I’ve started re-reading the Rings trilogy, I’ve just finished Book One and I’m about to start reading the Council of Elrond.

This is my third time through this work, the first time I found it an incredible bore, the second time I was swept away by its overall plan and design. Now its the internal structure that has me fascinated, something I had pretty much missed the first two times, the strakes and stringers, the ribs and frames, decks and bulkheads. Oh yes, it still has problems, Tom Bombadil seems to do little to advance the tale, and the adventure of the barrow-wights seems utterly pointless, but the rest is starting to hang together beautifully.

The language, the tone, the entire atmosphere of the piece has a beautiful internal logic and scope that seems to make up for the elements of fantasy and magic I usually find so off-putting in this type od literature. Its like reading the Old Testament, you don’t have to be a tribal monotheist to grasp the grandeur of centuries rolling past. And even for the most unrepentant atheist, the New Testament has drama and a sense of urgency and inevitability to it. Its literature, that’s why it has survived.

The LOTR has it, when you step back and see it as one coherent whole. But now I’m starting to see it at the granular level as well, in the sentences and paragraphs. Even all the little riffs, the poetry and songs, all contribute to the weight of the whole, just like the ruins and monuments scattered about the landscape remind us that this is an ancient world with a history all its own, we are just scratching the surface.