The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Not every book has to be a great sprawling thousand-page lump of printed paper – on the contrary, many of the best works of writing are short things that can easily be read in a couple of days. The Great Gatsby is one of them, and I’m going to have to say that I come out fully in favour of this thin slip of a novel, not least because I could easily send it somewhere in the post. This classic tale of romance, scheming and decadence amongst the 1920s New York aristocracy, contained in something that is only barely long enough to be considered a proper novel. What’s not to love?

The book itself is just under a century old, and from what I understand it’s a compulsory part of most English Literature reading-lists; I on the other hand never did any of that, and so have arrived at the thing relatively fresh. I won’t be doing any literary discussion stuff, as I think reading too much into any piece of art tends to overcomplicate and completely spoil it. No, I’ll just be sticking to the question of whether it’s actually any good to read.

The answer is ‘yes’, by the way, just so you know.

Like I said before, it’s really short – something you can get through in a weekend or less, but certainly feels substantial enough to provoke thought and feeling. The story is told by some narrator whose name I can barely remember, as he tells of his experiences when he moved next door to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, an aloof figure who is legendary for holding grand, drunken parties every week. As the narrator becomes friends with Gatsby, we discover the plot to essentially be a classic love-triangle: Gatsby’s in love with the narrator’s distant cousin Daisy, an old flame of his who has since married a total dick-head called Tom Buchanan. There are a few other plot points at play, and alongside Gatsby’s single-minded obsession with regaining the affections of Daisy are things such as: Tom’s affair with a mistress, the narrator’s half-hearted quest to uncovering the truth about Gatsby’s past, and the narrator’s budding romance with a friend of Daisy’s, called Jordan Baker. 

There’s a fair bit going on, but at no point was I left confused about what was going on. The reason this book is worth reading is because F. Scott Fitzgerald is really a very good writer. There’s no unnecessary frippery to get in the way of the pacing of the story, yet at no point does it feel too short, or underwritten. Each of the characters are complex and well developed, making remembering them and their part in the story no real obstacle. We’re never left in any doubt whether it’s Gatsby talking, or Tom, or Daisy, or even Jordan Baker; each has their own character and role within the story. The narrator himself (whom I cannot call the protagonist, because clearly Gatsby is the protagonist; the other guy just tells the story whilst playing a passive side-role in the narrative) is a good, well fleshed out character with a personality distinct from any of the other people in the book. Even the minor unnamed person referred to as ‘the owl-eyed man’, a drunken patron of Gatsby parties who makes a small appearance towards the end of the book, is also a brilliant and memorable feature of The Great Gatsby, worthy of praise for his contributions to the overall plot, pacing and feel of the story. He's definately one of my absolute favourite characters of all time, is 'the owl-eyed man'.

The locations and situations in the book are equally worthy of praise. Despite the low word-count, this novel never fails to build a picture in the reader’s head of the places we visit or whatever is going on. The parties at Gatsby’s mansion show us the lows to which the disgustingly wealthy end up, enacting one of the most truly deplorable drink-driving incidents ever written about, but nevertheless there does seem to be something appealing about the whole thing. It’s small wonder that so many people turn up at the place; after all, most people love a good, drunken rave. Also, while the hob-nobbing of the interwar New York aristocracy might not seem like the most thrilling setting or subject for a novel, let’s not forget that this was kind of Fitzgerald’s speciality, and his writing makes even this seem alive and interesting to us readers a century later. The characters of Gatsby and ‘the owl-eyed man’ are leagues better than anyone found in a Dan Brown or James Herbert novel, and I was more interested to found out about Gatsby’s past and whether his attempts to reconnect with Daisy worked out than I was to finally find out whatever the hell was going on in any Alistair Maclean action-thriller.

In conclusion The Great Gatsby is perfect, and there’s no excuse for you not to have read it. If you read it at school and hated it (as English Literature classes tended to affect my own feelings towards books, in case I haven’t been clear), then give it another chance and read it afresh, as you might be surprised. And if you haven’t read it yet, then this is an oversight that can easily be corrected.  After all, as I’ve said throughout this little review, it’s short enough and easy enough to read very quickly – for it ain’t no Heart of Darkness, which was about the same length but nowhere near as accessible to the reader. No, this one is actually designed to be read by actual people.

