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Alternative Tolkien - William Faulkner
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 08:07 pm.
William Faulkner:
... when he removed the ring from the hearth with the tongs, the old wizard who called himself Gandalf the Grey in almost perverse defiance of the rainbow of other designations he might have chosen, there being only two other human wizards of any repute in all the lands of Middle-Earth, those -- the wizards, not the lands -- being know as White and Brown, which, though not Grey, are like grey in that they are not colourful, thereby suggesting the existence of a sort of colour-blindness inherent in the magickal professions, this wizard Gandalf the Grey, Dullest of the Dun-Coloured, held up the fire-tested ring and took in his fingers almost at once, much to the surprise of the young, tween-ish as it were, hobbit Frodo Baggins of Bag-End, nephew and sole heir of that Other Famous Hobbit Bilbo, author of that famed dissertation on dwarves and dragons, mountains and mountains of treasure, dark things under mountains and rings found there as well, the same ring which the wizened wizard had momentarily rescued from the hearth-fire, the Red Book of Westmarch which, in this moment between hobbit and wizard, had yet to be completed and disseminated but the story of which was nevertheless known to them both in some fashion, this Frodo gasped.
"It is quite not-warm to the touch, against all reason, it having been placed in the fire," said Gandalf. "Take it." The wizard dropped the ring into the reluctantly-outstretched and shrinking palm, which, had it shrunk completely would have caused the not-hot ring to fall the floor and roll off into some forgotten corner of the hobbit-hole, there to lay for another two and a half thousand years of obscurity before being re-discovered which, in the retrospect of the incident at Bree to come might have been preferable to all of those concerned save Gandalf himself, who was not -- or should we say, will not be -- at Bree, but nonetheless understood the greater of the two evils involved in letting this ring lie under some piece of hobbit furniture, of the hobbit. In the hand of Frodo the ring seemed to have become thicker and heavier than ever, weighing on him like the belch of a Nazgul only he didn't yet know what a Nazgul was but if he did he would have made this analogy anyway and besides I am the author, he who lays out the story before you in whatever order and manner desired by me, the author, so the reader is invited to sit back and trust this author's instincts and insights and to desist from being so critical otherwise your face will freeze that way.
Frodo now saw fine lines, finer than the finest penstrokes, finer than finest hair of the finest of elves of Rivendell or Lothlorien, though the comparison fails when one has never seen elven hair, but there it is -- these lines of fire, not-hot, seemed to form letters of a flowing script which shone piercingly bright and yet remote as if out of a great depth, near but far, close but distant, white-hot yet cold, legible but incomprehensible, a language without speech, or speech which must not be spoken outside the Dark Land of its speakers, lest the long shadows of evil cast themselves even wider over Middle-Earth, as Sauron the Dark Lord wished to do, he who is not to be confused with Saruman the White, the sole un-dun wizard and Gandalf's fellow, he, Saruman, secretly in league with Sauron but not-Sauron, leading one to wonder how or why or when the author was led to give such similar names to two of his characters, if not to suggest a metophorical identity between them, between the flesh of Saruman and the spirit of Sauron, bodiless these last three thousand years without the Ring he so desperately seeks because, as one of the noble Teemings observed quite rightly whether in this thread or another on the same topic, evil wizards are given to imbuing a small, easily-lost object with all of their evil powers and nature, depending upon such items to maintain their very existence.
"I cannot read these letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice, or rather in semi-hemi-demiquaver as he had been taught by his voice coach, thereby adding to the drama of the moment, though not as much as the Bene Gesserit Voice would have allowed, but his coach had either been unwilling or unable to teach him, a male, such things as only women and Reverend Mothers could learn, unless he were the kwitsatz hobbit-rach, but that, too, is a story which has been referred to elsewhere, definitely in this thread this time, not in another like it, and will not be told or otherwise referred to again here.
"No, but I can," said Gandalf, priding himself on being a know-it-all relative to Shire-bound hobbits, who in turned prided themselves on knowing nothing of the world beyond the Shire's bounds, adventures and fame and notoreity being contrary to hobbit custom, though as we have seen this custom is almost flagrantly violated by the likes of Bilbo and, as we will see in due course, Frodo himself. "In the Common Tongue, this is close enough to what it says:
One Ring to rule them all,
The rings given to all the races,
To all of the Elves under the sky,
In Rivendell and Lothlorien,
From Gondor to the Grey Havens;
To dwarves in their halls of stone,
Caring not for life and sun
But digging into dark holes where Balrog's lie in wait,
To men, mortals doomed to die,
But excluding hobbits, for whom no rings were made
A race of no consequence,
Unknown until the One Ring was lost and re-discovered,
And then re-re-discovered under a mountain,
One Ring to find them --"
"All of that on a ring?" Frodo exclaimed, in bewilderment and disbelief, not willing to be fooled again as he had been in the past, remembering the half-convincing stories of North Farthing aggression his mother had told him as She Lay Dying in the Chicasaw Hospital, way over South Farthing way, talking and talking about the war and the fall of the South and someplace called Vicksburg and how the South Farthing would rise again and even Bindbale Wood would not stand against it, unlike the wood which had risen against Macbeth, as prophesied by the three witches, to destroy him, such a wood, and nothing like it, would fend off the South again.
"Shut yo mouth," Gandalf drawled. "Wood an' thatch of a hobbit-hole kin burn, so Ah'd advise yew not to inner-upt me agin. Now, where were we? That's right:
One Ring to find them. . ."
