"A Long Expected Party" - Jacob's Thoughts

The Lord of the Rings trilogy looms so large in our cultural consciousness nowadays that I was caught off guard by just how innocuous that opening page is. Seriously, "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday..." sounds more like the beginning of some Dr. Seuss book than of a long, dark, world-spanning epic.  Especially in today's cut-throat publishing world that places so much emphasis on that first page, first paragraph, first line that "grabs the reader's attention" lest some time-crunched editor toss your work to the reject pile without finishing, it is almost jarring to encounter a work that begins so leisurely--it is also refreshing.  There is a self-confidence about this meandering approach, where Tolkien doesn't feel a need to impress you or sell you on a tale he knows will overawe you in due time.  Nevertheless, we have little sense from these opening salvos of the pathos, pain, and passions that this series holds for us. 

Yet though the full scope of this saga is hidden on the first page, the foreshadowing is still sinister in its own understated way: of Bilbo's seemingly endless youth, the Shire folks shake their heads and mutter, "It will have to be paid for...It isn't natural, and trouble will come of it!"  No matter that the other Hobbits only spoke this in petty envy, it is a true prophecy, as the full extent of this price will be revealed in all its terrible beauty by the trilogy's end. 

Though a New Critic would throw a yellow-flag on me with a shout of "Intentional Fallacy!" for saying this, I can't help but wonder how much Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray influenced Tolkien's portrayal of a never-aging aristocrat (for Bilbo is wealthy indeed) who pays for his youth with a dark secret so profound that even he himself can scarcely comprehend its cost.  I also can't help wondering how much a literate British reading public would've intuitively picked up on those dark overtones in this Dorian-esque portrayal of Bilbo, so subtly different from the jovial, put-upon everyman we encountered in The Hobbit.

I find it interesting that Ben notes how off-handedly cruel Bilbo could be in his gift-giving, especially given what we later learn of Gollum's true origins--could we here, in this chapter, already be encountering subtle clues of how the ring has begun to corrupt Bilbo's soul the same way it had Smeagol's?  I find Bilbo's statement that he feels like butter spread too thin on bread to be particularly ominous in this regard.

I also find fascinating Ben's observance that the Hobbits here come off as "gossipy, snoopy, impatient, shallow," since Tolkien famously admitted that the term "Hobbits" is a play on Babbit, the Nobel-prize winning novel by Sinclair Lewis about the failings of narrow-minded conformity in a safe-yet-stultifying middle-class community.  Said Tolkien: "Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place."  There is something anti-Pastoral about Tolkien's Hobbits, a repudiation of English Romanticism, a refusal to celebrate the "natural" village life embodied by the Shire--which refusal renders this novel, despite its retro-Medievalism, distinctly Modern.  (The fact that the ultimate quest is to not gain, but destroy an artifact of great power, is likewise often cited as a peculiarly Modern twist in this series).  Even though Tolkien clearly harbors more affection for his characters than Sinclair Lewis, Tolkien also clearly does not want you to idealize them.

Though I agree with Ben that "A Long Expected Party" is doubtless meant to ease us into new territory with its foibles of hobbits, I'm tempted to think that all the endless domestic detail of the first chapter is supposed to be a little tedious, that we are meant to desire escape from this same wearying tedium, that we are, like Bilbo and Frodo, to feel a little oppressed by the Shire.  Even that chapter title, "A Long Expected Party," places us firmly in a world of set routine, unchanging in its banality, sans surprise, adventure, or the unexpected, with nothing to look forward to save parties that are expected long in advance, then come and pass without variance.  We finish "A Long Expected Party" with Frodo longing to get away from the steady minutiae of Hobbiton--and we with him.

Yet though the opening chapter to the most famous fantasy series of the 20th century begins in such an unspectacular, quotidian fashion, it does have some bona fide drama: that final exchange between Gandolf and Bilbo, as we behold two long-time friends almost turn on each other over the ring, is a genuinely tense moment.  Although the tension between them is resolved quickly enough, the tension about the ring is not.  What is it about this mere plot device from a previous novel that could suddenly turn two such amiable and lovable old characters against each other, even just briefly?  It isn't natural, and trouble will come of it.

