A Request to the Reader, or, The Ghost of Humphrey Bogart

#18 in the series, "J.R.R. Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

Help!

As of this writing I've completed 17 blogs on the subject of sex in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I've had a blast writing them, and from what I'm hearing on the cyber-street at least a few people have been having fun reading them. But now I'm stuck. Try as I might, I can't get a handle on what to write next about everyone's fun couple, Galadriel and Gimli. And I don't think it's writer's block. It's something more . . . sinister.

Part of the joy of writing is that you're constantly discovering things. Your readers, your material, your own subconscious: they're all a strange far country seen in the distance, and you really want to get there. And to get there you have to stretch yourself, poke at the boundaries hemming your life in, crawl under the fence and run around in MacGregor's garden chomping carrots. To write today, you have to be someone slightly different from who you were yesterday--someone more. The "more" is hard to categorize, but it's there. Maybe it's more intelligent, more obser- vant, more creative . . . it doesn't matter. What matters is the far country. But it's hard to get to.

Which is why it's come to this. Simply stated, I'm out of my league. I suppose I know as much about sex as most mammals, and I also know (approximately) how to write about it in ways that respect its power without letting that power overwhelm reason and turn W2WW into just another porn-site. No, the naughty bits don't trouble me, and I hope they don't trouble you. What troubles me is the stuff that H. sapiens does that no other species can even imagine. Stuff I'm not sure I can imagine myself. Stuff I don't think I can write about. Stuff I don't think I want to. It's . .. ugh . . . dare I say it? . . . It's . . . romance.

I HATE ROMANCE! I can't stand the Valentine's Day bilge, the hearts and flowers, the soulful gazes and sundry symbolic gropings, the bridal registries and soft- focus photos and crappy poetry. And don't get me started on kissing! Whenever Aragorn and Arwen start pitching woo in Jackson's movies I just close my eyes, turn my head, and concentrate on parsing the Elvish. (David Salo's got 'em using too many datives for my taste. Liv Tyler does a fine job on the fricatives, though. But I digress.) Just thinking about the mushy stuff sets off a powerful knee-jerk reaction in my brain, a distaste bordering on revulsion.

I'm not quite sure why this is. I've got a long-standing debate about it going with an old buddy of mine. I say I have some kind of autism, some form of brain damage that prevents me from comprehending the subtleties of romantic expression. He says I just have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit. Maybe it's both. At any rate I have never married, never will, and don't understand why anyone bothers.

And how DARE anyone call all that romantic balderdash "love"?! I spent 33 years of my life watching my mother patiently slaughter herself taking care of my pro- foundly handicapped little sister. I saw her sacrifice friends, career, marriage, and finally her life for the sake of someone who couldn't so much as speak her name or say thank you. And mom though herself the luckiest human being on the planet for having such a person in her life. And she was. And so am I. THAT is what I dare to call "love." My little sis taught me everything I need to know or ever will on the subject. Lesser mortals have nothing to tell me.

Remember Wood Allen's Play It Again, Sam ? Lovelorn Woody-the-nebbish says to the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, "But all I want is a meaningful relationship!" To which Bogie replies--in words that should be carved on a mountain somewhere-- "Relationship?! What kinda woid is that? Sounds like something from one of your Madison Avenue shrinks." My sentiment exactly.

Hanta i Valar Galadriel and Gimli don't ever have a "relationship"! Yet they do have something. So what is it? What do I call it? How do I explain what I think Tolkien is trying to do? What IS the Master of Middle-earth spending so much time and effort trying to tell us? For it seems to me something is peeking out from behind the thicket of stately diction and sly innuendo, something that is more than sex, more than romance, but isn't "love" in either the hearts-and-flowers sense or the sense I'm used to. To me, love is a kind of work. Joyous work, yes, but still work. Yet to Tolkien it's almost as if "love" was a kind of poetry--an artform. Love as an artform? I'm truly out of my league here.

And so, as I sit in my office pouring over scripts from old Bogart and Bacall movies, I'm asking for your help. I'm not asking for clever ideas or brilliant insights--creativity is my responsibility here, one I took on when I first decided to enter the blogo- sphere. I guess I'm just looking for support. Maybe one of you have encountered a similar difficulty in navigating this aspect of reality and can let me know how you fared--and if it gets any better.

Because just seeking the far country is scary business, neighbors. I feel like a not-too-bright little kid walking down a dark alley and it's way past my bedtime. Any flashlights tossed my way will be more than welcome. And in the meantime I'll be trying to make sense of maps like this one:

Vivian (Lauren Bacall): Well, speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front-runners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is. What makes them run.


Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart): Find out mine?

to be continued

Her WHAT?!?!

#17 in the series "J.R.R. Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

In all this talk of love and lust in the Lord of the Rings, one poor guy seems to have been left out completely. Our wallflower's name: Frodo.

My personal fave

Frodo is, on one level (of the many possible) the story's Christ-figure. We might expect a devout Christian to weave a Jesus into his tale; plenty of others more talented than C.S. Lewis have done so, and even agnostics like Faulkner have had a go. But Tolkien goes beyond them all by giving us not one but three Christs: there's Gandalf, master of elemental powers and ageless wisdom, and Aragorn, rightful and righteous king, and Frodo . . . sacrificial lamb. We might also expect a typical Christian not to attach any sexual energy to Jesus. Though the Bible portrays him as an ordinary human man who like good food, good wine, and good foot-rubs, the traditional view of Jesus was of someone who--despite being awful chummy with Mary Magdalene--had not the slightest sexual aura

By Tim Kirk, from the 1975 Tolkien Calendar

Surely Frodo has no such aura. He isn't as much as chummy with a single female of any species throughout the entire story. Galadriel is one of only three women with whom he has any kind of contact, and she is more mother than mate. (Recall that Frodo is an orphan and was raised by his uncle. And of the other females, Goldberry is a Maia, and Arwen he talks to only after she's married.) I've already asserted that the Phial of Galadriel is not a sexual symbol, and I believe the above data reinforce this view. Frodo's suffering, his receipt of the Phial, and his lack of any percepti- ble libido, make him otherworldly in a way that even Elves are not: other- worldly in the way of wizards. After his wounding with the Morgul blade he even becomes slightly dematerialized: there is a certain transparency about him that can be detected by those with eyes to see like Gandalf. As a Catholic, Tolkien was taught that sexuality and spirituality are not compatible: note St. Paul's "I would that all men were like me." And Paul means not merely abstinent, nor celibate, but "chaste": not even thinking about sex. This was the ideal of the "spiritual" life that Tolkien lived with on a daily basis from childhood--between the ages of 12 and 21 he was even raised by a priest. We can say, then, that the kind of otherworldliness we find in Frodo is a defining characteristic of "spirituality" as Tolkien understood the term. "My kingdom is not of this world," said Jesus, and neither is Frodo's, in the end.

