Puttin' the Blog in Balrog VII - Fellowship of the Ring II: 6-12

Why yes, I'm numbering these like biblical citations now. Isn't that blasphenomenal of me? But let's be honest, Tolkien fans, at least all the ones I know and take seriously as Tolkien fans, probably know these books better than they know the Bible, like them better, and probably consider them more important, too. I know I do.

I took a day or two off from reading Fellowship of the Ring to clear my head and recover from a really bad idea that EssJay and I had, that being the Lord of the Rings cinematic drinkalong. It was loads of fun, but this original rule set definitely needs revision; most of us were half in the bag before Galadriel was done with the introduction. The deplorable results are on display for all to see at the storify that EssJay made.

But get a load of what we were working with:

I think we're definitely ditching the scenery porn rule. Some have argued that we were lumping too many shots that were there to establish location as scenery porn, but it's hard enough to keep up with the film, drinking, and tweeting, without spending extra cognitive effort on making that kind of nice distinction. I have spoken.

Now, on to the book, which we left in a very exciting and distressing moment. "Fly, you fools" indeed. And fly they do, spilling out into Dimrill Dale like so many cheezy poofs from a bag. The sound of the Orcs' drums is still echoing in our readerly ears as Aragorn grabs the spotlight for a small, gloomy soliloquy of the kind we'd more likely expect from Boromir: "Farewell, Gandalf... What hope have we without you?"

That little speech, and his follow-up, admonishing everybody to get going "We must do without hope" always puzzle me. For you see, Aragorn's nickname while he was growing up at Rivendell was Estel, which is the Sindarin (Elvish) word that means "hope, trust, a temper of mind, steady fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose". Aragorn literally is hope.

See? Even Deviant Art says so.

And no, I don't think I'm reading too much into this. Tolkien is all about wordplay and plumbing the depths of his made-up knowledge. This is not just a throwaway line. It's a paradox that Tolkien planted here, deepening Aragorn's character for those who care to explore it, and still displaying, in the rest of his speech, those very characteristics for which Aragorn/Estel was named; he, like everybody else, is grieving, but he knows they must keep to their purpose as Gandalf would have wished. They can grieve on the run. I love this.

I also love this essay, or collection of essays, which I found while considering this question. I've pointed to a lot of silly speculations and crackpottery in these posts; it's good to remember that there's a lot of good and serious work to explore as well. Scroll down to the section, though, on Aragorn and Sam, which insists that Aragorn had a different Elvish word in mind, amdir, "hope based on reason" or "looking ahead" and that solves the paradox. I don't buy that; it makes even less sense, unless one takes the contorted position that what Aragorn is saying that they must do without reasonable hope and blunder on unreasonably?

Might as well take off the question mark and ignore the word order a bit and turn it into a positive statement, emphasizing the hope: "What hope we have!" Late at night this time around was when I came around to this passage, and that's what my tired mind did. I thought it was very clever, and further found myself musing about how perhaps Aragorn was regretting the loss of Gandalf, sure, sure, but also maybe a little glad that they'd be doing without the crutch of Gandalf's magic and lore; it was good they were going to have to Manve/Elve/Dwarve/Hobbitve up and take care of things themselves, good practice for the day, not far off, where even if the quest succeeded, there wouldn't be much magic in the world anyway. They'd best get used to it.

Like I said, I was tired. But even awake and properly hydrated, I find myself still liking this idea. Perhaps we'll discuss it further in comments, here or elsewhere. But onward!

Once everyone has bucked up and is ready to go, we find that Gimli isn't quite done playing tour guide. I love the moments he gets here, from shaking his fist at the Misty Mountains* to getting everybody to stop for a moment so he can admire Kheled-zaram, Durin's stone, a crumbling stone column that marks the spot from which Durin, the eldest of the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, first looked into the Mirrormere, where his reflection showed a crown of stars over his head -- pretty much the first time any created being ever beheld his reflection. I always took this as a sort of (premature!) dawning of self-awareness in Middle Earth.** As origins-of-consciousness-stories go, I like this a hell of a lot better than Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit. But then, as I've already expressed above, I like Tolkien better than the Bible anyway.

But so Gimli wants to recreate that magic moment, and drags Frodo along to share the experience, but unlike Durin, all they see is reflected scenery. Frodo is going to have to wait until he meets Galadriel to get revelations from the water. More parallels!

And speaking of Galadriel, onward to Lorien! Ah, Lorien, the stump-humper's paradise, where the mallorn trees (I always think of them as like really nice aspens) leaf out, the leaves turn golden in autumn, but don't fall until spring when the new leaves push them off. Where everyone lives in a really nice treehouse and is absurdly good-looking and always has enough to eat. Where Legolas is welcomed as a distant relative and Aragorn is well-known and the hobbits are treated as an interesting curiosity but Gimli is the fart in church, because as far as the Elves are concerned, his people's delvings in Moria are what brought evil (back to) the world. Which, sure, the

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might still be sleeping way down deep under the mountains if no one had ever, ever mined there, but then the Elves wouldn't have all that beautiful mithril and other stuff that they prize. But their enjoyment of the goods the Dwarves have provided over the centuries is outweighed by their annoyance that there's a

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down there, so, in a leap of logic that leaves this reader tumbling into the Cracks of Doom every time, they accept Legolas' and Aragorn's and Frodo's vouching for Gimli, but... insist that he be blindfolded when they conduct everybody through Lorien. Gimli says fine, but then Legolas has to be blindfolded, too. Legolas has a fit about this but soon it's decided that, to be fair, everybody will go blindfolded through the prettiest scenery Middle Earth has to offer. Sadz.

Fortunately, the blindfolds come off in the evening for camp, and everybody gets to see a little of the fairest of all the lands. Haldir lets everybody see some views from up high, and Aragorn has suddenly cheered up: he is in the land of Arwen's mother's people (Galadriel is Arwen's grandmother) and pretty much everything in that land makes him think of her: "Here is the heart of elvendom on earth... and here my heart dwells ever" he says, twirling a yellow elanor flower in his fingers. Has he regained estel and amdir? I think he has. Or if he hasn't yet, he soon will. Kind of literally. In his own quest, to re-establish the realms of Gondor and Arnor and to rule over them (with Arwen at his side), if not in Frodo's.

But even there...

Ah, Lothlorien. I was stymied to imagine it as a child, and even into young adulthood. Really, it was only when I came across Simon Schama's amazing Landscape and Memory and learned about the wonderful Bialowieza National Forest in Poland and Belorus that I even came close. I dream about visiting there someday, and walking under the hornbeam trees and pendunculate oaks that are so big they have names, and maybe seeing some wisent (European bison) while I'm there.

I'm pretty sure Caras Galadhon is right past that stand of trees.

But I digress. Again. You're used to that by now, though, right? Anyway, I would totally live in a giant treehouse in that forest, as Galadriel and Celeborn do. Especially if it's as beautiful as it looked in the film. OMG so much eye candy you'll get eyeabetes, the films.

And here's where we get the first idea of just how old Aragorn is. "It is eight and thirty years of the world outside since you came to this land," Galadriel says by way of welcoming him. We later learn that Aragorn is around 80 years old at the time of these novels, but he looks about 38. But even at his true age, he's still "a sapling beside a beech of many summers" compared to Galadriel's granddaughter and his future queen, Arwen. Still a kid as far as Galadriel and Elrond are concerned, a mayfly. But since he's the one who is going to inherit pretty much all of the troubles of Middle Earth after the Elves all go to the Grey Havens, they do their best to take him seriously, and in turn Aragorn seems to gain new strength and vigor and, yes, hope from this visit.

