DIALOGUS - John R. R. Tolkien

Peter Jackson

mcknightft@sssnet.com
Good day to you Sir Tokien,

My first question for you should be a fairly simple one. How do you think director Peter Jackson has done with interpreting your work on "The Lord of the Rings"?

Secondly, I have seen in your biographies that you do not like people to translate your visions of Middle Earth to the evil of today's world, and I would like to personally ask you why? I can easily compare the evil doings of "The Two Towers" to terrorism and the evil in the hearts of men today in the 21st century. Also, I realize that it is a fairy tale, but can one learn lessons from the books?

Thank you for your time and your wonderful literature,

Brendan Patrick

John R.R. Tolkien
Dear Brendan,

My personal feelings regarding what M. Jackson has done with my book verges on anger, but I am neither surprised nor able to do anything about it. As I've often said, once you publish, your creation does not truly belong to you anymore. It sort of flies off your hands to live out a life of its own. Irate words will not change this. So I trust intelligent movie-goers will understand the differences between me and M. Jackson's vulgar and twisted mind. To be honest, I have not seen the movies myself, for I am not interested in movies anyway. But my opinion is based on direct accounts from people I have faith in.

Know that all this has nothing to do with cuts, which I can tolerate, all the while my conviction that The Lord of the Rings is not suited to any visual or theatrical adaptation of any kind remains unchanged.

The core of the problem is in the word interpreting. Many people, if not most of them, do not make any difference between interpretation and representation, where the former implies a reconstruction of what is not written and the latter a reproduction of the immediate meaning of the text. While I believe that the primary job of the movie director should be representation (for ultimately a movie is the transformation of a book into images), it is mistaken to think that a reader never has to reconstruct anything. Thus the whole thing revolves around exactly what is there to reconstruct by the reader, and this is essentially the source of the blur around the concept of interpretation.

As I see it, there is a whole world of difference between assigning hidden meanings to a text (most often done through the identification, or should I say invention, of symbols), reading it through one's own specific ideological spectacles (we could have, say, an environmentalist understanding of my book) and establishing relationships between events or characters within a story or a group of strongly related stories (like figuring out the importance of Galadriel's refusal of the Ring for herself, or the fact that Gandalf was once a Maia, when you read both The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion). These are three different ways to interpret a book. Now let me insist that the interpretation of The Lord of the Rings should coincide only with the third. Why so? On this I think I have been explicit enough in the book's foreword, and I shall deal with this particular detail below. I will just say now that this third kind of interpretation should well serve the moviemaker to better represent the story. For example, what hair colour should Boromir have? This has to do with his ancestry and the specific Houses of Men who became the Númenoreans. So my point is that many details (albeit not all of them) are actually deducible from the story and its setting. This is interpretation qua reconstruction, something every author respectful of his readers would expect them to do.

Most of M. Jackson's blunders are purely representational, but many I equate with the second sense of interpretation explained above. He has either some kind of horror (as a genre) point of view that is sickening, or a liking for inane extravaganzas that just betrays a want for a superficial show. There is genuine evil, darkness and terror in my work, but that does not require the Orcs be born from silly glutinous cocoons, Sauron wear an armour when forging the Ring at a time he had befriended the Elves, Galadriel turn into some sort of poltergeist when she rejects the Ring from Frodo, or Théoden need an exorcism to be saved from Saruman (and assuredly you cannot drop lower than this one). There is also critical danger, but the Balrog does not have to roar like an animal, there originally is no longish battle against a Troll taking place earlier in the Moria and Aragorn never escapes death after fighting Wargs in Rohan. All these disturbing alterations are absolutely not forced on M. Jackson by the change of genre. While he is entitled to his own imagination, having my name associated with it is at best awfully unpleasant.

Now to answer your second question. Why do I dislike any attempt at linking our contemporary world with my own ëlegendarium'? Fairly simple: because this is pointless. How does this help to understand the work of fiction in the first place? How does this make it better? Alternatively, what do we learn more about our world by doing so? At most, the exercise is purely tautological, since it involves comparison, if not pure equation. If you wish to say, for example, that Orcs are like Communists or vice versa, what do you learn about either of them? Nothing worthy of note, let alone useful, I believe. The characters in my stories, as individuals, are examples of universal values, but they are not the values themselves, or their symbols. Frodo is a wise hobbit, but his wisdom is not all wisdom, or Wisdom with a capital W. He is just one example amongst others. The Ring is an evil artifact of Temptation, a device fairly common in fairy tales (where it has a clearer moral significance), yet it is but one form that temptation of Power can exhibit. Surely I did not invent the tyrant.

As such, any effort at seeing my book with a contemporary standpoint is likely to succeed, because it obviously deals with universal - i.e. human - values or themes (like death, which is central). But this is not what the story is primarily meant for. There is no message intended anywhere, and there is no allegory. That I have already repeated aplenty.

Sincerely,
JRRT

PS: Please, you may freely leave out the Sir, for I don't have such an honour as to bear this, or any other, title. Also, I am rather surprised to read biographies in the plural in your letter, for only M. Humphrey Carpenter has been officially authorized to write mine.

