B2MEM

[dreamflower]

Well, March is upon us once more. And you know what that means, right?

"Miss the golden days of the Lord of the Rings fandom? Get homesick for Middle-Earth?

Then this is for you!

You don't need to sign up anywhere to participate. But if you see this on your friends-page and like the idea, please post this text to your LJ to spread the word.

How to participate:

1. Pick a day of the week (or more than one) on which you resolve to always post something LotR-related in March, and let your friends-list know.

2. Go back and read your favourite chapters from the book, or watch the movies again. Let the beauty of LotR inspire you. And then, share the love.

3. Start your subject line with (B2MEM) when you post, and use a "b2mem" tag. This'll make it easy to spot your B2MEM-entries.

No matter if you just ramble about your undying love for LotR, picspam us, post wallpapers, icons, or write fan fic / create fan art, the plan is to get as many LotR-related entries on our friends-pages as possible throughout March.

Sounds good? We've been there, let's go back again!"

I am going to try two days a week: Tuesday and Thursday. And my contribution will be quotations from some of my favorite books *about* Middle-earth and JRRT!

The first one is from The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings by Fleming Rutledge, and is taken from her chapter on The Hobbit


"The Hobbit is a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. It introduces several important characters and describes events that are crucial for understanding the larger work. More to the point, a few of Tolkien's most powerful themes make their first tentative appearance in this earlier volume. We will understand them better if we begin here. At the same time, however, I call the reader's attention to the curious fact that the transcendent dimension so very present in The Lord of the Rings is largely missing from the introductory book, The Hobbit. That is one of several reasons for beginning with it, so that one can see the huge leap that Tolkien makes when he enters upon the tale of the War of the Ring.

Tolkien has told us that he was not entirely conscious of his own subtext when he was writing The Lord of the Rings. He says that it was "in the revision" of the Ring epic that he began fully to realize what he had been doing. As is so often the case with the writers, the work took on and independent life as it progressed, so that it spoke back to its author. Many writers have testified to the surprising autonomy of their work, but Tolkien, looking back later, was explicit; he acknowledged the hand of God in the Ring saga by referring to "the Writer of the Story", "the Great Author" and "the supreme Artist"...

When Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, therefore, he was as yet only dimly aware of the great structure that was to come into being around his early conception."

Comments

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

oooh, yes! I love Middle-earth month! However, I fail at rules (like picking a day of the week) and may just post haphazardly. Hope nobody minds! :D

[dreamflower]

I don't know how good I will be at keeping to my "days", but thought I would give it a shot!

[shirebound]

I was one of those who read LOTR first, and The Hobbit second. It was neat to discover the "prequel" to the trilogy and enjoy how the relatively simple tale would eventually evolve into such an epic.

[dreamflower]

What's amazing to me is how much The Hobbit parallels LotR!

I read them really close together, so to me it really was very much like a prologue to LotR. I read TH overnight, in one go, and then started LotR the next day, so to me it really is more like a four-book series than a trilogy.

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

I love this quote--thank you for sharing it! I'm not familiar (as yet) with the book it came from, but I will be looking for it soon!

Your post does exactly what it's supposed to do--it brings back those breathtaking feelings of the early days, when everybody could feel--somewhere between their hearts and the pits of their stomachs--that they were entering upon a life-altering experience. Thank you so much--just what I needed this morning!

[dreamflower]

It's a wonderful book, with a lot of insight into the connections JRRT made between his stories and Scripture. I did have a serious disagreement with her treatment of Merry and Pippin in the book, and wrote to her about it. To my surprise, she responded graciously, and said that she "stood corrected" and agreed wtih my objections! I was amazed!

I'm glad that it did what it was supposed to! I have so many wonderful quotes about LotR to share! I hope all of them do that to a certain extent!

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

What did she say about them, and how did you set her straight? (Way to go, by the way!)

[dreamflower]

Here's a link to the letter I wrote to her:
http://dreamflower02.livejournal.com/208514.html#cutid1

And here's a link to my post about her response:
http://dreamflower02.livejournal.com/305317.html

You can imagine how pleased I was!
And the rest of the book is brilliant. I have fond hopes that perhaps one day she will revise it with my comments in mind! *grin*

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

I do remember those now--your letter is marvelous!

I sometimes wish I had not acquiesced to the common expectation and made my Merry and Pippin a blend of book and movie. It happened partly because Dominic and Billy brought so much of themselves to the parts, but also because I am all too aware of the fact that a lot of fanfic writers and readers place a lot of emphasis on the childlike propensities of the youngest hobbits. I don't think I've gone too far, but I sometimes wish I hadn't gone at all.