But here I am blathering about Aragorn, when this bit should be all about Gimli, who is about to single-handedly begin to heal the breach between Elves and Dwarves by pretty much falling head-over-heels for Galadriel (as Frodo pretty much did for Arwen back at Rivendell). And about Gandalf, whom Galadriel and Celeborn just now learn has been lost; they were expecting the whole party, in that smug, knowing way that Elves do, but where's the Wizard? Even Galadriel, a fellow wielder of one of the Elvish Three, can't figure out what has become of him. The reaction elicited here is our first real and direct experience of just what a big deal Gandalf is and has been in this world; he's not just a wizard, not some Man who has learned a lot of magic and obscure knowledge, but a demigod, older than the Elves, older than pretty much everything we'll see except maybe the

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or Tom Bombadil.

And here Celeborn and Galadriel quarrel just a tiny bit. Celeborn is angry to hear what has become of Gandalf, says he was a fool to go to Moria and that had he known the Dwarves had managed to awaken the

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(because, you know, there's no way that all the goblins infesting the place could ever have managed that, right?), he would not have allowed any of the party to enter his land. Galadriel disagrees, points out that Gandalf never did anything needlessly, and tells Celeborn to chill about the Dwarf already, and observes that "Dark is the water of Kheled-zaram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nvla, and fair where the many pillared halls of Khazad-dum in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone." And then she looks down at Gimli, who is pretty much sporting wood to hear the prettiest lady he'll ever see rattling off words in his own language: "and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and there saw love and understanding." And he does his best to bust out some flattery of his own, basically flirting with Galadriel right in front of her husband. PLAYA!

It's a little-known fact that all Dwarves are pimps.

Then Galadriel goes on to tell them what they pretty much already know, that they've taken on the most dangerous quest ever but maybe they'll prevail if they stick together. And then she undresses everyone with her eyes, according to Sam. While that happens, everybody is given the choice between sticking with the quest and getting something they really, really want. Apparently everybody made the right choice, though, because on we go!

The company spends an unknown number of very pleasant days resting up in Lothlorien. Legolas starts bringing Gimli along on all of his outings around the place, I guess because if the Dwarf is good enough for Galadriel, he's good enough for Legolas. Freaking snob.

Meanwhile, the Elves sing lots of laments for Gandalf, and Frodo makes up one of his own, which is quite nice, and everybody is surprised, because this is the first time Frodo's shown any poetic tendencies, but hey, he did drink the Kvasir at TomBom's house, you guys! And then Sam dispenses wisdom like a firehose dispenses water. Oh, Sam!

And then the MIRROR. Where Galadriel reveals to Frodo that she has one of the Three Rings and lets him and Sam look into a big basin of water that is enchanted to show "many things", past, present and potential. It's hard now not to think of the first time Luke uses the Force to check up on his friends and freaks out over his vision when Sam looks and sees the Shire enslaved and burning (which "may not come to pass" Galadriel warns him, but we know that it does, not at Sauron's hand, but Saruman's, after he is expelled from his stronghold at Orthanc). Galadriel reminds him that "the Mirror is dangerous as a guide of deeds," though, and Sam is way smarter than Luke, thank goodness!

Meanwhile, Frodo gets a look at a figure who looks like Gandalf, except he's wearing white. Or is it Saruman? Or is it Gandalf?  No foreshadowing there!*** He also sees, among other things, Minas Tirith, the Grey Havens, Aragorn's Black Ship flying the banner Arwen is (at the time of this viewing) still making for him back at Rivendell****, and then, finally the vagina Eye of Sauron! Which can suck the Ring into the water that nobody's supposed to touch!

And then comes the famous bit where Frodo offers Galadriel the ring. Man, he sure does want to give it away. He has offered it to Gandalf, Aragorn, and now her, and none of them want it. Poor Frodo.

And finally the time has come to leave Lorien, but not without a boatload (hee) of gifts. Cloaks woven by Galadriel and her handmaids themselves. Brooches shaped like leaves. Lembas bread. Really good boats, so they don't have to decide for a while which side of the Great River to travel along -- one side goes to Gondor, where Boromir wants to go, and where Aragorn was going to go, too, except for losing Gandalf; the other to Mordor. Here the Fellowship first starts to weaken, for Boromir announces that he's going to Gondor "alone if need be." Oh, Boromir.

Nah, not alone. Pretty sure Mrs. Karenin will come with me.

And Sam, who has been fretting about not having packed rope from the beginning, is delighted that everybody also gets awesome Elvish rope! And reveals himself as a bit of a rope otaku, which sends the Elves over the moon! I love bits like this, you guys. Love.

And then everybody gets boating lessons, which, if you've never tried to handle a kayak or canoe, you want to know what you're doing before you're turned loose on the biggest, fastest river in the world, I think.

And then they're off. But wait, there's more! Like Ron Popiel, Galadriel can't stop sweetening the deal. She and Celeborn show up in a Swan Boat (Hello, Lohengrin!)****** and more gifts for everybody! Aragorn gets a sheath for Anduril, which will make the sword unbreakable from now on, and, after a bit of teasing, the Elessar/Elfstone*****, a beautiful green stone that has been fashioned into a brooch depicting a great eagle, that is an heirloom of Galadriel's and Arwen's family and for which Aragorn will be named when he is crowned. And Boromir and Merry and Pippin get blingtastic belts. And Legolas gets a new bow. And Sam gets the box of magic soil with which he will someday heal the Shire from Saruman's depredations, and a mallorn nut, with which he will replace the destroyed Party Tree. And Gimli gets a lock of Galadriel's hair, a shockingly intimate gift. I don't even want to get into her remarks about the skill of Dwarves with hands versus tongues. NO!******* And Frodo gets a phial that may or may not be one of the Silmarils, containing the light of Earendil's star. I've said elsewhere in this blog that I kind of buy it as a Sillmaril, but right here Galadriel as much as claims to have made it, trapping the starlight in some water from her mirror. So I guess if it's not an actual Silmaril, it's a good Silmarilcrum.

And there is also a great deal of journey foreshadowing, courtesy of Celeborn, whom I totally want to be my guide if I ever get to raft the Grand Canyon. Especially if we're in a Swan Boat.

And so begins the greatest float trip ever not chronicled by Stephen E. Ambrose or Wallace Stegner. Except Gimli and Legolas, now firmly established as an interspecies bromance, seem set to yammer through the whole thing. STFU, Gimolas!

I realize I'm probably the only person doing this PtBiB thing for whom The Great River is pretty much my favorite part. Hey, I'm from Saratoga, WY. Floating the North Platte River is pretty much why we live there. I would still live there if I could find a way to float the North Platte River for a living. It's just that there are a lot of other people who are better at it than me who are doing so, and the market is saturated. Also this year we're in epic drought mode and the floating season ended in May instead of August. Plus, nobody likes a river guide who basically has to wear a full-on chador on the boat. Oh, you would not believe my talent for sunburn. But anyway, yes, I would totally float the Anduin. Even after the trees fail and they start passing the Brown Lands.It's entirely possible that the main reason I fell out of love with fantasy was I could find no other fantasy stories that had Epic River Trips in them (and even this one doesn't really have enough). But I'll spare you further rhapsodizing on this subject, because I know this particular float trip is not really fun, especially not for my beloved Samwise: "He felt that the company was too naked, afloat in little open boats in the midst of shelterless lands, and on a river that was the frontier of war." Or for Merry and Pippin, stuck in a boat with Boromir, "who sometimes sat muttering to himself, sometimes biting his nails, as if some restlessness or doubt consumed him." Remember what I said about how there's always one jerk who has a really bad idea and won't let go of it...