But all that Frodo might have had in this world he bequeaths to Sam. And unlike his ethereal master, Sam is . . . well, Sam is downright earthy. Sure, he's a gardener, but that in itself should clue us in to the central role fertility plays in his life. We've already seen the overtly sexual nature of his temptation by Galadriel, and his powerful reaction to it. We know exactly with what Galadriel is tempting him--or rather, with whom--and we also know he's been fantasizing about this certain someone throughout the story. He thinks about her in Lorien, he thinks about her in Mordor--on the very slopes of Orodruin!--and no sooner is he back in Bywater than he's getting his mack on with Rosie Cotton before the War of the Ring is even over. Shy stumble-bum he may be, but he knows what he wants. And he wants it bad.

And Galadriel knows it. Which is why her gift to Sam is particularly dirty. Literally.

"G" marks the spot

It's . . . dare I say it? . . . a box. Her box. It's even got a G-rune on it. A box full of dirt. A bunch of dirt with a seed in it. A white seed. And Sam knows just what to do with his seed. After marrying Rosie, that is. Forget the darn mallorn--and remember that Sam and Rosie end up with thirteen children.

La vala Manwe! No more! I can't go on . . . it's all too smutty . . . her box . . . oh, the humanity . . . parents, tell your children. . . .

And how does our "gardener and lover of trees" respond to Galadriel's act of generos- ity? "Sam went red to the ears and muttered something inaudible." So, I imagine, have many young men upon receiving the gift of a lady's . . . box.

Galadriel devotes more time to describing Sam's gift (and telling him what to do with it) than she spends on any other gift she bestows--with one exception. That exception is the entire (paperback) page she spends on her gift to Gimli. And at first she doesn't even know what she's going to give him. But if the previous interaction between the Elf-queen and the Dwarf is any guide, we know that--in the immortal words of James Brown--whatever it is, it's got to be funky. . . .

to be continued

Greenhorny

#16 in the series, "J.R.R. Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

"Vagina." Given what we know about that Tolkien fella and his devilish hidden agenda, that was a no-brainer, wasn't it?

OK, so the sheath that Galadriel gives Aragorn is magical. (Aren't they all?) "The sword that is drawn from this sheath shall not be broken or stained even in de- feat," she says. We should hope not--ouch! But precisely whose "sheath" is the Elf-queen offering? Not her own, certainly. A clue to the identity of this Mysterious Lady lies in the other gift Aragorn receives. For the future king of Gondor is the only member of the Fellowship to receive more than one gift, and his rank isn't the reason. But enough of these sexual speculations--let's have some real fun and talk Elvish.

In Quenya, Galadriel's native language, there is a complex of words associating youth, femininity, sexuality, and the color green. Here they are, quoted from the "Etymologies," an essay on Elvish word-origins published in volume 5 of "The History of Middle-earth," The Lost Road: 

 
To get technical for a moment: all of these words begin with a letter of the Elvish alphabet (vilya, tengwa #24) that was originally pronounced "w" but which in the Third Age was pronounced "v" at the beginning of words. It was still a "w" after a consonant: note the Elvish spelling of the word "Arwen." The typeface used here is "Tengwar Annatar" designed by Johan Winge, and is in my view the most elegant and legible of Elvish typefonts. It is one of many such; Elvish typography is sufficiently sophisticated that there is a standard keyboard layout, and there is a proposal before the International Standards Organization to make Tengwar a Unicode character set. I have supplied the translation "virgin" for vene as it is implied in the source. By "blended with" Tolkien meant that the words ven and vende derived from different forms in proto-Elvish (reconstructed roots *GWEN and *WEN) but are felt to be related words by "modern" speakers--one of whom, we may assume, is Galadriel.

Miss April from the Tolkien Desk Calendar, 1980

Armed with a knowledge of Elf-speech, we can see Ara- gorn's second gift in a new light. It's a rock--a green rock. Specifically, it's the "Elessar," a sacred jewel with healing powers. The Elf-queen has foreseen that this stone should come to Aragorn at this time, for "Elessar" is "the name foretold for you." Or so she says. The stone itself--or rather, its color--says some- thing more. Linked with the sheath and the various ideas connected with green, the Elessar lets Aragorn know he has just received a third gift, the most valuable the Lady of Lorien has to give. Though Aragorn denies it--"it is not yours to give me, even if you would"--Galadriel is the eldest remaining member of her clan, and her opinion on a certain matter pertaining to her clan's youngest member should carry considerable weight. To put this more bluntly, Galadriel has a moral (if not strictly legal) right to control Aragorn's access to the one thing he wants above all else: Arwen. Or rather: Arwen's venya venesse.

Pinky by the Brothers Hildebrandt

By providing Aragorn with not one but two symbols of Arwen's sexuality, Galadriel blesses the union of the two lovers and signals her approval. The mes- sage is not lost on the scene's other speaker of Quenya, for Aragorn immediately draws the connection: "For the gifts that you have given me I thank you, O Lady of Lorien, of whom were sprung Celebrian and Arwen Evenstar. What praise could I say more?" The stone itself actually belongs to Arwen, who got it from her mother and she from hers; Arwen has entrusted it to Galadriel to give to her beloved should he pass through her realm. It is not just the Elessar itself but the women it came from and the blessing it symbolizes that evokes Aragorn's outpouring of gratitude. We know he needs Arwen, but he needs Galadriel, too. For Aragorn, like so many characters in the Lord of the Rings--and like its author--is an orphan, and the Lady of Lorien is the nearest thing he has to a mother.

Once again we see that a close reading of Tolkien's work--including obscure texts typically assumed (by, say, The New York Times Book Review) to be of interest only to geeks--reveals that the tweedy Sweet Old Dear of back-cover photographs is more than he seems. You don't have to play it backwards, and it won't screw up your turntable, yet "playing" the text of the Lord of the Rings the right way reveals messages far more interesting (and useful) than "I bury Paul." And if vaginas and virgins aren't sweaty enough for you, there's still what Galadriel does to that poor hobbit. . . .

to be continued

Of Bottles, Bows, and Belts

#15 in the series, "J.R.R. Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

Of the various gifts Galadriel bestows upon the members of the Fellowship of the Ring on their last day in Lorien, the easiest to interpret symbolically are those given to the "mid-ranking" characters, the ones we've already mentioned as being the least interesting (so far). Legolas receives a bow; Merry and Pippin each receive a silver belt. These gifts are physical embodiments of a gift Galadriel herself possesses: prophecy. Though she denies her own ability--"all foretelling is now vain"--everything she predicts for the various members of the Fellowship eventually comes true. Tolkien surely intends for her to be seen as (among other things) a kind of sybil or oracle. 

