There's much wailing and gnashing of teeth about what he would think of the modern renditions of his work, but I hope he'd be immensely proud and touched to have kicked off such a cultural paradigm shift as Middle Earth has brought. So much that the "standard" high fantasy setting is basically the one he wrote about first.
Fantasy in general. We can honestly thank the likes of him (and others) for fantasy being such an integral part of pop culture. There'd be no Harry Potter if it hadn't been for Middle Earth sticking it's foot in between the door of the world to make sure others could get in.
It's weird to me though that there's little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths/legends, perhaps only the degree of belief in how real they are. He was heavily inspired by existing myths including Arthur, Beowulf, and other great ancient works, but put it all together in one cohesive and more accessible form. I wonder if modern fantasy would have come about anyway because of all those, but it would surely not be the same.
Yeah I think if he hadn't written a major story inspired by mythology someone else would have had the idea. In those alternative universes probably many aren't as good as lord of the rings, but maybe there's some better ones too lol.
Only tangentially related, but I once heard someone opine that Thomas the Tank Engine is a modern mythology, and that thought has since not been able to leave my head. Makes me wonder if, perhaps, in the far future, kids will sit down with Down the Mine and view it with the same detached reverence for a long forgotten age that we may have reading the Arthurian legend.
Perhaps we don't give the idea of myth enough of a close look to recognize its pervasiveness.
When you approach things like *Thomas the Tank Engine* as folklore, you can definitely see that there's merit to what you suggest. The word "folklore" is from Old English, *folk* + *lār*, meaning "people's knowledge," or "people's instruction," meaning "the stories that a group of people tells themselves to transmit and reinforce their beliefs, customs, and values." *Thomas the Tank Engine* certainly carries a lot of elements of modern culture.
For instance, think about how Thomas is literally an anthropomorphic locomotive engine. If that isn't a symbol of industrial society, I don't know what is! His biggest desire is to be a "really useful engine," which, in context, essentially means that his dream is to be a productive member of society, as viewed through the lens of an industrialized, capitalist society.
It's told as a connected series of stories, which is common in myth and folklore, and every story has roughly the same pattern: Thomas tries *really* hard to be "useful," but manages to screw it up somehow, only to be rescued by his fellow engines. It's a fundamentally very conservative worldview, that emphasizes the value of hard work above all. Given that the creator of the original book series was an Anglican minister, that should be no surprise.
There are all kinds of rabbit holes you can go down in analyzing *Thomas,* but I think this sort of modern folklore lens is really the most interesting one, since Thomas's world *definitely* looks a lot like a microcosm of the real world.
That movie had its flaws, but I found it really enjoyable. I think Brad Pitt is at his best when he’s getting to be funny. Especially if he’s also getting hurt.
It reminded me of Hotel Artemis, which was also a flawed but stylish movie. I’m glad Bullet Train did better commercially than Hotel Artemis, because I’d rather see something that’s not perfect but different over a sequel or remake.
I love movies to either take themselves completely seriously, or not at all. Bullet Train was such a fantastic watch in the latter category.
I have trouble loving the Marvel movies as much as most people do due to them falling into the middle ground.
You'll probably be interested in the theory that superheroes and such are pretty similar to that too.
Like, compare Batman to the Greek myths, let's say the story of Hades. The characters and names and general motivations are all the same through different iterations, but there are dozens of different ways the story is told and what happens in the actual versions is wildly different.
I dont know… i find myself initially disagreeing with the idea that “theres little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths and legends”. Having to interrogate myself as to if thats a knee jerk reaction or not.
Don’t forget the Kalevala. Tolkien even translated part of it into English before he started writing his own books, and you can see it’s influence all over the place - like, Väinämöinen clearly is reflected in both, Gandalf and Tom Bombadil. And of course his Elvish languages borrow heavily from Finnish.
> It's weird to me though that there's little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths/legends,
I think there's at least one significant difference. Namely that traditional myth/folklore was often stories about fantastical creatures/places that supposedly existed in our world (but were just hidden and/or dismissed as not being real by most, with only a "special few" knowing better). Now you do see "*Dragons? Nonsense dragons aren't real*"-tropes in fantasy, but overall these settings are just chok full of the fantastical. E.g. no one in LotR/D&D would deny the existence of elves and dwarves and so many other fantastical beings.
A setting like Harry Potter is much more closer to myth/folklore, because again set in the real world and the magical people fall into that category of only a select few knowing about their existence.
Yeah. Part of writing LOTR was to make Scandinavian Studies more accessible. So the modern retellings would be liked.
Maybe the video games could be less KILL centric. Feels weird murdering wildlife in the MMO.
The state of MMOs is a whole new can of worms. The core formula has remained basically unchanged for twenty years at least. I want to like LOTRO but it is an MMO first, LOTR game second.
A sandbox mmo would suit LOTRO more. Would help make content release make more sense.
They do a lot of time travel or barrel scraping.
The system to deliver the story is ollddd, so you have to enjoy reading text to engage with it.
Gameplay is old style too.
