Quick Review: The Fellowship of the Ring

OK, so 25 years after I first read it, I returned to the TLOR.  Why such a long time, when many people I know have read it again and again?  Well two reasons:

1. I tend to remember the details of most good stories I read for a long time.  And as one of the most compelling things about reading for me is not knowing what happens next, I hesitate to re-read a book until a degree of fading has occurred.  This waiting has been complicated by since hearing the BBC Radio version, watching the old British movie of the first half of TLOR, playing War in Middle Earth in the early 90s, and then watching the Peter Jackson trilogy, followed by watching the extended editions.  But although I have waited long, it would appear that the original book made such an impact I still remember most of it.

2. It's this impact that made me pause: TLOR really was one of those pivotal moments, and reading it affected me deeply.  It was and is the best story I ever read, and so I was hesitant to return to it in case it didn't live up to the pedestalled memory; like returning to a childhood place which seemed huge park when we were small, only to discover it was just a normal sized garden.

So?

Well no, it hasn't lived up to the original impact.  But I don't believe this is because the book is not as good as I thought, but is more a statement of my psychology.  By which I mean:
a) I remember too much, so there is little of the suspense, the desperate need to see what happens next because, sadly, I already know.
b) Part of the power of 25 years ago was the change it wrought in me, and that work is done.  So I will not feel the impact of having my imagination stretched this time - because it is still stretched all these years later.  For example, one effect on me (and on many others) was to change the way I viewed landscape: something about Tolkien's dealing with landscape in the book meant that everywhere I went, when I saw a distant view of hills, or Dartmoor, or mountains, it had been affected or infected. But that's happened,  It can't re-happen.  Or, as another example, several scenes in the book in my memory are huge, long, epic.  Moria was like this: I can remember now being spellbound.  Or the adventure with the Barrow-Wight.  It's only a couple of pages!! What?  Surely that's huge?  No - but at the time this was all new, my brain was processing entirely new ideas - and so it seemed many pages long (cf. Andrew Adamson's comments on filming the massive battle at the end of LW&W, which turned out in adulthood to be only 2 pages long!)
c) It has revealed how I have changed.  25 years ago, the first chapters seemed to be holding up the story: "where's the adventure?!  13 years?  O come on.....".  This time my feelings were "No!  Stay in Hobbiton!  Let some other mug do it!".  Something has changed in me...probably I have found out that crisis and pain are not as much fun as one thinks, even if you call them a "quest".

But there are other changes too.  Things which seemed unimportant or irritating then, I find fascinating now.  Chief among these is Tom Bombadil: I was glad to see the back of him 25 years ago, but this time...fascinated!  Who is he?  What is Tolkien saying?  And please can I go stay at his house?  And the relationships between characters are far more significant this time round.  And the way different races interact...

And I ought to say that though I have had little time to read since starting at the beginning of the year, the time spent reading has flown by and suddenly I am at the Falls of Rauros.  It's still a great book.

25 years ago I found The Two Towers the least satisfying of the three...but this time, maybe something unexpected will happen.