By Inger Edelfeldt, from "Tolkien's World"

Through her strong sense of foresight Galadriel perceives that Legolas may need a weapon powerful enough to deal with a flying Nazgul. So she gives him a bow-- and a week later he uses it to shoot down one of the dreaded winged riders. The Elf-queen also perceives that the two hobbits may one day need to take up lead- ership roles in their native culture, and so--expercising a traditional royal preroga- tive--she elevates them to the nobility. In England even today there are "belted earls," aristocrats whose badge of office is a special belt. After Merry and Pippin return home the Shire will have a similar custom, at least in their case. Matured by their journeys, the two will become "noble": not just the somewhat spoiled sons of the landed gentry they'd been when they started off, but leaders who rally their people against their enemies. "Lordly," their folk will call them--even, presumably, those who care little for elves.

(To those of us who grew up in lands where patents of nobility are unconstitu- tional, it may be easily forgotten that once upon a time nobles really were war-leaders and not just parasitic anachronisms. And the tradition of aristocratic leadership hasn't entirely died out. During World War II a teenage noblewoman remained in London during the Blitz and made radio broadcasts rallying the British against the Nazis. Later she enlisted in the army and served in uniform as a truck-driver and mechanic. That young woman's courage, aplomb, and willingness to serve are still remembered in Britain today, though the noblewoman--a certain Princess Elizabeth--is now an old lady, and has a number "II" after her name.)

I'm going to pass lightly over Frodo's gift of the star-glass. This is not because it is too difficult to shoehorn it into my interpretive scheme, but because it's too easy: too easy to claim that the phial is a uterus and the white fluid within is seminal. I don't believe Tolkien had the slightest intention, conscious or not, of making the Phial of Galadriel a symbol of anything remotely sexual. His good buddy C.S. Lewis was famous for his critiques of Freudianism, and Tolkien certainly shared his disdain for Freud's one-dogma-fits-all approach. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; sometimes a glistening whiteness is just a star.

But the remaining gifts--those bestowed on Boromir, Aragorn, Gimli, and Sam--are definitely cigars in the Freudian sense. Given Boromir's sexual insecurities, is it not fitting that Galadriel gives him a chastity belt? It's a gilded belt, true, and without lock or key, yet unlike those of Merry and Pippin this belt ele- vates nothing, Indeed, it seems intended to prevent an elevation or two. It is a tactful reminder that our macho war-chief has a bit of a problem in the vicinity of his hips, and that he might want to get a grip, as it were. This belt, in other words, is also a prophecy-- and a warning. The only other time we hear mention of it is when Boromir is arrayed for his funeral.

The good translation.

I suspect many people have asked, "Why the heck does Galadriel give Aragorn a scabbard for his sword? Does it even need one? It doesn't seem . . . well, a fancy enough gift for the occasion. Shouldn't he have something a bit more . . . magical?" Well asked, o perspecacious reader! How to read this riddle aright? Let's do it the way Tolkien himself might have done it were he in our position: by focus- ing on the etymologies. Note that in the text the scabbard is actually called a "sheath." The use of this word instead of "scabbard" is significant. "Scabbard" is the more technical of the two terms; it is only used of coverings for swords and knives, and is only attested as far back as the Middle English period. "Sheath," on the other hand, goes back to Old English, which despite being a more generic term would still make it the more attractive choice to a dedicated fan of Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon such as Tolkien.

But there's another possible motive influencing the choice of "sheath" here: Latin. Tolkien's grandson Simon tells us that his gaffer was mighty put out by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, disliking in particular its imposition of the vernacu- lar Mass. In fact, he disliked it so much that when responses were called for in church he would respond (loudly) in Latin rather than English, to Simon's intense chagrin. Tolkien appears to have been as fluent in Latin as he was in Anglo-Saxon, and there are Latin influences present in Quenya, the language of the High Elves. So the Master of Middle-earth was certainly aware of the Latin trans- lation of the English word "sheath." Are you? I'll give you a minute here to run off to that pile of books you keep for bathroom reading and dig out your Latin dictionary. On your mark . . . get set . . . go!

to be continued

"Womanly Words, Manly Deeds"

Happy 119th birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien!

What is a four-letter word that ends in "K" and means "intercourse"? Talk.

Followers of this blog should know by now that if you want the kind of "good time" promised in countless public restrooms thoughout the land, don't bother calling that number--just reach for the works of that sultan of smut, J.R.R. Tolkien. Who was the first to give us sex between and an Elf and a Dwarf, eh?

As we saw in our last installment, Galadriel, in her role of Mysterious Lady of the Deep, Dark Forest, has been busily seducing the local Young Man Seeking His Fortune, the Young Man in question being Gimli son of Gloin. And she seduces him--in the very nicest sense of that somewhat disreputable word "seduce"--by speaking to him in his native tongue. Khuzdul is a secret language, never spoken around strangers; to learn it one must either be a Dwarf or be extraordinarily cozy with them. Even Gandalf must rely on Gimli "for words of the secret Dwarf-tongue that they teach to none," yet here's this Elf-lady, of all people, speaking words that prove (a) her respect for Dwarvish culture, (b) her excellent sense of timing, and (c) her desire to make Gimli feel good.

The scene of Gimli's encounter with Galadriel, up a tree without a grappling hook, is a sex scene and nothing less. Granted, there's no T & A: no one breaks a sweat, creates a fetus, incubates a disease, or mentions word one about con- doms. And the sensuality of the scene seems to have flown beneath the radar of most critics: despite a deep understanding of his work, even Ursula Le Guin--inheritor of Tolkien's mantle as Grand Master of Fantasy-- asserts in her essay "The Staring Eye" that "there's no sex" in the Lord of the Rings. Perhaps in a world where girls barely into puberty wear bombshell bras, it is unreasonable to expect people to recognize sexuality unless it's expressed Nicky Minaj-style. (Though I daresay there's plenty of folks who know more about the subject than I do, including the esteemed Ms. Le Guin.)

