2021 read #2: The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.*

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien*

1112 pages

Published 1955

Read from about September 10 to October 6

Rating: 4 out of 5

* Denotes a reread

It's been a long while since I've read for my own entertainment. Like, a long while. I don't think I've gone this long without finishing a book since I began regularly reading in the early 1990s. Thanks, depression!

To ease myself back into reading, I decided to start with an old familiar favorite. I first read The Lord of the Rings after watching The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001. It became a yearly fixture -- I read it at least once a year, usually in September, until 2005 or so. And then I just stopped, and didn't pick it up again.

I'm not sure how to review a book like this. (I'm no longer sure how to review books, period, so please bear with me.) There were fantasy novels before this, and Tolkien himself was influenced by many of them. LotR's enduring popularity and its central role in the development of later 20th century fantasy is a complicated business. It figured in the counterculture and folk revival of the ensuring decades, but also formalized an array of epic fantasy tropes that would be recycled well into the 21st century, when finally an influx of writers with different perspectives would breathe fresh life into the genre. There's also an astounding amount of casual racism in the text, thanks to the bizarre British taste for treating human beings like breeds of livestock. There's a lot to unpack, and I'm not sure where to start, so maybe I'll just skip that part.

Tolkien as a storyteller excels in two situations: when he narrates daily life from a hobbit perspective, and when he incorporates the magic and mystery of the natural world into his narrative. Contrary to its reputation, and sadly for the book itself, LotR is a lot more than halflings singing about trees. Tolkien struggles when attempting to tell his tale from a "courtly" vantage, losing the poetry of his own style in a creaky pastiche of the heroic mode. The first third of the book, Fellowship, fares best in this regard, but suffers a bit in modern eyes from pacing issues. When Aragorn becomes a central viewpoint protagonist, the narration becomes a disembodied mess of omniscient perspective, and gets weighed down with disgusting Numenorean master-race bullshit along the way.

Lord of the Rings endures, nevertheless, as a stirring and beautiful paean to cottagecore aesthetics rooted in worldbuilding of astounding depth. It was a nice reintroduction to the pleasures of reading for fun, which is exactly what I wanted it to be.