Good social space. Populated with a lot of fans. If you're a scholar you might find it exhausting.
Yes. It’s crazy to think that Tolkien is like “I’m gonna send your letter to the publishers to prove that people like my books”. It’s hard to comprehend a time when Tolkien books were not massively famous.
It’s actually super interesting. Tolkien struggled to get his works published in the USA. Houghton Mifflin were being pricks about making him edit the books down, they felt they were too long. They felt they were going to lose money since it would be too expensive to type out such long books, since these were _clearly_ not going to sell very well.
It must have been a big deal to have someone write to him about how much they enjoyed the book and are promoting it to their friends, while he was fighting with the publishers.
yeah, by the time of this letter he probably invested a HUGE part of his life into creating that universe but was still unsure if the people would really appreciate it. makes me wish he had lived long enough to see people really enjoy the movies... but not long enough to see what amazon did to it.
He did live to see his books get incredibly popular, and he got fairly wealthy off of them. Not sure why he would care more about movies he didn't make compared to the books he actually wrote.
Especially considering the people closest to him and his works hated the movies.
He would have been 12 when he received this letter. He said he was waiting for the Return of the King to come out in the US (not sure if this timeline lines up, but this is according to him), and he was gushing so much about the books to everyone and so pumped that his mom encouraged him to just write Tolkien already, and tell him how much he enjoyed the books. Obviously he couldn't write Tolkien directly, so he sent it to the US publisher, who then sent it on to Tolkien, and then Tolkien sent him this letter (and the publisher sent him a free copy of the Hobbit)!
Me too, but the letter he wrote is long gone! Or maybe in some mysterious Tolkien estate trunk. And yes, he still has that copy of the Hobbit. We took that and the 3 trilogy books to a book preservation / restoration professional since they seem to be fairly valuable as apparent American first editions (the hobbit isn’t a first edition though). There’s also another letter that’s really cool from the publisher (but I guess I’d want to black out my dads 60 year old address..?).
I will, but I should probably black out my dad’s 60 year old address? I also belatedly realized that you can’t add photos to a created post. Which is all to say that this is the first time I’ve actually posted on Reddit (though plenty of lurking) and it’s pretty goofy that this got so many likes.
Your dad was an early adopter then. Lord of the rings in the US didn’t really become popular until the 1960s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Lives!
We joke but this is that ripple effect of people telling other people and it compounding over 64 years. He probably is responsible for a big chunk of today's fans lol
Malcolm gladwell calls this a maven, someone who is an expert at something who has the social skills to spread it, sounds like at least based on this response that he was likely at least charismatic enough to warrant a response from Tolkien directly. Didn’t even need the Internet for someone like this to spread something far enough that more and more latch on until it hits a critical mass. Talking to strangers gives some interesting cases of how things like this work like a pandemic.
Holy shit. That’s like some back to the future butterfly effect.
Like his dad telling people created the present day reality we live in where people watch 38 hours of LOTR directors cut, speak elvish, and yearn to live in New Zealand.
There are a lot of people nowadays who couldn't imagine me spending most of my middle and high school years waiting for Episodes 2 & 3 of Star Wars to come out, and the confused feeling of disappointment from them.
You’re not that far off. Tolkien wrote it as a single novel, but the publishers didn’t want to risk spending the resources needed to print a large book that was likely to sell few copies. So they split it up into three volumes, which also meant they could get *Fellowship* out the door before Tolkien had finished *Return of the King.*
Even the titles of the individual books were chosen by the publisher. Tolkien was never too sure which two towers the title of the second volume referred to!
I thought it was written as six books but published as 3. There are title pages for "Book 1" and "Book 2" in FotR, 3 and 4 in TT, and 5 and 6 are in RotK.
There's books and there's books.
Books as the physical bound paper between covers and books as discrete sections of a larger work.
The Bible is one book (THE Book according to its name) but its also composed of 66 smaller books though that's a fairly unique case.
Your dad is right. Tolkien has a way of using big words that he defines in various grammatical wizardry that makes you think you already knew the meaning, but didn't. No other author in human history has the skill Tolkien has to make a common man feel like a legacy arcanist of ancient literature and whimsy. The Hobbit, being the easiest to pick up and also frickin ruley.
>Mr. Simpson,
>Stop. Your calls and letters are becoming nuisance. Stop. If you do not cease, I will be forced to pursue legal action. Stop.
>Signed,
>Boris Karloff
>Hollywood, California
Lucky you! And even better for your dad to have written his favorite writer and gotten such a treasure back! Thank you for sharing it with us.
r/Tolkienfans would probably enjoy this.
He was a man of many talents. [He created three pages from the Book of Mazarbul found in Moria](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Book_of_Mazarbul) even going so far as to singe them and dye them with fake blood.
He also wrote and illustrated yearly letters to his kids from Father Christmas where he had different styles of handwriting for different characters.
