The Hobbit - Ramble - Ch 1.

[ach_sss_no]

 Livebloggy notes while reading The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, chapter 1. These are notes I'm making in the process of assembling a proper chapter-by-chapter review of the book. There was some indication of interest in seeing a liveblog-style thing when I asked on Tumblr, so I'm posting my notes. 

My book has a small foreword from Peter S. Beagle who says Middle Earth is a real place and he wants to go to there. Peter S. Beagle: anonymous author of Tenth Walker fic??? (Probably not, but he did adapt the screenplay for the Ralph Bakshi LOTR movie, and it was, imo, a solid screenplay with an absolutely mangled execution re: visuals and some voice actor choices but that is a review for another time if ever.)

Mr. Beagle makes the statement that Middle-Earth and its characters exist somehow outside of and disconnected from Tolkien’s prosecraft and writing skill. This strikes me as a very strange thing for another writer to say. If I didn’t know Beagle was a novelist, I would think he knew nothing about writing whatsoever. Of course the writer’s craft has something to do with it. I dare you to find an enduring character and setting that came from someone whose craft didn’t reach at least a C+ quality. 

By sheer coincidence, I just bought a copy of The Last Unicorn after only seeing the movie adaptation and now I’m really really interested to see how Beagle writes. 

 

This is my copy:

 

I found it and two out of the three LOTRs at a local thrift shop for 50 cents each. I’m missing Fellowship. If any of you have the edition of Fellowship that goes with this set, I would be very very grateful if you’re willing to give me your ISBN number so I can find this edition on abebooks or ebay and complete my set. (Or: hear me out: I would be willing to buy your copy, or trade an art commission of equivalent or greater value for it (would pay shipping cost) call me)

 

The HObbit 

 

Or

 

There and Back Again

 

(Revised Edition) 

 

What got revised is an interesting story for another chapter. There is a prefacing note that alludes to it: “More important is the matter of Chapter Five”. Mm. Yes, quite

 

 

the Elvenking is down there somewhere and “There are Spiders”

 

This map of Mirkwood must have taken a dog’s age. Look at all these trees!

 

And there’s a very intimidating and horrifying Smaug up in the corner

 

(note to self: try out a different design for Smaug that looks like this)

 

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” is one of the most iconic opening lines of all time, I say, as someone who usually doesn’t notice or care about a book’s opening lines. Let’s see. “The primroses were over.” People make a big deal out of “call me Ishmael,” but I didn’t get a lot out of Moby Dick, myself. It’s mostly essays about whaling with some strange experimental novel in between. There’s a huge section that’s written like a faux-Shakespearean play.

 

Tolkien immediately goes on to clarify that the hole is not gross.

 

The whole opening bit is a very clever and subtle bit of expositing what a hobbit is and who Bilbo is by describing his house. I am reminded a bit of Watership Down’s opener: describing the countryside and plant life before focusing in on the rabbit characters who live in it. Also, Bilbo Baggins would not resonate with people as much as he does without the prosecraft used to sketch him for the readers. What was that Beagle said about MIddle-Earth just coming into existence, again? 

 

I’m going back to that for a minute. Tolkien seems to be a relatively unique author in the respect that everyone who cares about fantasy fiction (and often fiction in general) brings him up when discussing the craft of writing and they often have some bonkers gonzo crazy opinions.

Source: I’ve read a lot of material on being a better writer. It hasn’t worked.

One of the things that’s really started to bother me is this kind of ‘oh Tolkien pulled off [difficult thing that comes off really poorly if you try it below a certain craft level] because… he was a genuis. You can’t do it. Don’t try.’

That has the strange effect to me of insulting both the aspiring writer and Tolkien. I’m not Tolkien scholar, but from a brief perusal of the man’s work and his forewords, Jirt put in a lot of hard work, time, care, redrafting, and sheer effort into creating the novels that became so beloved and famous. He played to his strengths and used subject matter that he cared about and knew about. 

1) Saying ‘he was magic lol’ devalues the work he put in.

