Oh god, another useless column that strings together a bunch of words so the writer can make a paycheck and the publication can fill some white space and drag some eyes to its adverts. This time the publication in question is This is London, and the subject is J.R.R. Tolkien vs. J.K. Rowling. There are (all together now) several inaccuracies in this little thing. One: both authors did not feature "a young, innocent hero." The only version of Lord of the Rings where Frodo is both young and innocent is the current movie version. In the books Frodo is actually nearly fifty, which in "hobbit years" is meant to represent a period of past youth but not middle age -- say, equivalent to a human in his mid-thirties. Obviously, this Malcolm Burgess fellow has not bothered to do the most cursory research before he typed up his column. I daresay he would not even have had to read the actual book to find out Frodo's actual age; he could probably have found a fan site on the internet with more info than he needed or wanted.
"Lots of places with Capital Letters." Er, what? English grammar rules demand capitalization of place names, of made-up countries as well as real ones. I'm not getting this. It's filler in a filler column.
Evidence for the assertion that people who read Rowlings books will be reading "only one book this year" comes from where?
Crickets chirping.
I see.
The rest is crap. Into the Fiery Mountain with it.
(Via the Onering.net.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at July 9, 2003 03:30 AMExcellent work! You got a triple play of bloviating idiots. I haven't read word one of HP, and I doubt I will, but you'd think that the franchise was actively taking food off theses schmoes' tables.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin at July 9, 2003 at 08:32 AM50 yrs in hobbit time is equivalent to our 30something years...the prime of life...but you knew that already :D ! And its typical of kids to think they were the first to discover these sort of things. I had a friend who was in the store and a kid standing in line thought it was cool that she was buying a Star Wars poster...until he saw that it was from the original trilogy (ESB)...then it was "Oh...you like the OLD stuff."
Silly silly kids...
Posted by: Sharon Ferguson at July 9, 2003 at 11:15 AMDang, Andrea! You've been on fire the last few days! I come away from your blog all fired up and ready to curse at ayone who gets in my way!
(that's a good thing BTW!)
Posted by: Ith at July 9, 2003 at 03:28 PMAndrea,
Yep, I'm with Scott: three idiots in a row. You'd think they would at least bother to read the books before sneering at them. "Why can't I stay in my hobbit hole all day like Bilbo Baggins?" Obviously he never got ten pages into the first book of LOTR. He has no clue what the Goblet of Fire is. There are no such things as "Quidditch spells." &c., &c. They pay people to write like this?
It's the petty pride that's the common note in your three samples. someone must be cast down so that they can be lifted up. Urgh.
Posted by: Michelle Dulak at July 9, 2003 at 06:30 PMBrilliant! I'm so happy I'm not the only human on the planet Earth who sees that J.R.R. Tolkien's work and J.K Rowling's work have almost nothing in common besides some words like "the" and "it" and "is"! I've read all of Rowling's work (because there isn't much) and most of Tolkien's, so I can say that there aren't many common threads with a clear conscience. Good work again!
Posted by: Micah Jones at July 10, 2003 at 04:00 PMUmmm...there's dragons in both, to an extent. That's the closest connection I can think of, though. Oh yeah, and bad guys.
Posted by: David Perron at July 11, 2003 at 11:04 AM