy i had ever had, right down to the last kickass swordstrokes and the depressed convalescent romance. i didn't know it was going to be funny, and full of wonderful observations of human nature. (i got caught up in the feeling that the whole thing is the story of Sam. but then again, i also was quite fixed on all the slashyness with the hobbits. C was rather distressed. it's all there in the text, damn it.) we finished in good time for the premiere of Fellowship of the Ring.

i've since returned to the books by myself several times. i still don't think it's great literature, but it is a great story, marked with many brilliant passages, and it's impossible to deny the craft and care put into the world.

i'm grateful to C for taking the time and effort to show me Middle Earth.

happy birthday today to JRR Tolkien, and tomorrow to his gentle and generous interpreter, C.