An image from Rolling Stone, slightly modified

Not that i'm knocking knockers here, but could sexual expres- sion have other, more subtle options? There must have been such options in Tolkien's day, even if men back then weren't supposed to talk about their own underwear let alone anyone else's, and women were sup- posed to lie back and think of England and not of orgasms. Yes, sexuality was suppressed during the Edwardian era, yet truth will out, and Tolkien--who grew up during the reign of Victoria the Virginal and Edward the Uptight, and who spent his adolescence under the care of a priest--got his ya-yas out anyway, through the medium of his writing. There's no escaping the erotic imagery of seduction in LotR, of one party sweet-talking away the other's resistance, of penetrating and being penetrated. Like Galadriel's beauty--or Gimli's--it's there to be found. If you're willing to find it, that is, and if you're willing to accept what you find when you do.

And if you want to make a hard and fast distinction between metaphorical/symbolic/sublimated/displaced lust versus what you'd see on RedTube, go right ahead. I'd only point out that without the metaphorical kind the more physical kind would never get off the ground, or on it. Neither we nor the Dwarves are animals: we don't go around smiffing each others' butts and then presenting. We need a bit of foreplay. And that almost always means . . . talk.

Note Islamist date-palm and crescent moon.

(The title of this installment is taken from the official motto of the great state of South Carolina. The words were originally chosen to be blatantly sexist, but let us be charita- ble. Afterall, words are deeds--as any politician or preacher will tell you--and deeds can relate to each other in a kind of syntax. So perhaps the good citizens of South Carolina are trying to tell us that the ideal human being is a hermaphrodite. Put that on RedTube and smoke it!)

Alright--after all this argument you're finally willing to accept the idea that there really is s-e-x in the LotR, that Tolkien had something to say about sexuality, and that for reasons cultural and personal he chose to say it in the language of the fairy-tale. But let's face it: his "sex scenes" aren't very . . . well . . . sexy. It's not as if they're, um, arousing or anything. If we're going to say that Tolkien is writing pornography, shouldn't we at least see a little cleavage?

Cleavage, you say? Very well! Rest assured, o reader, that at Welcome to Weird World what you want is what you get! But you might also want to be careful what you pray for. It's easy to forget that "cleavage" can be something created by the scrunching of a pair of breasts--or it can be something created by the slashing of a sword. . . .

to be continued

Perp Walk

#11 in the series "J.R.R. Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

So far we've seen Galadriel's sexual energy encountering--and recoiling from--two of the eight remaining members of the Fellowship. We've got six to go: rather a crowd. Tolkien could line each of them up in front of the elf-queen and give us their reactions (and hers) one by one. Instead, like any good porn-writer he streamlines the process so we can get to the good stuff quicker. What's the "good stuff"? Why, sex, of course: finding out who gets down and dirty with Galadriel.

 To understand Tolkien's streamlining strategy we must divide the Fellowship into two groups: the hobbits and the non-hobbits. Such a division is justified thematic- ally and stylistically, and not just in this instance but throughout the story. The hobbits talk and act very differently from their larger Fellows--they're more like "us," and are thus the point-of-view characters, the reader's portals into the tale. We see the Big People mostly from the outside, as sets of traits and behaviors; the hobbits are made more familiar, easier to identify with. It's hard to visualize Aragorn stopping by the side of the trail to piss on a tree, whereas it's easy to imagine beer-swilling Sam anointing more than his fair share of shrubbery.

Within each group there is, as they said in the Middle Ages, a place for every man, and every man is firmly in his place. Hierarchy is everywhere in Tolkien's writings: we find it even in the Fellowship, his closest approach to egalitarianism. Aragorn as king is the highest ranking non-hobbit; he is followed by Boromir (son of the ruler of Gondor), Legolas (son of a minor elf-king), and finally, as offspring of a mere nobleman, Gimli. The hobbits are similarly arranged, with Frodo as a member of the landed gentry at the top, Merry and Pippin as sons of prominent families next, and lowly Sam, our only peasant, at the bottom.

To the modern nose this insistence on rank smells . . . well, rank. But Tolkien has uses for hierarchy beyond a fondness for medieval sociology. In the Lord of the Rings rank serves, among other things, to structure the movement of libido, to direct our attention to where it "should" go. For example, Aragorn may have sexual access to Arwen only after he has become ruler of Gondor and Arnor, i.e., when he has a rank more or less equal to her own. (I'm assuming, of course, as Tolkien would have, that both are virgins at the time of their marriage.) Knowing a character's rank sets up certain expectations as to whom he or she will find attractive, as well as telling us that when such expectations are NOT met we should sit up and take notice.

And when we first meet Galadriel what we notice is that libido, like Jesus, prefers the hot and the cold. Erotic energy is attracted to extremes, which is why in the scenes featuring the elf-queen the least active, least interesting characters are those in the middle of the Fellowship's hierarchies. Legolas is, in his own words, "an Elf and a kinsman here," making him too incestuously close for comfort, so he's out. Merry and Pippin have not yet developed enough personality within the story to be interesting in much of any way, erotic or otherwise; their time as characters has not yet come. Boromir's macho makes him, ironically, off limits.

As for the extremes, Aragorn is easily identified as also being too close to Galad- riel (although in another way). Frodo as Ringbearer is in a position somewhat like that of Boromir: he's brought evil into Lorien with him, though it's not of his own making as Boromir's is. Boromir in fact grills Frodo about what Galadriel offered to tempt him (thus diverting attention from his own guilty conscience), but Frodo--unlike Sam or Merry--refuses to divulge even the tiniest hint. And this is a hint that


Frodo's sexuality is not going to be an issue. We'll see later what kind of relationship he establishes with the Mysterious Lady; for now we'll treat him as eliminated from consideration.

We've already seen how poor Sam reacts to the elf-queen's telepathic probing, and can easily deduce the sexual nature of his temptation. In fact, his reaction is so powerful we can imagine Sam running away from his own erotic instincts at full speed; the energy of eros is so strong that, though it would like to alight, it can't keep up with its moving target. (At least, it can't until Rose Cotton catches up with it.) For now, at any rate, Sam's also out of the picture.

So who do we have left? Who in the Fellowship does the Lady of the Golden Wood actually bond with on a sensual level? To put it more baldly: who's gonna get a piece of Galadriel? Here's another hint: it's not going to be her husband. . . .

(to be continued)

Confessions of a Macho Man

(#10 in the series, "J.R.R. Tolkien: Smut Peddler!")

Boromir is one of many characters in the Lord of the Rings well worth watching, and not just because he's interesting in his own right. For as we observe in the reactions of certain people to Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton, Boromir walks among us. And not just the part of him that is envious of Aragorn and craves power and glory. I mean the other part: the part that can't stand even the thought of a powerful woman.

