Do you love LOTR but merely tolerate THE HOBBIT? (or vice-versa)

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Yesterdog]
True, but many of us are not students of Tolkien. I would love to be one, but even with my massive collection and 20+ readings of the Silmarillion, I still don’t even consider myself close to that title yet.

Though, I did hear Tom Shipey speak at my school a few years back. It was brilliant.
[/QUOTE]

His manuscripts are at Marquette University in Milwaukee. I think they are there for a while, you’ll need an appointment if you want to see them…
I’m surprised Qadgop has not seen this thread, his tolkien acumen is second to non.

22

[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
His manuscripts are at Marquette University in Milwaukee. I think they are there for a while, you’ll need an appointment if you want to see them…
I’m surprised Qadgop has not seen this thread, his tolkien acumen is second to non.
[/QUOTE]

I thank you for that bit of info. Next time I’m in Chicago, I’ll have to make a trip up there. Thanks. :cool:

23

I’ve been reading LOTR 3 or 4 times a year since 1966. But had I read The Hobbit first, I would never have read LOTR at all.

The Hobbit is twee and sorta interesting, but it’s a children’s book and does not, IMHO, compare to LOTR. I’ve read it a few more times, but it doesn’t improve.

I have read The Silmarillion about 2 dozen times, I suppose and have been bored half to death every time. Turgid, dense, contradictory, incomprehensible, needlessly complicated - a lot like the bible, as mentioned above.

A friend of mine has a new Tolkien-scholar book coming out next year:* Arda Reconstructed*, from Lehigh University Press. In it the author attempts (and I am told he succeeds) in putting all the various contradictions in explicible order. I hope so. If he can’t do it, no one can.

As for the movies, well, I always thank Peter Jackson because if I hadn’t seen the first movie I would never have joined the fanclub website and would not have met the great people I’ve met there and elsewhere. FOTR was the best, the only one that really had anything to do with the book. TTT and ROTK were drivel, CGI-fests full of cheezy jokes and characters who bore no resemblance to Tolkien’s creations except for their names.

24

Saw the thread, too busy to reply at work today.

I’m a student of JRRT. A C- student, maybe D+. But that’s due to lack of time and talent, not lack of love of the subject matter.

I’m currently slogging thru the 1st volume of HOTH (History of the Hobbit), which is to “The Hobbit” what the 12 volume HOMES (History of Middle Earth Series) is to JRRT’s Middle-Earth writings.

And the first thing that becomes apparent while reading HOTH is that the story, as originally envisioned and executed, did not take place as a part of JRRT’s Middle-Earth writings (which were pretty much restricted to the 1st age, featuring Melko and Aelfwine the Mariner and Meassë the Vala at that time.)

So there is a different feel and authorian imperative to it.

Not to mention that JRRT wrote it as a children’s story, originally imagining it to entertain his kids, and refining it for a larger children’s audience.

Early on in his writing, he began to throw in a few references to his unpublished ME writings (Gondolin being one of the most obvious).

And later, he built LOTR around the settings laid out in the Hobbit, and furthered his ME writings to provide backstory for who Elrond was, how he got there, and so forth.

But JRRT’s son Christopher, who edited all 12 volumes of HOMES, refused to place “The Hobbit” in that series, as he felt it really stood more outside the ME realm than in it. The task of analyzing & writing the “History of The Hobbit” he left to other Tolkien scholars.

That said, I read the Hobbit after reading LOTR (back about 1971 circa age 13. And frankly I was a bit disappointed, because I’d been expecting something a bit more in-depth than it seemed to me.

I only began to appreciate it more on re-reading.

I can see similarities in how The Hobbit is presented, to JRRT’s story-telling style in “Mr. Bliss” and “Father Xmas letters”, etc.

But I can also see how germs of ideas planted in TH grew into full-blown histories in LOTR, or later writings involving ME.

Frankly, LOTR, SIL, and several tales from UT (along with Children of Hurin) rank much higher in my appreciation than TH.