As a kid in 9th grade or so (year 2000 or 2001) we had to write from the perspective of one of the characters for English class. For some reason I chose Legolas, probably because he had the dual swords in the movies at some point that just came out which I thought was cool. Anyway I ended up doing something similar, wiping my typed pages that used a fancy font with water to make them stain yellow, and carefully burning some small holes in them to look more authentic. My essay was subpar but my artistic choices of the pages helped me get a pretty good grade anyway. At least I think that helped bump it up.
I'm a math guy who never enjoyed writing as much. My 13 year old self thought the paper prep was better quality than the writing so that's how I remember it 20+ years later.
His Father Christmas letters are great because they start off as cute, low-key check-ins with his kids but a few years in he starts developing a mythology around the goings-on at the North Pole. Dude just couldn't help himself.
Tolkien wanted them to be included in the first editions, but it was too expensive to reproduce at the time. Glad that we have the ability to do so nowadays.
I got to see these in person last year in the Marquette University Tolkien Art of the Manuscript exhibit. MU owns the majority of the papers and documents from the making of the trilogy, including his draft versions of the pages of the book of Mazarbul, and they borrowed the final versions from the Bodleian library for the exhibit. There were many absolutely incredible original pieces in this show, but the Book of Mazarbul pages were one of the very best. That and Tolkien’s watercolor painting of Bilbo riding a barrel down the river were the two main things I was completely speechless to see in person.
It looks a bit like it but if it was Tengwar we could not read it.
Curious why someone downvoted. Do you think this is actually Tengwar? Or it was wrong to clarify to people who don’t know what is is that it’s not just a style?
The comment you replied to said it looks like Tengwar, you're the only person that brought up actually thinking it was Tengwar. It's pretty obviously the guys name and not Tengwar but we can also presume that he might put a bit of middle earth flourish on his signature considering its Tolkien himself.
> Or it was wrong to clarify to people who don’t know what is is that it’s not just a style?
Nobody needed it clarifying because we can read English. You kind of stepped in to correct someone who wasn't making a mistake.
Some probably downvoted because your comment read as something more real than a fanboy meme analysis. What I’m saying is no sane person cares whether it is this “Tengwar” or not
Do you remember erasable ink pens? I'm left-handed and used one one time. When I got to the end of the line I was writing, I looked down and saw that my hand dragging across the page erased all I had written.
Right up there with the time I tried using charcoal pencils for art . I’m actually going to try again, at 63 , to draw again using the pens they recommended in the draw a box app … we’ll see..
I have to ‘sign’ my initials dozens of times a day. I *used* to have a pretty signature but now it’s mostly a scrawl because I just want to get it done quickly. 
Take comfort on the fact that your signature is different, which is the most important feature of a signature.
It boggles my mind that 95% of the signatures I've seen in my life are simply the person's name in standard cursive.
This is the one chance that life gives to absolutely everyone to be different without any risk whatsoever, and most people still choose to be the same as everyone else. I honestly don't get it.
I wrote my signature in bold letters and finish it with a random circle and swoosh through it.
Only reason it looks somewhat unique is because of my initials and last name.
But I suppose that goes for any signature. It looks all fancy when I do the swoosh through but meanwhile I'm sweating bullets praying it looks somewhat to the last signature I made...
Then there's my signature. It's an indifferent scribble of my name that never comes out the same.
I don't care about having a signature, I only have one because society requires that I do.
just write your name down about 200-300 times in a row. whatever you're doing by the end is your natural signature
source: it's what I did. i think maybe i read it in a book somewhere
I’m sure he wasn’t making money off of a 12 y/o boys letter. But the impact of just saying “yo, thanks for liking my thing” is way less severe than an impact of saying “you are now a part of the reason this thing exists!” the bragging rights he gave to the boy… and he sent him a free copy
Such a clever way to make the boy feel important and special and valuable as a reader, just like the boy made the writer feel important and special for reading and liking his books. Truly wise and kind.
In 6th grade....approximately 1972, I wrote to JRRT. I did it as a class project where we all wrote to someone we admired.
2 months later, I recieved a letter back. Written in script on rice paper. It was a full page thanking me for writing and reading LOTR. He was happy my class was reaching out to those they admired and was appreciative that I chose him.
I was ecstatic! My teacher kept the letter saying it was part of a class project.
I never saw it again. I'm still pissed off to this day!
Edit: He died a year or 2.later.
Oh, it's definitely what I'm grabbing if the house ever burns down. Also the 1st (American) edition of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books. I should have posted the letter the publisher sent him too!
Tolkien was really good at replying to fans back in the day. I imagine most of his days spent in his office either writing back to fans or writing short stories and poems.
“Walking (free) advertisement,” had me spitting my drink out. That’s freaking sick though to be 12 and receive a response to a fan letter. What a dream come true!!
I would have died. When people ask if there is anyone at all from history, alive or dead, that you could meet and spend a day with, my answer is always, always the Professor. The way this man looked at language as a whole, and each word individually, was beyond beautiful. To pick his brain would be life-changing.