2) Saying ‘you can only do [x thing] if you’re a genius lol’ implies your reader is an idiot, and also severely underestimates the results random humans can achieve by caring a lot about a subject and investing a lot of time and love and care into it. Look, maybe your reader is an idiot- but if you’re that pessimistic why are you writing an instructional book

What I’m saying is, if you want to write a ton of wordbuilding into your book, anyone who tells you not to- without even seeing what you’re trying to do or why- might not have your best interests at heart.

 

Wait, there’s a book sitting here and I’m one page into it. Hold on.

 

MM yes. ‘The Bagginses are respectable becasue they are rich and boring’

It’s often advisable to start a book with some kind of hook that promises something. Jirt makes a promise right off: ‘This is a story about how a Baggins did something unexpected […] He may have lost the neighbors’ respect, but he gained-“

Gained? You mean he stole the PrWell, I’m interested. Let’s see how guy with nice house becomes disapproved of.

 

Anyway, Tolkien goes on to immediately insult the reader

‘Big stupid folk like you and me’

He has a conversational style of prose here that is immediately captivating.

 

Brief description of the Tooks and how they are bananas. Alas, it will be a few years and another series of books before we see how bananas the Tooks really are. However, since I never read LOTR as a child and always accepted the Hobbit as the standalone work it originally was, I am going to try to do something I would normally never do, and forget about Pippin.

 

After some hinting that Bilbo Baggins may have an inherited wild streak, Gandalf shows up with a brief introduction that Gandalf is someone who does shocking things. Bilbo out of the kindness of his heart says ‘Good morning’ with all sincerity and Gandalf goes absolutely nuclear. Bilbo is totally fine with this but then Gandalf mentions adventure and Bilbo immediately ignores him and hopes he will go away. It doesn’t work. Ignoring people until they go away never works for me either. 

 

Gandalf says who he is and Bilbo suddenly and rhapsodasically realizes he likes adventures, sealing his fate forever. Gandalf all but says he’s sending Bilbo off for the lulz. I know I just said I was avoiding talking about LOTR but all of this takes on an ironically ominous tinge when you remember all of this leads to Bilbo yoinking the One Ring and Sam and Frodo dragging themselves half-dead up the side of a volcano.

 

Bilbo never wants to see Gandalf again so he invites him to tea because he doesn’t want to be rude. Bilbo Baggins is a character of special interest to me, because he is in effect the naive everyman protagonist that all the story things have to be explained to, but unlike most everyman protagonists of this type, I find him interesting and endearing (and have since I was a little girl and even easier to bore than I am now), so I am keeping a special eye on how Bilbo pulls off being 

R e l a t e a b l e

While still feeling like an interesting and unique character. Bilbo also pulls off a very clean and nifty and classic hero’s journey arc without being boring. I think here the first part of it is that Bilbo is relatable by having little awkward social moments that most people encounter, and he just happened to have one with a wizard. He’s not being made relatable through the narrator’s insistence that he’s not special. Actually, Tolkien kept the ‘telling’ about Bilbo rather brief before cutting to the showing what he does on a normal day and how he interacts with people. Also, Bilbo stress-eats, and so do lots of people.

 

So now Gandalf trolls Bilbo by summoning the dwarves, and Bilbo has just been just barely rude enough to Gandalf that we are not appalled by a flood of dwarves rushing into his home. One of my personal favorite things about Jirt is how he balances characters’ actions and motivations with the ‘deservedness’ of the consequences for those actions. (The most fascinating example of this for me is… mostly in LOTR but he’s here too we’ll get to him. Later. “More important is the matter of Chapter Five”)

 

Dwalin: Blue (!) beard, golden belt, very bright eyes, dark-green hood

No no n o n NO TAKE BACKS IT WILL BE blue

Balin: Very old, scarlet hood

 

Of note: Bilbo is assenting to and inviting in these dwarves as soon as they arrive. He could have said ‘Get out of my house’ quite early on, not let any dwarves in, and headed this off. BUt he didn’t. It kind of looks like we’re setting up a ‘not assertive/too acquiescent’ character flaw. I wonder if this will reach an absurd point later. “More important is the matter of Chapter Five”

 

Bilbo offers tea and Balin goes ‘nah I want beer’. One time my family was living in Ireland and my mother invited over a writer friend and her writing group. She knocked herself out making appetizers and they all happened to have meat in them. The group comes in and this one lady, who had ample opportunity to communicate any dietary restrictions beforehand and didn’t, says ‘I’m a vegetarian’ and looks at us waiting for other food. We bring out some leftover spaghetti. She asks for cheese to put on it.