25

I love all of his books. I love the Hobbit and LotR about equally. I enjoy the depth of the Silmarillion and the lost treasure that is Untold Tales. I recently completed the History of the Hobbit. I plan to reread all 12 volumes of the History of Middle Earth.

When I was 11 (6th grade) I picked up the Hobbit and blew through it quicker than any book I had read to that point. I then happily devoured the LotR and moved on to the Silmarillion. I then found Smith of Wootten Major. I read it and reread it in the same day I checked it out. It is a wonderful little tale.

Hmmm, if **QtM ** is a C- student, then I guess I am only a D-. But I also consider myself a student of JRRT. I wish I had a chance to take a class from the Professor. He is the foundation of my love of Fantasy and my love of reading.

I love that the Hobbit was a long Fairie Tale created for his kids and that the LotR starts as a Fairie Tale but then grows into a great epic. I love the conceit that the books are not fiction, but actually from the Red Book of Westmarch.

I have the Red Bound single volume edition BTW, so there was an option to buy just one and not three.

I am also not a big fan of the movies, but intellectually I can appreciate the fact that like the books themselves, the movie is the standard that all other fantasy now needs to me compared to. The movies are my son’s favorites. He really loves them and he is looking forward to the Hobbit more than I am.

I have hopes the Hobbit will stay truer to the book than the LotR movies did.

Jim

[RIGHT]Frodo Lives[/RIGHT]

26

I preferred LotR, but that’s just because I’m one of those horrible people that doesn’t like hobbits. It’s just my pattern. Sneaky, aristrocratic cats over loyal, homey dogs, the cunning, dangerous thieves over the honest, pure clerics. The sheer innocence and lack of worldliness of hobbits just turns me off.

27

I like both. Read the Hobbit for the first time when I was about 8 or 9, and Lord of the Rings all in one go when I had chicken pox at 13 and was stuck at home feeling miserable for about a week and a half. I’ve actually re-read the Hobbit more times, so I may actually like it more, but on the other hand it’s a much easier read and doesn’t require such an investment of time, so that might be why. Hard to say.

28

Ok if QTM thinks he’s a C student and WhatExit? thinks he’s a D- student…I better retake the class :smiley:
I am definitely a student of Tolkien, I hope to pass on the love and reverence for him to my children, who are not even born yet. Hopefully they will have a love for him as I have.

As for taking a class with the professor…I think I would have liked to sit with he and C.S. Lewis in the Pub, with my pipe, and just listen to the two of them hash things out over charactor development and story line. That scenerio [pub, pipe, tolkien, lewis] is probably one of my most fond adult dreams. Something I would have loved to have done…sit with the two of them in their favorite pub with a pint [they come in pints] and a pipe, just listening.

29

[QUOTE=vison]
I’ve been reading LOTR 3 or 4 times a year since 1966. But had I read The Hobbit first, I would never have read LOTR at all.

The Hobbit is twee and sorta interesting, but it’s a children’s book and does not, IMHO, compare to LOTR. I’ve read it a few more times, but it doesn’t improve.

I have read The Silmarillion about 2 dozen times, I suppose and have been bored half to death every time. Turgid, dense, contradictory, incomprehensible, needlessly complicated - a lot like the bible, as mentioned above.

A friend of mine has a new Tolkien-scholar book coming out next year:* Arda Reconstructed*, from Lehigh University Press. In it the author attempts (and I am told he succeeds) in putting all the various contradictions in explicible order. I hope so. If he can’t do it, no one can.

As for the movies, well, I always thank Peter Jackson because if I hadn’t seen the first movie I would never have joined the fanclub website and would not have met the great people I’ve met there and elsewhere. FOTR was the best, the only one that really had anything to do with the book. TTT and ROTK were drivel, CGI-fests full of cheezy jokes and characters who bore no resemblance to Tolkien’s creations except for their names.
[/QUOTE]

If you really want to wrap your noodle around something, read Chris Tolkiens’ War of the Jewels and Morgoth’s Ring. Every instance in the Silmarillion is covered in there - every variation. For example. If Tolkien wrote the frist paragraph of the Valquenta 5 times, all 5 of those are reprinted in chronological order with cross references and footnotes. :smack: It’s still a good read.