"A Long-Expected Party" - Ben's Thoughts

I wanted to begin my weekly posting by relating a bit about the role The Lord of the Rings played in my childhood. I read The Hobbit at a very young age with my dad and launched into LOTR very soon thereafter. While the story was interesting and engaging, what sucked me in was Tolkien's worldbuilding. The maps, appendices, and vast sense of history conveyed throughout the text completely sucked me in. For that reason, The Silmarillion might edge out LOTR as my favorite of Tolkien's works (even though Silmarillion was published posthumously). Growing up, I often would copy out the maps and genealogies from the books, and would compile them into exhaustively organized folders of "history." A map of Middle-Earth, expanded beyond what is found on the maps included in LOTR and containing many additions and embellishments of my own, hung on the wall of my room probably up until high school.

All that is just to introduce the fascination that Tolkien's worldbuilding had for me. Just what is it about this text that is so compelling? Perhaps it is the resonance that I feel from the author himself -- in the Foreward to LOTR, Tolkien states that the primary reason for diving into the fantasy world of Middle-Earth was to provide backstory to the languages he had created:

". . . I wished to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desidered to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues."

This statement does not ring entirely true to me, because if that was the case, Tolkien would have written The Silmarillion and left it at that. Plus, a made-up language does not "require" a backstory to be complete. Tolkien created novels, not just histories, which contain characters and plot lines that have resonated with readers for generations and spawed (almost) single-handedly an entire genre of fiction. Backstory alone could not have done that. Fortunately, Tolkien also provides a glimpse into additional motivation for turning his history into a narrative:

"The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them."

This seems like a particularly noble goal for any writer of fiction. You hear a lot of platitudes about writing, instructing us to "write for ourselves" and "write what we know," and lately the websites that I frequent that spotlight fiction have featured content that seems to glorify diversity in fiction as if that diversification should be the goal of writing in and unto itself. Tolkien's statement here seems to pare that down. I'm sure this desire to delight and captivate comes from his experiences with The Hobbit; by all accounts, that text spawned from bedtime stories he told his children. He would have had first-hand experience of how a powerful tale could enrich the lives of others. (As an aside, if anyone has not read Tolkien's The Father Christmas Letters, it's lovely and has beautiful artwork and is another example of what a good dad Tolkien was).

In any case, on to LOTR. The novel certainly managed to "amuse" and "delight" me in the past, and I'm eager to see if it manages to do so again. Nobody else wanted to begin with the preface, but I thought I'd do a brief highlight: it's broken into four parts, highlighting the history, culture, and politics of hobbits, as well as providing a brief recap of how Bilbo found the Ring in the goblin tunnels in The Hobbit. My first thought was that this material would be better suited to the appendicies, but I think Tolkien felt that a new reader would want to delve a little deeper into Hobbit-lore to become grounded prior to reading the first chapter. However, what I found after reading "A Long-Expected Party" was that the first chapter does a much better job of conveying this same information (in brief, that hobbits are stubborn, that they like food, are interested in geneology, have deep family ties, etc.) in just a few pages of quick-moving exposition and dialogue than the preface did in thirty pages. If Tolkien wanted to expand on what is already conveyed by Gaffer Gamgee and all of the gossip about Bilbo and Frodo in the first few pages of the book, I think it would have been better left to the appendicies after all. Some of the preface also makes me wonder when exactly it was written -- it links The Silmarillion to the text by implying that the Elvish history we have comes from Bilbo's "Translations from the Elvish," and sort of contains "spoilers" for LOTR by linking Merry to Rohan and Pippin to Gondor. As I said, probably better left to the end of the books.

There was, however, one section of the preface that was necessary for the earliest readers of LOTR. I refer of course to the "great ret-con." In the first edition of The Hobbit, Tolkien wrote the story of how Biblo came to find the Ring quite differently: Bilbo won it fair and square from Gollum as a prize in the riddle-game. When he realized that the Ring was going to be the driving force of LOTR, Gollum voluntarily parting with the Ring didn't make much sense, so it needed to be changed. The preface explains that this version of events was Bilbo's "made-up" story that he told the dwarves after they discovered he had a magic ring, and the "true version" was included in subsequent printings of The Hobbit (comparisons of the text of the two chapters can be found at this site). Readers of LOTR coming from the first editions of The Hobbit would have been out to sea without this explanation.

Now on to the first chapter. What struck me immediately this time around is how little we see of Frodo and Bilbo from the beginning. My memory of the books is unfortunately quite colored by the Peter Jackson adaptations, as I don't think I've read LOTR since they came out (despite having read it countless times prior). But here, while Bilbo and Frodo are the topics of conversation, everything is conveyed to the reader through the eyes of other hobbits, especially Sam's dad, Gaffer Gamgee. It certainly keeps the reader at arms-length, wondering what Bilbo is up to. Even his first conversation with Gandalf is kept short and cryptic, with Bilbo hinting at needing a "vacation" and planning some sort of "surprise" at the party.

