The Toast's Tolkien correspondent, Austin Gilkeson, previously told us of his legal battle with the Tolkien estate, which was a marvelous piece of satire whose satiric nature was largely lost on Reddit. It is also one of Nicole's favourite pieces of all time, so please go read it.
J.R.R. Tolkien may have been the epitome of the tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking Oxford don, but his books have inspired a lot of heavy metal over
No one who gets a postgraduate degree in Hobbit Studies ever imagines they’ll be sued by the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. I certainly didn’t expect to wind up in court against Christopher Tolkien and his lawyers, like Frodo Baggins facing down the Nazgûl on Weathertop. Little did I know I was heading into a legal and scholarly Midgewater when I wrote and published The Lord of the Rings: A New English Translation.
"There have been no Entings -- no children you would say, not for a terrible long count of years. You see, we lost the Entwives." "How very sad!" said Pippin. "How was it then that they all died?" "They did not die!" said Treabeard. "We lost them, I said. We lost them and cannot find them." "It is rather a strange and sad story," he went on after a pause, "When the world was young,…
"Hi, I'm Aragon, son of Gilraen, son of Ivorwen. Would you or your mother like to rest your feet on me?"
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"Hi, I'm Celeborn, but you can call me Ofgaladriel."
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"Hi, I'm Gimli/Gloin/Thorin/Ori/Dori/Nori/Oin/Dwalin/Fundin/Balin/Bifur/Bofur/Bombur/Dain, son of a super-dope female dwarf who was so cool that we're forbidden, as men, to utter or even know her name, ever, which is exactly as it should be."
I am a person who, like Bilbo Baggins, prefers comfort and regular meals to sleeping outdoors and having adventures. It is my belief that The Hobbit, while excellent, would have been vastly improved had the bit with the dwarves been edited out and Tolkien had stuck to 200 pages of Bilbo making cozy-ass meals and going to bed early.
There were five of us. One was a little embarrassed; she was the only one who really had other friends. One was cheerfully uncomprehending, but happy to be involved with the group’s latest obsession. The rest of us were devoted to whatever short-lived passion struck us at the time. It was December 2001, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had just been released. We weren’t put off by that grandiose,…
1. Let me fix you, Thorin Oakenshield. (cue the Coldplay montage)
(I do not take spoiler concerns about The Hobbit seriously--HE FINDS A MAGIC RING AND THERE IS A DRAGON--but obviously I'm going to talk about what happens in this movie.)
