The Soddit

[The Saucepan Man]

I received The Soddit for Christmas and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am partial to parody and have no objections over things close to me being parodied. So, I had no reservations over it, regardless of The Hobbit being one of my all-time favourite books. But parody must be good parody if I am to enjoy it and previous threads on this posts appear to me to have identified the key components of good parody, as follows:

• it should display a good knowledge on the part of the author of the source material; and
• it should make a good story in itself.

The Soddit seems to me to succeed on both of these counts. Certainly, the author seems to me to be having a fond dig at Tolkien's work, rather than mercilessly lampooning it. As an example, I would cite the following passage, which I found most amusing:

What else? That they are conservative, rural, bourgeouis, middle-class. That they speak with a slight Birmingham accent, oddly. And, also, despite their manifest disadvantages - their diminutive stature, their crippled elaphantistic feet, their small-mindedness, their disinclination to listen to strangers or change old ways, their addiction to tobacco and alcohol, their stagnant class-ridden 'respectability' - despite all this, they have developed the most modern semi-industrial culture in the whole world, with water-mills, steam-foundries, comfortable housing, pipes, pop-guns, spectacles, velvet clothes, charming little flintstone churches, books and fireworks, whilst the rest of Upper Middle Earth is languishing in the dark ages of swords, horses, and burying their dead under enormous mounds of earth. Funny that. But, you see, the ways of the world are strange and sometimes inexplicable.

It seems to me that it takes someone who has a certain familiarity with Tolkien's works and the man himself to come up with such a wonderful parody of Hobbit nature and the style adopted by Tolkien in the original. In addition, some of the footnotes are a delight. There is one in particular which comments on the (fictional) author's motives in writing the book, which rather tickled me.

And, on the second count, the story works in itself as a stand-alone story. As Esty has suggested, it does not faithfully follow the plotline of The Hobbit, but rather develops a plotline of its own. Indeed, I found myself becoming quite engrossed in the story and, in particular, the reason for the quest.

I would also disagree with Esty that the book is over-long. I found it very easy and quick to read and was through it in no time. Much longer, though, and it might have become a tad tedious.

All in all, I would say, a good light read if you are fond of parodies, and I would class this as a particularly good example - certainly moreso than Bored of the Rings which I also enjoyed, although less so. And, the title notwithstanding, it is decidedly less bawdy than Bored of the Rings.

Oh, and the socialist spiders are hilarious.