All in all, "A Long-Expected Party" feels like The Hobbit-redux. Yes, there are some hints at sinister goings-on with the Ring, and Gandalf is appropriately mysterious and not-quite-at-home in the Shire, but overall this chapter takes a light tone and highlights the foibles of hobbits. I can only assume this beginning tone is meant to ease readers, accustomed to The Hobbit's tone and style, to the new narrative before tossing them in the deep end. Essentially, at the end of the chapter, the characters we encounter (with the exception of Gandalf) are no longer focused on. This "passing of the torch" is even paralleled in the conversations had in the two inns: in "Shadow of the Past," we get Sam Gamgee holding court instead of the Gaffer, and Ted Sandyman instead of his dad the old miller. Out with the old; in with the new, I suppose.

The stuff dealing with the hobbits it quite funny, really, but bitingly satirical. The hobbits, by and large, come across as gossipy, snoopy, impatient, shallow, and even downright criminal: they try to steal all of Frodo's stuff and knock holes in his walls at the end of the chapter. Bilbo doesn't come off much better in this respect, with his nasty little gifts to his relatives (the wastepaper basket for his aunt who was fond of writing letters came across as especially cruel to me). Far from an idyllic land, the Shire doesn't come across as that nice a place in this chapter. It really only begins to shine when Frodo gets out into the countryside in subsequent chapters. In a way, these nasty hobbits are a preview of how rotten the Shire will become by the end of LOTR. The seeds were always there; it just takes Saruman to stir things up a little bit.

A few notes about characters. Merry Brandybuck is introduced here, as Frodo's friend and social equal. He gets a good joke in, but that's about it. The most interesting introduction is Frodo. While others talk about him, he is not characterized by the narrator until after Bilbo's disappearance, and our first close look at him deals with his sadness about Bilbo's departure. I think this helps readers familiar with The Hobbit relate to Frodo; we realize that this story won't be about Biblo, but we can't help feeling sad at his departure. Frodo's soberness might also serve to highlight the fact that this will end up being a very different book than The Hobbit. Contrast Frodo's intro with Bilbo's light-hearted one in "An Unexpected Party" of The Hobbit as he chats with Gandalf while blowing smoke-rings.

Frodo in 1978

In response to Bender's comment about Elijah Wood: I never really wrapped my head around Wood as Frodo Baggins. He was always Elijah Wood playing a hobbit. For one thing, he was too young -- Frodo in the book is in his fifties, the same age as Bilbo was when he first left home. They should have gotten a slightly older actor, I think. My mental image of Frodo, however, is colored by another movie: the animated Ralph Bakshi version released in 1978. My grandmother who lived in west Texas had a copy of this film on VHS, and everytime we would go out there, all I would want to do was watch it over and over again. Sometimes it would end and I would immediately rewind it and start it again at the beginning. So I always picture Frodo with reddish hair and a round face, instead of with dark hair and Wood's freakish blue eyes.

All in all, "Long-Expected Party" was a fun read. It went by at a quick pace and never left me flipping pages to see how much more there was. Frodo remains a bit of a chiper, beyond his sadness at losing Bilbo and his exasperation at his "guests" the morning after the party. Other than that, the chapter has hopefully done its work to rid the text of "Hobbit nostalgia" so things can move forward from here. 

Welcome!

So I know that we aren't doing our first posts till Saturday, and that Eric is slammed with law school at the moment so won't be joining us till week 2, but the giant blank space on the blog main page was starting to bother me, so, to paraphrase Beckett, I decided to stain the silence with my words.

To any random passer-byes, this blog is about as straight-forward as the sub-title indicates: we are three old college roommates who have, against all odds, kept in touch over the years, despite being scattered across the country.  We were all English majors (two of us went to Law School, while another entered a PhD program) and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was one of our formative influences growing up; so we thought another fun way to stay connected would be to re-read said trilogy, see how they hold up, reminisce, and have some fun.  Since we're all busy with careers and families and grad school and etc, we are pacing ourselves at one chapter a week, updated roughly every Saturday.  I presume we'll be commenting on each others posts, as well.

I myself am way excited for this project, since I personally haven't read Lord of the Rings since High School, when I devoured them in prep for the Peter Jackson movies then in production (just to date myself a bit).  In many ways it feels like my entire life has happened since then, so I'm especially interested to see to see how I experience these books now (not to mention to find out if I can even picture Frodo as someone other than Elijah Woods anymore).

 

Also, let's give a big hand to Ben Gillis for the snazzy site design!