One last point to mention; I have not watched any film adaptation of this book, and certainly not the recent one with Leonardo DiCaprio. The mark of a perfect book is that it is genuinely impossible to make a better film adaptation, and I do not believe that anyone could make a film that better captures the story or the themes than Fitzgerald has done with this own book. It just can’t be done. So what’s the point in wasting money and time on an inferior adaptation, when the book is so good, and so near-effortless to read and appreciate? Go on, read the book. And if you’ve read it, then there’s no actual point in watching any movies about it.

Bibliography – ‘cause, I remembered to do one this time

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Penguin Group: St. Ives. (1994 this version, though it was first published in 1926, as it happens)

'In defence of the 1990s....'

‘AND NOW.... AN OPINION!’

I dislike it when people mock and ridicule the 1990s, and claim it to be a sad, terrible decade devoid of culture or identity. They always contrast it alongside the ‘60s, ‘70s, and most often the ‘80s, using the supposedly vibrant feel of these decades as proof that the ‘90s was a dark and meaningless time.

          This is a classic case of bovine excrement.

          The ‘90s had the poor luck to come directly after the wild and bombastic ‘80s, a decade famed for its originality, its good music, its ludicrous yet somehow universally accepted fashion, and its chunky technological revolutions. Compared to all that, it is no wonder that the ‘90s is seen as flat and grey, little more than a stepping-stone to the bright new world of the 21^st Century.

          Popular music of the ‘90s was I admit, more or less, utter crap. Dominated by boy-bands, hip-hop and, worst of all, the outright pestilence that was the Spice Girls, when looked at through the eyes of ‘Top of the Pops’ it’s easy to see how the ‘90s was a terrible decade for everybody involved, and its legacy is still sorely felt right up to the present day. Compared to the general music of the ‘80s and the preceding decades, culture took a nose-dive. Also movies seemed to go downhill, with the only vaguely memorable films being things like Jurassic Park and Titanic, which in themselves were hardly revolutionary except for the amount they cost to make, while everything else in the cinema was either a terrible sequel or an inferior remake. Nowhere is this more evident than the close of these years with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. And fashion! Gods, wasn’t that a nightmare? Either schizophrenic, short-lived and eye-stingingly awful, shell-suits, or else bland business-wear.

          If any of these heavy-handed generalisations has made your blood-boil, then good; that was the effect I was hoping for. If you agreed with it all, then I’m hoping to point out where you’re wrong. You see, there was a lot of really good stuff in the ‘90s, but it has all been overshadowed by the hideous popular culture that one sees if merely looking at an overview. These worse aspects have also, I reckon, been conflated by the dirty hand of the Internet, controlled as it is by the memes of cynical ‘80s kids who are for some reason convinced that their own decade was the peak of culture and vibrancy, and was squashed suddenly when the year 1990 came around. Worse still, the ‘90s generation has been quickly suckered in by this myth, and have become all too eager to denounce the decade of their childhood, the decade that had neither the all-powerful Internet nor the flashy ‘80s culture that their elders idolize. With one hand these ‘80s kids point to the films, music and television of their salad-days, while with the other they contrast it with the more sober and undecided feeling of the ‘90s. The ‘80s knew what it was about, while the ‘90s existed apparently just for the sake of it. Now here’s where we put those misconceptions right.

           

              The music of the ‘90s was never terrible to the exclusion of all good music – sure there was the appalling shit that clogged up the radio-waves and perpetuated a desire for national suicide, just like there is today, but you just have to look past all that to see that good music was far from dead. Things like REM and Tori Amos were very popular, and captured a spirit in their music which beforehand had not been heard, a spirit unique to the ‘90s, while below the surface could be found groups and musicians whose artistic output equalled and exceeded the quality of most things found in days gone by, without having to be tied down to a specific decade, and which had the advantage of being influenced by all the music that had gone before and thus allow them to push the boat out yet further. Heavy Metal, Rock music, Punk Rock, Jazz and even Classical could all be found in this decade, some of it better than ever, and you just had to resist the crap that the record companies tried to shove down your throat. The death of Freddie Mercury, meanwhile, did little to actually silence the all-powerful rock-band Queen, and the frequent resurfacing of their old hits gave a small island of respite for a music-starved world. People who actually liked music, as opposed to the people who were content to put up with the wank-stained likes of Boyzone they were subjected to on the radio day-in and day-out, were never lacking for decent listening, but more often than not they probably just mourned the loss of ‘80s music - music which wasn’t all great, I might add. After all, we only have to recall Adam Ant to see what happened when the ‘80s went too far.