And then, UH OH, we have what is probably at least our third crypto-Gollum sighting. He was in Moria, and he was dogging them outside Lothlorien... And now he's floating behind them on a log. Later on, Frodo catches a glimpse of him in the night (it's a pity that Smeagollum's devolution from proto-hobbit into whatever-he-is-now came with eyes that shine like dim little lamps in the darkness), and then Aragorn confirms that he's known about their stalker since Moria but didn't want to alarm anybody. WHA---???? Anyway, from then on out, at least until the river gets interesting, they decide to travel by night and sleep by day -- Gollum can't abide the sun, nor can most of the other nasties he might have alerted to their progress.

And then we come to some rapids, just in time also to come into the range of some hostile archers! Fortunately, it's night time, so our company make very poor targets, in grey cloaks floating past in grey boats. There are some near misses, and these rapids aren't too terrible, and it looks like a clean escape, but OH, something big and dark and cloudlike flies up to menace them from the air! Probably the first of the flying Nazgul! But Legolas shoots it down! Close shave!

And then it's argument time. First it's how much time actually passed in Lorien. Then it's whether Frodo should have blabbed that Galadriel has one of the Three Rings. And then... Oh, Boromir... it's where to go next. There are some serious rapids and waterfalls and such ahead, on the way to Mordor. But if everybody goes to Gondor (there to use the Ring as a weapon against Sauron per Boromir. Oh, Boromir), then they don't have to mess about with boats anymore, soon. Nobody else wants to do this. Aragorn finally gets Boromir to temporarily pipe down by promising that he'll decide one way or the other once he has stood and seen the view from Amon Hen above the Argonath, to which the river will bring them soon enough. A big deal for Aragorn is Amon Hen. And soon it will be for everybody else, too.

But first, portage time, because there are some rapids that even experts aren't dumb enough to shoot in a boat, and the Fellowship are not experts. Well do I know what that's like. You've been all mellow in the boat, drinking a beer, maybe doing some fishing, and suddenly you're out of the boat, carrying it and everything with it, usually making more than one trip back and forth, over usually rough terrain (because Murphy's Law), slapping at mosquitoes when you can get a hand free, getting dive bombed by hummingbirds if you're dumb enough to take off your hat and expose your red hair, ugh. But now add Orc Patrols. There is not enough ugh in the world for that.

It seems to me, though, that the mist-shrouded "sharp shells and stony teeth of Sarn Gebir" (the rapids they're skipping) are probably awful pretty. Sigh.

And so they finally make their way to the Argonath, where stand the giant statues of Isildur (not Isildur of the Ring, but an earlier ancestor) and Anarion, glaring defiantly at the frontier beyond the ancient borders of Gondor. In the presence of these images of his ancestors, Aragorn suddenly sits taller and seems to realize for real that he is the heir to a proud lineage and a mighty kingdom. "Under their shadow," he says, "Elessar, the Elfstone, son of Arathorn of the House of Valandil Isildur's son, heir of Elendil, has nought to dread." Dude, when I type sentences like that, I tremble at their progeny. So much pseudo-Tolkienian crap, full of nonsense-sounding place names and risible speechmaking hath these books spawned. Oy.

Anyway, well, Aragorn/Elessar/Elfstone/Strider may feel he has nothing to fear, but, um, he does, because Orc attack. Well, not until the next novel, but soon. Aragorn senses its inevitability in the night, and Sting, Bilbo's Orc-detecting sword that he gave to Frodo along with his mithril coat, confirms it. But first, the sun comes up, and everyone sets to trying to make the decision they've been putting off, pretty much since Gandalf fell in Moria: where next, guys? Nobody wants to speak up, so Aragorn puts the burden on Frodo, who asks for an hour to himself to think about it. By all means, wander off alone, Frodo. Great idea.

And so in the most scenic place we may have yet seen (yeah, yeah, Rivendell, yeah, yeah, Lorien. Give me a big river and a huge waterfall and giant historic statuary any day), Boromir, Oh Boromir, finally has the chance to show his quality (wink). He stalks Frodo up the big stone steps to Amon Hen and, to give him credit, tries to reason with Frodo before he tries to take the Ring by force. There's some nice irony in his speech before he gets grabby, isn't there? "True hearted Men, they will not be corrupted," he says. "We do not desire the power of wizard lords," he says. And then all the sudden he's making a grab for it, and Frodo, no match for the big guy, can think of only one way out of his pickle, which is using the Ring to disappear. Which brings Boromir back to himself a little bit -- enough to realize he's failed anyway. "What have I done?" But Frodo is gone, up, up, up to Amon Hen, the "Seat of Seeing." And with the Ring on, he sees a LOT. And is Seen.

Frightened more than he ever has been before, Frodo decides he's got to go alone, that he can't trust anybody anymore, after Boromir's performance.

Meanwhile, everybody else is wondering what Frodo is going to choose to do. Boromir slips back into the discussion, and tells a version of what happened, in which Frodo took off unprovoked, of course. And everyone freaks out and decides to tear off looking for Frodo. Aragorn, who doesn't trust Boromir or his story, assigns Boromir to keep an eye on Merry and Pippen as they go one way.

Sam, meanwhile and famously, the best player of WWFD, thinks of checking where the boats are. Frodo is already taking off in one. Sam tries to jump aboard, misses, and goes into the water. Frodo yanks him out and onto the boat, amused and all but laughing at poor Sam, and dismissive even now, but Sam eventually wears him down with a masterful display of servile bullying. Off they go, Mordor or Bust!

THE END. FOR NOW.

*Like a disappointed fanboi who has finally gotten to meet his idol in person, only to discover said idol is kind of a jerk, Gimli is maybe not so enthusiastic about these peaks anymore.

**This event took place before Aule, who created the Dwarves without permission, was forced to put them to sleep until Illuvitar could get around to making Elves, because Middle Earth was supposed to be for the Elves.

***We never do get an idea, from the books, just how much the Istari look alike. PJ made one choice, casting Ian McKellen (!) and Christopher Lee (!!) and Sylvester McCoy (!!!) (the number of exclamation marks indicates my level of gushy approval of the choice, and even McKellen's mere one mark still represents about a half hour's worth of Snoopy Dance), but I always thought they were pretty damned hard to tell apart, visually, and so on my very first read of these books as a little, I was sure he was seeing Saruman. How I miss that blank slate innocence in reading them!

****Oh man, the banner. What a masterpiece of iconography Arwen makes for her man. The White Tree of Gondor, seven stars (representing the Seven Ships that brought everybody from Numenor [Middle Earth's Atlantis], probably, though there has been lots of speculation about that. LOTS) It asserts his heritage, his status as the Hope for the West and his overwhelming presence to anyone who sees it. Arwen is a smart cookie.

***** From Tolkien's Unfinished Tales: "There was in Gondolin a jewel-smith named Enerdhil, and he was the greatest of that craft among the Noldor after the death of Fëanor...it came into his heart to make a jewel within which the clear light of the sun should be imprisoned, but the jewel should be green as leaves. And he made this thing, and even the Noldor marvelled at it. For it is said that those who looked through this stone saw things that were withered or burned healed again or as they were in the grace of their youth, and that the hands of one who held it brought to all that they touched healing from hurt." Remember what's been said earlier (by which I mean later) about how "the hands of the King are the hands of a healer." Aragorn is slowly assembling, or repairing, all the tokens of his heritage that he'll need to demonstrate his claim to the throne of Gondor.