				Peter Jackson




mcknightft@sssnet.com				Good day to you Sir Tokien, My first question for you should be a fairly simple one. How do you think director Peter Jackson has done with interpreting your work on "The Lord of the Rings"? Secondly, I have seen in your biographies that you do not like people to translate your visions of Middle Earth to the evil of today's world, and I would like to personally ask you why? I can easily compare the evil doings of "The Two Towers" to terrorism and the evil in the hearts of men today in the 21st century. Also, I realize that it is a fairy tale, but can one learn lessons from the books? Thank you for your time and your wonderful literature, Brendan Patrick


John R.R. Tolkien				Dear Brendan, My personal feelings regarding what M. Jackson has done with my book verges on anger, but I am neither surprised nor able to do anything about it. As I've often said, once you publish, your creation does not truly belong to you anymore. It sort of flies off your hands to live out a life of its own. Irate words will not change this. So I trust intelligent movie-goers will understand the differences between me and M. Jackson's vulgar and twisted mind. To be honest, I have not seen the movies myself, for I am not interested in movies anyway. But my opinion is based on direct accounts from people I have faith in. Know that all this has nothing to do with cuts, which I can tolerate, all the while my conviction that The Lord of the Rings is not suited to any visual or theatrical adaptation of any kind remains unchanged. The core of the problem is in the word interpreting. Many people, if not most of them, do not make any difference between interpretation and representation, where the former implies a reconstruction of what is not written and the latter a reproduction of the immediate meaning of the text. While I believe that the primary job of the movie director should be representation (for ultimately a movie is the transformation of a book into images), it is mistaken to think that a reader never has to reconstruct anything. Thus the whole thing revolves around exactly what is there to reconstruct by the reader, and this is essentially the source of the blur around the concept of interpretation. As I see it, there is a whole world of difference between assigning hidden meanings to a text (most often done through the identification, or should I say invention, of symbols), reading it through one's own specific ideological spectacles (we could have, say, an environmentalist understanding of my book) and establishing relationships between events or characters within a story or a group of strongly related stories (like figuring out the importance of Galadriel's refusal of the Ring for herself, or the fact that Gandalf was once a Maia, when you read both The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion). These are three different ways to interpret a book. Now let me insist that the interpretation of The Lord of the Rings should coincide only with the third. Why so? On this I think I have been explicit enough in the book's foreword, and I shall deal with this particular detail below. I will just say now that this third kind of interpretation should well serve the moviemaker to better represent the story. For example, what hair colour should Boromir have? This has to do with his ancestry and the specific Houses of Men who became the Númenoreans. So my point is that many details (albeit not all of them) are actually deducible from the story and its setting. This is interpretation qua reconstruction, something every author respectful of his readers would expect them to do. Most of M. Jackson's blunders are purely representational, but many I equate with the second sense of interpretation explained above. He has either some kind of horror (as a genre) point of view that is sickening, or a liking for inane extravaganzas that just betrays a want for a superficial show. There is genuine evil, darkness and terror in my work, but that does not require the Orcs be born from silly glutinous cocoons, Sauron wear an armour when forging the Ring at a time he had befriended the Elves, Galadriel turn into some sort of poltergeist when she rejects the Ring from Frodo, or Théoden need an exorcism to be saved from Saruman (and assuredly you cannot drop lower than this one). There is also critical danger, but the Balrog does not have to roar like an animal, there originally is no longish battle against a Troll taking place earlier in the Moria and Aragorn never escapes death after fighting Wargs in Rohan. All these disturbing alterations are absolutely not forced on M. Jackson by the change of genre. While he is entitled to his own imagination, having my name associated with it is at best awfully unpleasant. Now to answer your second question. Why do I dislike any attempt at linking our contemporary world with my own ëlegendarium'? Fairly simple: because this is pointless. How does this help to understand the work of fiction in the first place? How does this make it better? Alternatively, what do we learn more about our world by doing so? At most, the exercise is purely tautological, since it involves comparison, if not pure equation. If you wish to say, for example, that Orcs are like Communists or vice versa, what do you learn about either of them? Nothing worthy of note, let alone useful, I believe. The characters in my stories, as individuals, are examples of universal values, but they are not the values themselves, or their symbols. Frodo is a wise hobbit, but his wisdom is not all wisdom, or Wisdom with a capital W. He is just one example amongst others. The Ring is an evil artifact of Temptation, a device fairly common in fairy tales (where it has a clearer moral significance), yet it is but one form that temptation of Power can exhibit. Surely I did not invent the tyrant. As such, any effort at seeing my book with a contemporary standpoint is likely to succeed, because it obviously deals with universal - i.e. human - values or themes (like death, which is central). But this is not what the story is primarily meant for. There is no message intended anywhere, and there is no allegory. That I have already repeated aplenty. Sincerely, JRRT PS: Please, you may freely leave out the Sir, for I don't have such an honour as to bear this, or any other, title. Also, I am rather surprised to read biographies in the plural in your letter, for only M. Humphrey Carpenter has been officially authorized to write mine.