Comments

  1. FishyFred says

    This is the hold. My girlfriend, Eileen, did most of this

    You have got to be kidding me.

  2. Paguroidea says

    What an exciting project on break! After all that work it would make a person feel guilty to eat it.

  4. oddjob says

    LOL!!!!!!!!

    Now that’s someone who needs a life! (And I have a leather-bound, acid-free paper edition of LOTR, so it’s not as though I’m not a fan…..)

  7. oddjob says

    Oh please….. When he wrote that there was nothing else on the market at all like it! In fact, he had enormous difficulty getting it published because no publishing house thought they’d make any money from it because there was nothing else like it.

  10. Elf Eye says

    “lace it with archaisms”

    ‘Lace’ is hardly the appropriate term. Tolkien created an entire universe in which to set his tales, complete with a geography, a mythology, and histories and languages for multiple peoples. My students were in awe last semester as they contemplated Tolkien’s universe, created over decades while he simultaneously taught Old and Middle English literature. I’m with Ric: LOTR is underrated, in part because it is associated with the ‘genre’ literature inspired by its unexpected success.

  11. says

    I think LOTR is underrated as well, but in some senses it is considered to be greater than it is. More than there are hints of equality, there are hints of racism. Sexism is portrayed, opposed by a couple strong female characters (note: I am NOT talking about Arwen Evenstar, I mean Galadriel and Eowyn), but in the end the status quo is maintained. The story is written entirely from the victors point of view, and the view it gives of reality is horrible grim. This is understandable, as Tolkien wrote the darkest part of the story during WWII, but he ended up writing an anti-enlightenment moral to the story. The solution to the dilemma of a technology (or knowledge) that can be used for good or evil is to simply destroy it.

    Nevertheless, LOTR is a fabulous universe with a depth of reality and unexplained mysteries that I find incredibly engrossing. I think LOTR is less understood than it is over-rated or under-rated.

  13. says

    Whatever, people. Vast candy dioramas of imaginary battles are totally underrated, it should be obvious.

    I’m the one who submitted this to BoingBoing and TheOneRing.net, and it’s great to see someone who did something bizarre simply for the crazy joy of it get some credit. It’s beautiful not in spite of the strangeness, or the futility, but rather because of them.

  14. jufulu says

    I’m with raincoaster. It’s not about the final product (however cool and awesome), its about the fun making it. I can imagine everyone giggling and laughing as each new idea about what to do next came up. Life doesn’t get better than that. That is a life.