******I love Lohengrin. And I grew up hearing a story mom loves to tell about Lohengrin, a performance of which, one time, the prop guys screwed up and the Swan Boat left before Lohengrin could get aboard, and the singer, with the unbelievably awesome name of Leo Slezak actually sang "Wann geht der nächste Schwan?" (When does the next swan leave?). Which, trust me, if you're an opera fan, that's a hilarious story.

And this is totally going to be my next messenger bag, you guys.

*******I'm sure there's fanfic out there somewhere depicting Gimli someday using the hair to clone her for his personal enjoyment, though. God, sometimes I hate my brain.

100 Books #65 - J.G. Ballard's THE BURNING WORLD

Sometimes I read to escape my situation; sometimes I read to wallow in it. I suspect that my taking up The Burning World during this hot, dry, searing, scorching summer of wildfire and little rain is due to the latter tendency, but I'm not entirely sure. I never am, with J.G. Ballard.

This is my third foray into the gently trippy, weirdly abstracted imagination of this mid-century master (last year saw me sinking under the surface of The Drowned World; I spent part of February freezing over in The Crystal World. I guess I'll have to track down The Wind from Nowhere next, to get all of Ballard's "Elemental Apocalypse" quartet under my belt), and I'll definitely be returning for more. Nothing compares to a Ballard novel: short, vivid, melancholy, yet curiously detatched, just like his characters, who are never fighting the drowning/crystallizing/burning of their worlds, but rather just observing and saying something along the lines of "Well. How about that?"

As the novel opens, Charles Ransom, -- our, well, I hesitate to call him either hero or protagonist, so let's just call him our viewpoint character -- lives and waits in the lakeside community of Larchmont, where his marriage to Judith has dried up along with most of the continent. At first, it is she, but not he, who is preparing to follow most of the rest of the area's residents in abandoning the town forever in an exodus to the coast, where desalinization plants offer humanity's last hope. Soon Ransom is left only with the remnants of a somewhat bullying Presbyterian minister's shotgun-toting congregation, Mr. Lomax, a possibly deranged architect expending every last bit of his resources in pursuit of what he imagines is going to be a promising future, Lomax's even more bizarre sister Miranda*, a weirdo named Quilter who runs around with a dead peacock hanging off his belt, and Ransom's friend, Philip Jordan, a strange, silent young man of about 20 whose whole life was spent mucking about in the water until the water started to go.

And then there's the fishermen, whether bent over a beached boat "like widows over a coffiin", standing mutely, hats in hands, at the back of Reverend Johnstone's church, or rampaging through the streets with nets like toreadors, become fishers of men for their own quixotic crusade, because Larchmont isn't nearly sad or Lovecraftian enough yet. Really. I'm talking burning churches wearing sturgeon's heads as hats Lovecraftian.

The cause of all this desolation both is and isn't plausible (not that causes or plausibility seem ever to be the point, in Ballard): decades of pollution and discharge into the oceans has left a soup of petrochemicals and polymers that have formed a thin but impenetrable skin on their surfaces that has halted, probably forever, the cycle of evaporation and precipitation that makes life on land possible. This is my first Ballard, in other words, in which the end of the world is humanity's fault.

Not that any hand-wringing over this happens, as would be true with pretty much any other author. The closest we come is the sermons of Reverend Johnstone, who regards the drought not so much as punishment as just another manifestation of the opus contra naturam by which man earns his right to exist in creation. All those migrators away from the dwindling lake and the withering vegetation are sinners for their lack of faith and sissies who are unworthy of the grace of God.

But not Charlie. Charlie thinks he is staying put, though not, of course, for any reasons the Reverend would understand, nor, I suspect, any that Charlie would, either. His inaction, even when impulsively accompanying a water truck driver to deliver the last of the water from Lomax's swimming pool to a local zoo to keep the animals there alive for a few more days, draws always the same reaction from others: they want to know what he is going to do, why he hasn't left, as though somehow knowing that will make their own paths clearer. But Ransom can't help them. He's about to have problems of his own.

Like holding onto his humanity once circumstances finally compel him to leave Larchmont with just three other people, on his own lemming-like journey to the sea:

During their journey to the south he had felt an increasing sense of vacuum, as if he was pointlessly following a vestigial instinct that no longer had any real meaning for him. The four people with him were becoming more and more shadowy, residues of themselves as notional as the empty river.

Another common theme in Ballard, that, it seems**; the guy did imagine everybody dreaming of slipping back, evolutionarily, to their lizard brains or beyond in The Drowned World.

I must digress here for a moment, for I find I have a similar experience when I read Ballard. The characters and their immediate situations are always sort of drifting in and out of my consciousness. I've pondered this for a while and decided that this is because Ballard manages to summon so many cultural ghosts to haunt his stories. Phrases or passages suggest Shakespeare, Saramago, Sebald, Homer, Tolkien, tarot decks, Greenaway and Herzog films, but do so with such subtlety that one doesn't consciously notice it as she reads along. Ballard is a hypnotist, and he's inducing daydreams. Hence the bewildering effect of seemingly ordinary passages like this, when our hero spots a man in a dusty cotton suit, sort of shambling ahead in the distance: "Without thinking, Ransom walked forward a few paces, as if following the man. He waited, almost expecting to see a dog appear and run around the man's heels." The Fool card. And now I'm tripping on T.S. Eliot and Tim Powers... meanwhile the mystery man keeps shambling along in the "absolute isolation of the chalkwhite promenade, with its empty perspectives..."

Imagine experiencing something like that every few paragraphs, and then you'll see that Ballard is expanding way beyond the notional 160 pages of this novel, or page count of any novel. I could share examples of this until this post was longer even than my Lord of the Rings rambles.

This effect should be a flaw by most gauges of literary worth or entertainment value that I know of, but it's not. Novels are supposed to suck you into another world when you read them. Ballard just sucks the rest of the world in with you.

That's not to say Ballard is just borrowing other art. There is original imagery that is going to stay with me for the rest of my life in this novel:

They reached the margins of the river estuary. the funnel-shaped area had once been bordered by marshes and sandfalts, and the low-lying ground still seemed damp and gloomy, despite the hot sunlight breaking across the dry grass. The hundreds of vehicles parked among the dunes and hillocks had sunk up to their axles in the soft sand, their roofs tilting in all directions.

And so begins our fossil record, no?

Ballard writes a lot about isolation and solipsism, directly or indirectly, always in a perfectly neutral tone, no judgement or consequence. His characters just end up islands or, in this case, dunes, just as we who read him do, for surely no two of us are ever lured into the same space. And once lured or driven apart, these characters seldom reunite as they adapt in their idiosyncratic ways to their utterly transformed world. And when they do come back together, it's not always in merry meetings. Adaptation and isolation do lead, after all, to speciation, don't they.

And so it is on the seacoast to which Ransom brings his three companions, Philip Jordan, Jordan's blind and elderly foster father, the Calibanesque Quilter's witchy mother (yeah, shades of Sycorax!), and a red-haired former zookeeper, Catherine. A ten-year lacuna sunders them utterly (not that that's very hard), and when next we see them, they are unrecognizable. And as to what they get up to, reverting as they have to a primitive life of sealskin capes and repurposed fragments of the old world, is as bizarre, yet well-imagined, as anything I have ever seen. Capturing water that the tide washes up and then steals away is difficult enough; moving it around enough to leach out the salt is monumental; stealing it is almost ridiculously complicated!

But even that mighty effort is just a stop-gap, if a long one. It's no way to live, and echoes of Lomax's last words to Ransom, telling him that he'll be back someday, have already dragged the reader's thoughts back to Larchmont even before the excuse is found to try going there. That suggestion, planted so long ago, is the deepest and most compelling of all, and so it doesn't matter a bit that the excuse found doesn't make a lot of sense. Why, of course.

