“Boogies…do not like machines more complicated than a garrotte or a Luger…shy creatures except when a hundred or more may dry gulch a lone farmer or hunter…”
“Five nine is your height and 180’s your weight
You’ll cash in your chips around page eighty-eight.”
Simply the finest parody every written. My major incentive for finally slogging through the entire LOTR trilogy was so that I’d be able to really enjoy BOTR.
A great book. I first heard about it while reading the Hobbit, before I started the trilogy, and I read it as soon as I finished LOTR. That was over 30 years ago.
I’m surprised at how good a distribution it got. BOTR was put out by the Harvard Lampoon, but it was initially published by Signet books, and I saw lots of copies on the sherlves at department stores (!). The book has been reprinted recently by, I think, Del Rey, so it’s easy to find a copy. This is unlike the other Harvard Lampoon parodies – you’ll look high and low, or pay a lot through internet rare-book sites, for a copy of theur James Bond parody, Alligator, or the Playboy parody, or any of their others.
Having lived in the Boston area, off and on, since I first read the book, I now recognize that some of the references are local – thirty years ago most people outside New England wouldn’t know that “Poland water” (one of the gifts they pick up in LornaDoone) is Poland Spring water, or that Moxie is a New England soft drink, once on a par with Pepsi. And the description of the hot fudge sundae in Moxie or Pepsi’s dream while on forced march by the Oma-Ha and the Otto-wa (Uruk-Hai) had to be inspired by the hot fudge sundaes at the now sadlt departed Bailey’s ice cream parlors, only a couple of blocks from the Lampoon Castle near Harvard Square.
A king of elves
There was of old
Saranwrap by name
Who slew the narcs at Mallowmarsh
And Sorhed’s host did tame.
And with him marched the stubby dwarves
drafted from their mines
And when the fearsome battle raged
They hid behind the lines.
Dribble, dribble, fake, dribble, fake, dribble, dribble.
“I am Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, son of Aeroplane”
He gave the ancient elvin greeting “Hihowareya!”
I cried when I found out that Jackson and company didn’t think to make this fourth movie using the characters and sets with slight modifications based on this book. Still one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