To be fair, Boromir's macho isn't entirely his fault. His mother died when he was young; he's spent his adulthood slaying monsters; his father has pushed him into the role of Gondor's savior. With this kind of background, it's small wonder he's never had the time or inclination to get to know women. (Hard for a fella to get a date while drenched in orc-blood.) Certainly the cause of True Love has gotten little encouragement from Boromir's stern, grim father, still in silent mourning for his long-dead wife. And Boromir's hostility to Galadriel is more than a response to deeply buried sexual drives, for he's so gynophobic he turns up his nose even at the harmless "old wives" who tell nursery-tales of Fangorn Forest.

It's interesting how many characters in the Lord of the Ribngs lead double lives. Gandalf appears to be a frail old man; Saruman appears to be kindly and wise; Aragorn appears to be a wandering scruffy. And Boromir? Listen to this descrip- tion from Appendix A: "Boromir was a great captain, and even the Witch King feared him. He was noble and fair of face, a man strong in body and in will." Sounds just like our man . . . except that this is a description of Boromir the First, a Gondorian general who died a half a millenium before the War of the Ring. Our Boromir is the second man in Gondor's history to bear the name, as Aragorn is the second Chieftain of the Dunadain to bear his. And what our Boromir shares with his long-ago relative--in addition to his qualities as a military leader, and a father also named Denethor--is suffering. "He received a Morgul-wound in that war which shortened his life, and he became shrunken with pain and died twelve years after his father." Boromir I is maimed physically; number II suffers emotional stunting, as Denethor II  seemed to foretell when he named him.

Boromir has a wounded heart, and it is this that makes him the outwardly tough, inwardly vulnerable man that he is. Macho doesn't come out of nowhere, as some feminists (Andrea Dworkin, Valerie Solanas, even Ursula Le Guin) seem to believe. Nor is it the fault of ideology, or the Y chromosome, or "testosterone poisoning" (an expression first made-up--as a joke--by Gloria Steinem). Macho has an emotional cause, and that cause is whatever awful thing it is that makes a man give up on love. Our intuitive knowledge of this cause is what allows us to feel sorry for Beowulf, Boromir, and Quaritch, even as we see that character is destiny and that their destiny is doom. Boromir's death-scene is genuinely moving, Aragorn's tears for him realistic and right (as Marion Zimmer Bradley recognized). It is easy to imagine Tolkien himself witnessing more than one such scene in the trenches of World War I. As Boromir floats off on his final journey we grieve with his companions, and wish him well.

And we can rest assured that his final journey will have a happy destination. Boromir's soul has been saved--and not just by his sacrifice for the sake of the hobbits. Aragorn is the last descendant of the kings of Numenor, who alone among the Men of Middle-earth had the authority "to call the One to witness." As the One is, in effect, the God of the Catholic Church, the kings of Numenor and their descendants are, in effect, priests. Thus, Aragorn is empowered to hear Boromir's confession ("I tried to take the Ring from Frodo. I have failed.") and to grant him absolution ("You have not failed. Be at peace!"). Boromir is well aware of Aragorn's status as priest-king (though those who haven't read Unfinished Tales may not be), and he dies with a smile, his tormented soul at ease at last.

Boromir's reactions to Galadriel are "realistic" in the sense the term is usually employed in modern fiction, and can serve us as a critique of the wall of separa- tion between "realistic" and "fantastic" literature. I've spent extra time on the poor guy to demonstrate that Tolkien is as ready to confront an Awful Truth of human sexuality as anyone working in the so-called mainstream--to wit, the Awful Truth of gynophobia. It's an truth all of us living under patriarchy have to confront at some point, and the guidance that Tolkien offers us on this subject can be profoundly useful. That the son of Denethor carries an aurochs horn and fights cave-trolls should not obscure for us a simple fact: Boromir is the kind of guy we could meet on any street, on any day.

Or, for that matter, the kind of gal. For if current events are any guide, men aren't the only ones who think we're supposed to be impressed by their ability to field- dress a moose. . . .

to be continued

Macho Macho Man Man

(# 9 in the series, "J.R.R. Tolkien: Smut Peddler!")

Stephen Lang, the actor who did such a great job portraying Colonel Quaritch in Avatar, gives us a brilliant insight into his character's psyche. In an interview in Energy Times (Nov/Dec 2010) he says, "[Quaritch] comes [to Pandora] as a victim. He's been dehumanized. . . . In many ways [he] presents some very fine qualities . . . but it got so twisted in these filthy wars back on Earth that part of him has just been burned away, that part being is soul. What's left is pure function." Lang--who specializes in playing tough guys--has hit the nail on the head. "Pure, soulless function": a superb description of the Colonel, of Beowulf, of your typical orc . . . and very nearly of Boromir. It's also a perfect description of others less overtly violent, such as Avatar's corporate lackey . . . or of those Republican congressmen mindlessly forcing the government to give worthless tax breaks to billionaires. It appears the Nazgul walk among us as well.

"I don't think much about why I do things."--G. W. Bush

(A buddy of mine once had the opportunity to see a Nazgul up close and personal. He said that even from 100 feet away he could feel the Black Breath; it literally made him sick to his stomach. Pretend Nazgul have cool-sounding names like "Gothmog" and "Angmar." The real thing had a more prosaic name: George W. Bush.)


The Colonel's lack of soul is why it makes such perfect, poetic sense when Neytiri puts an arrow into his heart: she's only making up for what he's missing. Since he won't let female power enter him, he'll have to have it inserted by force. And to reinforce the message, Neytiri gives him two arrows: one for her beloved father, and one for the courageous young war-chief who would have been her mate. The Colonel dares to penetrate the Bush with evil in him--and the Bush penetrates right back.

For there is no evil in this Bush unless a man brings it there himself. Then . . .
let him beware.

(It would seem a lot of fantasists like tall women. Neytiri is nine feet tall . . . so how tall is Galadriel? According to Tolkien's precise calculations, she's two Elvish rangar, which works out to be 6 feet 4 inches. The Lady of the Blue Wood and the Lady of the Golden are both tree-top lovers, and in more ways than one.)

Lang's insight into the character of Miles Quaritch lends a depth to his portrayal that aligns it with the fairy-tale tradition. Lang, Tolkien, James Cameron, and the unknown author of Beowulf all agree: the warrior virtues, noble in themselves, are not enough --not for the man, and not for his people. They also agree that a society run by warriors is likely to function more like a baboon-troop--or a modern corporation--than a healthy human community. Through the artistry of his portrayal, Lang shows us both the seductive charm and the deadly brutality of the warrior, and helps us to see (as Tolkien's Boromir does) the fatal flaw at the heart of the warrior mystique: the warrior is not a whole man. There's a hole in the middle of him where his heart should be. To be a whole man the warrior must Seek His Fortune . . . and heed the advice of the Lady when he finds her. Jake does--and awakens to a new life.