I'm perhaps no longer making sense, but Ballard does that to me, just like W.G. Sebald did. I'm in awe and maybe still a little entranced. And watching everything burn. Well. How about that?

*There is totally a sort of reverse-Tempest thing going on; Quilter gets compared to Caliban at least as often as Philip Jordan to Ariel; Lomax might make an Antonio to Ransom's Prospero, but as Miranda belongs to/with Lomax (sister rather than daughter, but still) perhaps it is he who is Prospero? But Ransom does not seem like a usurper type, or any other of the types from the Shakespeare play. And maybe he's not supposed to. Maybe I'm getting carried away with the analogies. I do that, sometimes. But really: there's even rather a lot of repetition of the world "bosun."

**I keep saying "it seems" about Ballard because I'm being cautious. I've only read three of his books to date, and so am not entirely comfortable making sweeping pronouncements about what is or is not common to Ballard's work, thematically or otherwise. BUT, I do feel somewhat backed up in my sense of Ballard by this great little piece by Martin Amis that appeared recently in the Guardian. And I plan to become a real Ballardian. That's right, dear readers, there are going to be many more musings on Ballard's books in this here blog.

100 Books #64 - Trent Jamieson's NIGHT'S ENGINES

I wasn't able to say much about Roil, Book One of this "duology", because I read it at the height of my double dose of tennis- and golfer's elbow, but I stand by what little I did say; it was one of my favorite books I read last year, exciting and strange and different and provocative. I stamped my virtual feet and howled for Jamieson and Angry Robot to hurry up with the sequel already.

I almost felt the need, though, to take a time out and re-read Roil, because what stuck in my head from that book was not the story so much as the world, which would have been fine except for the fact that this second volume of The Nightbound Land is all about the story; we barely even see the Roil, that ever-increasing zone of chaos and devilry which is rapidly swallowing and colonizing* the planet on which our unfortunate human and Aerokin (the name for the vast, sentient, living airships that share that city-in-the-air, Drift, with their human pilots and friends. Oh, and a giant rock, shaped like an inverted mountain, that impossibly floats at the heart of Drift. Yeah.) characters live. I guess its menace is supposed to have been established well enough last book so for this book we're just supposed to focus on our heroes' efforts to destroy it.

Not that there isn't conflict, for the defense mechanisms with which mankind holds off and hopes someday to destroy the Roil are pretty nasty. And some of them are alive and sentient: the Old Men, raving and ravenous immortal creatures who are specially linked to a series of Lodes, themselves linked to a vast machine at the planet's North Pole, that, if anyone managed to activate it (only Old Men can do that, by means of their engineering rings), would bring on the Mechanical Winter. That's right: the goal is to freeze out the Roil.

Our heroes are the typical small band of misfits: David, a dissolute son of a politician who began the last novel as just another poor little rich kid junkie but ended it possessed by the Old Man who had sort of helped him escape his city after his dad was assassinated and the Roil began to engulf the place; Margaret, daughter of a pair of geniuses who had developed an arsenal of weapons against the Roil but then were absorbed by it (an early scene in which Margaret is confronted by her mother, now a demon of the Roil, is chilling as hell, literally because the weapons mama designed and daughter employs so effectively are all based on generating cold, as well as figuratively); Kara, pilot of the Aerokin Roslyn Dawn, crazy and daring and a bit of a prodigal problem child as far as the city of Drift is concerned; Medicine Paul, physician and unlikely sort-of-leader of the Underground, destination of refugees, where the bulk of mankind may have to make its last stand. They're all pretty interesting, but not as interesting as the world they call home, which, as I said, we see less of in this book.

If I sound disappointed in Night's Engines, I suppose that's because I am, a touch. Roil balanced character establishment with world-building and was immensely, tensely engrossing, teeming with monsters and crazed action scenes and a sense of perpetual peril. With the exception of the prologue, which knocks the reader's socks right off with action and battle, scary monsters and super creeps, Night's Engines takes all that for granted and just sort of plods, relying on the generally distant menace of the deranged Old Men pursuing David for most of its tension -- and even these vampirish monsters on the move are barely glimpsed. We know the Roil is out there chiefly by the chapter headings, which give a location, usually a city, and its distance from the leading edge of the Roil, which would be an effective device if it didn't constantly tease us with what we weren't getting in this book: more Cuttlemen and Quarg Hounds and Hideous Garment Flutes! Come on! We barely even get any Witmoths! The last third of the book gives us a little more of this, but the effect there is just to emphasize the lack of same in the first two thirds, sadly.

This is not to say that Night's Engines is a bad book; quite the contrary. David's struggle against the hungering, weird, possessing force of the Old Man who infected him in Roil is pretty good stuff that almost makes this book worth reading all on its own, as is the (regrettably brief and infrequently given) account of an entire city's worth of refugees staggering north, with the Roil in close pursuit, on foot (I, for one, would have liked a great deal more of that. A great deal). It was just hard to buy these as a sequel to the anxious, deranged imaginings of Roil. The jeopardy the Roil poses should not be taken as a given; it should still be illustrated vividly, as it was to such stunning effect in the first book -- especially since not everyone who picks this up is going to have read the first one.

I came very close to giving this a mere three stars over on Goodreads, but for the sneaking hunch I have that, if read together with Roil in an omnibus edition, back to back, the whole taken as one might feel greater than this single part, read eight months after the other. I might try that sometime, such was my love for Roil.

*And oh, how it colonizes. Ahead of its actual spread are sent "witmoths," tiny, black, fluttering creatures that get inside people and take over their bodies and minds, reproducing inside them and eventually bursting them open to spread more witmoths. You can't always tell when someone is infected. They were used to marvelously creepy effect on board a train bound for doom in Roil; here they only make a few cameo appearances. Sigh.

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog VI: Fellowship of the Ring Book 2: Chapter 1-5

Wow has this turned into a thing! By current reckoning as of July 12 we have 19 participants, 18 of whom I've put on this handy Twitter list so we miss out on as little of the 140-character #PtBiB fun as possible. Alas, the 19th participant is me; though my account is old and venerable by Twitter standards, it is somehow still under the curse of a bug that makes me unlistable. I can be put on Twitter lists, but I sort of slide right off them a few minutes after that's accomplished. So please use the hashtag whenever possible, especially if you're talking to me (@KateSherrod).

And here is the part of the post where I promise to try to be a bit more concise, but who am I kidding? Tolkien brings out the gushy firehose of thoughts in me. That being said, though, this first part of Book II of Fellowship of the Ring has always been a bit lackluster for me, at least until we wander back into OMGWTFBBQ territory again.

I'm pretty sure that J.R.R. Tolkien's paintings set my standard for good art forever. 

I still tend to favor these stained-glass-ish styles. Look how pretty!

Ahh, Rivendell, where they keep all the exposition* and, now that even Bilbo has decided to retire there, all the poetry as well. It's also sort of a warehouse for characters of proven usefulness, like pretty much everyone who survived the various and sundry events of The Silmarillion. And it lets the current cast recover their hit points. And it's pretty! And there's a woman there, bringing the apparent female population of Middle Earth up to two!** What's not to like?

I mean, aside from all the exposition.

Frodo is awake and finds out that the Nazgul tried to draft him for their team. He is told there is going to be a feast in his honor. Sam and Bilbo and Gandalf -- who has yet to explain his Delay -- have all been sitting up with him while Elrond has plied him with plants and potions and performed delicate neurosurgery. And Bilbo is the A.Z. Foreman of Middle Earth.*** That pretty much sums up Chapter 1 of Book Two (which my ebook collection lists as Chapter 13, so pardon if I get mixed up a bit. I'm trying to save wear and tear on my beloved Ballantine Boxed Set from 1977).