William Faulkner:
... when he removed the ring from the hearth with the tongs, the old wizard who called himself Gandalf the Grey in almost perverse defiance of the rainbow of other designations he might have chosen, there being only two other human wizards of any repute in all the lands of Middle-Earth, those -- the wizards, not the lands -- being know as White and Brown, which, though not Grey, are like grey in that they are not colourful, thereby suggesting the existence of a sort of colour-blindness inherent in the magickal professions, this wizard Gandalf the Grey, Dullest of the Dun-Coloured, held up the fire-tested ring and took in his fingers almost at once, much to the surprise of the young, tween-ish as it were, hobbit Frodo Baggins of Bag-End, nephew and sole heir of that Other Famous Hobbit Bilbo, author of that famed dissertation on dwarves and dragons, mountains and mountains of treasure, dark things under mountains and rings found there as well, the same ring which the wizened wizard had momentarily rescued from the hearth-fire, the Red Book of Westmarch which, in this moment between hobbit and wizard, had yet to be completed and disseminated but the story of which was nevertheless known to them both in some fashion, this Frodo gasped.
"It is quite not-warm to the touch, against all reason, it having been placed in the fire," said Gandalf. "Take it." The wizard dropped the ring into the reluctantly-outstretched and shrinking palm, which, had it shrunk completely would have caused the not-hot ring to fall the floor and roll off into some forgotten corner of the hobbit-hole, there to lay for another two and a half thousand years of obscurity before being re-discovered which, in the retrospect of the incident at Bree to come might have been preferable to all of those concerned save Gandalf himself, who was not -- or should we say, will not be -- at Bree, but nonetheless understood the greater of the two evils involved in letting this ring lie under some piece of hobbit furniture, of the hobbit. In the hand of Frodo the ring seemed to have become thicker and heavier than ever, weighing on him like the belch of a Nazgul only he didn't yet know what a Nazgul was but if he did he would have made this analogy anyway and besides I am the author, he who lays out the story before you in whatever order and manner desired by me, the author, so the reader is invited to sit back and trust this author's instincts and insights and to desist from being so critical otherwise your face will freeze that way.
Frodo now saw fine lines, finer than the finest penstrokes, finer than finest hair of the finest of elves of Rivendell or Lothlorien, though the comparison fails when one has never seen elven hair, but there it is -- these lines of fire, not-hot, seemed to form letters of a flowing script which shone piercingly bright and yet remote as if out of a great depth, near but far, close but distant, white-hot yet cold, legible but incomprehensible, a language without speech, or speech which must not be spoken outside the Dark Land of its speakers, lest the long shadows of evil cast themselves even wider over Middle-Earth, as Sauron the Dark Lord wished to do, he who is not to be confused with Saruman the White, the sole un-dun wizard and Gandalf's fellow, he, Saruman, secretly in league with Sauron but not-Sauron, leading one to wonder how or why or when the author was led to give such similar names to two of his characters, if not to suggest a metophorical identity between them, between the flesh of Saruman and the spirit of Sauron, bodiless these last three thousand years without the Ring he so desperately seeks because, as one of the noble Teemings observed quite rightly whether in this thread or another on the same topic, evil wizards are given to imbuing a small, easily-lost object with all of their evil powers and nature, depending upon such items to maintain their very existence.
"I cannot read these letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice, or rather in semi-hemi-demiquaver as he had been taught by his voice coach, thereby adding to the drama of the moment, though not as much as the Bene Gesserit Voice would have allowed, but his coach had either been unwilling or unable to teach him, a male, such things as only women and Reverend Mothers could learn, unless he were the kwitsatz hobbit-rach, but that, too, is a story which has been referred to elsewhere, definitely in this thread this time, not in another like it, and will not be told or otherwise referred to again here.
"No, but I can," said Gandalf, priding himself on being a know-it-all relative to Shire-bound hobbits, who in turned prided themselves on knowing nothing of the world beyond the Shire's bounds, adventures and fame and notoreity being contrary to hobbit custom, though as we have seen this custom is almost flagrantly violated by the likes of Bilbo and, as we will see in due course, Frodo himself. "In the Common Tongue, this is close enough to what it says:
One Ring to rule them all,
The rings given to all the races,
To all of the Elves under the sky,
In Rivendell and Lothlorien,
From Gondor to the Grey Havens;
To dwarves in their halls of stone,
Caring not for life and sun
But digging into dark holes where Balrog's lie in wait,
To men, mortals doomed to die,
But excluding hobbits, for whom no rings were made
A race of no consequence,
Unknown until the One Ring was lost and re-discovered,
And then re-re-discovered under a mountain,
One Ring to find them --"
"All of that on a ring?" Frodo exclaimed, in bewilderment and disbelief, not willing to be fooled again as he had been in the past, remembering the half-convincing stories of North Farthing aggression his mother had told him as She Lay Dying in the Chicasaw Hospital, way over South Farthing way, talking and talking about the war and the fall of the South and someplace called Vicksburg and how the South Farthing would rise again and even Bindbale Wood would not stand against it, unlike the wood which had risen against Macbeth, as prophesied by the three witches, to destroy him, such a wood, and nothing like it, would fend off the South again.
"Shut yo mouth," Gandalf drawled. "Wood an' thatch of a hobbit-hole kin burn, so Ah'd advise yew not to inner-upt me agin. Now, where were we? That's right:
One Ring to find them. . ."
