Relocating To Elfland

In response to kindly complaints that my blog exhibits a degree of “attention deficit disorder,” that it rambles in a most desultory manner from thing to thing without a hint of what might be coming next, I should perhaps explain something about my reading habits.

I read twenty or more books at a time. The amount of stuff I have to keep up on won’t permit me to do less, and anyway, it suits me. When I get tired of one book, I put it down and go read a different book for awhile. When I’m tired of the second book, I go pick up a third, and when that no longer holds my attention, I return to book one. It so happens God gave me a brain that can keep track of what’s going on in all the books at once, so the “system” works for me, and it keeps me fresh. When I finish a book, I add a new one to the mix; or sometimes I add a new one just for the fun of it.

So much for apologia. Now to the latest addition.

I recently began reading Ralph C. Wood’s The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. I’m tempted to drop everything and blog through it, I’m enjoying it so much. Let me give just a couple snippets from his chapter on creation to whet appetites all round.

On the goodness of food:

“The hobbits are unabashed lovers of food, enjoying six meals a day. Not for them our late-modern and quasi-gnostic obsession with slimness. Tolkien would have agreed with the novelist Tom Wolfe’s lament that America is the country where no one can ever be too rich or too slender. The feast laid on at the Inn of Bree is a celebration of a homely and humble cuisine that features the gift of simple food rather than fastidious gourmandizing: ‘There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show’ (1.166). Even Barliman Butterbur’s name suggests the hops that he brews and the fat that seasons his cooking. Yet food is far more than physical sustenance for the Company; their shared meals also renew their spirits. Nowhere is their communal existence more fully realized than in their feasting.” (Wood, p. 24)

On the goodness of doing things slowly:

“Most of the free creatures in Tolkien’s world reverence the good creation with their craftsmanship. A craft requires lifelong discipline and laborious effort, unlike the instantaneous results of magic. Gandalf’s fireworks, by contrast, are matters of skill and labor rather than sorcery – even if his wand seems to be a supernatural gift. Once Gandalf suspects that Bilbo has come into possession of the magical Ruling Ring, he spends many decades in his quest to confirm his hunch. Repeatedly Tolkien stresses the importance of patience, the willingness to avoid the shortcut and the easy way, recommending instead the slow and arduous path that leads to every excellence. Anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly.” (Wood, p. 26)