          In terms of style and fashion, I think that perhaps the worst offences of the decade were only ever committed in urban America. I spent my childhood on the other side of the Atlantic, but I never remember southern England being overrun with stupid hairstyles or mish-mashed pastel-coloured odd-cut gymwear. People generally dressed normally, t-shirts, jeans, or grey suits if they needed to go formal. Okay, we were overrun by sweatshirts and jogging-bottoms (or sweat-pants I believe they’re called in the U.S, possibly the most horrible yet suitable name for an article of clothing yet devised), and it is an eyesore that has refused to leave. But compared to the ‘80s, I would say fashion was generally much better – especially the hair, after we had eradicated the Mohican and the Mullet, and when permed hair had once again been consigned to oblivion (okay I’m overstepping myself with the hair perms – they weren’t too bad, but did they have to be everywhere, like they appeared in the movies? Why was that style so popular?) Denim shirts, leg-warmers, padded shoulders and aviator jackets may have been more widely accepted back in their day, but they still looked awful. Thank God for the days of the 1990s when people started to dress normally again, with proper trousers and decently combed/gelled hair; and even the ‘grunge’ look doesn’t look so bad, when you look at what the ‘New Romantics’ were subjecting their fan-base to.

There are a few other things worthy of note about this great decade. The Movies may have gone downhill and unadventurous in the ‘90s,  but there are a few worthy mentions: the work of Quentin Tarantino for one, and odd spasms of greatness such as The Sixth Sense and Forrest Gump, films which were unencumbered by the pervasive culture of the previous decade and so therefore could focus on just being films – no need for a montage or synth-driven music-scores, which not even James Bond could escape. Independence Day could have appeared at any time, but we know it’s not from the ‘80s due to the lack of those cultural touchstones that almost became a staple of ‘80s cinema. And also let’s not forget that Toy Story was ‘90s film, as was the whole Pixar thing that spawned from it. And just because I couldn’t attach this little side note anywhere else, we also saw the rise of two great series’ of novels: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Both are brilliant, surviving into the next century and providing excellent reading material for huge numbers of people.