Who can blame Frodo for wanting to go exploring, by the way? He's in by all accounts the prettiest and safest place on the whole damned continent with the possible exception of Lothlorien, and he can see most of it from Elrond's sweet patio. He's just been on the worst camping trip ever and gotten over having the Snow Queen's sliver a piece of a Morgul blade lodged in his shoulder for 17 days. And there it all is. I bet there aren't even any mosquitoes, because the Bruinen is very strong and swift-flowing, so there's probably not a lot of standing water.

And I bet the fly-fishing is out of this world!

But no. Like being shipped off to a sweet new condo development only to have to sit through 30 hours of time share sales presentations, Frodo has to go to a meeting. As do we.

Expositions and new characters. Gimli (Dwarve), son of that Gloin who went on the trip with Bilbo. Legless Legolas (Elve), son of that Thranduil, who kept the Dwarves prisoner in Mirkwood. And Boromir (Manve), son of Denethor, steward of Gondor, though first introduced as just a "man from the South." "Called," as Elrond says "though I have not called you to me... You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem." Uh, yeah.

Anyway, they swap a lot of news that, get this, Tolkien doesn't even want to bother with: "Not all that was spoken and debated in the Council need now be told."****

But we do hear that 30 years ago, Balin son of Fundin, Bilbo's best friend from the trip to Erebor, had taken it upon himself to hare off and re-open Moria! Moria! Wonder of the Northern World, Moria for short. But see, there's a reason that fabled mine/cave/city/kingdom got closed in the first place. That may or may not have wings. As such. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, here, because what matters right now is that 1. Balin has disappeared in Moria and 2. Sauron is reaching out to the Dwarves for help finding Hobbits/Shire/Ring except Sauron is being all dismissive about what a small "trifle" the ring is. Like anyone is going to buy that! But so, the Dwarves sent Gloin (and Gimli) to warn Elrond and, hopefully, Bilbo that the hunt is on.

And then the spotlight moves to Elrond the Expositor, who reads everybody most of the Silmarillion tells everybody the history of the Ring, which amounts to, hey, Sauron was kind of a hottie once, and he just wanted this one little favor... just a little bling, and then everything kind of got blown out of proportion because everybody wanted one, and then there was this war, and this guy Isildur (son of Elendil, King of Gondor) cut the Ring off Sauron's hand, and Elrond tried to get him to destroy it, but he kept it until... look, we all know this story by now, right?

I think that pretty well covers the chain of custody, your honor.

But there are other heirlooms and mementos to discuss, like Narsil, the sword Isildur used to cut the ring off Sauron's finger, now kept in pieces by his heir, Aragorn! Soon to be reforged and renamed Anduril, Flame of the West! And what's left of the White Tree of Gondor, a seedling of the seedling of the seedling of the... oh, go look at EssJay's blog about the Silmarillion. Anyway, it's there in Minas Tirith, which used to be Minas Anor, the city that's pretty much right on the border of Mordor (where shadows lie), which is where Boromir is from and is a big reason why, for instance, Bilbo and the Dwarves didn't have a lot more nastiness to contend with on their trip, and everyone else has been relatively safe, too, thank you very much. Although here lately, not so much, as Boromir tells everybody. Minas Tirith has been getting its ass kicked. Things are grim. No. I refuse. I refuse to say it. All right, you made me. And Winter is Coming. Now I'm ashamed. Drink.

Believe not that in the land of Gondor the blood of 

Numenor is spent. Boney doesn't stand a chance.

And then we move on to Gandalf, who finally explains why he wasn't able to escort Frodo and co. out of the Shire: Saruman.***** But first, we also hear why he dumped Bilbo and the Dwarves on the edge of Mirkwood, what is it, 68 years ago now? And his research tour of Middle Earth, complete with all the kind of bitchy things Denethor (father of Boromir) said to him when he hit the Scrolls of Minas Tirith, and how Aragorn found Smeagollum and hauled him off to be kept by the Elves, and...

Interruption! Legolas has to share the bad news that Smeagollum escaped!

Anyway, Saruman!

Saruman is the more scholarly of the wizards and the one who knows the most about Rings and Sauron (no Defense Against the Dark Arts jokes, please. I said NO!) has, Gandalf says, decided that everybody would really be better off if he, Saruman, was in charge and had the Ring if that's at all possible, please. Don't worry. It'll be fine.  But Gandalf was skeptical and Saruman got impatient and imprisoned Gandalf until Gandalf would spill what he knew about where the Ring was and now I know exactly how Gandalf must have felt because get me the HELL OUT OF RIVENDELL.

I apologize. I pass the test. I will diminish and go into the West and meekly continue to be expositioned to.

But seriously, I'm with Bilbo on this one. They should have at least gotten a donut break. But no, on and on about what a jerk Saruman is now and how Rohan is paying Mordor a tribute of horses and the Sackville-Bagginses are ruining Bag End and...

"May Elrond and the others forgive the length of it."

Decision by committee, people. It's never pretty. And there's always at least one jackass who comes up with the worst idea and sticks to it like gorilla glue. Boromir. Oh, Boromir.

And then, what do they do? They decide to do what we all knew they were gonna do back when "they" was just Frodo, Sam and Gandalf.

I really do not remember being this irritated at this point in the book, not since that first time when I was nine anyway. Is it because I know so very, very well what is to come and just want to get there? Is it because I know so very, very well what all of the news is that they're sharing here? Or is it just that I didn't get enough sleep this week and I'd be irritated at anything right now?

Anyway, the party is chosen, but even now we're not swearing for keepsies that everybody's going to Mordor. We're sticking together through Moria, because (gigglesnort) that is apparently the safest route for them because no one expects them to be that stupid. But after that, well, we'll see. All I can say right now is OH THANK GOD THE RING IS GOING SOUTH.

Err. After the scouts come back. In two months. Or three. Gotta make sure the Nazgul got forced to respawn in Mordor after the hippopotamus attack!

And now back to our story, already in progress. Our nine companions (and Bill) approach the Misty Mountains and Gimli waxes downright poetic at the sight. He has never actually seen these peaks, mind you, but he's seen them represented in Dwarvish art and knows all their names and is pretty much a Misty Mountain fanboi, which I think is cool. Somebody should be! These mountains get such a bad rap, but then, oh yeah they deserve to, because Caradhras, where the very microclimates have a hate-on for Dwarves and Elves and everybody except Legolas gets buried in snowdrifts. I know a bit about that. My next door neighbor's giant camper trailer makes the snow pile up in my front yard and driveway so badly that I always wish I had Boromir and Aragorn to help me fetch the mail. It'll be chest-high against the house and then like two inches at the curb. Just like on Caradhras.

How many buried hobbits can you see in this picture?

So everybody turns back and heads back down the mountain, watched by crows and wolves and things that look like wolves but scare Gandalf much worse than wolves. Even more dismaying: the landscape as Gandalf remembers it has changed, a respectable and scenic-sounding river, the Sirannon, seems nowhere to be found until it's revealed as a mere trickle among the red rocks, the mighty Stair Falls is just a dribble, and this is all so because someone (or something) has dammed it up! There is now a "sullen" lake in front of the Gates of Moria, brimming over with "unwholesome" water that the party has to edge around.

And now it's time to say good-bye to Bill! Poor Bill, sweetest of ponies, has somehow to make his way through all the country they've traveled to get here, dodging wolves and who-knows-what-else in hope of Rivendell. Sam is upset, Gandalf's annoyed (but at least gives Bill his special, uh, pony blessing?). Extra classy that they made Bill edge around the unwholesome water before turning him loose, too.

