A few weeks ago I bought this BBC 2-CD set. It’s a program of recordings of Tolkien’s remarks and other commentary.
Much of this material is pretty well-known, but it was interesting to hear it in Tolkien’s and other people’s own voices. I’ll just mention a few things I found interesting. All unattributed quotes were spoken by Tolkien.
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“The wisest thing in the whole book was the wheels of the world are turned by the small hands while the great are looking elsewhere. They turn them because they have to; it’s their daily job.”
(Elrond states this idea in the chapter “The Council of Elrond”, FOTR, LOTR collector’s edition, p. 283 -
“Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”)
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About beginning “The Hobbit”.
"I wrote it as a relief from examining school certificates as they were then called. One of the candidates had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing on it, which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an examiner. And I wrote on it: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ "
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When Elaine Griffiths was a graduate student, Tolkien lent her his typed copy of “The Hobbit”. She thought it was excellent. Some time later, she spoke to Susan Dagnall, who was then working for Allen & Unwin at the time and was a friend when they were undergraduates. She told Susan “The Hobbit” was very good and suggested she get it.
Griffiths: “Now, she was a very attractive young woman. Not only was she good to look at, but she had a delightful voice, and I thought, ‘Now if anyone can get this out of Tolkien, it’ll be Susan’. So off she went to see him, and sure enough, she got ‘The Hobbit’, and ‘The Hobbit’ was taken and published.”
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Re Elvish: “I wouldn’t mind other people knowing it and enjoying it. But I didn’t really want to, like some people who have been equally inventive in language have done, is sort of make cults and have people all speaking it together. I don’t desire to go and have an afternoon’s talking Elvish to chaps.”
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The CD does mention criticism of LOTR. For example:
Dr. John Carey: LOTR is for children. Simplified morality and no sexuality or sensuality. No wit, painful humor.
Tolkien’s response: no women because it was a war and a journey to a remote and hostile place.
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“I liked [Gollum] better than all the other characters…” (Apparently this was because Gollum was more conflicted than the others. He was wicked, was given a real chance to reform and began to turn that way, but at the end his desire for the Ring overcame him.)
(This brief extract is interesting, but Tolkien mumbles at the end of it and I can’t quite understand it. If you want to hear it yourself and possibly tell me what he’s saying, copy and paste this address into your browser (direct link won’t work): http://www.geocities.com/rowrrbazzle/Tolkien_re_Gollum.wav
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“Practically all human stories are about one thing, aren’t they: death. The inevitability of death. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation. And whether you agree with those words or not, they are key to the LOTR.”