(Incidentally: those are Lang's real muscles, not CGI. He worked out for eight months to get the right build for the role.)

It's important for our appreciation of the Lord of the Rings that we realize Boromir is a "good guy." He's not there just to be shadow to Aragorn's light, or to represent Aragorn's "shadow side," or even to show us what Aragorn might have become if the Ring had gotten to him. Boromir is a tragic hero in Aristotle's sense, a good man with a character flaw that leads to his undoing. But here's another way in which Tolkien gives us more than we might have bargained for at the fairy-tale bazaar: Boromir has two such flaws. He's no ordinary macho man--he's a macho-macho man. But there's one more thing about Boromir--and about Aragorn--that even the Village People may not have known. . . . .

(to be continued)

Teeth, Tolkien, and "Twilight"

Ask anyone who's read them what they find least satisfying about the Twilight novels and they'll likely tell you it's their utterly unrealistic view of human sexuality. You get a couple of teenagers making goo-eyes at each other for several hundred pages, and now the elders are out of town, they're in the bedroom together, half their garments have gone AWOL, and . . . nothing happens. First base, second base . . . the baseball diamond has gone straight-edge. Bella and Edward don't even have the condom discussion. Perhaps vampires are unusually sensitive to fluoride? 

Most of us assume that if you put a straight man and a straight woman in a room together, extraneous factors being ignored, it's likely there will be at least a tiny smidgin of sexual tension between them. And if there's more than two people in the room, or if the would-be sex object is for some reason inap- propriate or unavailable, then--like a fly bumping around in a bottle until it finds a way out--the sexual energy will hover until it finds someone (or something) it can fix on. Until it does, everyone involved is going to feel the buzzing of frus- trated libido.And as any human being who has ever had wisdom teeth can tell you, libido doesn't like being frustrated.

Tolkien knew this as well as anyone--even though he wore dentures. (Which, incidentally, he liked to give instead of money to unattentive cashiers at the grocery store, just to see their reactions.) Being a professional medievalist, the Master of Middle-earth tended to adopt at least some portions of the medieval world-view and its sundry symbolic displacements, so that his own sexuality, even in his private letters, tends to be skillfully and modestly hidden. Carpenter's Biography speaks of Tolkien's intense need for privacy in regards to his marriage, and there's no reason for us to speculate on the nature of his relationship with Edith. Unlike her beloved husband, SHE was no smut-peddler.


So here I'll just mention the simple fact that J. R. R. Tolkien was more than a scholar. Yes, he was a devout Catholic who got up at the crack of dawn to ride his bicycle five miles to church so he could take communion before early Mass. . . . but he was also a man who, after the birth of his fourth child, had to sleep in a separate bed because getting his wife pregnant again might have killed her. (Afterall, being a devout Catholic in his day meant he couldn't even discuss condoms, let alone use them.) Heavily sublimated as his feelings may have been, Tolkien knew about sex, and about sexual frustration. He also knew how to write about them.

Libido's need for a nesting place is especially obvious in literature. Authors can't just conjure up sexual imagery without doing something with the resulting emo- tional urgency, in either their characters or their readers. The "head" of pressure (as it were) must be released. Even the most skillful author can't make the pressure simply disappear, because they've used sex to arouse the reader's expectations, and it's answering the reader's "and then what?" that keeps them with the story. Copulation needn't be the only way to release the tension, but the power of libido must in some way be acknowledged, or the reader has been cheated. And I can't imagine that Mormon housewives approve of cheating any more than non-Mormon non-housewives--even when they're doing just that.

Tolkien has set up his own, fairy-tale equivalent of a bedroom scene when the Fellowship meets Galadriel. And (unlike some authors), he has no intention of cheating his readers. We've already seen how sexual tension is present, and thick enough to cut with a charmed knife forged by the Men of Westerness. The source of the tension is, of course, Galadriel; indeed, it's almost shooting out of her like a laser. But unlike the traditional fairy-tale, in which we get to see everything from only one point of view--i.e., the male's--Tolkien lets us also see the sexual energy through female eyes. That is: what is the goal of Galadriel's libido? Where should her desire come to rest? Who should she want?

According to the canons of the classical fairy-tale, the fixation object should be Aragorn. (Big Pointy Things--chick's dig 'em.) But as we've seen, Aragorn is engaged to be married. In a "modern" novel this would present no problem: gal and guy could do the wild thing or not, with plenty of soul-searching agony thrown in to make the encounter "realistic" (think Bridges of Madison Country.) But even within the "fantasy" setting Aragorn has a perfect reason to avoid Galadriel's libido, and she to avoid his: the elf-queen is the future king's future grandmother-in-law. Even in a "realistic" story this could be expected to dampen his ardor, and maybe even hers. (This isn't The Graduate.) So Aragorn, Big Pointy Thing notwithstanding, is out of the game. One down, seven to go. . . .

So who's next in line? It should be Boromir. Strong, handsome, courageous, noble, Boromir has the cajones to battle hordes of orcs yet is gentle enough to carry the hobbits piggy-back down from the Redhorn Pass. Well-connected, too: he's the heir of the cur- rent ruler of Gondor, and the leader of Gon- dor's army. There's just something about a man in uniform . . . particularly when he's got a great big horn. What's not for a (straight) woman to like?

Unfortunately for the cause of True Love, it's what Boromir doesn't like that's the problem. . . .

(to be continued)

Nice Hole!

Part Six in the series "J.R.R.Tolkien--Smut Peddler!"

Now our heroic Young Man has penetrated The Bush, along with his seven would-be-merry men. The seven buddies aren't in the script--the classic fairy-tale script, that is--but then, Tolkien isn't quite the "traditionalist" many would like to believe. Every so often he is wont to take fairy-tale tradition and mess with it. You could say that the whole of the Lord of the Rings is such a "messing": whereas in the typical fairy-tale the hero is trying to find the Magic Dingus, in Tolkien's tale the hero is trying to lose it. Such modifications of tradition--even reversals--come thick and fast when we get to the scenes featuring females. And no one in Tolkien's work is more female than Galadriel.

Ah: there she is! A vision of loveliness--if we so chose, and we do. But hold (as they say in Middle-earth)! The Mysterious Maiden we find in Lorien isn't your typical young virgin living in an enchanted forest with no visible means of support. For one thing, Galadriel isn't exactly young--unless the yonder side of 6,360 years old is considered "young." (I imagine immortals have a different standard for when a woman enters "cougar" territory.) And she's no virgin: she's married, and has been for literally ages. There's a vague implication that the lost elven-prince Amroth is Celeborn and Galadriel's son . . . and a quick check of Appendix B reveals that they also have a daughter named Celebrian--the wife of Elrond, and thus the mother of Arwen. And so . . . Galadriel, our supposed Mysterious Maiden of the Deep, Dark Wood, is a grandmother. Oops! So much for her maidenhood, and maidenhead.

