Before and after the movie

[Child of the 7th Age]

First, I have already thanked Nurumaiel personally for her wonderful post, but I want to add my thanks here. Not many of our families have been so intimately involved with introducing us to LotR. You have some great memories there!

Snowdog - Those categories are fantastic. I fall into the "Old-School Book Fan". But you might want to have at least one "sub-category" in that group: the "Frodo Lives" generation, the U.S. college students from the late sixties whom Tolkien felt had good inclinations but were also a little nuts and who came at the book from a different angle than his own. (He was undoubtedly correct about this!) Everyone had the books in college and many had posters plastered on their dorm or apartment walls -- usually the psychedelic one done by Barbara Remington that JRRT couldn't stand! We even had pins that said "Gandalf for President".

A number of this group were "tree huggers" and thumbed their nose at the establishment, instead specilizing in baking bread and toting protest signs! Certainly not what Tolkien had anticipated, but we saw LotR as a way to break out of the "bourgeois" constraints left over from the late Fifties and early Sixties.

Looking back, I have to smile but it was a time of excitement. The general reader in the U.S. did not yet know about the books (totally unlike today), and we felt we'd stumbled onto a secret world that was all our own....

Just curious....but is there anyone else out there who had a similar experience in college?

[piosenniel]

Great categorizing, Snowdog!

Another old school fan here . . . the battered old paperbacks from my college days lean haphazardly together on my bookshelf, touching covers with Diet for a Small Planet, another book from back then. I'm sorry to have lost the old buttons of that era in my many moves - but here are a few of them for your perusal:

Frodo lives!

I would concur with the need for a sixties subsection as proposed by Child.

~*~ Pio

[mark12_30]

Snowdog:

Old-school here, too.

I had no Frodo-Lives buttons (or Gandalf for President, either). But I did have several psychedelic posters.

My fellowship was not in college, but in Junior-high. Eomer, Faramir, and Gimli (as we called ourselves) sat cross-legged in the hall during lunch break and swapped fanfics, written and spoken. Mary-Sues, every last one, and all long since burned or shredded. But I wonder if I still have any of those old charcoal drawings...

Soooo... Old-School. Ah....... **cough** if we're neither Edain nor Eldar, What does that make us?

Ents?

Maia?

Valar???



Nuru-- wow.

[drigel]

Excellent catorization! I would be remiss though to say that if you are going to subgroup a sixties college students group out of the oldtimers, please give us GenX'rs a place! hehe .. I was in the 5th grade in 1975 when i picked up The Hobbit (what a wonderful age to start reading Tolkien!), and Immediately/ permanently became a fan. I may be an unusual throwback, however. My LOTR paperbacks were smashed between Asimov and Robert E Howard. I have gone through the cycles already succintfully described on this thread. My journey came after the sixties "I have discovered my own little world", but I had the advantage of being able to soak up all the wonderfull, more refined art that was being done during the seventies. Of course it all came to a crashing end with Bakashi lol. Sigh... so many hopes for that flick that were dashed....

I was completely ignorant of the excellent Tolkien internet presense though, until the movies came out and I started researching. So - thank or curse the movies for my involvement here! As a newbie (kinda) to this site - i can definately discern diparate groups here. Some make me think, others dont. I still read on. For me, I get just as irratated by a high faluted philosophical academic as i do a Legolas is so hot popcorn eater ... no offense intended.

As an oldtimer (cough), my view of PJ's endeavour was one of interpretation, which is of course what it was. TTT was where it was very evident to me. My thoughts at the end of that movie was how hard it would be to interpret LOTR to film. ROTK (for me) showed even more evidence of the glaring interpretation decisions made by PJ. And showed me even more insersions of his movie making style which, to me, detracted from the Tolkien experience. Too many Goonies influences. Might work for King Kong - didnt work for LOTR. I will enjoy PJ's interpretation of The Hobbit or Silm as well. But, as I enjoy the different opinions here, I would also appreciate any other filmmakers interpretation as well, as long as the intention and the budget were as honorable as PJ's....

[Snowdog]

Being that I managed to make Old School by a year, and was one who was in line for the opening of the Walden books the day the Silmarillion was released, I didn't have any knowledge of the cultures before 'my' time which was 1975-76. So I will work all your 60's suggestions into it, and hope to get in touch with this charming old gent who told me he read the triligy in 1956 in the U of Washington library. he was a 'beatnik' and was a precurser to the whole 60's Frodo Lives generation.