We fetched the cheese. Bilbo gets the beer. We never saw Irish vegetarian again but Bilbo won’t be so lucky

 

Note: The cover called this book ‘The enchanting prelude to LOTR’. I would in 9 times out of 10 cases take issue with a book calling itself ‘enchanting’ but by gum, I am enchanted. I’ve read this book so many times and I’m still enchanted. A big, big part of it is Tolkien’s friendly prose style (what was that Beagle said about Middle-Earth just existing by itself- what in the world was he talking about)

A lot of people seem to have either tried to imitate this style or just tried to be approachable and not really hit the mark like this. I hear he wanted to rewrite this book to match the style of LOTR. Look, I hate everything I make and want to redo it immediately. I understand. But thank goodness he never got around to doing that. This book is a treasure.

…Then again, he did revise a portion of it and it’s great, so, I don’t know.

 

Fili and Kili: Yellow beards, blue hoods, silver belts, a bag of tools and a spade. They are the same.

 

Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin and Gloin (my edition does not have accents over the o’s in Oin and Gloin) - two purple hoods, a grey hood, a brown hood and a white hood. Gloin is the most important person here (to me) (because of future events that have nothing to do with this book) and he’s not described at all.

 

Bilbo is just watching his house fill up with dwarves. I am now beginning to wonder what I would do if a bunch of dwarves started showing up at my house. (glances up) Let’s see, Dwalin just pushed inside as soon as the door opened. I might call the police. Or I might- let’s think- I might ask why he’s there and why he thinks I am planning to let him inside. Bilbo seems to have had his questioner paralyzed by social convention. 

 

The dwarves just start ordering Bilbo around like a waiter and then Gandalf finally arrives, and he stealth-erases the ‘Dwarves Come Here’ mark he put on the door before Bilbo can see it, the absolute madlad. I do not remember whether Bilbo ever finds out that Gandalf put out a dwarf Bat-signal on his house, and I’m going to pay special attention to that.

 

Now Thorin shows up. As I’m writing these notes I’ve not yet seen the three 2.5 hour long live action film adaptations that were made out of this 300-page* children’s book.

 

* 300 pages??? I always remembered the Hobbit being a light and easy read and I assumed it was more like 150 lmao 

 

I am led to believe that Thorin’s role and his relationship with Bilbo end up more fleshed out and prominent in the movies unless the Internet is just freaking insane, so I’m paying more attention to him in the book out of personal curiosity. I have seen and do remember the Rankin-Bass animated movie, where Thorin was cranky and self-important and not a terribly deep character (and voice-acted with enjoyable flair by Hans Conreid). I remember that being fairly accurate to the book but we’ll see.

 

Jirt introduces Thorin with something like ‘Thorin was really important so he was really mad that a bunch of other dwarves fell on top of him and squashed him flat in Bilbo’s entryway’ and I’m kind of getting the impression that he doesn’t take Thorin entirely seriously. We’ll see. 

 

Bombur: “Immensely fat and heavy”

 

Thorin is almost immediately described as ‘very haughty’. I mean- I don’t know- has Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien ever done a theme in his books about pride being bad

 

The dwarves showed up in their ‘best detachable party hoods’.

 

Gandalf refuses tea, demands wine. Everyone just starts bawling food orders like they’re in a truck stop. Of interest to me is that Bilbo Baggins is cooking and serving everything himself. He’s well to do and lives in a place that seems to be based on English culture in an era when, as far as I know, a well to do person employing a cook would not have been weird, but he’s doing it all himself.

“Confusticate and bebother these dwarves”, he says. I’m going to remember that for the next time I want to swear without actually swearing. 

