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camwynAs I mentioned a day or two ago, I started rereading the Silmarillion recently. I'd forgotten how much of a sucker I am for grand old mythological epicfoo. Even when it gets horrendously overblown or repetitive, I'll keep ploughing right on through it and enjoy it. I assume I developed this fondness somewhere around third or fourth grade, when the Gifted & Talented kids (there were about twelve of us in the class, if I remember right) got into a Who Can Read The Biggest Book? contest. My major accomplishments were Clan of the Cave Bear and The Once and Future King. Once you've read that kind of stuff as a nine-year-old, the idea of diving headfirst into The Odyssey when you reach high school is nothin', man. Add to that the fact that after I watched The Hobbit (the cartoon is really a nice little piece of work, even if it did leave out large chunks of the book) and read the novel, my dad put me straight onto reading The Lord of the Rings, and... well. Big books good. Big mythic books better.
Anyway, after the realization that there were Buddhist themes crawling out of every available joint in the woodwork of the Silmarillion (well, with the possible exception of the Ainulindale part at the beginning), I found myself fondly remembering the Tolkien background material I'd read in high school. I was pacing up and down in front of the SF/F shelves at Borders last night, trying to remember which of the series had been my last and trying to decide which picture-book related to the Lord of the Rings would make a nice gift for my HK penpal, when it hit me:
The last time I got this obsessed with Tolkien, I was in high school I read everything available at the time. Book of Lost Tales I and II, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Lays of Beleriand, The Shaping of Middle-Earth, Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth, two more that I think were in the history of Middle-Earth series, the Silmarillion itself, you name it. My entrance application to Harvard included the option of simply listing every book I'd read in the past twelve months instead of doing one of the three essays, and I still wonder what they thought when they hit the Tolkien stretch. I applied to Harvard in the autumn of my senior year, 1991. I'd read the Tolkien books mostly in the late part of junior year, early 1991. And all of a sudden they were calling me back again, sucking me in like a bug in the path of a Shop-Vac. I hadn't seen either of the movies in months (although I did have a copy of Fellowship of the Ring downstairs, I just hadn't watched it lately), so what was provoking it?
As nearly as I can tell, I'm diving into Tolkien headfirst now for the same reasons as I did back then, although it's not as if I realized it back then. It's lovely, mind-occupying stuff that's just about as far as it's possible to get from the Gulf War. It gave me an outlet then, something else to think about, something more morally bearable and understandable than invasions and bombings and leaders of highly debatable motives - and it promised punishment for the wicked, without possibility of their being left any shred of reward.
I know it can't be that way in the real world, and I know escapism on a constant basis is as unhealthy as 16-hour-a-day exposure to the news, but if I have to pull myself out of the emotional morass that this war's managed to create, at least I'm doing it with something literary. And at least it leaves me with enough resolve to go on and face reality, and at least try to morally understand the world around me.
Now if I could just control the demon that seems to have moved into my right hand. It keeps trying to seize control of the mouse and go add more Tolkienana (sp.?) to the Amazon Wish List I have.
Anyway, after the realization that there were Buddhist themes crawling out of every available joint in the woodwork of the Silmarillion (well, with the possible exception of the Ainulindale part at the beginning), I found myself fondly remembering the Tolkien background material I'd read in high school. I was pacing up and down in front of the SF/F shelves at Borders last night, trying to remember which of the series had been my last and trying to decide which picture-book related to the Lord of the Rings would make a nice gift for my HK penpal, when it hit me:
The last time I got this obsessed with Tolkien, I was in high school I read everything available at the time. Book of Lost Tales I and II, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Lays of Beleriand, The Shaping of Middle-Earth, Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth, two more that I think were in the history of Middle-Earth series, the Silmarillion itself, you name it. My entrance application to Harvard included the option of simply listing every book I'd read in the past twelve months instead of doing one of the three essays, and I still wonder what they thought when they hit the Tolkien stretch. I applied to Harvard in the autumn of my senior year, 1991. I'd read the Tolkien books mostly in the late part of junior year, early 1991. And all of a sudden they were calling me back again, sucking me in like a bug in the path of a Shop-Vac. I hadn't seen either of the movies in months (although I did have a copy of Fellowship of the Ring downstairs, I just hadn't watched it lately), so what was provoking it?
As nearly as I can tell, I'm diving into Tolkien headfirst now for the same reasons as I did back then, although it's not as if I realized it back then. It's lovely, mind-occupying stuff that's just about as far as it's possible to get from the Gulf War. It gave me an outlet then, something else to think about, something more morally bearable and understandable than invasions and bombings and leaders of highly debatable motives - and it promised punishment for the wicked, without possibility of their being left any shred of reward.
I know it can't be that way in the real world, and I know escapism on a constant basis is as unhealthy as 16-hour-a-day exposure to the news, but if I have to pull myself out of the emotional morass that this war's managed to create, at least I'm doing it with something literary. And at least it leaves me with enough resolve to go on and face reality, and at least try to morally understand the world around me.
Now if I could just control the demon that seems to have moved into my right hand. It keeps trying to seize control of the mouse and go add more Tolkienana (sp.?) to the Amazon Wish List I have.