But he doesn't have to leave right away, because now it's password guessing time (while the sullen surface of the unwholesome water ripples ominously. Um. And then, while Gandalf tries every command he can think of to get the gates to open, Boromir starts chucking rocks and sticks into the water in frustration. Oh, Boromir). The answer is from happier days. The doors open. And the giant evil tentacled horror, the Watcher in the Water attacks!****** While it makes an attempt at Frodo mostly, it's happy, once everyone has hurtled through the gates, to just pull them closed and trap everybody inside Moria, as if it had been stationed there for just that purpose, which might well have been the case. But can you imagine just sitting there in that pool for months or years waiting for that one job to do? And how did it survive until then? As was said of the midges outside the Old Forest, what does it eat when it can't get hobbit? And what did it do after this one great task of its was completed?

These are the things I wonder about. Along with why PJ had to take the idiocy of throwing rocks into the sullen water out of Boromir's hands and put it into Pippin's. No, I know the answer, really. Sigh. It's the same reason Pippin's dropping of a simple pebble down a well in the Moria guard station by way of a curiosity-driven depth-check got magnified into bumbling and knocking a helmet and all of the chain down that well in the film. Sigh.

But, pebble or helmet-and-all-of-the-chain, it certainly sets off some excitement which we've kind of been needing for a while. But first we have an exquisite slow burn as we tour the tunnels and galleries of the Dwarrowdelf, which Gandalf and Gimli assure us were not always dark and empty and full of dread - great shafts admitted sunlight, for one thing, we just happen to be there at night - and we're treated to a great bit of poetry about Durin and the world as it was when the Dwarves were the only people in Middle Earth, before even the Sun and Moon existed. I mean, WOW. I can totally imagine Moria that was. And would like to visit.

But Moria that is? Um. Doom-doom. Doom-doom. Tolkien did an amazing job of rousing our fears, then lulling/boring them, then rousing them again until the full-on attack of the goblins and also of the

BALROG

Which I know is like the ultimate big-bad except for Sauron himself, and might be even older than Sauron; we know from the Silmarillion, or from EssJay's excellent summaries thereof, that Sauron is actually kind of a gotten-up former servant of the real big bad, Melkor. Which is neither here nor there, really, but I thought I'd mention it to show I've been paying attention. Anyway, the

BALROG

Is not something I found nearly as scary as the Watcher in the Water, but as I said in my footnote, I have my reasons for that. But the thing is, Gandalf fears him. He shoos everyone else away, telling them that this foe is beyond any of them. And then he goes after the Balrog, yelling that it cannot pass (to be honest, I like the film's "shall not pass" a little better; it's got more imperative force to it and is, let's face it, memorable as hell. Kudos, PJ and co. Kudos), and attacks it with Glamdring and his staff and oh yeah, one of the Three Rings (which we only know he has if we've read the appendices), and it attacks him with a badass flaming red sword and a flaming bullwhip and oh, the bullwhip, because when Gandalf finally just breaks the bridge, CRACK. WRAP. YANK.

And down he goes.

Cliffhanger. Literally.

By the way: if anyone can explain to me why there exists in this world a baby's onsie that announces "I am Isildur" please do. Or maybe not. I am now undecided on this subject. Maybe tell me if it's really funny but don't if it's going to shatter my sanity?

*If HBO were doing an adaptation, Rivendell is where all the naked whores would be.

**I mean, there must be some female hobbits, though unlike in the films, we have yet to learn of the existence of Miss  Rosie Cotton, ancestress-to-be of the Fairbairns of the Towers. And presumably many other females as well, since all these boys exist -- unless we are choosing to believe, for instance, that instead of being born, Dwarves are authochthons from the stone.

***If you like poetry, and especially if  you like original, sensitively done and beautifully rendered translations of foreign language poetry into English, Foreman is your man. Click on the link and go to his blog. Hit him up on Twitter. Tell him the PtBiB people sent you. He'll probably have no idea what you're talking about, but he'll be very polite and friendly about it. He's a cool guy. Also a prolific one. And he does all the languages. Probably even Icelandic.

****Though Christopher Tolkien is probably, even now, tossing that last desk drawer for materials to go into the 13th volume of The History of Middle Earth: Minutes of the 1017th Council of Rivendell, coming soon from Harper Collins.

*****Man, did this stuff drive me nuts when I was a kid. I kept getting Saruman and Sauron mixed up. I remember paging back in frustration, trying to figure out why the Snape Gandalf would have gone to the big bad enemy to get advice on how to deal with the big bad enemy. And this was before the internet, and I didn't know anyone else in the whole wide world who had read or was reading these books (and I have a feeling that my frustration at this time plays a role in why my mom to this day won't touch fantasy, which she dismisses as "dragons and dumdums" to this day), so it was me all on my lonesome, ten years old and grinding my teeth trying to keep everybody straight. It didn't help, of course, that the good guy wizard was the grey one, while the white wizard was obviously kinda maybe turning grey and had a name that sounded a lot like the evil/black wizard and man, Tolkien almost lost me right here. In fact, he did when I was nine, to be perfectly honest. But I kept the books and tried again, obviously.

******Oh god. This was by far the scariest moment in all of these books for me when I was a kid. Don't laugh, but when I was little and growing up in landlocked Wyoming, my greatest, most paralyzing, hysterical fear was that a giant squid was going to get me. Maybe I saw 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea too young? Anyway, the Watcher in the Water still freaks me the eff out, even more so after talking about it a bit with David Fuller, who made the link between this monster and some stuff Gollum alluded to in The Hobbit, which would suggest it's been waiting up there for at least, what 67 years now? It was maybe stationed there against the day Gollum finally got sick of hiding out in the caves under the Misties, so it could attack him and get the Ring, by this theory, which is somewhat borne out by the fact that, of all the people it could have grabbed at after Boromir's pebble-throwing woke it up, it goes after Frodo. Now, the question of how it would get the Ring, if it managed to get it, to Sauron is another matter...

100 Books #63 - Benjamin Rosenbaum's THE ANT KING AND OTHER STORIES

It is said we fabulists live two lives at once. First we live as others do: seeking to feed and clothe ourselves, earn the respect and affection of our fellows, fly from danger, entertain and satiate ourselves on the things of this world. But then, too, we live a second life, pawing through the moments of the first, even as they happen, like a market-woman of the bazaar, sifting trash for treasures. Every agony we endure we also hold up to the light with great excitement, expecting it will be of use; every simple joy we regard with a critical eye, wondering how it could be changed, honed, tightened, to fit inside a fable's walls.

- Benjamin Rosenbaum in "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes' by Benjamin Rosenbaum"

If you dug all the mixed-up craziness of the "universe without Time" schtick in "The Wedding of River Song" (the Series 6 finale of the Doctor Who revival), then this is the short story collection for you.

It's one of the oddest I've encountered since Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, and while that oddness is the primary quality the books share, it is far from the only one. Go look for yourself: a few of the stories from this collection have been published elsewhere, in magazines like McSweeney's, and are available online at Small Beer Press's website.

It's all very, very po-mo, but not in that annoying way, though bits of the story quoted above stray into a somewhat precious parody of a certain dialect of academese that I don't miss hearing at all from my college days. No, what we have here is pure, bizarre creativity, as if a Borgesian by temperament suddenly decided to chuck the master's adherence to the cultural touchstones of Western civilization and mysticism and just decided to go gleefully mad.