30

The Hobbit reads like a childrens’ book (which is precisely what it was). LOTR is for adults.

31

I enjoyed The Hobbit. I can’t say the same for The Lord of the Rings. I got through maybe a third of the entire thing, then just gave up out of sheer boredom.

32

[QUOTE=aldiboronti]
The Hobbit reads like a childrens’ book (which is precisely what it was). LOTR is for adults.
[/QUOTE]

I would change that just a little. The Hobbit is a fairy tale. It is for kids or parents to read to kids. The LOTR is for pre-teens and up or ages 9 to 109. I read it and loved it at 11 and I know many other read it even earlier.

33

[QUOTE=Yesterdog]
If you really want to wrap your noodle around something, read Chris Tolkiens’ War of the Jewels and Morgoth’s Ring. Every instance in the Silmarillion is covered in there - every variation. For example. If Tolkien wrote the frist paragraph of the Valquenta 5 times, all 5 of those are reprinted in chronological order with cross references and footnotes. :smack: It’s still a good read.
[/QUOTE]

I tried it. :frowning: I’m just not that interested, I guess. I take the thing as it is, meaning LOTR. The Sil doesn’t matter a whit to me.

I will buy and read my friend’s book only because he wrote it. He got no joy from Christopher Tolkien, not surprisingly.

34

[QUOTE=vison]
He got no joy from Christopher Tolkien, not surprisingly.
[/QUOTE]

Hit or miss IMHO.

35

[QUOTE=Yesterdog]
Hit or miss IMHO.
[/QUOTE]

Hm. I guess I didn’t write that very well. I meant that my friend wrote the Tolkien estate and CT saying it was a serious scholarly work and they need not fear it was going to be a ripoff or disrespectful or anything and that he would cooperate in every way with every requirement they might have, what he got in return was a snotty letter warning him not to dare to write about The Sacred Text.

36

Recently read (well, listened to unabridged reading) of LOTR for the first time since roughly junior high, goin’ on 20 years now. I was surprised by how well I liked it. Some parts of it are terribly scary – the barrow downs, the passage of Cirith Ungol. The parts that I remembered as twee and dull (namely the first chapters with the hobbits) are actually fairly engrossing; I had forgotten, in the wake of the movies, how solid and level-headed Merry and Pippin are. I do felt it flagged near the end during the last leg of the trip to Mount Doom, and the geographical description borders on numbing quite a bit. On the whole, I was quite delighted by how well it held up for me. When I last read Tolkien, I was also reading Agatha Christie, who I now find unreadable; Professor T’s work still has a lot going for it.

Haven’t read the Hobbit for an even longer span of years. Nothing I remember about it lures me to crack it again. Maybe if someone makes a good movie of it I’ll be inspired again.

[QUOTE=Yesterdog]
Immediately after watching the Fellowship, I went to the book store and bought the trilogy in 1 volume deal. I read it in a single sitting.
[/QUOTE]
You have an ass of mithril, sir (or ma’am).

37

I loved the Hobbit but just could not get into LOTR (though I did enjoy the movies). The Hobbit is a fun adventure tale, while the LOTR has a bit too much war and politics for me.

38

[QUOTE=vison]
Hm. I guess I didn’t write that very well. I meant that my friend wrote the Tolkien estate and CT saying it was a serious scholarly work and they need not fear it was going to be a ripoff or disrespectful or anything and that he would cooperate in every way with every requirement they might have, what he got in return was a snotty letter warning him not to dare to write about The Sacred Text.
[/QUOTE]

Just for some perspective, these are among the most famous books in the English language. There have been dozens of books written about them and Professor Tolkien already. In the last 35 years, how many inquiries do you think the Tolkien estate has fielded like your friends?

Jim