Finally the crux of the matter, the thing which I reckon puts the ‘90s on the map as a genuine cultural hot-spot, making it just as worthy to be remembered and praised as ever the ‘80s, ‘70s or ‘60s for its unique contributions to civilisation – television! More specifically, well-observed and intelligent science fiction series’ which have left a noticeable impact on the world of today. Of course we had sci-fi all through the preceding decades, one or two of which were actually quite good, but the ‘90s witnessed an explosion of good TV series’ that were noticeably lacking up to that point, and have since fallen out of favour. Star Trek the Next Generation, its spin offs Voyager and Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, and to cast the net slightly wider we can include Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While less good than all these mentioned, the no-less fondly remembered Sam Raimi’s Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess were nevertheless great fun to watch. All of them were great shows, whose success continued right on through into the next decade, spawning a cultural triumph at the start of the 2000s with The Lord of the Rings films and the apex of the space opera, the new Battlestar Galactica. Meanwhile in terms of comedy we ended up with The Simpsons, and Fraiser, the second of which had a popularity that came to eclipse even that of its venerable ‘80s forbear Cheers. I suppose I might also begrudgingly include Friends on that list considering that it was an important part of ‘90s culture, but I never liked that show, so I won’t. All in all the 1990s was a good time to be watching television, just based on the small selection here that I’ve cobbled together off the top of my head. Unfortunately at some point mid-way through the ‘00s (the decade of the 2000s, in case that’s confusing, pronounced not ‘naughties, as Channel 4 would have you believe, but hundreds, as in nineteen-hundreds [1900s] and eighteen-hundreds [1800s]), the sci-fi’s that had been such a feature of the previous decade began to be seen less and less – although that’s not to say the decade was devoid of good television. After all, the work of Joss Whedon continued to excel itself despite repeated strangulations from the higher powers, and the first series of Heroes was genuinely amazing – but on this subject it must be stressed that Heroes was a one-shot wonder, the style and structure that had made it so thoroughly watchable at first only ever carried the seeds of its own destruction, and the subsequent seasons were a long and depressing codicil to something that had started off so well only to die, miserable and forgotten in a pool of its own blood and vomit still miles away from the finishing line. What was more depressing was to see the whole thing happen again in rapid-motion with the spin-off of Battlestar, called Caprica, which tried to pull the same tricks only to die just as pathetic a death after only one season. 'Crapica' was essentially the same quality as Heroes was after its first season; i.e. schizophrenic storylines, plot-holes like a sieve, and story-threads that trail off after a single episode. Also it had this really annoying quality that I like to call “profound statement of the week”, where one character gives another a short lecture about some vaguely spiritual random subject for no reason other than to try and make the show seem more meaningful than it actually is. It's about as far away from the quality of BSG as you can get. There were a dozen similar tales to Heroes and ‘Crapica’, but it was clear that most of them were just trying to recreate the success of their predecessors, to recapture the glory of the late ‘90s (and yes, I use that phrase without a even a hint of irony, because this is the heart of what this whole essay has been about), but they lacked the drive and knowledge and ardour that had made those things what they were. There was Star Trek: Enterprize, which completely failed to make an impression. Let’s face it; the ‘90s had something the late ‘00s didn’t.

Because the ‘90s did actually know what it was about; it was about looking forward to something, not just enjoying the here and now. It wasn’t just the last decade of the 20^th century, but the last few years of the ‘Second’ Millennium; one cannot help but see the year 1996 onwards as a hurry towards the finishing line. With the end of the Cold War and the promise of the Internet, our culture in the ‘90s was about the anticipation of the wonders of the future, whether for good or for ill, and the changing of that one number at the start of the year was a monumental occasion. I remember there were some retarded discussions around that time about whether the new Millennium began in the year 2000 or in the next year, 2001, because there was no year zero; it was never about precisely how many years there were, but about changing every single number in that four-digit date, most of all the one right at the front which during much of western civilisation had remained unalterably the number ‘1’, and will for the next 987 years be a number ‘2’. Those of us who lived through the ‘90s got to see that number change, and unless you don’t use the ‘Anno Domini/Common Era’ system that’s been a hallmark of western history for some considerable time, then that must surely be a fairly special moment. I know it was for me. I remember the last few years of the ‘90s quite well, how there was a general anticipation in the air for this new future, in which humanity had been released from its shackles by art and science, and that the threat of nuclear annihilation might actually go away. That’s why I think that sci-fi series’ suddenly gained this immense popularity during this decade – they had already been building firm foundations for themselves, and with a new era just round the corner the time was right to indulge our fantasies.

And now after all this, if you still think that the ‘90s was a cultural dead-zone filled with Neapolitan ice cream and ‘Play-by-Mail’ board-games, fit only for forgetting and for ridicule, then I pity you. I really do. There were things that happened that weren’t so good, such as the Spice Girls and sweat-pants, but then every decade had equivalents, including the glitter-spangled ‘80s. And in terms of culture, I wouldn’t trade He-Man and Transformers, cheesy hallmarks of the ‘80s, for Stargate and Babylon 5, pieces of ‘90s culture that were actually good, actually worth remembering for more than misguided nostalgia. This is not to say that I’m condemning the ‘80s, after all there is much that happened there that I love - the best example here is song ‘Flashdance’, which is a three minute encapsulation of everything brilliant about the ‘80s: bombastic, synthetic, but glorious beyond my ability to describe with mere words; I almost want to laugh at it, but it’s just too amazing to do so. The following decade seems to lack anything that so solidly places it in a good light, but all in all it was a good time to have lived though, and for all its faults, it has left the world a much better place for its happening. I’m glad to have lived through them.

