Eric issued a rebuttal (a 'rant', in his words) to some of my comments about Tolkien, and in these matters I defer to him. Clearly, one should be sure one knows what one is talking about if one is going to accuse Tolkien of not thinking about his choice of words. Clearly, Tolkien knew more about the English language and its origins than I could hope to learn in three lifetimes. So yes, every line spoken in the book says something about the character's race, culture, age, upbringing, and attitudes.

And yet, there was something in the book that caused me to feel the way I did. So let me offer some possible reasons why the movie characters might have seemed to leap off the screen more than their literary counterparts leapt off the page. Eric, your opinion is most welcome.

• Tolkien intended the story to be an epic tale, full of mythical archetypes. In that case, it's appropriate for all the action and dialogue to feel a little remote, to be a portal to an inaccessible earlier age.
• If we enter Tolkien's world and adopt the stance that the books were translated from Westron, then we could expect a certain 'compression' in language as words are forced to fit the constraints of English and the translator's ability (I mean a hypothetical translator, not Tolkien himself -- surely he would be skilled enough to take this into account too).
• Even if the dialogue was carefully crafted and varies broadly in style, the books were written fifty years ago and the English will have uniformly aged somewhat since then.
• The linguistic styles in the book tend to be mapped to different classes of British English, to which my inner ear is not as attuned as North American English. So it's harder for me to pick up on the variations.
• However proficient his technique, every line of dialogue in Rings was still written by one man. In the movies, those lines were reinterpreted by many actors. Those performances no doubt contribute style and liveliness to the characters.

Those are just some thoughts. In the end, I'm glad I was so coarse in my previous entry. Eric's response contained many specific examples of language in the books that were quite interesting. No less than I would have expected from the master of all things Tolkien.

The other day I finished reading Return of the King, and thereby the entirety of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Actually I'm currently up to Appendix D in the notes, but I'll consider myself to be done.) I heard they were recently made into films, too. Perhaps I shall endeavour to view those films.

No, I've seen them plenty of times (at least the first two). In fact, I sometimes put on Fellowship for background noise while I'm working, so you could say I've seen it many times over (though I wasn't always paying close attention). I'm sure I'll pick up the super-extendo-mix of Return of the King and watch that over and over again too.

My reading the books comes as a relief, because I think I was in danger of losing my nerd credentials. To have grown to adulthood without having read Tolkien marks me as somewhat diminished in nerdhood. Anyway, I can add another notch to my Big SF/Fantasy Series belt, where it joins N-space, Foundation, and Hyperion. The latter doesn't have quite the same stature as the others, but I can't resist including it because I'm a big fan.

As for Rings, well, I liked it! It was great, sweeping, well-planned epic storytelling. And I thought that the movies, while deviating here and there from the original story, stayed fairly true to Tolkien's vision. It's clear that they made some changes for the sake of dramatic arc in each of the three movies. For example, it was amusing after seeing Two Towers to find the battle for Helm's Deep shoot by quickly in the book, and early too. On the other hand, it wouldn't make sense to structure Two Towers directly after the book, where the two main plot lines are given sequentially rather than interleaved.

What really impressed me is the amount of personality the actors brought to their characters. Reading the books, I found a very limited stylistic range in dialog; it was almost as if I was watching Tolkien put on a puppet show where he spoke everyone's lines. By sticking real actors in each of those roles, you suddenly get an explosion of individuals rather than mouthpieces for mythical archetypes.

Perhaps I'll read some more Tolkien after a break. Ah, if only I knew someone who was knowledgeable in Tolkien-related matters and who could provide some suggestions.... alas. What do you think, Eric -- Hobbit next?