 

“Thereupon, the dwarves - not Thorin, he was too important […]” begin clearing the dishes. I’m also paying special attention to Thorin because I believe I remember a section from near the end of the book where Tolkien describes Bilbo grieving for Thorin’s death (oh yeah spoilers) as if he’s a little afraid we won’t believe he’s really sad. ‘Bilbo was a kindly soul and actually cried!’ or something like that. So I’m keeping an eye out for why we would be surprised that Bilbo is sad this guy died. I mean I do remember Thorin calling Bilbo a descendant of rats and trying to throw him off a cliff before that.

 

The song about breaking all of Bilbo’s stuff! These dwarves really have a lot of nerve. 

 

Then of course the dwarves all have a jam session in Bilbo’s house. I don’t think I want to discuss fanfiction trends in the review proper, but, I see a whole genre of ‘modern AU where Bilbo joins Thorin’s rock band’ fic, and honestly, it makes sense. 

 

There’s a long stretch where Bilbo has deep feelings struck by the music and then gets really upset because the dwarves call him a conspirator and I don’t have much to say about it. I just like this whole section. I also really liked how the Rankin Bass movie conveyed Bilbo having feelings about the music, I thought that moment came across very well.

 

Jirt continues to constantly throw shade at Thorin. So far a lot of Thorin’s characterization has been through narrative description. It’s pretty funny if you pretend that

1) Bilbo Baggins is actually writing the book, as the meta goes

2) He wrote this after Thorin DIED IN HIS ARMS

 

And here’s the famous bit where a hobbit invents golf by smacking a goblin in the head super duper hard. 

 

We have the first instance where Bilbo’s Took and Baggins sides argue with each other. A lot of the hobbit characters seem to talk to themselves and argue with themselves. I’m curious to see whether the movies ran with this to a weird extent or not. Anyway, when Bilbo does it it’s cute. 

 

Aha, Gandalf did admit to marking the door. He does it in what is the most infuriating way possible to both Bilbo and the dwarves at the same time. I feel like this Gandalf is a little more chaotic neutral than LOTR Gandalf.

 

"There is a dragon marked in red on the Mountain," said Balin, "but it will be easy enough to find him without that, if ever we arrive there."

 

Yeah, he’s probably pretty easy to spot. Also I am going to assume that if not for printing constraints, the adorable little Smaug doodle on that Mirkwood map would have been in red.

 

 

Bilbo’s little characterization detail of liking maps and having a map of his hometown that he only has boring things to write on is a deft touch. 

 

"That would be no good," said the wizard, "not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary)."
 

I read LOTR way after everyone else had already read it and after I’d read a lot of other fantasy. One of the really striking things about it was that it did not feel like a ‘genre seed’ work. Oftentimes, when I read a work that inspired a genre, it feels like a rough and unfinished kernel, something that later people built on and improved. LOTR, oddly enough, felt more like a clever and subtle deconstruction of the fantasy genre in many ways, because, I think, Tolkien thought things through to their logical conclusion in places where many of his imitators did not.

Anyway, this bit here feels almost like a parody of the very genre it’s sort of creating. 

 

Bilbo: Can you tell me a little more what we’re doing and whether it will kill me

Thorin: You want more???? Didn’t you hear the song????????

 

Thorin refers to ‘mortal men’ as separate from Dwarves. I’m pretty sure Tolkien dwarves are mortal.

 

There’s some interesting talk about the Necromancer and hints of things going on elsewhere. I have heard the PJ movies expand on the story quite a bit, and I am not opposed to that on principle- it sounds like there’s a lot you could explore in this story by going off-script- it depends on execution. I suspect some of the additions will be quite good or at least interesting and others will make me want to pull my hair out. 

 

And the chapter ends. Bilbo is well sketched as a likeable person with some frustrating flaws that we are rooting for him to confront. Thorin Oakenshield is hilariously annoying. 

To end on a non sequitor, I just noticed Dreamwidth has a poll-embedding feature and I would like to see how it works.

What's the best LOTR book (I'm only counting the ones in the trilogy) Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers Return of the King I don't know I can have multiple questions on polls. Please rate your mother on a scale from 1 t o10.