[Disclaimer: These are always fun to do, so I’ll do one here. All this is my personal opinion, and as such you may have cause to dispute some or all of what I say. If you do, then well done! That probably means you’ve read the essay. If not, then finish reading it before you get down here. You might dispute my opinion that the Spice Girls were a terrible blight on the history of civilisation, even though this would in fact prove that you were insane, but we’re all entitled to our opinions. Whatever your thoughts on the matter, I’m merely trying to point out the ‘90s were in fact a good time to be alive, contrary to what a large proportion of Internet memes suggest by their barefaced condemnation of the ‘90s. If you have any alternative ideas, then you're welcome to let me know].

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein

Back in 2003 The Lord of the Rings was voted as Britain’s favourite novel on a live television series called ‘The Big Read’. 21 books had a chance of winning, including several that I’ve already reviewed in this blog, and each one had a short video presented by some celebrity who championed their chosen book and gave reasons as to why it should win. Ray Mears did a piece on The Lord of the Rings, and obviously made a suitably compelling argument considering that that was the book which ended up winning first place; however, as I witnessed its inevitable success, my thirteen year old self could not help but think that the vote may have been skewed, just a little bit, by the recent Peter Jackson film adaptations. Was this book really as popular ‘The Big Read’ evidenced it to be, and was it even that good a book if so? These past couple of months I’ve been investigating these very claims, spurred on by my memories of 2003 and by my general slight disappointment with all things related to The Hobbit.

          The first thing to note about Tolkein’s masterpiece is its sheer size. The whole story is estimated to be around 500,000 words long, and it is easy to see why it had to be split into a trilogy. I fortunately possess the whole story in one complete volume, the 1991 edition illustrated by Alan Lee, and it certainly deserves the description ‘a mighty tome of a book’. It runs to over a thousand pages, complete with the various appendices, maps and illustrations that flesh out the fantasy world of Middle-Earth, as well as a long red silk ribbon that serves as a bookmark. When the dust-cover is removed I am presented with what looks like a normal brown-coloured hardback book, albeit one that’s several sizes larger than the average novel, with gold-leaf lettering on its great thick spine declaring, simple yet elegantly, that this is JRR Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings,  Illustrated by Alan Lee, and published by Harper Collins, whilst the only thing on the front cover is an neat rune-like symbol made obviously from the combination of the letters J, R, R, and T, a logo for Tolkein.

          This book is quite probably one of the most beautiful things in my possession.

          

          As we know though it’s not the presentation of a novel that wins it the marks, no matter how good the Alan Lee illustrations may be (and believe me, they’re good! You might be interested to know that the artist Alan Lee was one of the chief people working on Peter Jackson’s film adaptations – one of the many excellent decisions he made), it’s all about whether the writing inside is any good. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? The Lord of the Rings is a novel, not a picture book. It comes as no surprise then that this is a particularly long book; Tolkein is able to dispense with the forced-childish tone he adopted in his earlier fantasy book and could devote himself to the great long wordy rambling narrative style that beefs his masterpiece up to its current immense word-count. He skimps on nothing; description, dialogue, action, side-points, segue-ways, all have the very best the English language has to offer piled into them, each paragraph a story all in itself. This is at once its greatest strength, and potentially its greatest weakness where the reader is concerned. Modern novels always opt for a broadly minimal approach and fast-paced plots, and because Tolkein seems to openly scoff in the face of this approach it is little wonder that many people would be put off this immense, wordy thing which takes a lot of time to develop as a story. Yet it was still voted the favourite book of 2003, and I still enjoyed reading it, despite my self-confessed hatred of long, over-worded archaic literature from Victorians and Victorian wannabes. Tolkein is not one of them. Tolkein is something else entirely.

