sigridhr | Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week One

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Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week One

*smashes a bottle of champagne over the post* And we're off!

Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week One (The Hobbit)
Chapter I: An Unexpected Party
Chapter II: Roast Mutton

Rules

I very much doubt we'll require much in the way of formal rules, but just for the sake of formality and clarity:

Discussion is welcome and encouraged, as is disagreement. Name-calling and personal attacks will be punished by a barefoot gauntlet walk across a set of lego pieces.
There is no spoiler policy in place. Although we're reading the Hobbit, please feel free to bring in things from other Tolkien works, any of the films, the History of Middle Earth, the Letters of JRR Tolkien, and, if you should like, other literary sources.
There is no such thing as too nerdy. Or too excited.
If you have any concerns at any point, I'm the closest thing this gong show has to a mod, so feel free to get in touch. I can be reached either by PM through this site, or directly by email at sigridhr.lokidottir@gmail.com.

Discussion on this post will officially run from Friday 11th January 2013 to Friday 18th January 2013. However, the post will remain open after that point, so you're more than welcome to continue discussions on.

(I'm cheating a bit, as it's not quite the 11th here yet, but I want to get this up before I go to work tomorrow, and 6am posting is just asking for disaster). Have at it, guys! :)

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I know, right? :D There's a way in which LotR does the same thing, but it's not nearly as tidy as The Hobbit, which is just this beautiful piece of the history of fairy-stories and I love it.

I enjoyed studying Ulysses, but I agree, it's work all the way through. (Not that Joyce isn't enjoyable - I do read The Dubliners for sheer enjoyment.) I've been rereading the <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/02/lord-of-the-rings-re-read-indexLotR readthrough on Tor.com</a> (spoileriffic and deeply intelligent) and I think that was where I picked up again on the idea that Tolkien is just as much a modernist as Joyce and Yeats and that lot. (Actually, Tolkien has a lot in common with Yeats stylistically. Personally, they probably would have loathed each other.) I would love to read Tolkien in a class on modern literature, to draw out those parallels.

I love the fact that the Hobbit is explicitly a children's book, too, and yet isn't afraid to be really dense and wonderful.

I haven't read The Dubliners – I read Ulysses and gave Finnegan's Wake a sort-of honest attempt before just settling on reading the essays about it. I would probably chew my right arm off to take a modern lit class that compared Yeats and Tolkien, tbh.

THANK YOU for that link. I've just skimmed and bookmarked, but I think I'll probably very much enjoy going through it all in detail when I've got the time.

I am remembering all my modern Irish lit class on Yeats and how into mysticism he was and his personal vendetta with Aliestair Crowley (CROWLEY ONCE HIRED A HITMAN TO TAKE OUT W.B. YEATS, THIS IS MY FAVORITE FACT ABOUT LITERARY HISTORY) and how much he and Tolkien have such different worldviews they would not even be able to *talk* to each other - and also how he used to write all this poetry about Irish myth and legend and then the wars happened and he kind of went into his tower and hid. (Yeats was almost broken by the Irish Civil War, which is nothing at all like Tolkien at the Somme, but yeah, the more I think about this the more I want to write a thesis, can I get a Master's degree in Tolkien And Yates Hate One Another, But Their Work Is Really Quite Interestingly Similar?)

I highly recommend The Dubliners, actually. Full of gorgeous little character sketches, and it makes Stephen much more tolerable in Ulysses.

...dammit, that link wasn't a link at all, was it? Sorry for the munged up html. And stopping with the digression about Irish modernists now.

I DID NOT KNOW THAT. It's now my favourite fun-fact too, though.

If you can't, you really, really should be able to. Because that would be amazing.

No worries. I managed just fine. :)

Can I ask you guys something, why does everyone seem to hate the Arwen from the movies?

I was a bit young when the films came out (10 or 11, I think), so I missed a lot of the bruhaha, but from what I can recall people were concerned on two fronts: 1) they thought she was a little too warrior princess, because she replaced Glorfindel as the elf that met them on the road. I didn't have much of a problem with that scene, really, but some people did. The one thing I did have a bit of a problem with was criticism 2), her fate gets somehow bound up with the ring's (? this is never explained to my satisfaction), and her life depends on the ring being destroyed, apparently.

