Comments on: Thoughts On The Hobbit http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/ Lollards in the high church of low culture Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:28:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: “In a hole in the ground…” « Ned Raggett Ponders It All http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-346212 “In a hole in the ground…” « Ned Raggett Ponders It All Tue, 04 Dec 2007 05:25:23 +0000 http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-346212 [...] 2007 — Ned Raggett Over at Freaky Trigger the ineffable Tom Ewing’s recently put up a really lovely post about J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which along with a typically funny and observant [...] [...] 2007 — Ned Raggett Over at Freaky Trigger the ineffable Tom Ewing’s recently put up a really lovely post about J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which along with a typically funny and observant [...]

]]> By: Ned R. http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-345630 Ned R. Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:40:01 +0000 http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-345630 Grebt piece on a grebt book indeed. And Mark's comments well taken on board -- if (IF) it's ever filmed, I am presuming they're going to dial the tone re: the Elves upwards to the other movies rather than keeping it back down, thought who knows. (I would love to finally see Smaug fully realized.) All that unexplained backstory made me so happy the first time through, kept me wondering what the hell else was going on. The point about its plotting in #3 -- when I first tried out NaNoWriMo in 2001, so unsure was I about how to best tell it that I very intentionally mapped my story onto a deeply buried structure, that of <I>The Hobbit</I>. It's hardly a one to one transfer but it gave me something to work with in telling a day-in-the-life story around Orange County -- which also kinda makes it my version of Joyce, Homer and <I>Ulysses</I>. If you squint. A lot. Grebt piece on a grebt book indeed. And Mark’s comments well taken on board — if (IF) it’s ever filmed, I am presuming they’re going to dial the tone re: the Elves upwards to the other movies rather than keeping it back down, thought who knows. (I would love to finally see Smaug fully realized.) All that unexplained backstory made me so happy the first time through, kept me wondering what the hell else was going on.

The point about its plotting in #3 — when I first tried out NaNoWriMo in 2001, so unsure was I about how to best tell it that I very intentionally mapped my story onto a deeply buried structure, that of The Hobbit. It’s hardly a one to one transfer but it gave me something to work with in telling a day-in-the-life story around Orange County — which also kinda makes it my version of Joyce, Homer and Ulysses. If you squint. A lot.

]]> By: a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-343708 a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:30:39 +0000 http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/thoughts-on-the-hobbit/#comment-343708 re 2: the rivendell elves are TOTALLY GAY in the hobbit: "bilbo baggins on a horse -- isn't it delicious?" oo get her ect ect, and as a result all their songs = camp piffle AT BEST re 3: tolk is UTTER KING of the unexplored backstory -- stuff that he knows but doesn't say much about which has incredible resonant power as a result (most obvious bit is the role of the NECROMANCER, whern gandalf first mentions him and thorin sez YES! let's have a pop at him, or some such -- ie we totally feel they both know lots but are saying little in front of the easily spooked hobbit; there's a sense of a much bigger world than we're let in on, which is incredibly exciting) (this is actually a weakness of eg his dark materials, where the backstories of the various worlds remain a bit sketchy and utilitarian) re 6: the "tolkienian moral" of LotR is something like the HUGE IMPORTANCE OF TINY THINGS (and folk); the only GOOD KING is a king who knows to bend his knee to the halfling; whereas i think the "tolkienian moral" in Hob is a very different one viz: "big people they ain't so big" (gandalf gets a certain amount of minor snark for his vanity, for example) re 2: the rivendell elves are TOTALLY GAY in the hobbit: “bilbo baggins on a horse — isn’t it delicious?” oo get her ect ect, and as a result all their songs = camp piffle AT BEST
re 3: tolk is UTTER KING of the unexplored backstory — stuff that he knows but doesn’t say much about which has incredible resonant power as a result (most obvious bit is the role of the NECROMANCER, whern gandalf first mentions him and thorin sez YES! let’s have a pop at him, or some such — ie we totally feel they both know lots but are saying little in front of the easily spooked hobbit; there’s a sense of a much bigger world than we’re let in on, which is incredibly exciting) (this is actually a weakness of eg his dark materials, where the backstories of the various worlds remain a bit sketchy and utilitarian)
re 6: the “tolkienian moral” of LotR is something like the HUGE IMPORTANCE OF TINY THINGS (and folk); the only GOOD KING is a king who knows to bend his knee to the halfling; whereas i think the “tolkienian moral” in Hob is a very different one viz: “big people they ain’t so big” (gandalf gets a certain amount of minor snark for his vanity, for example)

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