With regard to M&Ps roles in LOTR, I once wrote an essay, for a friend, on the subject of Merry and Pippin in the context of the Biblical idea of "the least of my brothers." It's not perfect, and bviously not for those who find the subject tiresome, but it's here:
http://entropyhouse.com/baillie/candme/essays/leastofmybrothers.html

[dreamflower]

I know there are some who dislike any hint of movie-verse in book-verse based fic, but as you said, Dom and Billy lent a good deal of themselves to the roles. And the visual imagery (including the actors) were the movies' strongest point (aside from Howard Shore's amazing score).

Yes, too many fanfic writers overemphasize those childlike qualities. (In my earliest fics, I feel even I bear down a little too hard for my own comfort there--it was not until I actually began writing them *as* children that I was able to grant the adult versions more maturity.) Yet some of those childlike qualities *are* apparent in canon--I cannot imagine a human in late adolescence "running over the grass and singing" the way Pippin did at the beginning of the Quest. Or a near-adult human engaging in an overenthusiastic bath song, either. The four of them did have a certain childlike innocence when they left the Shire. But "childlike" is not at all the same as "childISH*, which is where so many fics put a foot wrong.

[dreamflower]

Oh, that was an absolutely wonderful essay, dear! I loved it, and you brought out a good deal that needed to be examined! Beautiful--thank you for pointing it out to me!

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

:)

You're welcome! I'm glad to share it; I'd almost forgotten all about it.

[maniac1.livejournal.com]

What a fascinating little essay Elanor! I found it very thought-provoking.

I tend to forget that out in the greater world, Merry and Pippin would have been considered the 'least'. In their own world, the Shire, they are members of two of the most powerful families.. but that is in their world only, a relatively peaceful, simple world. In contrast to the other battle-hardened races of the Fellowship, the Hobbits would indeed have seemed very weak and insignificant. It's amazing what Merry and Pippin ended up accomplishing, all by 'accident'.

Thank you for showing us this link!

[caerdroea.livejournal.com]

Really enjoyed your essay. I think you made some wonderful points.

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[labourslamp.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wish I had not acquiesced to the common expectation and made my Merry and Pippin a blend of book and movie.

Don't apologize--you broke me out of the habit of clicking the back-button whenever I read a movieverse eyecolor!

I would, of course, be/have been interested in how your "pure bookverse" M&P look and act as opposed to the ones that you've characterized (persnickety "only draw from movieverse when subverting it" people like me get a little lonely), but there's so much else to them that resonates with pure bookish glory that I really can't tell how different they would be!

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

:)

Thank you, labourslamp--I appreciate the compliment and the invitation!

I've worked pretty to hard to integrate the book and movie M&P, with book being the default setting. But I've messed up a few places and I think the places that guilt me the most are Pippin sitting up on the highland getting quietly drunk in preparation for imminent death, and the 'road trip' through the North Farthing in the same condition. I expect I could have manufactured a boatload of angst for those moments instead, but I wasn't real comfortable with that idea, either. There's a limit to angst, you know? Peter Jackson's modern conceit, whereby Merry and Pippin seem rather excessively fond of intoxicating substances, (a situation which I personally think is probably anachronistic to the Shire of Tolkien's construct) was an easy fix. The problem with the whole premise, though, is that it doesn't have enough depth; it plays to Jackson's view of Pippin as feckless and shallow--which he never was and never could be. I'll make it up to him somehow, and I'm hoping to find a way to fix it in the final edit.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Ooooo, neat quote!

Hee. Last year, I decided I'd post one chapter per day of Happy AU material to SOA for B2MEM. We know where that led! ;)

[dreamflower]

LOL! It led to you getting a lot of new readers, who followed you back to your LJ and TLS later on! *grin*hugs*

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

The Hobbit was a children's story, but it did contain some hints of the depth LotRs would have.

[dreamflower]

It's interesting that he could not keep Arda out of the Hobbit--I don't think he originally intended for it to be a part of his great creation, but it was so much a part of him at that point. And of course, it *was* "meant to be, and not by its maker" that hobbits *had* to be a part of Arda.

I find it interesting to compare The Hobbit to some of his other children's books, like Roverandom. It's obviously leaps ahead of them, whatever JRRT's own misgivings about his style there.

[lbilover.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad there is going to be another celebration in March. I was wondering if there would be. What a great idea to share these quotes. Like Janet, I read The Hobbit after LOTR, and I have to say I found it difficult to adjust to the tone, which is so different.

[dreamflower]

It is very different in tone in many ways (although not so different from the first chapter of LotR as you might think). Aside from it being written for children, there is a sort of whimsical and dry snarkiness that you don't find in most of LotR.

I consider myself fortunate. Most people either did not read TH until after LotR, or they read TH as a young child, and then read LotR years later as teens or young adults.

But I was in my mid-teens, and read TH and LotR all together within the space of a little over a week. So for me, TH was much more of a prologue to LotR than for many folks!