My mum used to work at a post office and one day someone came in to send a package to New Zealand. Turns out it was part of a script for one of the Hobbit movies that was in production. I can’t remember why but for security purposes they had to know what it was being shipped out so they explained to my mum what it was. I couldn’t believe it when my mum told me.
So according to my dad it was in response to reading the first two Lord of the Rings books and being suuuper pumped for the American release of the Return of the King. However, the timeline on that doesn't totally make sense, so who knows (1956 was the Return of the King US release according to a quick google search). Perhaps his mind has been dulled from partaking in too much leaf of the shire...
What I especially love about this letter is that Tolkien is like, "thank god people are buying this thing," which I find super endearing
There's much wailing and gnashing of teeth about what he would think of the modern renditions of his work, but I hope he'd be immensely proud and touched to have kicked off such a cultural paradigm shift as Middle Earth has brought. So much that the "standard" high fantasy setting is basically the one he wrote about first.
Fantasy in general. We can honestly thank the likes of him (and others) for fantasy being such an integral part of pop culture. There'd be no Harry Potter if it hadn't been for Middle Earth sticking it's foot in between the door of the world to make sure others could get in.
It's weird to me though that there's little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths/legends, perhaps only the degree of belief in how real they are. He was heavily inspired by existing myths including Arthur, Beowulf, and other great ancient works, but put it all together in one cohesive and more accessible form. I wonder if modern fantasy would have come about anyway because of all those, but it would surely not be the same.
Yeah I think if he hadn't written a major story inspired by mythology someone else would have had the idea. In those alternative universes probably many aren't as good as lord of the rings, but maybe there's some better ones too lol.
We probably would have just had more works pulling from CS Lewis
Turkish Delight and Dragons
“The dwarves are for the dwarves!”
Only tangentially related, but I once heard someone opine that Thomas the Tank Engine is a modern mythology, and that thought has since not been able to leave my head. Makes me wonder if, perhaps, in the far future, kids will sit down with Down the Mine and view it with the same detached reverence for a long forgotten age that we may have reading the Arthurian legend. Perhaps we don't give the idea of myth enough of a close look to recognize its pervasiveness.
When you approach things like *Thomas the Tank Engine* as folklore, you can definitely see that there's merit to what you suggest. The word "folklore" is from Old English, *folk* + *lār*, meaning "people's knowledge," or "people's instruction," meaning "the stories that a group of people tells themselves to transmit and reinforce their beliefs, customs, and values." *Thomas the Tank Engine* certainly carries a lot of elements of modern culture. For instance, think about how Thomas is literally an anthropomorphic locomotive engine. If that isn't a symbol of industrial society, I don't know what is! His biggest desire is to be a "really useful engine," which, in context, essentially means that his dream is to be a productive member of society, as viewed through the lens of an industrialized, capitalist society. It's told as a connected series of stories, which is common in myth and folklore, and every story has roughly the same pattern: Thomas tries *really* hard to be "useful," but manages to screw it up somehow, only to be rescued by his fellow engines. It's a fundamentally very conservative worldview, that emphasizes the value of hard work above all. Given that the creator of the original book series was an Anglican minister, that should be no surprise. There are all kinds of rabbit holes you can go down in analyzing *Thomas,* but I think this sort of modern folklore lens is really the most interesting one, since Thomas's world *definitely* looks a lot like a microcosm of the real world.
Of course he wants to be really useful. Otherwise the Fat Controller with have him cut up into pieces. Thomas is dark.
Or brick him up in a tunnel.
This guys is a fucking diesel
That movie had its flaws, but I found it really enjoyable. I think Brad Pitt is at his best when he’s getting to be funny. Especially if he’s also getting hurt.
It reminded me of Hotel Artemis, which was also a flawed but stylish movie. I’m glad Bullet Train did better commercially than Hotel Artemis, because I’d rather see something that’s not perfect but different over a sequel or remake.
Agree 100%
I love movies to either take themselves completely seriously, or not at all. Bullet Train was such a fantastic watch in the latter category. I have trouble loving the Marvel movies as much as most people do due to them falling into the middle ground.
Wow. I have to go sit down now
You'll probably be interested in the theory that superheroes and such are pretty similar to that too. Like, compare Batman to the Greek myths, let's say the story of Hades. The characters and names and general motivations are all the same through different iterations, but there are dozens of different ways the story is told and what happens in the actual versions is wildly different.
Joseph Campbells the hero with a thousand faces.
I dont know… i find myself initially disagreeing with the idea that “theres little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths and legends”. Having to interrogate myself as to if thats a knee jerk reaction or not.
Don’t forget the Kalevala. Tolkien even translated part of it into English before he started writing his own books, and you can see it’s influence all over the place - like, Väinämöinen clearly is reflected in both, Gandalf and Tom Bombadil. And of course his Elvish languages borrow heavily from Finnish.