          The key to enjoying The Lord of the Rings comes in its pacing; namely that it has a certain pace, and once you adjust to it, then it becomes a deeply, richly rewarding book to read. To use a cliché, ‘It’s a walk, not a run,’ and when you work out that each paragraph, each sentence even, is something to be enjoyed in itself and not hurried over just for the sake of finding out what happens next in the plot, then you realise just how remarkable a story it really is. Most of the 500,000+ words of this book are devoted to the simple sights and sounds of characters who are journeying across a largely uninhabited, unspoilt fantasy landscape. Casual readers may dislike this, as it seems needless to hold up the story for long sections in which quite literally nothing happens, but if this is the case then they’re missing the whole point. This is a complete world that Tolkein is presenting, one with more history and land than any other fantasy author has come close to equalling; and he does not shy away from showing it to us in the most gorgeous detail during his journey; because it’s the journey that matters, not just the ending or the events that take place during. Someone once said that you should be careful when writing about a journey, because it could quite quickly just devolve into a story about the stops and breaks along the way; well I’m pleased to say that Tolkein is the one writer I’ve read who has not let this happen at any point in his work. Frodo and Sam walk from the Shire to Mordor, and by God we follow them every step of the way. At no point is the journey neglected over the action, we see every sight the world has to offer on the way, and the battles that take place are all the more poignant because of the distance we’ve travelled to get there. When one adjusts to this slow but careful pace, the book really opens up; and when you try the same approach on other, lesser books, you begin to realise just how hollow they really are. Maybe I should try this on one of those ghastly pieces of Victorian misery I deplore so much, and see if that makes them less mind-numbingly boring – although I tried it on Dracula, and that still didn’t help.

          Now then for some criticism – while The Lord of the Rings can be forgiven for taking a while to get going, it cannot be forgiven for making some narrative hiccups in its first section, the Fellowship of the Ring. Particularly in chapter 2, and in the ‘Council of Elrond’ segment later on, the reader is swamped with huge, insurmountable chunks of mind-numbing exposition as characters just ramble on to each other about the future plot of the story and the other divergent plot-threads that Tolkein wishes to bring in. If the joy of this book is in the journey they take, then these are especially tedious because the characters spend their time stock-still, going nowhere, just trying to work out why they’re there and where they need to go and why they need to go there. I can’t tell you what a relief it is when they get moving again; because it’s a long way to Mordor, and the sooner they start, the sooner they can finish. Also the characters themselves aren’t especially interesting; instead of a bunch of non-entity Dwarves as in The Hobbit, are alternatively a couple of indiscernible Men, a handful of Hobbits, a grumpy wizard and a dull Elf and Dwarf. While the taller characters don’t undergo much in the way of noticeable character development for a long time, the book can be forgiven when Frodo and Sam ditch the rest of the Fellowship and team up with Gollum/Sméagol, for these sections show excellent characterisation and vivid interactions between the three of them. I would say that books four and six, the ones starring Frodo and Sam, are the very best of all of them, portraying sympathetic and believable characters undergoing real hardship, especially in the character of Samwise Gamgee, the real working-class hero of the story who turns out to be heaps better than either Frodo or Aragorn. Tolkein’s decision to make the Hobbits the protagonists of his story was a good one, for the cold and under-developed Aragorn and the other characters of the race of ‘Men’ always seem a little wooden and aloof, while the sympathetic and introspective Hobbits, innocent and good-natured, help make the story that bit more authentic.

          Once the rambling exposition disappears the journey can begin, and you can pretty accurately trace the route they take on a map. The journey through the abandoned mines of Moria is a bit of a hard slog, and I couldn’t help but greet Gandalf’s departure from the story with indifference, but it gets a whole lot better the moment that this is over. The three chapters that take place in the forest of Lothlórien are amongst my favourite of the entre novel, as the characters come to terms with Gandalf’s passing amidst the idyllic woodland of the Elves; it’s a welcome respite after Moria, for the reader as well as the characters. The setting of this enchanted Elven forest also helps to tell the story far better than any of the rambling exposition that came before, painting a beautiful though mournful setting of a people whose time in the world is almost over, and no matter the outcome of the quest the Elves will have to leave Middle-Earth, their magic disappearing from the world forever.

