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The Hobbit-Forming World of J.R.R. Tolkien

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The Hobbit-Forming World of J.R.R. Tolkien THE HOBBIT-FORMING WORLD ead the following paragraph carefully; then close your eyes and remember. R"They are (or were) small people, smaller than FRODO dwarves (and they have no beards) but very much OF J.R.R.TOISIEN larger than lilliputians. There is little or no magic LI about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along V making a noise like elephants which they can hear An aged Englishman's saga a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stom- ach; they dress in bright colors (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow nat- ural leather soles and thick warm brown hail like of elves, dwarves and dragons has the stuff.on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it)." suddenly become the hottest-selling item All right. That was a degcription of hobbits, a race of "halflings" who originated in the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien, a retired Oxford don, and play a in U.S. campus bookstores. major role in his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Could you begin to see them? Did you feel a warm, comfortable feeling as you thought about the prospect of two dinners a day—and no diets? Would you like to spend some time in a place where there is "less noise and more green"? If your answers to any of those questions is yes, you may By HENRY RESNIK well have a chance of becoming one of the Tolkien 90 venting his own. He pursued this linguistic pas- Buttons proclaiming that FRODO LIVES (they refer sion at college, finally settling on philology, par- to the hobbit hero of the trilogy) are available in ticularly the study of Anglo-Saxon and other me- either English or Elvish, one of Middle-earth's dieval languages, as a career and Oxford as the native languages. place to study it. During this time, several lan- A panel of students assembled in Baltimore guages had been growing in Tolkien's imagina- recently to tape a TV book-discussion show tion, and he found that he could not resist invent- drove the show's directors into a mild frenzy with ing countries to go with them. In a matter of constant digressions about Tolkien. Two teachers years these countries grew into a whole world of English at Minnesota's Mankato State College which he called Middle-earth. Prodded by some of have announced a Tolkien Conference to be held his Oxford colleagues, he finally wrote a book there this October. At Reed College in Oregon a r : . about this world. The book, published in 1937 group of students has devoted several evenings to ,, with elaborate illustrations and maps by Tolkien reading The Hobbit, word for word, over the col- 01 himself, was called The Hobbit. lege radio station. And at the recent meeting of the 1N 1 / But, as Tolkien explains, once he had invented Tolkien Society a group called "Hobbits, Unin- this world he could never quite finish with it. hobbited" gave a command performance, " featur- Act% 4,4 "tilli 7 Middle-earth continued to grow in Tolkien's mind, ing The Ores' Marching Song and a couple of ter- and in 1956 he completed The Lord of the Rings, rible voices," according to the meticulously edited .....-I■t k 10)011 410.1 1 offering the admirers of The Hobbit a vastly ex- Tolkien Journal. (Ores are another breed of Tolk- 1Ir,4111 "'• 4 14.-attr„,„.4 ■ panded view of his unique creation. ien creature.) This is more than mere enthusiasm; .0z_b.. i 1,-, The Lord of the Rings is a 1,300-page trilogy. this is passion—uninhobbited, joyous passion. Most Tolkien fans have read it twice; five times is Since the most dazzling quality of Tolkien's •,°-.;--,av- li ft•tkb• \ I 4'0 1> not an uncommon record. One woman who fell in fantasy world is the abundance of its detail—the love with the trilogy when it was first published landscape and genealogy of Middle-earth are just ldst count after her 30th reading. Tolkien fans are as elaborate as the languages—one favorite ac- I 1,11 not satisfied with merely reading, however; they tivity of Tolkien fanatics is analyzing these de- !..t, ")*■- proselytize, and their number steadily increases. tails. People have invented alphabet games to go ? Mpi We§ j g According to a spokesman at the Yale Co-op, with the languages; the two magazines publish r. An! The Lord of the Rings is selling better at Yale than articles which deal with such subjects as "The irviNit Lord of the Flies at its peak. (Lord of the Flies, a Hereditary Pattern of Immortality in Elf-Human . 