I thought that was nonsense. Aragorn was already fulfilling his role as the heir and didn't really need extra motivation, and I didn't understand why it was necessary, other than, presumably, to shoehorn Arwen in.

I thought the use of bits from the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen was much better shoehorning. I think some of the (often self-professed) 'purists' were annoyed that Arwen and Elrond were arguing over her fate, given she and Aragorn had been betrothed for (I think) 50ish years and everyone's mind was reasonably made up by that point, but anyone who hadn't read the books wasn't to know that, and I thought it did a reasonably good job of outlining the tale of Aragorn and Arwen, discussing the nature of Arwen's choice and why it was a big deal, and getting more girls into a film that was otherwise a total sausage fest.

So, I guess this is a long way of saying, I don't really know what people's problem is if they hate Arwen. Although, when I have heard people profess this opinion, I've occasionally been under the impression they don't like her because they ship themselves with Aragorn. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

A little bit? You were way too young! Compare to me. Now I'm feeling self-concious and old. :)

I agree with you on the Ring part. I think it takes the real significance behind Elrond being a half-elf and his children being bond to the fate of Elron and his brother. Would they go with their father and live in the Undying Lands or stayed in Middle Earth even after Elrond has sailed and succumb to their mortal fate. Aragorn was trying to recover his homeland and trying to destroy what Isildur couldn't so to have him all 'threaten' that if the Ring is not destroyed Arwen would die is just...I don't know.

About her role replacing Golrfindel, I can understand because I was dying to see Glorfindel and Erestor. But I thought her role as a part warrior was an introduction to those who haven't read the books. Which is why they decided to include the rest of the story behind Arwen and Aragorn. If you haven't read the book you would think Aragorn should have ended up with Eowyn instead of Arwen because we only got a glimpse of her in the dinner at Elrond's home.

So, it is logicall they showed something else regarding Aragorn and Arwen. Sorry, it's just I saw a so-called Tolkien purist talking trash about PJ's Arwen saying she was just there to steal the show.

Well, my dad read the books to me when I was about 6 or 7, so I started early. :P Plus, I'm pretty much a crotchety old 70 year-old on the inside, so...

Plus, Arwen's marriage to Aragorn was dependent on Aragorn becoming king – that was Elrond's condition, so, her fate was already dependent, to a certain extent, on the outcome of the quest.

Glorfindel and Erestor would've just been more characters they needed to cast in an already full film, though. Elladan and Elrohir were personal favourites of mine in the book, who never made it on to the screen for probably similar reasons. :P

Precisely – it's hard to get the audience to invest in the love story, if you never see it. Plus this let them play up the love-triangle angle with Eowyn – like it or not.

There'll always be people complaining about ever film adaptation of a book that it wasn't precisely right. And people always complain about female characters, too. So Arwen's kinda a double whammy in that regard. I'd ignore them. :P

I think your last point is the biggest reason - of all the things to complain about in the movies, I do think Arwen was one of the better changes that they made. She gets to do something, you get to see their relationship instead of being told about it after the fact (the first time I read the books I was astounded when Aragorn got married at the end, who the hell was that?), and she didn't end up outrageously out of character. (They did take her out of Helm's Deep, thank goodness.) But there's a pretty strong misogynistic streak in fantasy fandom, and it tends to come out a lot in relation to Arwen.

I get so frustrated with the belief that fantasy is somehow a male playground... And with the fact that it's hard for female characters in almost any fandom to do anything 'right', it seems. Same with people who get pissy about Eowyn being too much of a 'warrior chick'.

It all just makes me want to write an epic genderbent!Fellowship fic. Just to spite everyone.

Whoa, wait...wait...Images of Boromir dying...if this genderbent!Fellowship works I just want to see a real BAMF Female!Boromir giving it everything to the fight, besides it would make her faster than the Uruk-hai. And, I just have to see what Eomer would say of a female Aragorn.

I may or may not be in the early stages of planning a sci-fi genderswap AU of the whole Denethor/Boromir/Faramir clan.

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Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week One

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