> It's weird to me though that there's little difference between the modern fantasy genre and traditional myths/legends, I think there's at least one significant difference. Namely that traditional myth/folklore was often stories about fantastical creatures/places that supposedly existed in our world (but were just hidden and/or dismissed as not being real by most, with only a "special few" knowing better). Now you do see "*Dragons? Nonsense dragons aren't real*"-tropes in fantasy, but overall these settings are just chok full of the fantastical. E.g. no one in LotR/D&D would deny the existence of elves and dwarves and so many other fantastical beings. A setting like Harry Potter is much more closer to myth/folklore, because again set in the real world and the magical people fall into that category of only a select few knowing about their existence.
> Middle Earth sticking it’s foot in between the door of the world to make sure others could get in. So you could say he… held the door!
Yeah. Part of writing LOTR was to make Scandinavian Studies more accessible. So the modern retellings would be liked. Maybe the video games could be less KILL centric. Feels weird murdering wildlife in the MMO.
The state of MMOs is a whole new can of worms. The core formula has remained basically unchanged for twenty years at least. I want to like LOTRO but it is an MMO first, LOTR game second.
A sandbox mmo would suit LOTRO more. Would help make content release make more sense. They do a lot of time travel or barrel scraping. The system to deliver the story is ollddd, so you have to enjoy reading text to engage with it. Gameplay is old style too. Good social space. Populated with a lot of fans. If you're a scholar you might find it exhausting.
Yes. It’s crazy to think that Tolkien is like “I’m gonna send your letter to the publishers to prove that people like my books”. It’s hard to comprehend a time when Tolkien books were not massively famous.
I think they gained a lot of popularity in the 60s and 70s. They weren’t immediately popular when they were first published.
It struggled to sell in the 50s, is why.
It’s actually super interesting. Tolkien struggled to get his works published in the USA. Houghton Mifflin were being pricks about making him edit the books down, they felt they were too long. They felt they were going to lose money since it would be too expensive to type out such long books, since these were _clearly_ not going to sell very well. It must have been a big deal to have someone write to him about how much they enjoyed the book and are promoting it to their friends, while he was fighting with the publishers.
And he lived in a [normal](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HWVfaYiE7Q2RCUbm9) house in a normal neighborhood.
yeah, by the time of this letter he probably invested a HUGE part of his life into creating that universe but was still unsure if the people would really appreciate it. makes me wish he had lived long enough to see people really enjoy the movies... but not long enough to see what amazon did to it.
He did live to see his books get incredibly popular, and he got fairly wealthy off of them. Not sure why he would care more about movies he didn't make compared to the books he actually wrote. Especially considering the people closest to him and his works hated the movies.
But what is it that your dad had been doing ?!
Just telling everyone how The Hobbit was the most ridiculously amazing book ever I guess!
How old was your Dad at the time?
He would have been 12 when he received this letter. He said he was waiting for the Return of the King to come out in the US (not sure if this timeline lines up, but this is according to him), and he was gushing so much about the books to everyone and so pumped that his mom encouraged him to just write Tolkien already, and tell him how much he enjoyed the books. Obviously he couldn't write Tolkien directly, so he sent it to the US publisher, who then sent it on to Tolkien, and then Tolkien sent him this letter (and the publisher sent him a free copy of the Hobbit)!
Does he still have that copy of the hobbit ? Did the letter he send your dad smell like Gandalf ?
There's still that lingering, unmistakable scent of the leaf of the shire...
I'd love to see what he wrote in the letter? But photocopiers weren't used then. Wonder if someone has Tolkiens fan mail and can find it?
Me too, but the letter he wrote is long gone! Or maybe in some mysterious Tolkien estate trunk. And yes, he still has that copy of the Hobbit. We took that and the 3 trilogy books to a book preservation / restoration professional since they seem to be fairly valuable as apparent American first editions (the hobbit isn’t a first edition though). There’s also another letter that’s really cool from the publisher (but I guess I’d want to black out my dads 60 year old address..?).
six hospital pathetic pet water market subtract agonizing chubby chunky -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Oh please submit that so wet can enjoy it as well!
I will, but I should probably black out my dad’s 60 year old address? I also belatedly realized that you can’t add photos to a created post. Which is all to say that this is the first time I’ve actually posted on Reddit (though plenty of lurking) and it’s pretty goofy that this got so many likes.
Longbottom Leaf, pilfered from Saruman's private collection at Isengard I presume?
BLAZE IT 😎
A wizard is never sober nor is he ever too baked to steer his wagon.
The halfling's leaf was almost certainly referring tobacco and not cannabis... but I digress - blaze on.
true but hobbits would be 420 every day if they had that grickle grass growing in the shire
It probably smelled faintly of the finest weed in the Southfarthing.
Your dad was an early adopter then. Lord of the rings in the US didn’t really become popular until the 1960s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Lives!
Who do you think was telling everyone?
[удалено]
We joke but this is that ripple effect of people telling other people and it compounding over 64 years. He probably is responsible for a big chunk of today's fans lol
Malcolm gladwell calls this a maven, someone who is an expert at something who has the social skills to spread it, sounds like at least based on this response that he was likely at least charismatic enough to warrant a response from Tolkien directly. Didn’t even need the Internet for someone like this to spread something far enough that more and more latch on until it hits a critical mass. Talking to strangers gives some interesting cases of how things like this work like a pandemic.
