Wednesday, February 13, 2008
An Open Letter to J.R.R. Tolkien
Dear Mr. Tolkien (Can I call you J.R.R? Or just J.R.?),
I'm sorry, but I just can't do it. When the new year started, I had grand ambitions of adding your greatest works to my reading list for 2008. It's been almost eight years since I read The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not sure if I've ever actually read The Hobbit, though I was addicted to the little picture-book-and-tape version as a child. But I wanted the whole Tolkien experience, so I decided that before I return to those wonderful classics, I had to get The Silmarillion under my belt.
I've made it about a fourth of the way through your epic creation myth, and I'm not going any farther.
I gave you a chance, and you failed to get through to me. Perhaps it's the fact that you died before you were able to really finish The Silmarillion -- maybe there was a lot of work you had left to do on it. Perhaps it's the voice and tone of the narrator who's reading it on the audiobook version I'm listening to (he is rather dry and aloof). But I think the main reason I'm not ever going to finish your book is that it's mind-numbingly boring.
Seriously, J.R. Do you really need to give three names to every place, race, and character, none of which anyone could repeat ten seconds after hearing it? I know you were all into language and stuff, and delighted in creating a new elven language, and the elven poems in The Lord of the Rings were amusing, if distracting. But in this book you say things like (and I'm paraphrasing here because, as I said, I listened to it on audiobook and therefore I can't easily go back and find a quote) "Thus they called the place Feagwanimore, which being interpreted in the elven tongue, is Taniwaniwanipoop, for it was Humidrishiloth, or Gramelienever." WHAT?
And are we supposed to care about any of these hundreds of characters you've created, when you can't spend more than a paragraph talking about any one of them except the incarnation of evil, Melkor/Morgoth (and who knows how many other names I didn't catch?)? Where's the personableness you were able to create in the lighthearted Bilbo, the valiant Aragorn, or the tragic Gollum? Did you forget how to fashion characters in your old age?
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are still on my list. I know you can do better than The Silmarillion. But I gave you a chance and you blew it. Life's just too short to spend time trying to figure out the ancestry and posterity of some elf whose name is just the same as all his relatives.
Sincerely,
Matt (which, being interpreted, is actually just plain Matt)
I'm sorry, but I just can't do it. When the new year started, I had grand ambitions of adding your greatest works to my reading list for 2008. It's been almost eight years since I read The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not sure if I've ever actually read The Hobbit, though I was addicted to the little picture-book-and-tape version as a child. But I wanted the whole Tolkien experience, so I decided that before I return to those wonderful classics, I had to get The Silmarillion under my belt.
I've made it about a fourth of the way through your epic creation myth, and I'm not going any farther.
I gave you a chance, and you failed to get through to me. Perhaps it's the fact that you died before you were able to really finish The Silmarillion -- maybe there was a lot of work you had left to do on it. Perhaps it's the voice and tone of the narrator who's reading it on the audiobook version I'm listening to (he is rather dry and aloof). But I think the main reason I'm not ever going to finish your book is that it's mind-numbingly boring.
Seriously, J.R. Do you really need to give three names to every place, race, and character, none of which anyone could repeat ten seconds after hearing it? I know you were all into language and stuff, and delighted in creating a new elven language, and the elven poems in The Lord of the Rings were amusing, if distracting. But in this book you say things like (and I'm paraphrasing here because, as I said, I listened to it on audiobook and therefore I can't easily go back and find a quote) "Thus they called the place Feagwanimore, which being interpreted in the elven tongue, is Taniwaniwanipoop, for it was Humidrishiloth, or Gramelienever." WHAT?
And are we supposed to care about any of these hundreds of characters you've created, when you can't spend more than a paragraph talking about any one of them except the incarnation of evil, Melkor/Morgoth (and who knows how many other names I didn't catch?)? Where's the personableness you were able to create in the lighthearted Bilbo, the valiant Aragorn, or the tragic Gollum? Did you forget how to fashion characters in your old age?
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are still on my list. I know you can do better than The Silmarillion. But I gave you a chance and you blew it. Life's just too short to spend time trying to figure out the ancestry and posterity of some elf whose name is just the same as all his relatives.
Sincerely,
Matt (which, being interpreted, is actually just plain Matt)
Comments:
Hilarious. Silmarillion takes time and patience. Small, small doses are best. What I found the most interesting about in some respects it paralleled the LDS version of the creation of the world and the fall with the storyline of Melkor, etc. Ultimately, I think Silmarillion isn't really a story, more of a validation of the history of the LOTR arc.
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