A long-expected journey.

My introduction to the Hobbit was not that auspicious. When I was 3, I came into possession of a Fisher Price Record Player and a few records to go with it, including this one::

"Hobbit Book & Record: Rankin/Bass (1977)"

I set up the record player in my multicolored, foldable indoor playhouse (if I recall correctly, it came from Little Golden Books or Random House - something like that) and spent days listening to records. Mostly, to be honest, I was listening to other records: I forget which they were, but I had two that were identical with different B sides, and at first I thought the song changed by magic.  I solved this great mystery by teaching myself to read, which led to my real introduction to Tolkien four years later. As for the Rankin Bass record, the only impression it really made on me was "Goblins are scary and will eat your head!"

Yesterday I reread the Hobbit (for maybe the 7th time). Even after this many readings, I noticed new things, for instance this parallel between the Hobbit and LoTR, which made me smile:

"You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition, and I chose Mr. Baggins. Just let any one say I chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck you like, or go back to digging coal."

"Together we score one hundred and forty-four. Your numbers were chosen to fit this remarkable total: One Gross, if I may use the expression. No cheers. This was ridiculous. Many of his guests, and especially the Sackville-Bagginses, were insulted, feeling sure they had only been asked to fill up the required number, like goods in a package. ‘One Gross, indeed! Vulgar expression."

It seems being asked to fill up a required number is not such an insult!

I read it this time because I wanted to reinforce my own original impressions before seeing Peter Jackson's interpretation later this week. Though I think I read LoTR a total of nine times, I didn't reread it before seeing the movie, and this is something I regret. My Frodo and my Aragorn (among others), ones I liked far better than the movie versions, are now difficult to recall. Reading the books first meant my Middle-Earth was really my own, and though the longing to see those images realized is what brought me to the movie, what made them powerful was the degree to which they "matched" a world that had already existed for years in my mind's eye. The Shire, Gandalf, Gollum were much as I pictured them and this delighted me; hearing the songs set to music thrilled me, but it occurred to me just yesterday that if I hadn't read the book before seeing the movie I might not have read it it all..

The richness that sets Tolkien apart from the genre largely inspired by him, something I've spent a lifetime trying to put my finger on, does not really make it to the screen. The movie was mostly enjoyable because I had read the books. The world called to me, in part, because I'd found it the way Tolkien himself found it, starting with that intriguing sentence "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit". It began as a world where the narrator joked with me and an ordinary person (who seemed, in size and experience, more like my 7-year-old self than like a middle-aged man) revealed himself to be a fellow "fan" of stories of dragons and elves, and this world evolved into a gradually darker, more epic, seemingly older one; a path taken in both the Hobbit and LoTR, but also spanning both. For me, Tolkien's anachronisms and changes in style are not a blemish (as some seem to think) but a key to what sets him apart. Most writers of fantasy take an ordinary character and thrust him or her over some threshold into another world - a classic part of the hero's journey - but Tolkien handled this in a more artful way, starting from an "ordinary" world that is itself fanciful and symbolic, a dream version of reality, and progressing from there into a deeper dream. I wouldn't call it escapist any more than I would say that of the dreams that keep us sane.

The movie on the other hand, taken by itself, is barely distinguishable from ordinary escapist mental junk-food; it would have entertained me but had no lasting impact. I would probably have scoffed and said something clever about male power fantasies, then promptly forget the whole thing. The striking contrast between the various parts of Middle-Earth, which even creeps into the voice of the narrator, would be gone. Tom Bombadil, who breaks the rules of the story (and the rules of storytelling!) so near the beginning would be gone, along with the philosophical weight he brings. The Scouring of the Shire, also "breaking the rules", would be gone, breaking the relationship between the Shire and the heroic world, and thus the implied relationship between reader and book. The movies followed the "rules", and in doing so take life out of the story. I still enjoyed them because I watched them with an overlay of meaning remembered from the books. 

I don't doubt the Hobbit movie will similarly smooth over the quirks and bumps, though in this case the story will be padded rather than condensed. Minimizing the differences in style between the Hobbit and LoTR (an understandable attempt to repeat a successful formula) will certainly have this effect. Following Gandalf might be interesting, but it violates the veil that is drawn around the story in the Hobbit and thus flattens the world, bringing the background into the foreground. I sometimes enjoy fanfiction, and I suppose that's what this amounts to, but fanfiction is not the best introduction to a work! I'll certainly enjoy seeing the characters, places and music "brought to life", but this phrase is misleading: they are already very much alive for me, which is why I want to see them.