“In a Hole in the Ground...
BY MELEK CANSU PETEK (ELIT/I)
…there lived a HOBBIT." This is one of the most well-known, most translated, and absolutely most loved book openings of all time.
It's simply brilliant. I'm sure you all know which book I'm talking about: "The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien. Since the movie is coming out soon (December 14, yayy!), I wanted to take this chance to talk about the book's pure brilliance. Besides, this year is the 75th anniversary of the first publication of "The Hobbit." So, happy birthday, Bilbo Baggins! Let's jump into our TARDIS (yes, I'm a geek, but "Doctor Who" is pretty cool - well, except maybe the graphic effects) and go back in time to 1929. Tolkien, as a professor at Oxford, is reading his students' papers. He gets bored (well, who wouldn't?) and writes this sentence on a piece of paper: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." Why hobbit? Why in a hole? I don't know. Neither does Tolkien. After that one-sentence accident, he forgets about it. Months pass, and winter comes. A favorite evening activity for Tolkien in his home at 22 Northmoor Road in Oxford is telling stories to his children. One night, he starts to tell a story about a small being with furry feet. He remembers that sentence and calls the creature a "hobbit." His kids are very attentive, to the extent that they object to even the smallest inconsistencies in the narrative, making comments like, "Last time you said Bilbo's door was blue, but now you say it's green!" The story grows bigger as his children do, and most of it is written by the winter of 1932; however, the only people who know about it so far are Tolkien's kids and C. S. Lewis, the author of "The Chronicles of Narnia." Tolkien writes the final chapters around 1936, and the book is published on September 21, 1937.
Needless to say, everyone loves Mr. Baggins! In fact, they love him so much that they want to hear other stories about him. However, Tolkien is pretty occupied with his lifelong work, "The Silmarillion," and thinks, "What more can hobbits do?", but in the end, he can't resist the pressure. He sends a letter to a friend saying, "I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits -'A long expected party.'" That was the very first chapter of "The Lord of the Rings."
I want you to stop here for a second and think what this means. He just writes a new story, only because of pressure, and that story turns out to be "The Lord of the Rings"?! Am I the only one amazed here? How can a person just write those books?
Okay, now you know why I love Tolkien, so let me explain why I love Peter Jackson and expect so much of this movie. One reason: he loves and cares about these books as a Tolkien fan would and should do. Even when he was shooting the LOTR movies, he referred to "The Hobbit" in ways that only a dedicated Tolkien reader would understand. I've seen the video blogs he put on this website, thehobbitblog.com, and they are simply amazing! Everything is so detailed, from the locations to the costumes, and this time we get to see Middle-earth in 3D! Even watching the trailer gave me goose bumps, especially the part where the dwarves start to sing: "Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old." Hearing the old tunes made me feel "There and Back Again," while this new song and other heroic melodies reminded me of the darkness that awaits us.
Oh, one more good thing! Martin Freeman is playing Bilbo Baggins. I like him quite a lot -- you might remember him as Dr. Watson from the "Sherlock" television series. Plus, we'll see Benedict Cumberbatch -- Sherlock himself!
-- as the dragon Smaug (I guess I'm watching too many British shows).
So, mark your calendars, my dear hobbitsess (gollum, gollum), and get ready to go on a journey that will change the history of Middle-earth. May your days be full of adventures! P.S: If you want to have a LOTR marathon before "The Hobbit" comes out, don't forget to give me a call, and I'll come running with my books and extended-edition movies!