Took or Baggins? Part 2
I am reading The Fellowship of the Ring, which is
the first of the LOTR trilogy. (ISBN 0-345-33970-3) At the time I bought it,
years ago, it cost $6.99 for the paperback copy. It's the Ballantine
edition, containing a foreword by Tolkien himself.
One thing that drew my
attention is that toward the end of the foreword, Tolkien complains about other
paperback editions being published without his consent. He states that only the
Ballantine edition is the one he approved and encourages readers not to buy any
other! And here I was thinking that stealing authors’ work was a recent thing
born of the internet. Obviously not.
While most readers skip the Foreword (I seldom pay a second’s attention to it), this time I
have made a special effort to trudge through it. I’m glad I did. First of all,
this is Tolkien himself talking about his work. In my mind, silly as it sounds,
he’s talking from beyond the grave, as he’s been dead many years.
Tolkien denies that his books had anything to do with the
war (WWII) and points to the fact that his work’s origins go back way before
the war. His main motive in writing the works was to “…hold the attention of
the readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply
move them.” Those are the reasons any true writer writes.
The writing of the series (LOTR) went on from 1936 through
1949! Today, authors put out a book every three months. Anyone who doesn’t
produce in numbers is not considered a true writer. But Tolkien, one of the
most beloved and successful authors in the English language, did not write
every day! His duties, his interests, and the war got in the way. It took him
thirteen years, but he never gave up.
A final point of observation I have is in the way Tolkien writes,
primarily his sentence structure. His sentences are complex, often taking up
the space of a small paragraph. He uses plenty of commas and an abundance of
semicolons. He also does not skimp on the word "that."
I don't find his work difficult to read. I don't see many extremely hard or out-of-date words. Words like “laborious,
decrepitude, and allegorical” are few and can be easily Googled by anyone who has
never heard them.
The one thing that may make him difficult for today’s reader
is that he requires the reader to hold more than one line of thought within one
sentence. Today’s readers want to get there fast. They have little patience for
the meandering way.
Tolkien’s Foreword
is not without humor. At one point, he talks about his reviewers:
Some who
have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring,
absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar
opinions
of their works, or of the kinds of writings that they evidently
prefer.
Here is a genius writing books that eighty years later are
still selling, and he had reviewers who put him down! Some of the indies on
Facebook and Goodreads should learn from him.
At the end of his Foreword, he dedicates his book to us
across the water. America. He obviously knew that we, across the water, would
continue to buy millions of his books for many years to come. Smart marketing move, the dedication!
On to the Prologue, where we are filled in on all kinds of
background info on the Hobbits.
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