For those of you completely uninterested in the Ring Trilogy, my apologies. I want to talk about it a bit more.
I am now on the chapter "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol" - Frodo, Sam and Gollum are starting up the mountain pass. I know that there is a giant "s" in the next chapter. I am prepared.
I can see now why people get so addicted to these books, so obsessed by the world created, that they can barely read anything else. They want to spend their whole lives making Middle Earth become clearer and clearer and clearer ... no detail too small. Even if there weren't a ton of maps of Middle Earth in the back of my book, I could picture it in my mind, North South East West, because that's how Tolkien writes - The road-map is in the writing.
So you read, and you can follow along, literally step by step.
If you have a mind that loves details, that is susceptible to the mathematical beauty of things making sense - then these books are a whirlpool that will suck you in. By "things making sense" I mean this: A place-name is mentioned in the Trilogy. I have never heard of it before. I look it up in the Index - and there is a list of page-numbers, where this place-name is discussed in the trilogy. Then I look on the map, and lo and behold, it is on the map. So suddenly - with all of this back-up - I can SEE what Tolkien has been talking about. There is no detail too small. Everything is on those maps, and everything is in the Index. It's rigorous reading%2
Posted by sheilaYour last paragraph is really good..true of all successful fiction, I believe (comment about this on my blog)
Posted by: David Foster at January 4, 2004 11:44 AMYou want obsession with detail? Have you read the Silmarillion? Tolkien started it in 1915 and STILL wasn't completely satisfied with it when he died nearly 60 years later, but it throws so much more light on things in LoTR.
Oh, and being typically pedantic, PEI is near Nova Scotia, but it's a separate province (Canada's smallest).
Sucked back online once again after more than a week away; oh no, it's like I never left. ;-)
Posted by: Dave J at January 5, 2004 11:28 AMDave J - I have not read the Silmarillion, and frankly I am afraid to start. I fear I will never break free.
I should have known that about PEI. Lucy Maud Montgomery is a real hero. Her journals are beyond belief. And those books are such absolute pleasures. PEI is described in as much detail, with as much care, as Tolkien describes Middle Earth. She died in "exile" - at least that's what she called it. Because of who she married, they moved to Toronto. Far away from the sea. And she never stopped pining for Prince Edward Island and its red red roads.
Good to see you back by the way.
Posted by: red at January 5, 2004 11:32 AM