I brought Return of the King to work with me today; I’m rereading the LOTR series in anticipation of the upcoming film(s). After lunch, I came back in and put my purse and the book on the shelf where we keep our personal items. A while later, a cow-orker asked me, “Is your book about Elvis?”
Now, I have read a lot of books about Elvis. I’m not a fan, but he was an interesting cat. I’d forgotten about Tolkien for the moment because I was concentrating on the papers I had to go through, so I absently said, “No, but I have read a lot about him; what did you want to know?”
"No, I just saw that your book is called “Return of the King”.
I don’t want to alienate people at this job, so I kept a civil tongue in my head and explained that that was the third book in the Lord of the Rings series by Tolkien. No, not “Token”, J.R.R. Tolkien. The movie of the first book is coming out this fall. No, that’s the Harry Potter movie. This was written in the forties.
I’m open to the possibility that there are people who’ve never heard of Tolkien, even in passing. But how on earth could she have thought ROTK was about Elvis? Books about the Big E invariably have a honking big picture of him on the cover; this has the Eye of Sauron and some runes. I could even accept someone seeing the title and saying “That doesn’t look like a book about Elvis”, like when someone saw a biography of Sarah Bernhardt I was carrying, thought it was about Sandra Bernhard, and said, “Is that picture from when she was hanging out with Madonna?”. You know, at least making sure they saw what they thought they saw.
Oh well. This is the same person who sings along with Outback Steakhouse radio ads.
Maybe what you should have done is opened the book to a random page and started to explain how Elvis fits into the story. “This is the scene where Elvis and Frodo are preparing to throw the ring into the fire pit in the middle of the Dark Lord’s kingdom when suddenly gollum appears…”
(sorry, I haven’t actually read the books for more than ten years.)
My guess is the person would have KNOWN Lord of the RINGS… but… return of the king? NEVER heard of it myself. Then again… never read any of the series after the first book. NO interest whatsoever, not my thing. NO, don’t consider it a classic. Just because its YOUR thing you expect everyone to recognize? Well… it IS something the Comic Book Guy would snort at now isn’t it?
I UNDERSTAND what you’re saying, Whammo, but my POINT is, even if a person had NEVER heard of Tolkien, they still have to be pretty DUMB to think that that cover art had ANYTHING to do with the guy from Memphis. I didn’t SAY everyone in the world knew ROTK.
That’s pretty clueless, I admit! It is unheard of to have an Elvis book without at least showing a bit of sequins and bellbottoms on the cover - right?
[hijack]I bought the big “Macintosh Bible” in CompUSA (it has a large title “Macintosh Bible” on the cover.) And the very sweet clerk who checked me out started to talk about religion. (Which was OK in my case, because I am religious as well.) But I couldn’t figure out why he started talking about it, and thought he was taking a risk - a non-religious customer might have been offended. Anyway, I figured it out - he thought the “Macintosh Bible” was, like, some version of the Holy Bible! When was the last time you saw religious literature in CompUSA???[/hijack]
In the beginning, God created the Macintosh, and he saw that it was good. And God said, “Let there be light!” And the monitor did bring forth a goodly glow, and God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let it have a nice and elegant user interface, with pretty icons and fun backgrounds, and let it be user-friendly and easy to learn.” And God saw that it was good.
And on the 6th day, God cast down the fallen angel, Bill Gates, from the heavens.
That’s probably what she thought it was—something upholding the Elvis-Is-Alive theory.
Damn you Bob Greene. He is or was a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and he is without a doubt the reason that rumor took off. Someone kept writing to him, insisting that Elvis was still alive, and providing all kinds of “evidence”. He described her, and her “findings”, in a column, taking the attitude that there sure are a lot of weirdos out there, and he didn’t believe a word of what she said. But he didn’t refute it either, and even if he had, he was still giving her publicity. So because he gave this person credibility (if it’s in the paper it’s true, right?) a lot of other nutcases rallied to her support, and it became unstoppable. Irresponsible jerk.
Rilchiam, that is the funniest thing I’ve heard today. Gotta give it three “bwhahaha’s”! I swear, sometimes folks unknowingly write just the best dialogue, don’t they? Thanks for the laugh.
Ok, I wouldn’t have assumed that the book was about Elvis, but I’ve never heard of Return of the King. I don’t read Tolkien, and don’t plan to. You see, my Dad tried to get me to read The Hobbit when I was 7, and I thought it was the most boring thing I’d ever put my eyes on. I tried to read it again in my mid-teens, thinking that maybe I hadn’t given it a fair shake, and since I was beginning to be interested in fantasy I’d like it better, but it was still one of the most boring things I’d ever tried to read. To be fair though, what I read was facinating compared to The Perfect Storm. I’m sure some of my favorite books bore the hell out of people, too.