          In this way may I just point out that this book is possibly mislabelled when they declare it as a fantasy. Fantasy suggests a flight of fancy, or the work of some kind of feverish imagination, but Tolkein’s world seems to transcend that somewhat contemptuous stereotype; I would say it’s a work of nostalgia more than imagination, as though he’s harking back to every fairy-tale ever written and amassing it in one single prose epic. Think about the plot elements and characters; we’ve got a messiah-like king in exile come to reclaim his rightful throne and thus end all ills in the world, the Dark Lord, knightly figures on horseback, the evil advisor whose name is nothing less than ‘Wormtongue’, a Fairy-Queen, enchanted forests, a wise old wizard, an unhappy princess, a giant spider, a haunted swamp, and a cataclysmic last stand against the Very Forces of Darkness. It’s a story about a world where battles are fought with swords and on horseback, where a fortress is as strong as its walls, where the enemy really are vicious beastly savages, ruled by a villain who is genuinely evil, and where kings really are great divinely-appointed men of nobility – in short, it’s a complete rejection of the modern world. The Hobbits also are a throw-back to some idealised past, of a happy and amiable society unconcerned with the troubles of the outside world, content to live in their comfortable little houses, gardening, slaking their thirst down the local tavern, and smoking pipe-weed, where the only disturbance to the peace is the occasional family-feud. Much of Tolkein’s story is about the threat to these things presented by Mordor and the One Ring, and this is all brought home at the very end during ‘The Scouring of the Shire’, where the Hobbits see the damage that has been caused to their tranquil home by petty-minded revenge and greed. Tolkein isn’t merely presenting the results of a enthusiastically overactive imagination, but instead is recalling an idealised lost past where there really was magic and a force for good. Then again, it’s not just mere nostalgia, for this world is so well developed, so detailed, that it rises above most other literary creations, and has resulted in a lasting legacy.

          And one of the best parts of that legacy is the Peter Jackson films. I know that this is overstepping the whole book-review aspect of what I do, but I have to give praise where praise is due, and the films did a great deal of good in bringing Middle-Earth to life. The characters were brilliantly fleshed-out, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli given actual personalities, and Gollum was presented in a suitable pitiable light. I can’t think of many films in which every decision made by the makers ended up being the right one, and part of the success was due to their faithfulness to the source-material. I am one of those people who adores the Extended Edition more than the original Theatre version, for you end up with, in essence, six films instead of three, and they do a far more adequate job of bringing The Lord of the Rings to the screen – complete with tying up character arcs, as in the case of Faramir and Eowyn, and in revealing some of the weirder aspects to Tolkein’s world, such as the life of the Ents. In many cases a film adaptation of a novel falls well below the mark, while sometimes if a novel isn’t particularly good a film adaptation can be a whole lot better – Peter Jackson’s adaptations have, in my opinion at least, hit the same very-high standard as the book without eclipsing it, a rare and wondrous thing. One or two minor changes that they did make to the overall story I can understand and appreciate, such as the skipping over the Tom Bombadil section entirely (seriously though, that bit was a little too weird, even for the films).

          Wrapping up now, I’m happy to conclude that The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkein is worthy of its apparent popularity. Though I still believe that the results of the 2003 ‘Big Read’ were skewed by the success of the film adaptations, there were no other books I would be happier to see in that pride of place. While I can hardly say that it’s my favourite book of all time, favourites being rather fickle and abstract things and hard for me to choose considering the large amount of choice there is in the world, I will admit that this novel is a monumental thing that is worthy of reverence from all and sundry, and I am happy to have read it. Middle-Earth is one of the most richly-detailed creations in all of literature, putting the stock-creations of its lesser imitators to shame time and again. The reader can’t get away from the notion that the story they are reading takes place in a setting richer and deeper than mere words and paper can convey, and Tolkein’s writing helps to cement this even further – the opening chapters in the Shire refer to towns, villages, people and places that have never purported to exist in the real world, yet never in those opening chapters did I once doubt that any of them real. Particularly the place of Crickhollow, a name which when said out-loud at the right speed sounds infinitely delicious – go ahead, try it. The world itself, though only a fantasy, carries genuine weight, of history and language and culture and geography, and all throughout we have tantalizing glimpses of the places and peoples who don’t play a direct part in the main narrative, but have themselves yet more stories to tell. I hope then that you can find it in your heart to appreciate this fine work of literature, for I certainly did.