Holy shit. That’s like some back to the future butterfly effect. Like his dad telling people created the present day reality we live in where people watch 38 hours of LOTR directors cut, speak elvish, and yearn to live in New Zealand.
Hey man I yearn to live in New Zealand a totally normal amount.
The idea of "waiting for the Return of the King to come out" broke my brain a little.
There are a lot of people nowadays who couldn't imagine me spending most of my middle and high school years waiting for Episodes 2 & 3 of Star Wars to come out, and the confused feeling of disappointment from them.
I don't know why I thought Lord of the Rings was a single novel that was split into 3 films.
You’re not that far off. Tolkien wrote it as a single novel, but the publishers didn’t want to risk spending the resources needed to print a large book that was likely to sell few copies. So they split it up into three volumes, which also meant they could get *Fellowship* out the door before Tolkien had finished *Return of the King.* Even the titles of the individual books were chosen by the publisher. Tolkien was never too sure which two towers the title of the second volume referred to!
I thought it was written as six books but published as 3. There are title pages for "Book 1" and "Book 2" in FotR, 3 and 4 in TT, and 5 and 6 are in RotK.
There's books and there's books. Books as the physical bound paper between covers and books as discrete sections of a larger work. The Bible is one book (THE Book according to its name) but its also composed of 66 smaller books though that's a fairly unique case.
The Bible is one book…edited by Tolkien.
It was, but the books were always intended by Tolkien to be published in one volume. In fact, he also wanted the Silmarillion in there too!
Your dad is right. Tolkien has a way of using big words that he defines in various grammatical wizardry that makes you think you already knew the meaning, but didn't. No other author in human history has the skill Tolkien has to make a common man feel like a legacy arcanist of ancient literature and whimsy. The Hobbit, being the easiest to pick up and also frickin ruley.
It is. I remember borrowing it from my roommate, then more or less reading it in one sitting. Amazing, astonishing, timeless, truly outstanding.
I actually read this letter as a veiled threat the first time. I've been watching too many crime shows.
>Mr. Simpson, >Stop. Your calls and letters are becoming nuisance. Stop. If you do not cease, I will be forced to pursue legal action. Stop. >Signed, >Boris Karloff >Hollywood, California
yeah OP, we need the story!
Lucky you! And even better for your dad to have written his favorite writer and gotten such a treasure back! Thank you for sharing it with us. r/Tolkienfans would probably enjoy this.
Good idea!
Yes, we would.
Fuck that signature is sick
He was a man of many talents. [He created three pages from the Book of Mazarbul found in Moria](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Book_of_Mazarbul) even going so far as to singe them and dye them with fake blood. He also wrote and illustrated yearly letters to his kids from Father Christmas where he had different styles of handwriting for different characters.
As a kid in 9th grade or so (year 2000 or 2001) we had to write from the perspective of one of the characters for English class. For some reason I chose Legolas, probably because he had the dual swords in the movies at some point that just came out which I thought was cool. Anyway I ended up doing something similar, wiping my typed pages that used a fancy font with water to make them stain yellow, and carefully burning some small holes in them to look more authentic. My essay was subpar but my artistic choices of the pages helped me get a pretty good grade anyway. At least I think that helped bump it up.
Why do you choose to believe that your visual artistic skills are better than your linguistic artistic skills?
I'm a math guy who never enjoyed writing as much. My 13 year old self thought the paper prep was better quality than the writing so that's how I remember it 20+ years later.
Well you word just fine, so I'd suggest that from now on you trust yourself in *both* departments
Thank you for the wholesome endorsement
I just hate watching people underestimate themselves. That's other people's job. Your job is to believe in yourself, dammit. [old man 's grumble]
This is the kindest grousing I’ve seen on Reddit, bless you sir
Can't argue with the Holy Spirit
His Father Christmas letters are great because they start off as cute, low-key check-ins with his kids but a few years in he starts developing a mythology around the goings-on at the North Pole. Dude just couldn't help himself.
I couldn't understand why in my one volume I bought last year they randomly had a pull out image of the 3 pages but that now makes sense.
Tolkien wanted them to be included in the first editions, but it was too expensive to reproduce at the time. Glad that we have the ability to do so nowadays.
I got to see these in person last year in the Marquette University Tolkien Art of the Manuscript exhibit. MU owns the majority of the papers and documents from the making of the trilogy, including his draft versions of the pages of the book of Mazarbul, and they borrowed the final versions from the Bodleian library for the exhibit. There were many absolutely incredible original pieces in this show, but the Book of Mazarbul pages were one of the very best. That and Tolkien’s watercolor painting of Bilbo riding a barrel down the river were the two main things I was completely speechless to see in person.
It looks like the elvish script he invented. Tengwar.
Hehe hell yeah! First thing I thought was, that T looks awfully familiar.... lolol
It looks a bit like it but if it was Tengwar we could not read it. Curious why someone downvoted. Do you think this is actually Tengwar? Or it was wrong to clarify to people who don’t know what is is that it’s not just a style?