It seems our fairy-tale expectations have been dashed on both sides of the gender wall: our Young Man is no gawky stripling, our Lady no blushing maiden. Yet at least part of the classic script IS adhered to: from the moment we meet Galadriel the sexual tension is there. How do we know this? Check out the fine gentlemen of the Fellowship for the classic symptoms: staring, stammering, blushing, head-hanging, general bashfulness, inuendo . . . and temptation.

One of the traditional functions of the Mysterious Lady is to serve as a temptress. Particularly in stories from Christian countries, the Lady acts to divert the hero from some appointed task such as finding the Holy Grail. And she does this, delicate and defenseless as she may appear, by wielding her sexuality as a weapon. The hero has his Pointy Thing, and she has hers. In LotR we see Galadriel perform exactly the function of temptress, using her telepathic powers to try to talk her guests into abandoning the Quest of Mount Doom. And the nature of the temptation is quite explicit. How "explict"? How do we usually use that word nowadays?

If you want to know [says Sam], I felt as if I hadn't got nothing on, and I didn't like it. She seemed to be looking inside me and asking me what I would do if she gave me the chance of flying back home to the Shire to a nice little hole with--with a bit of garden of my own.

Let's get this straight (and we are being quite hetero here): Galadriel gets Sam naked, and then she offers him a nice . . . little . . . hole.

A hobbit hole! That's what he means! Of course he does! Something to live in . . . I mean with furniture! And bathrooms! And a--oh, a "garden," is it? Yes, a garden. A nice, quiet, secluded garden. A nice fertile garden. A garden chock full of . . . roses. Maybe a particular Rose. Maybe the one who will eventually give her husband thirteen children.

You mean to tell me you've been reading the Lord of the Rings all these years and you didn't notice that "nice little hole"? Get thee to a Viagra factory!

Who'd'a thunk it? Samwise Gamgee, the baby of the bunch, is the only member of the Fellowship to have explict (very explicit!) sexual fantasies. And Aragorn, our Young Man With Pointy Thing, is the one least affected by Galadriel's wiles. But then, this isn't the only ironic twist on traditional themes that Tolkien pitches us. For despite his patriarchal upbringing, Tolkien was a lot more comfortable with strong women than many authors, traditional or modern. Though he was no feminist, the Master of Middle-earth seemed not to be disturbed that his female characters occasionally climbed down off their courtly pedistals and . . . wanted. Eowyn wants Aragorn, Shelob wants to eat up the world, Ioreth wants someone to listen to her, and Galadriel . . . she wants something, alright. She wants it bad. And it ain't the Ring of Power, bucko!

(to be continued)

"Oh, It's Me and My Crew, We've Come For a . . ."

Awhile back, I talked about how some critics have had fits trying to encompass the works of J. R. R. Tolkien within their theories. The following quote seems to me to capture some of their difficulties with The Lord of the Rings quite nicely:

"Far from redeeming . . .  not fully satisfy . . ." Are these cool and cautious phrases what one really wants to say about this novel? If the question seems odd, perhaps it is because modern criticism does not fully encourage one to rely upon personal feelings when discussing a book. . . . [This book] raises no great problems of interpretation: most literate readers are likely to share a common view of its meaning. By now its impact is also a matter of common knowledge, those who detest the novel offering evidence as forceful as those who admire it. But when it comes to estimating the value of [this work], a notorious silence overcomes the critics, perhaps because they sense that here neither approval nor dismissal matters as much as recording faithfully one's primary response.

If you've been following me so far (this being post #5 in the series) you've got an idea that fairy-tales, pornography, and the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien all have something in common, and that this something is sex. Tolkien knew fairy-tales like the back of his hand: such lore was part of his job as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. So of course he knew a dozen or more versions of Young Man Seeks His Fortune. And despite the way he's treated in various critical hagiographies, he knew about sex: he was a married man with four children, none of whom was conceived in a petri dish. As for his knowledge of pornography . . . let's just check out what he did with his own Young Man, and his Fortune, and find out for ourselves. But be warned! For in so doing we must now leave the cozy world of scholarly disputation and plunge headlong into a festering cesspool . . . of smut!

For behold! Here, in chapter 6 of Book II of LotR (that is, in the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring) we witness the approach of our handsome Young Man with his long, sharp Pointy Thing. And there right before him is the enchanted Forest, just begging to be--ahem--penetrated. So far, nothing you wouldn't find in Old Ethiopia, or Little Golden Books.

But hold! It seems our Young Man has brought some buddies along. Seven buddies, in fact. Whoa! That's not in the script! The story's gone kinky on us already, and we haven't even gotten to the penetrating part.

But then, this IS the modern world. As I pointed out in an earlier posting, modern writing just ain't the real thing unless it has at least one murder, orgy, cannibal feast, or rape. Faulkner's Sanctuary--what some regard as the first "modern" novel in this sense--was twenty years old when Fellowship was published, so the reader experienced in 20th-century literature should feel well-prepared to endure Tolkien's smuttiness. What's an eight-ply gang-bang compared to what happened to poor Temple Drake? And LotR is a fairy-tale, anyway: everything's symbolic. (Didn't Joseph Campbell say so?) We're not going to SEE anything. This isn't Cormac McCarthy we're reading here, let alone William Faulkner. Buck up, stalwart reader.

(Oh yes: the quote above, though it looks like it could be about LotR, is actually about Sanctuary. It's taken from Irving Howe's William Faulkner: A Critical Study, originally published in 1951, just after Faulkner got his Nobel Prize. And 1951 was the same year The Fellowship of the Ring was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.)

But hold, again! It seems that in Fellowship the fairy-tale script isn't just being ignored, but trampled into the dirt. For our Young Man isn't exactly young. In fact, he's 87 years old! And he's engaged to be married! And worst of all: only one of his seven buddies is even human! What kind of story IS this? Maybe it's just as well we don't get to see anything. Even on the "symbolic" level we're being set up for something rather beyond mere kinky.


And while we're preparing ourselves for the worst . . . have you solved my riddle yet? You're going to need the answer when we get to the part with the dwarf. . . .

