All Tolkien Post - quel surprise, no?

[vivien]

I finished the biography. So, so good. Here was one bit that surprised me, but now makes perfect sense:

Garth quotes Tolkien
"As far as any character is 'like me' it is Faramir - except that I lack what all my characters possess let the psychoanalysts take note) - Courage" Garth goes on to write "Faramir is an officer, but also a scholar, with a reverence for the old histories and sacred values that helps him through a bitter war."

I thought this was really interesting, and given that Tolkien fought in the first push of the battle of the Somme, it puts Faramir's actions in trying to retake Osgiliath into perspective (in the book, not the movie ;)

Speaking of the book, I started rereading it and I noticed a really funny thing happen. At first I heard the actor's voices as I started reading, but later the voices fell into the old ones I always heard when I read the character's dialogue. Curiously, Gandalf's does indeed sound pretty darn close to Ian McKellan, but Frodo? Not even close. Sam is pretty similar, but not quite. Merry and Pippin totally different. I found it amusing how the old voices came back so clearly.

Comments

[mcamy.livejournal.com]

The voices come back to me with Harry Potter like that. Doesn't matter how often I see the movies, or how much fanfic I read. It all falls away, and I'm left with the voices I heard when I first read the books. It's nice.

Come to think of it, the voices (and the images) fall away for me with Tolkien, too, though it's been so long since I've read them, I wasn't sure when I first started re-reading.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

The book sounds really interesting. What's the title?

[vivien]

It's called Tolkien and the Great War and it's by John Garth. It is a fabulous book - it even made me cry, which is a rare thing with nonfiction ;)

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

That images thing is why I'm always glad to have read the books first. Works with Harry Potter too--only in some select cases do the film images take over my mental images, usually when the casting is especially right (for example, Robbie Coltrane in the role is so much like my mental Hagrid as to make no difference).

Among the many, many reasons I'm grateful to Peter Jackson is for helping to drive the Rankin-Bass animated images out of my head for good. I can even watch the thing now for giggles and it won't stick (the songs, alas, are another matter).

[vivien]

I can even watch the thing now for giggles and it won't stick (the songs, alas, are another matter).

Snerk! Is that The Hobbit or the all-is-foul Return of the King animated one? I got The Hobbit on DVD for X-mas and kinda enjoyed it, if only for the fact that it made me remember my introduction to Tolkien. And I liked how Bilbo was drawn, for the most part. Very Hobbity.

But "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" could be expunged from my memory with much pain, and I would be thankful ;)