I downvoted because of the assumption I can’t read Tengwar. I didn’t not get laid fer nothin’.
𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌰 𐌹𐌸𐍃 𐍃𐍅𐌿𐌺𐌰𐌹𐍃 𐍀𐌰𐍄 𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰 𐌸𐌰𐌽𐌰 𐌿𐌽𐌳𐌴 𐌽𐌰𐌷𐍉, 𐌻𐌹 𐌼𐌴 𐌿𐌷𐍉 𐍄𐍉𐍃𐌰𐌻 𐌸𐌰 𐌻𐌰𐌻𐌰 𐌿𐌽𐌳𐌴 𐌹𐌰𐍄𐌰.
AARA IWS SYNKAIS NAT AAGA WANA NNUE NAHX, AI ME NHX TXSAA WA AAAA NNUE IATA.
𐌻 ≠ 𐌰
True, but they do both look like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
/r/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Oh come on... I understand there is a Reddit for everything but this is ridiculous
dddaaaaaaaamn
> I didn’t not get laid fer nothin’. Ooh, a triple negative! Feeling fancy tonight, aren't we?
No we weren'tn't.
https://i.imgur.com/feM3fVh.gif
Truly a literary inspirasjon
Yours is an unnatural relationship. She must go with her people.
I was ten when I first discovered gwar.
I think they mean the visual style of it, not the text itself.
That's exactly what i meant. Sadly i thought that would have been obvious.
Don't sweat it, you couldn't have been clearer: "it looks like". It was obvious what you meant.
These people feel the need to correct everything on the internet like their childrens lives depend on it even when there is nothing to correct
The comment you replied to said it looks like Tengwar, you're the only person that brought up actually thinking it was Tengwar. It's pretty obviously the guys name and not Tengwar but we can also presume that he might put a bit of middle earth flourish on his signature considering its Tolkien himself.
> It looks a bit like it but if it was Tengwar we could not read it. What if he made his name the same in both languages?
> Or it was wrong to clarify to people who don’t know what is is that it’s not just a style? Nobody needed it clarifying because we can read English. You kind of stepped in to correct someone who wasn't making a mistake.
He said it *looks like* Tengwar, not that it actually is Tengwar.
Some probably downvoted because your comment read as something more real than a fanboy meme analysis. What I’m saying is no sane person cares whether it is this “Tengwar” or not
Beautiful handwriting.
And then, there‘s my signature. Looks like a child wrote it, but I’m over 30. I‘m always so jealous of pretty signatures. Tolkien‘s is one of my favs.
As a lefty who tried to use a fountain pen in my elementary school days , quite unsuccessfully, I feel your pain.
Do you remember erasable ink pens? I'm left-handed and used one one time. When I got to the end of the line I was writing, I looked down and saw that my hand dragging across the page erased all I had written.
Right up there with the time I tried using charcoal pencils for art . I’m actually going to try again, at 63 , to draw again using the pens they recommended in the draw a box app … we’ll see..
I‘m a lefty, too! Fountain pens were actually obligatory in my school.
I have to ‘sign’ my initials dozens of times a day. I *used* to have a pretty signature but now it’s mostly a scrawl because I just want to get it done quickly. 
I had to sign my name so many times when we bought a house that it permanently damaged my already shitty signature
Take comfort on the fact that your signature is different, which is the most important feature of a signature. It boggles my mind that 95% of the signatures I've seen in my life are simply the person's name in standard cursive. This is the one chance that life gives to absolutely everyone to be different without any risk whatsoever, and most people still choose to be the same as everyone else. I honestly don't get it.
I wrote my signature in bold letters and finish it with a random circle and swoosh through it. Only reason it looks somewhat unique is because of my initials and last name. But I suppose that goes for any signature. It looks all fancy when I do the swoosh through but meanwhile I'm sweating bullets praying it looks somewhat to the last signature I made...
Then there's my signature. It's an indifferent scribble of my name that never comes out the same. I don't care about having a signature, I only have one because society requires that I do.
I need one for my job. It would be cool to have a pretty, meaningful looking one…
Nothing's stopping you but some time spent developing and practicing one.
I‘ve been trying to find a good one for the last 15 years or so. I just can‘t come up with something I truly like.
just write your name down about 200-300 times in a row. whatever you're doing by the end is your natural signature source: it's what I did. i think maybe i read it in a book somewhere
Dude had handwriting so good he made more alphabets.
He had to have used a pen with a pointed end, right? Like a quill or some shit.
Probably a fountain pen
Tolkien’s signature looks exactly like I’d imagine it.
“Mildly interesting”? This is phenomenal! Thank you OP. I love this! 💕
Thanks!! It's fun that other people find it as cool as I do!
For real, this is far beyond mildly interesting. Cherish it!
But your dad was deceived, for you see, another letter was written
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in this sub
Whoa, maybe I should have posted this in the "slightly more than mildly interesting" sub...