04'4 novel by another Englishman, William Golding, Crosses"; and one Tolkien scholar has even spelled 0, 00.1-0,tN led'', has had enormous popularity among students.) At out an elaborate Freudian interpretation. Gen- fikt the Harvard Coop, the Tolkien books occupy an erally, however, the activity centers on indexes, iiiiir-wro -1=. ' ( ' 40 li honored place next to the cash registers, where, dictionaries of the Elven languages, and transla- like cigarettes, they are readily available in large tions of poems which appear in their original Elvish. -3,,,...-■00,,,_ quantities. But they are selling well in almost The books are essentially an adventure story, „4„ \ ■,.„,,1/47,,... every college town in the country. "Somehow," and this certainly accounts for part of the en- says Ian Ballantine, publisher of one of the Tolkien thusiasm they generate. The adventure is founded paperback editions, "college kids have managed to on the well-known medieval convention of the get word to each other that this is the thing." quest, complete with hero (occasionally in armor), The Ballantine Books edition appeared in \ dragons of various sorts, treasure (or reward) at September, 1965, four months after that of its the end, and, although less important (the books competitor, Ace Books, and within 10 months the are not very sexy), a smattering of fair ladies. two firms had sold more than a quarter of a mil- In The Hobbit, which is, according to the Tolkien lion copies of the entire trilogy. This is a consid- people, a children's book—delightful, but not as erably faster sales rate than those of A Separate sophisticated or profound as The Lord of the Peace or The Catcher in the Rye, other campus best Rings—the quest involves traveling hundreds of sellers of recent years. In fact, it is a kind of ex- miles to the Lonely Mountain and killing a fear- plosion in the publishing world. The explosion is some dragon, Smaug, who smolders quietly in a due mainly to the complete absence of any paper- subterranean lair, guarding his stolen treasure. back edition of the Tolkien books for almost 10 The quest falls to an unsuspecting hobbit, Bilbo years after Houghton Mifflin published the Amer- Baggins, who would much rather stay at home people. And, as any of the steadily growing num- ican hard-cover version in 1956; Tolkien's public where he can be sure of six solid meals a day than ber of high-school and college students who have had all this time to gather, like a crowd before the be off fighting dragons; he is persuaded to embark read The Lord of the Rings can tell you, one of the palace of a king, awaiting the bestowal of what on the journey, however, by a friendly wizard Tolkien people is just about the best thing a per- they knew must come. By the end of 1965 almost named Gandalf and a boisterous company of son can be. every college student in the country had at least dwarves. Gradually the hobbit's inner courage In recent months, The Lord of the Rings has heard of The Lord of the Rings. emerges, and although he frequently longs for the been at the top of college best-seller lists across the Although the Tolkien fans rarely show herding comforts of his well-equipped hobbit hole, he country, and although the Tolkien people wince instincts and never scream, they are driven by the struggles on through terrifying dark woods, en- at the word "fad" as if it were sheer blasphemy, same subtle urge that produces water guns at the counters with huge spiders, battles with trolls and even they will admit that their enthusiasm has first breath of spring, gives rise to the sudden, goblins—on to an enigmatic, hobbit sort of vic- gone—perhaps inevitably—beyond all reason. The unexpected yo-yo, and squeezes crowds of stu- tory. (Bilbo does not actually kill the dragon him- Tolkien people may be less noisy than the LSD- dents into telephone booths. The vanguard of the self; this job is left to a more heroic figure.) heads, but there are more of them, and they give Tolkien movement—those who purchased the Aside from being a vivid introduction to Middle- the lie to most of the melodramatic scandal that books when they were available only in hard cover earth and its creatures, The Hobbit is significantly has emanated from the American campus within (or, better yet, in England—"The English edi- linked to The Lord of the Rings through an inci- the past year. Look into the mirror of their emo- tion knelled great," one of them said recently)- dent in Bilbo's travels: he flees at one point to an tion—the world of Tolkien—and you will prob- -tends to view the recent upsurge with a moder- underground cave, the secret lurking place of a ably fmd a clue to what today's students are really ately patronizing eye, but none of them be- despicable creature called Gollum, who had about; look into that mirror and you may even grudges either the pleasure and excitement the sought refuge there long ago after murdering his find the link that ties you to them.
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