Books in my Blood 3: The Lord of the Rings
I first encountered Middle Earth back in the 1970s, when I was in high school. A beautiful, dark-haired young woman was my guide, an English teacher named Debbie Ernst. We became friendly when I was in her composition class, and she picked up on how bored I was with most of my classes. "I have a book you might like to read," she began, innocently enough. "Have you ever heard of The Hobbit? I think you'll like it."
She brought me her paperback copy, and I took it, somewhat skeptically. At the time I was reading nothing but science-fiction, and couldn't see how anything with swords and bows could be really interesting. Nonetheless, I really liked Debbie, so I gave it a chance. By the middle of the book I was hooked. Even though it was obviously a kid's story, there was a depth to it, with hints of a bigger story just behind the page, a world larger than the tale it was telling. I was fascinated.
Debbie was thrilled that I enjoyed it so much, and told me about another book by the same writer—actually three books telling a single story, which was related to The Hobbit, but more adult. I begged her to bring them in for me, so on Friday she brought in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. I couldn't wait to get a chance to start reading it.
This was much harder work than the first book. It demanded more of me than any book I'd ever read: I had to sort out characters with annoyingly similar names, the historical digressions were ubiquitous and essential, and there was quite a bit of poetry thrown in, too. And yet it was still compelling, as though I wasn't just reading a story, but rather looking into another world, one as richly detailed as our own.
I blazed through the book that first weekend, and then couldn't wait for Debbie to bring in the next, instead forcing my father to take me to a bookstore to find the other volumes. The Two Towers slowed me down quite a bit—that's the one where people often lose their courage and stop reading—but once I got into The Return of the King I couldn't even sleep I was so desperate to find out what happened.
And then it was over, with that marvelous, bittersweet ending I'll not spoil for those who haven't read the books. I sat there with the book open in front of me, and I felt something I had never felt before: deep, wrenching sorrow that the trilogy had run its course. While I could re-read the books, there would never be new stories of Frodo and Sam. Gandalf defeated the Balrog, but he couldn't prevail against the death of Professor Tolkien. I sat at my desk, and actually cried for the end of the story.
In the days and weeks that followed, my friends and I re-read and endlessly discussed the books, dissecting them, scraping out every bit of undiscovered lore, trying to recapture the feeling we'd had reading them the first time. We bought books about the languages of the elves and dwarves, memorized frightening levels of minutiae, even took on character names for ourselves.
It was decided that I should be Gandalf ("because you are wise beyond your years," Debbie said), that Debbie should be Galadriel (although she insisted she was much more like a hobbit than an elf queen), and that my cohort in obsession, Jim Aurand, would be Saruman. Frankly, Jim and I should have exchanged our names, as he has always been one of the most resolutely good people I have known, whereas I... well, let's just say that like Saruman, I, too, have stared into the palantir, and been left changed.
Graduation came, and it was time to move forward in life. I didn't give up Middle Earth, although by that time it had been joined by a myriad of other worlds, though none as richly imagined. While by brief foray into college slowed my re-reading of the books, it didn't stop, and even lead to some rather odd experiences in later years, experiences we may discuss another time. But mainly, reading The Lord of the Rings exposed me to the heights to which imagination can soar, the importance of detail and consistency in suspending a reader's disbelief, and that writing can be fantastic and still have something to say about our mundane lives. It changed the way I viewed literature.
Debbie changed me, too. We became friends, close friends, talking as much about our lives as about school and books. She was only a few years older than her students, really, which made it easier for us to talk with her, and harder in some ways, too. The last days before school ended, we got together often, just to talk about the world. We talked about what we wanted to do with our lives, which surprised me, as I had assumed that by the time you got through college you'd have all that worked out. She laughed when I said that, and told me she didn't know if anyone was ever really sure what to do with their life.
As tradition dictated, I asked her to sign my yearbook. She held on to it for a while, at least a day, and when she gave it back she said she knew what she wrote was terrible. "Please forgive me for writing something so clichéd. Don't use that to remember me...."
On the page she had written "Frodo Lives. At least, he does in our hearts." She signed it simply "Debbie." I looked at her and she had this tremendously embarrassed look in her eyes. I couldn't help myself, I started laughing, and she said "Well, you are a better writer than I'll ever be, darn it!" She started laughing, too, and I hugged her, and we kept laughing until we were both crying.
When the moment passed and we'd regained a little composure, it struck me why we'd been crying. Our story was over.