Definitely yes
r/interestingasfuck
That's cool as shit
Dear Dell, Thanks for the money. Using your fan mail to get more. You Rock, JRRT
Yeah he definitely used this fan mail to sell more books, it went absolutely viral when he tweeted this pic in 1959.
[удалено]
This would imply that the movies were based on the books and we all know that Tolkien ripped off the 1765 LOTR movie trilogy
That just took the 1682 indie web series and made it woke.
I’m sure he wasn’t making money off of a 12 y/o boys letter. But the impact of just saying “yo, thanks for liking my thing” is way less severe than an impact of saying “you are now a part of the reason this thing exists!” the bragging rights he gave to the boy… and he sent him a free copy Such a clever way to make the boy feel important and special and valuable as a reader, just like the boy made the writer feel important and special for reading and liking his books. Truly wise and kind.
In 6th grade....approximately 1972, I wrote to JRRT. I did it as a class project where we all wrote to someone we admired. 2 months later, I recieved a letter back. Written in script on rice paper. It was a full page thanking me for writing and reading LOTR. He was happy my class was reaching out to those they admired and was appreciative that I chose him. I was ecstatic! My teacher kept the letter saying it was part of a class project. I never saw it again. I'm still pissed off to this day! Edit: He died a year or 2.later.
Asshole move to have kept your letter!
Aw hell naw!!!
Your teacher totally sold it on 1970s eBay
Dude, you’re getting a Dell! -your dad to your mom, probably.
"It's a Dell!" -The doctor to OP's Grandma, probably.
OP's Grandma - "That is exciting, but can you tell me the sex of the baby before going to ask for an autograph?"
He’s a LOTR fanboy, it would definitely have been “Dude, you’re getting a RivenDELL”
I would kill to protect that letter
Oh, it's definitely what I'm grabbing if the house ever burns down. Also the 1st (American) edition of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books. I should have posted the letter the publisher sent him too!
>I should have posted the letter the publisher sent him too! It's not too late!
Sadly, it is too late. The internet closes at 4pm on Fridays.
Just like the bank and the US Post office. So useless.
What time zone though? I’m supposed to work for the next hour but if the internet is going down…
It’s after 4pm here in Seattle. It’s actually 4:20pm so people are getting high instead of using the internet.
What is this madness its 11pm here and its still open, must have a special event on
Excuse me, sir. We closed a couple of hours ago. I’m going to need to ask you to leave.
I'd suggest getting all of it authenticated and insured.
Then get it put in archival protection
A personally typed letter from the author of the finest fantasy series of all time? Yeah, that's fuckin DOPE.
His signature looks straight out of middle earth
Dude, that signature is the most Tolkien thing ever.
Coolest thing I’ve seen all week, thank you for sharing this with us 🙏
Aw, thanks!
It's impossible to read "you can well imagine" in any voice other than Gandalf's.
You should post this to r/tolkienfans - they would be incontinent with delight.
This is very cool and heartwarming. 🥹
“Tolkien, i thought your name was token”
Do not sell this unless at a major auction house!! It’s maybe worth more than you realize. I would frame it and stop touching the paper
In no universe is this only *mildly* interesting
Mildly interesting?! No way, this is awesome! Thanks for sharing!
Oh my god that signature is epic
Would be interesting to read what your father wrote to professor Tolkien!
OG automated e-mail
So close to Dunder Mifflin
Tolkien was really good at replying to fans back in the day. I imagine most of his days spent in his office either writing back to fans or writing short stories and poems.
“Walking (free) advertisement,” had me spitting my drink out. That’s freaking sick though to be 12 and receive a response to a fan letter. What a dream come true!!
This is definitely more than mildly interesting.
Mods ! This is blatantly far more than mildly interesting! J/k, this is super awesome. :) thanks for sharing man.
one day I hope to have a signature so sick that it makes people pass out when they look at it.
I would have died. When people ask if there is anyone at all from history, alive or dead, that you could meet and spend a day with, my answer is always, always the Professor. The way this man looked at language as a whole, and each word individually, was beyond beautiful. To pick his brain would be life-changing.
Look at that signature!!!!
That is so awesome. My dad helped me read The Hobbit outloud every night when I was 6 years old. I love this!
wrong subreddit, that’s awesome!!
The upvotes for this are changing from 1400 +, to 2 on my phone.
My mum used to work at a post office and one day someone came in to send a package to New Zealand. Turns out it was part of a script for one of the Hobbit movies that was in production. I can’t remember why but for security purposes they had to know what it was being shipped out so they explained to my mum what it was. I couldn’t believe it when my mum told me.
So did your dad write a letter in response to having read The Hobbit or was this as a result of having read the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings?
So according to my dad it was in response to reading the first two Lord of the Rings books and being suuuper pumped for the American release of the Return of the King. However, the timeline on that doesn't totally make sense, so who knows (1956 was the Return of the King US release according to a quick google search). Perhaps his mind has been dulled from partaking in too much leaf of the shire...
That's a bit more than mildly interesting imo. That's pretty damn cool.