As an oldtimer (cough), my view of PJ's endeavour was one of interpretation, which is of course what it was. TTT was where it was very evident to me. My thoughts at the end of that movie was how hard it would be to interpret LOTR to film. ROTK (for me) showed even more evidence of the glaring interpretation decisions made by PJ. And showed me even more insersions of his movie making style which, to me, detracted from the Tolkien experience.

I knew his interpretation would be way off as soon as I saw a blade held by "Arwen" at the throat of Aragorn in the wild . Nuclear Galadriel, Elves in Helms Deep, searchlight eye of sauron... But it was all ok for a movie because I know what its really like, stored in my head.

[drigel]

aye snowdog i concur
It didnt kick in for me with the Arwen/Aragorn scene - it was the exorcist Bilbo at Rivendell - yikes. For an oldtimer, it was dissapointing stick with the authors narrative - that scene would have been just as powerfull if you could have dropped the freakish melodramatics

[Encaitare]

Those buttons were great, Pio! Time for me to scour E-bay and find some for my very own.

it was the exorcist Bilbo at Rivendell - yikes. For an oldtimer, it was dissapointing stick with the authors narrative - that scene would have been just as powerfull if you could have dropped the freakish melodramatics

It would have been cool if it had suddenly gone very surreal, with Frodo envisioning Bilbo a tad "Gollum-ized" -- like was planned for Frodo to look for a moment in the EE of TTT, although they took that bit out.

I wish I was an "old-school" fan... too bad I'm too young! I could have been one of the "first born" had I only had a bit more willpower around the age of twelve... I couldn't make it past Tom Bombadil at that age, tricky guy that he is. So I'm just one of the Edain, a new-school book fan. Woohoo!

[Lalwendë]

Snowdog, those categories are great - but I'm disappointed I'm not considered true 'old school' At least I'm one of the first-born though. I first read Tolkien way back in 1982/3, first the Hobbit, then LOTR, then straight onto the Sil and Unfinished Tales, and then onto whatever I could find in the library. I was only12 when I read it. My brother got the books and he loved them, and I thought, 'this has got to be cool if my brother likes it'. So I pinched them from him.

I used to have to sneak the books into school, where I constructed a little hidey hole to go and read in. It was under a pile of those old metal-framed chairs with the canvas seats, which had been piled up in a store room. I took a long time to read it because I did not want it to end and kept going back to parts I found particularly good. I also used to draw pictures of scenes in the books, one which springs to mind was Boromir's death scene. My mum must still have that somewhere as we are a hoarding family.

Everyone had the books in college and many had posters plastered on their dorm or apartment walls -- usually the psychedelic one done by Barbara Remington that JRRT couldn't stand! We even had pins that said "Gandalf for President".

Child - I am jealous. You might laugh at this, but when I read Tolkien I developed this obsession with all things late sixties/early seventies, and accumulated a large number of like-minded friends. This was the 80s, and we would go round listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, early (Gabriel-era) Genesis, Fairport Convention.....We used to write Frodo Lives on everything. And we were considered peculiar.

By the time I got to university - 1989 - Tolkien was sadly considered for geeks, especially to my fellow English students, and I struggled to find anyone who would openly admit to being a fan. Still, me and my goth flatmate were of like minds. We once went to join a uni sci-fi/fantasy society and ran away because all the young men there scared us. Not because we were scared of young men, au contraire, but these were scary men. It was all very Mike Leigh.

[Neferchoirwen]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Child - I am jealous. You might laugh at this, but when I read Tolkien I developed this obsession with all things late sixties/early seventies, and accumulated a large number of like-minded friends. This was the 80s, and we would go round listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, early (Gabriel-era) Genesis, Fairport Convention.....We used to write Frodo Lives on everything. And we were considered peculiar.

I always thought that I was born in a wrong decade as well. Oh well...

[Snowdog]

Snowdog, those categories are great - but I'm disappointed I'm not considered true 'old school'

Sorry. The cutoff for old-school was the release of Christopher Tolkien's Silmarillion, because before that, the last release was Return of the King in 1955. The late 70's brought the Silmarillion, and the Bakshi & Rankin Bass cartoons, and a bit later the Unfinished Tales and the HoME series by Christopher Tolkien. I suppose a 'New Old-School' catagory could be made for those who read the books without any influence from the Christopher Tolkien releases or the cartoons & movies....