(to be continued)

Into the Bush--And I Don't Mean Dubya

I read an anthropologist once who claimed that if you're parachuted into the middle of an isolated valley in, say, New Guinea, and you need to get in with the locals as quickly as possible, just strike up a conversation on any of these three topics: (1) death/disaster/dismemberment, (2) the wicked ways of those strangers yonder, or (3) sex. A quick glance at the typical blog (such as this one) reveals the wisdom of this advice. I'm "in" with you, correct? And not because of sliced-up eyeballs or those wicked strangers over the next hill.

The great theme of all story-telling---and Joseph Campbell wasn't the first to notice---is the human life-cycle. Whether it's a story about a young girl growing up, or of a young man finding a mate, or of a newlywed dealing with hostile in-laws, or of a child dealing with a parent's jealousy, or of anyone confronting sickness, old age, and death, the fairy-tales of every culture encode that culture's collective experience about the passage of the human personality through time. And some of the most popular stories in world literature are those that deal with the theme I'm calling "Young Man Seeks His Fortune."

Here's the standard scenario: a young man somewhere between puberty and full adulthood takes leave of his (often widowed) mother and, armed only with her blessing and a few ancestral gew-gaws inherited from his (usually vanished) father sets out in search of . . . well, the story-tellers are usually a bit coy about his goal. No sooner has our Young Man taken a dozen steps out the door, however, than he finds himself in a forest. A deep forest. A dark forest. A mysterious forest that professional mythographers writing for Parabola magazine would have us believe is a stand-in for the collective unconscious, but which an audience in, say, 25,000 BC Ethiopia---lacking a copy of The Portable Jung---would probably have thought was something more obvious. Namely, that universal non-archetype: The Bush.

A scary place, The Bush. It must be: otherwise, why does our Young Man need a sword? And if not a sword, some other ancestral gew-gaw from the long-and-pointy department. With the help of his Long Pointy Thing the Young Man penetrates into the farthest recesses of the deep, dark, scary Bush. And having reached the deepest, the darkest, the very scariest nook/corner/cranny/recess of The Bush, what does our stalwart Young Man discover?

(Cue voice of Goofy) Gorsh! It's . . . a lady!

And such a lady! Drop-dead gorgeous, of course. Tall, well-proportioned, pale . . . not a lot of sunlight in your typical deep, dark forest. Long hair, natch---unless she's from the Kalahari, or the Young Man is a young lesbian looking for the butch of her dreams. And why not? Fairy-tales can take place in the 21st century . . . and maybe they had butch-dyke goddesses back in 25,000 BC Ethiopia, too. Venus of Willendorf, anyone? At any rate, the story makes it perfectly plain the Mysterious Lady---or whatever we call her---can be any fill-in-the-blank sex-object you wish. The point isn't what she looks like (or even her gender), but where the story is leading us. And it isn't down the road paved with good intentions. Or maybe it is.

For it's inevitable (the story assures us) that something wonderful will happen: our Young Man is going to fall in love with the Lady of the Deep, Dark Wood. But to win even the finest love, as we all know, is a struggle. For the hand of his beloved, our Young Man must do battle. And Tolkien's young man? The Lady of his dreams is no ordinary Mysterious Lady. And he's no ordinary Young Man. And the Lord of the Rings is no ordinary fairy-tale. For Tolkien's young man isn't quite following the traditional fairy-tale script. Among other things, it appears he's brought along reinforcements. . . .

(to be continued)

The Monster (?) and the Critics

Mainstream critics have had a dreadful time trying to get a handle on Tolkien's work. Even a casual glance at the Lord of the Rings reveals an almost total lack of the characteristics that define serious, respectable writing in the 20th (and 21st) centuries. There's no ironic distancing, no agonized interior monologues, no verbal fireworks, no anti-heroes-with-heavy-emphasis-on-the-"anti," no monologues mascarading as dialogues (a la Hemingway), no convoluted symbolism. If your idea of literature is Jane Austin or Leo Tolstoy (and why not?) Tolkien is going to be a letdown. As one famous Austin/Tolstoy lover once wrote:

When it appeared in the library I avoided it. It looks dull, I thought. It's probably affected. It's probably allegorical. . . . Once I went so far as to pick up volume II and look at the first page. People were rushing around on a hill looking for each other. The language looked a bit stilted. I put it back.

And of course, any Tolkien fan knows of Edmund Wilson and his famous "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" or Katherine Stimson and her "Frodo lives--on borrowed time," or Isaac Asimov's "the One Ring is not wholly evil," . . . or Ursula LeGuin, who wrote the above review. (Or rather: beginning-of-a-review. How her essay "The Staring Eye" ends is another matter.)
    How can any aesthete with street-cred possibly take Tolkien seriously after reading a real heavyweight like Cormac McCarthy? Tolkien only hints that Gollum eats babies--in Outer Dark we get to see it done. Now there's serious writing for you! Yet in choosing non-modern modes of expression for his work, Tolkien appears to have abandoned modern themes as well. In addition to a lamentable lack of baby-eating, rape with corncobs, and sliced-up eyeballs, in LotR there is no alienation, no class warfare, no existential torment, no grappling with Important Social Issues of Our Time, no moral ambiguities. And certainly no sex.
     That last one is the clincher: the final proof of Tolkien's status as a lightweight. EVERY modern author writes about sex. You just can't have a modern novel without a potpourri of adultery, rapes, incest, bestiality, and--if the writer is a Mormon housewife--hormonal awakenings triggered by sparkly corpses. Someone once defined the plot of the Great American Novel as "aging college professor contemplates adultery." I never could figure out why the contemplative had to be a professor and not, say, a lawyer (Atticus Finch?) or a sharecropper. Aren't sharecroppers, well . . . hunkier?
     Refusal to "confront" adultery, or any other Awful Truth of human lust, is prima facie evidence of authorial cowardice: so say the Guardians of the Literary Canon. And--volunteering to face the cannons of World War One notwithstanding--a coward is what Tolkien must have been. For the Lord of the Rings contains no adultery, no rapes, no incest, no bestiality, and (a laita i Valar!) no sparkly vampires. Therefore, the Lord of the Rings contains not even the tiniest bit of sex.
     Or does it?
     I would like to suggest that that those who have found no evidence of sex in the Lord of the Rings are victims of either the Evil Fluoride Conspiracy or saltpeter in their mashed potatoes. For the Awful Truth is that Tolkien's masterpiece is loaded with sex, dripping and oozing with sex, pulsing and pounding and panting with sex, growling and grunting and groaning with sex, sex, sex! That's right: sex, my friends! SEX!! Stop looking at me like that!
     You don't believe me? Your primitive earth-minds cannot comprehend? Then let facts be presented to a candid world. . . .

(to be continued)