Two Geeks Three Cats

Today was March 25, also known as Tolkien Reading Day. And, in places where folk believe that the events in Tolkien's books actually took place in the distant past (such as, for example, your neighborhood pen-and-paper RPG shop, or the Denny's where the local LARP chapter in your town has breakfast every Saturday before "battle"), it is something like the 8,500th anniversary of the fall of Sauron and the destruction of Barad-dûr, the day that Frodo completed his quest.

So it is with great pleasure that I hereby announce today that I am now delving like a dwarf into a mithril mine back into that spectacular tome that has taken up so much of my reading attention since adolescence. Yes, I am reading The Lord of the Rings again, for the - I don't know, tenth? - time.

In fact, I already started. I read Book I (that's Book I of VI, the first half of Fellowship of the Ring, for those only familiar with the films) last week. Although I have three copies of LOTR in the house, purchased at various times, the only copy I can find right now is a one-volume hardcover containing all 1,000+ pages. So I took a break from it for this week so I could bring a more portable book with me on a plane trip. But I will be resuming my read with Book II tonight.

And not soon enough. Re-reading Book I was like getting reacquainted with an ex-lover and quickly remembering why I was happy to leave her ass behind in the first place. Okay, the Barrow-Downs are cool for about two pages, and everything from the Prancing Pony on is pretty wonderful, real down-the-rabbit-hole kind of great fantasy writing. But I have always felt that the story doesn't really get going until Rivendell, at the beginning of Book II. This is not a case of outgrowing an old favorite. I still love the parts that I have always loved, but in general I have always been critical of Book I. It is slow, directionless, and filled with family-friendly, fairytale fantasy elements whose relationship to the broader Middle-Earth cosmology is either poorly conceived or insufficiently explained. (That creepy old willow! That merry Tom Bombadil and his common law wife Goldberry! Those Barrow-wights, are they ghosts or monsters or what?)

Most of all, and I know I'm going to get so much flak for this from my pot smoking friends ... I'm sorry, but the Tom Bombadil stuff sucks. Don't get me wrong, he's a merry fellow, his jacket is blue and his boots are yellow, yeah yeah yeah. I've read nearly everything Tolkien ever wrote, including his standalone poems published as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and I think Tom is great in that. But the insertion of the character by Tolkien into an epic fantasy masterpiece like LOTR seems misguided. His only narrative purpose seems to be to rescue Frodo and friends from situations they can't possibly get out of themselves because they are hobbits, and therefore out of their depth the moment they leave the kitchen. Tom is there to save them not once, but on two consecutive perilous occasions.

Consecutive!

And I just don't think Tom belongs in Middle-Earth. He's not an Elf, Dwarf, Man, Hobbit, Ent, Wizard, Orc, etc. In fact, we don't know what the hell he is. Even Tom doesn't seem to remember where he came from. It has been suggested that he might be a Maia, one of the quasi-angelic beings who pop up in the story from time to time. The Elves call him Iarwain Ben-Adar (translation: Eldest, Fatherless) and there has even been speculation that - SPOILER ALERT - this jovial, powerful and childlike being may be Eru Ilúvatar himself, the creator of the world and all its creatures and the closest thing to a monotheistic deity in all of Tolkien's work. I'm sure anyone who reads can agree that you're in bad shape as a writer if your deus ex machina is an actual deus. Well done, Professor T.

That said, I do love every other thing about LOTR with rabid fan-boy fervor, as much today as I did when I read it for the first time all those years ago. I even love the hokey stuff: the baffling archaic language, the black-and-white morality; those fit the story, and the story would not be the same without them. I really am excited to be getting back to the book once again after several years away. Wingnut Films, you did an excellent job with your adaptation and I love you dearly, but the book is still king. And I'm thrilled to be returning to the king tonight.

Mae govannen!