"Biographical Notes..." is probably the most Borgesian, with its professional constructor of plausible fantasies, who uses the author's own name as a nom de plume, as a hero, but here the action is at least as much in our hero's physical world as in his mind. That physical world is a steampunk dream of dirigibles and gliders and derring-do as he leaps from the one to the other in mid-flight, even as he dreams of an alternate reality in which Brahmanist causality does not hold sway and merely the laws of physics and materialism are true. How would people living in such a weird universe as that fly, he wonders as he clings to the side of the P.R.G.B. Sri Bernard Shaw and preparing to tackle a would-be assassin, or maybe some aerial pirates, or both! And that's just part of it, for in this world, the great colonizing powers on a mission to civilize the clueless of Europe come from Cathay, Gabon, Khmer, the Aryan Raj!* This might not be everyone's favorite story in this collection, but I think it's mine.

And that's just the beginning, kids. "The Orange" concerns an orange, as in a piece of citrus fruit, that actually rules the world**; "Start the Clock" depicts a society in which age is a matter of choice and can be physiologically fixed, its protagonist a girl who has chosen to stay biologically nine years old forever and is never troubled by having breasts or sexual desire but now has to deal with a friend who wants to grow up; "The Blow" depicts a Sam Spade type's bittersweet, limited existence after a blow to the head leaves him half-paralyzed; the title story, subtitled "A California Fairy Tale" concerns a love triangle of sorts, with the lady kidnapped by the titular Ant King while her swain struggles to run a gumball corporation and rescue his love by playing... a video game; "Orphans" re-imagines Babar as an object of human female desire***. And speaking of female desire, there's "Red Leather Tassels," featuring a sex scene between a tycoon's wife and a woodpecker, "like the fluttering of a feather duster... an insistent, passionate feather duster." Some of the funniest stuff I've read in a long time, that.

Ah, but then there's stuff like "The Book of Jashar," which juxtaposes Thomas Pynchon's Oedipa Maas and Philip K. Dick's Timothy Archer in a story of, what else, imaginary Judeo-Christian apocrypha, written in the form of a letter to a small press fiction editor together with an enclosed English translation of what amounts to a Hebraic vampire story, and was a bit too much of a dig in the ribs for me. And "Sense and Sensibility," an oh-so-meta tale of the twee inhabitants of various locales on and in the body of a being known as The Glutton which I could barely endure****. But not every chocolate in the box is going to have hazelnuts, am I right?

All of this, though, good, amusing, annoying, indifferent, all of it pales in comparison to the final story, "A Siege of Cranes," a pulp fantasy dreamscape that is as compelling, emotionally draining and powerful as the rest are merely clever. Were I to get a chance to take Rosenbaum aside and have a little chat with him about his future, I would grab him by the lapels (and if he wasn't wearing anything with lapels, I would force him to put on a jacket so I could grab him by the lapels) and tell him to quit arseing around and showing off and give us more of this, work that bears comparison with Harlan Ellison at his most gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and nightmarish (oh gawd, that chariot!) and true. Because it's all fine and good to be clever, but it's better, isn't it, to write stories that people want to read again and again? Of all of these stories, most of them worth reading at least once, "A Siege of Cranes" is one I think I'll return to, and for which be eternally grateful to Rosenbaum. Worth the price of the whole book, this story.

I took in these stories one by one at odd moments over the course of a good month or so, mostly because when read one after the other, they blend together weirdly and unsatisfyingly. That's the peril of tongue-in-cheek surrealism; when anything can happen, anything can happen, and if you forget what story you're in, you might easily think you're in another and get annoyed at how incoherent it all seems. Best to avoid that (I suspect this might be behind some of the negative reviews of this collection that I've seen).

Many and profuse thanks to Eric Orchard for telling me about this book and its publisher, Small Beer Press. I see now a whole new vista of awesome to enjoy!

*Not the stupid white power Nazi-esque sense of "Aryan". Think of the roots of that race and of Indo-European languages. Yeah. India!

**Too bad it's so short, a complaint one might have about many of these stories. Something else Rosenbaum seems to share with Borges: a certain "lofty laziness."

***Yet another story, "The Fig" reimagines Douglas Adams' famous Vl'Hurg war fleet as an army of little men whose mission is to recover the titular fruit from a cat who stole it from a little girl. One suspects Rosenbaum has a whole stack of these somewhere.

****What did Jane Austen do to deserve all of this, exactly? Seth Grahame-Smith, I'm looking at you as well, of course.

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog: My Own Private Middle Earth

A long, long time (11 years!) ago, on a blog far, far away, I wrote about my experience of making an 80 mile round trip to a movie theater where The Fellowship of the Ring was playing. In the course of those musings, I thought a lot about how I had imagined Middle Earth to have looked and how that contrasted with what Peter Jackson and Weta workshop came up with.

I first read The Hobbit when I was seven years old. I tackled The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was nine, but didn't finish; it wasn't until I was ten that I made the trip all the way with Frodo to Mount  Doom and back. This means that at the time, my world was still pretty small, but it offered lots of locales that did just fine for me in picturing Middle Earth, though I find I mostly have stuff for locations in The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Shire - downtown Saratoga, WY

The Old Forest - Aspen Alley near Encampment, WY

Old Man Willow and the Withywindle  - The western bank of the North Platte River, Saratoga, WY

(This was my backyard when I lived in Saratoga for a few years as an adult)

Tom Bombadil's Front Yard - My dad's rock garden, Saratoga, WY

(really just an excuse to show you all the only known specimen of the Stumpalope again)

Tom Bombadil's house - CCC shelter, Veterans Island, Saratoga, WY

The Prancing Pony - the Hotel Wolf, Saratoga, WY

The Barrow Downs - Baggot Rocks, just north of Encampment, WY

Weathertop/Amon  Syl - Libby Flats Observation Point, Snowy Range, WY

Rivendell - Medicine Bow Lodge, Snowy Range, WY

(There's a creek that runs by it but no, no Bruinen-type rivers up there in the mountains)

Rivendell/View from Elrond's Back Deck - Lake Marie spillway into French Creek, Snowy Range, WY

Caradhras - Medicine Bow Peak, Snowy Range, WY

(It's a hell of a hike, but there is a trail that goes to the top of that sucker, 

which tops off at just above 12,000 feet!)

The Gate To Moria - Bellamy Lake, Snowy Range, WY

(The Snowy Range makes good Misty Mountains, no?)

The Carrock - Castle Rock, Green River, WY

(Yeah, from The Hobbit. So is the next one. Heh.)

Erebor, aka The Lonely Mountain - Devil's Tower National Monument, northeastern WY

(No brainer, this one!)

Lothlorien - Vedauwoo and environs, between Cheyenne and Laramie, WY

(I couldn't imagine deciduous trees bigger than these cottonwoods!)

Argonath - The North Platte River below Sheeprock near Saratoga, WY

Fangorn (getting logged by Saruman) - Brush Creek Campground, Snowy Range, WY

Rohan - Red Desert, WY

Helm's Deep - Seminole Dam - Rawlins/Alcova, WY

(Don't ask me why I always pictured a dam; I guess it was just the biggest manmade structure I'd yet seen)

Ithilien - A stone cabin near Kemmerer, WY

Osgiliath - Ames Monument - northeast of Laramie, WY

The Dead Marshes - Boiling mud, Yellowstone Natonal Park, WY

The Gate to Mordor - Devil's Gate, central Wyoming, southwest of Casper, WY

The Stairs of Cirith Ungol - Hell's Half Acre, southwest of Casper, WY

(This area served as the alien planet for the film Starship Troopers)

Barad-Dur - Denver, CO on a smoggy day - YUCK

And what about you, dear readers and fellow #PtBiB participants? Did anyone else populate the landscape of Middle Earth with familiar childhood sights like I did?