Reading Tolkien

I refused to read Tolkien when my dad tried to give it to me at 8 or 9. He had started me on stories from Galaxy and Analog (he did illustrations for both as well as Amazing while he was in college and for a few years after). Heinlein was “light reading” and I had not discovered Sword and Sorcery, other than the rather iffy John Carter stuff. I read “She” by H. Rider Haggard before I read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl.

Chronicles of Narnia was too sanctimonious and preachy; I stopped after Asshats (sorry) Aslans second coming…. I mean appearance… though I liked C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra trilogy. I put Fellowship down after reading "Bilbo Baggins was celebrating his Eleventy-first birthday." Eleventy-one? Pffft. Please, Dr. Seuss is fun and funny, but this? Eldritch horror to rinse out my mouth and mind please! Quickly! I need Clark Ashton Smith, and perhaps to re-read “The Telltale Heart” or “The Black Cat”! Take me to Trantor, now!

Then I got stranded at a relative’s home in New Orleans one night, while the grown-ups went to play on Bourbon Street. I had hoped to have a pleasant evening with the grownups vanished, as my third cousin once removed on my stepmothers side (or whatever that would be called) was only 5, and my sister Lynne was about a year old. I was 11 plus a few months. The grownups had decided to bring over a babysitter to deal with them, rather than force me to; and she was lovely. “Go ahead! Stay out as looooong as you like!” I thought.

14 or 15, honey blonde hair, big green eyes, lovely accent… and OMG, an IQ rivaled by my cat. I grabbed “The Fellowship” off the book shelf nearby as the only thing I had not read. I had just finished "Dune" the prior month. I recall looking at it like a soiled diaper, and my (step-uncle?) said “You don’t judge a book by its cover, do you? Read the first four chapters”. I could see right away that reading ANYTHING would give me refuge from Barbielite. “You read? Books? Wow, ya’all must be smaht!” Off to my room I went, frustrated and dragging a surely insipid novel along as refuge.

I hit the Barrow Downs shortly after midnight I think, and was utterly creeped out. I even thought about going down and sitting near the blonde. The attack at the Inn in Bree was chilling, and the assault on Weathertop made the lights in the room dim, or so it seemed. When they reached the Fords of Bruinen and Frodo began the desperate escape astride Asfaloth, my heart was racing as fast as the horse’s.

The ‘rents got home around 3 AM, and found me so deeply involved I barely responded to them. My father and uncle drove the ladies out and left me there. They came to get me for breakfast late that morning, maybe 10 AM. I had gone downstairs at about 6 AM and grabbed “The Two Towers” as well as “The Return of the King” and gone back to my room. My stepmother tried to get me to put the book down at the table, to which I replied “I’m not really hungry Marilyn” and got up to go back to my room. My father and uncle stifled her protest instantly, and my aunt brought me up pancakes… or waffles… or shoe leather. I wouldn’t have noticed. If she had stuck one of my feet between two slices of bread, I would have chewed my own foot off and failed to realize it. I finished the novels that evening. I was so ready for more, I read the appendices. Yeah, all of them…..

I have read the trilogy 2-3 times a year ever since. I often grab it on rainy winter days, build a fire even if it’s daylight, or pull the drapes in my room and light candles and one dim lamp. I am not quite at the point of being a Bradbury-esque “People who are books”, but I am damn close. Without trying to get it word by word, I believe I could tell the whole story, in the sequence the novels are laid out even after the parting of the Fellowship. I wrote screenplays for all three novels in the late 80’s, and tried off and on for a decade to get Saul Zaentz or the Tolkien estate to even talk to me. I was fairly pleased with the final Peter Jackson films, though I confess I skip over the bastardized Faramir scenes when I watch the DVD’s.

So, if you ever want someone to read them to your kids, I’m available. If I ever wind up with my own, this is a fixed part of parenting. I will also read “The Princess Bride” (is this a kissing book?) and maybe even the first three Narnia novels. I was 18 before I went back and read all the way to “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. Oh, and they will also get “The Last Unicorn” and “Wind in the Willows”, “The Phantom Tollbooth” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I will leave Poe and Derleth, Howard and Burroughs, Lovecraft and Dunsany, Asimov and Ellison, Clarke and Heinlein until they can turn the pages themselves…..