With the launch of the film version of The Hobbit on the horizon, here, for your nostalgic pleasure, are the New Statesman‘s original reviews of The Hobbit, and our later – infamous – review of The Two Towers.
Books For Pre-Adults
Richard Hughes
The Hobbit. By J. R. R. Tolkein. Allen and Unwin. 7s 6d.
It is an even harder matter to recommend books for children than books for grown-ups; since children differ rather more widely from each other than grown-ups do. They differ in two dimensions, as it were. First, there is as much difference between one eight-year-old and another eight-year-old as there is between one forty-year-old and another forty-year-old; and reviewers who say “all children of six to eight will enjoy so-and-so,” might as well say “all adults of thirty-five to forty will enjoy thingummy-bob.” But, in addition to the difference between children of the age, there is the enormous difference between the same child at one age and another. What Uncle George approves at forty, he is unlikely to reject as wholly unpalatable at fifty; but Georgie gobbles at seven may be anathema to him at eight. Yet we conveniently label all the pre-adult ages “childhood,” as if they were all the same as each other! It is convenient, of course, to distinguish between “town” and “country”: but suppose a traveller on the Great Western Railway found all stations but Paddington simply labelled “Country,” and was expected not to mind in the least which he was dumped at!
This prefatory admonition is really directed as much as myself as to the reader: because I am tempted to say that all children will enjoy The Hobbit. That of course would be nonsense. But a very great many will; and though the ages for which it is written range roughly from six to nine years, you may expect very considerable extensions at both ends of that period. I myself have tried it on a four-year-old with marked success; and I have tried it on myself with market success also. The author is a professor of Anglo-Saxon; and because the author of “Alice” was also a professor the publishers are tempted to compare the two books. Actually, they are wholly dissimilar. There is no philosophical fantasy in The Hobbit. But they are alike in this, that in both cases the author is so saturated in his life-study that it waters his imagination with living springs. Professor Tolkein is saturated in Nordic mythology: so saturated that he does not rehash this mythology and serve it up at second-hand, rather he contributes to it at first hand: and thus his wholly original story of adventure among goblins, elves and dragons, instead of being a tour-de-force, a separate creation of his own, gives rather the impression of a well-informed glimpse into the life of a wide other-world; a world wholly real, and with a quite matter-of-fact, supernatural natural-history of its own. It is a triumph that the genus Hobbit, which he himself has invented, rings just as real as the timehallowed genera of Goblin, Troll and Elf.
One word of warning, though. Some adults may think parts of this book rather terrifying for bedside reading (although, however fearful the adventure, things always turn out right in the end). I myself think this caution is a mistaken one. For a child has a natural capacity for terror which it is next to impossible to curtail; and if you withhold from his such proper objects of terror as goblins, trolls and dragons, he will work himself just as frantic over an odd-shaped bed-post – or the over-hearing of such a frightful piece of news as that there is a barrister pleading in the court.
December 4, 1937
The Two Towers
Maurice Richardson
First, let me get Professor Tolkien out of my delusional system. The Two Towers is the second volume of his mammoth fairy tale, or, as some call it, heroic romance, The Lord of The Rings. It will do quite nicely as an allegorical adventure story for very leisured boys, but as anything else I am convinced it has been wildly overpraised and it is all I can do to restrain myself from shouting: Conspiracy! and slouching through the streets with a sandwichman’s board inscribed in jagged paranoid scrawl in violet ink: “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantilist invasion.”
It has been compared by Richard Hughes to Spenser’s Faerie Queen; by Naomi Mitchison to Malory; by C. S. Lewis to Ariosto. I can see why these three should have soft spots for its Norse and Celtic and mystical trappings. Mr. Auden has also gone into raptures over it. This, too, is not unexpected, because he has always been captivated by the pubescent worlds of the saga and the classroom. There are passages in The Orators which are not unlike bits of Tolkien’s hobbitry.
Of course one must be fair. It is not Professor Tolkien’s fault if he has been overpraised. Also, coming in half-way, it is difficult to judge his story as a whole. Still, one third (200,000 words, about as long as Anna Karenina) should be a representative sample. My first impression is that it is all far too long and blown up. What began as a charming children’s book has proliferated into an endless worm. My second that, although a great deal of imagination has been at work, it is imagination of low potential. The various creatures, hobbits, elves, dwarfs, orcs, ents (tree-wardens who seem at times to be almost walking vegetables) are nicely differentiated. Their ecology is described with scholarly detail and consistency. But not one of them has any real individuality; not one is a character. And though their dialogue is carefully varied, from colloquial-historical for men and wizards to prep school slang for hobbits and orcs, they all speak with the same flat, castrated voice.
I also find the story-telling (true, this is particularly difficult to judge in an isolated volume, and I should warn new readers who are going to begin here that they will find the synopsis barely adequate) confusing. Interest is diffused between too many characters and groups. In this volume the hobbits, Pippin and Merry, steal too much of the picture from the chief hobbit, Frodo, the original possessor of the Ring which all the fuss is about.
Naturally there are points in favour. The battle scenes are well done; the atmosphere of doom and danger and perilous night-riding often effective. The traditional mystical confusion attaching to a quest, and a struggle between good and evil (cf. Emerson’s “They reckon ill who leave me out. When me they fly I am the wings”) is neatly worked into the plot. And the allegorical aspect rouses interesting peculations. How much relation is there between the world—ruined, note—of the story and our own past, present and future? To what extent, if any, does the Ring tie up with the atomic nucleus, as well as symbolising whatever rings do symbolise? Are the orcs at all equated with materialist scientists? Nevertheless, the fantasy remains in my opinion thin and pale. And the writing is not at all fresh. Here is a sample—one of the rare descriptions of a female person in a story most of whose characters appear to be sexless:
…Grave and thoughtful was her glance, as she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Eowyn, lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood…
Observe the strange effect of pre-Renaissance literature on a distinguished scholar’s style; this might almost be Michael Arlen.
18 December, 1954
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