Zatera Ul

I finished reading a couple of very long books recently.

First was Christopher Tolkien’s History of the Lord of the Rings. This is actually a four-volume set about the textual history of the books. It was fascinating to look at how Tolkien wrote them: handwritten drafts on scrounged paper, in scripts ranging from delicate Elvish runes to indecipherable scrawls, often erasing a pencil draft and rewriting over it in ink. He also did very many experimental drafts playing with characters and plot, especially in the beginning. It took him a long time to nail down whose birthday it was, whether Bilbo or some young relation was leaving on the adventure, and which hobbits were going with him. Aragorn started out as a mysterious hobbit named Trotter, survived as a hobbit in the drafts all the way to the gates of Moria, and then was changed to a man. But he didn’t become Strider until so late in the writing that he had already been crowned King of Gondor. Also, Gandalf’s original reason for not being able to meet the hobbits at Bree was that he had been captured “by the giant Treebeard”. So all the characters, and even the geography, evolved greatly over the years of writing. Still, in many places, Tolkien came very close to the final text on the first writing. Another fascinating was seeing the Old English origins of many of the names, and all the work that he had to do to synchronize the different threads of the story.

Then, I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time. Mostly good, although I didn’t really appreciate the 55-page sermon on Objectivism that came after nine hundred-odd pages of reading. As a Christian, I do not agree with Rand’s assertion that all religion is a hoax to exploit the virtuous. Still, there’s much in it that’s applicable to our current economic situation; especially about the effects of disincentives to productivity.

Edited to add: Atlas Shrugged gave me some of the same feeling of horror at mindless evil that I have when I read Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. Also, the same satisfaction when the evil starts to tear itself apart.