Faerie Stories

A recent "new-but-old addition" to my library was a slim volume containing three essays written by JRR Tolkien, "Tree and Leaf", "Smith of Wootton Major", and "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth". It was rescued from a pile of books improperly stored books in Monsieur Redacteur's parents house in Northern Ireland (that Irish damp got to some of them with sad consequences) and brought back to France because if Monsieur Redacteur knows anything he knows that I love Faerie stories.

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Two of the stories, "On Fairy Storys" and "Leaf by Niggle" were originally comprised for an Andrew Lang Lecture that Tolkien delivered in a shorter form at St. Andrew's in 1938. Now just mentioning Andrew Lang makes me excited. I have long wished to own all twelve of his colourful "Fairy Tale Books". I have contented myself with a four volume (Red, Green, Yellow (that is actually orange in colour in this set and confusing because there is an actual Orange Fairy Book), and Blue) boxed set from Dover because it was a used bookshop bargain and is the unabridged facsimile copy of the original editions, which are cher (dear) in cost as well as value.

On this shelf: National Geographic 100 Years of Discovery, Andrew Lang Box Set, many copies of "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", one of my favourite books in all the world Henry Miller's "In the Time of the Assassins", Two different printings of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn from The Obelisk Press, an Olympia press of "Nexus" from Miller's "Rosy Cruxification", lots of old first edition Richard Brautigan books, and that gentleman in the back is Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Hell Screen", which is a fascinating book.

Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, anthropologist, novelist, literary critic...a man of many talents that calls to mind a (Captain Sir Francis) Richard Burton, who was around at the same time working on his own masterpiece work, "The Thousand and One Nights".  Lang's masterpiece is known by a few names - "Andrew Lang's Fairy Books", "Andrew Lang's Coloured Fairy Books", and "Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colours" - oh which the latter is my favourite.

Published between 1889 and 1910, there are twelve books in the collection starting with Blue (1889), Red (1890), Green (1892), Yellow (1894), Pink (1897), Grey (1900), Violet (1901), Crimson (1903), Brown (1904), Orange (1906), Olive (1907), and Lilac (1910).

Though Lang did not, as had been the tradition, collect these stories from oral tradition, the extent of his sources from translating recounted stories in multiple foreign languages and cultures resulted in some fairy tales being put into English for the first time in history.

Lang started this work during a period of time where fairy tales were considered too brutal for the fragile psyches of children. The same stories deemed harmful for children were beneath any serious consideration for adults. Lang's work changed this perception entirely. In fact it caused a literary revolution.

Thanks in part to Lang's reputation as an expert in matters of folklore, and also in part to a brilliant marketing scheme that packaged the books in "sets" - the series was immensely popular and like anything popular gave birth to many imitators.

Lang explains in the preface that the stories were of old, and not his, that he found new fairy tales no match for them.

They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that he has been dreaming.

Such are the new fairy stories. May we be preserved from all the sort of them!

JRR Tolkien expressed admiration for Andrew Lang's work (which he must have had extensive knowledge about, why else would he be asked to lecture on the subject at Oxford?) in his essay "On Fairy Storys", in which he discusses the fairy-story as a literary form.

Without Lang perhaps fairy-storys would still be considered "beneath" admiration. As someone who has loved fairy tales from the very first "Once upon a time"* line we all know so well - as someone who still buys every collection of fairy tale books she can afford, I am extremely grateful to Andrew Lang for his contribution.

*Il était une fois or Il y avait un jour, literally "there was a time" and "there was one day" in French.

You can read Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Storys" here, but you need a PDF reader.

If I could point to any one thing that has had the most impact on me as a person, on my writing, or on my life itself, it'd be an old book of Perrault's "Conte de Fées" with Doré illustrations that entranced my imagination and captivate me still that I had as a child.

Take a look some of Doré's illustrations below and you'll understand what I mean. Those poor mice are surely going to get it...

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The Hobbit

The geek in me (who is the same geek that has seen the long ass director's cuts of the three LOTR movies in the cinema even) is pretty excited about Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit". Of all the LOTR books it is by far my favourite. It also contains one of the best opening lines of any book in history:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Before this sentence no one even knew what a hobbit was. No one had ever seen or heard of a hobbit. No one knew what they looked like, where they lived, or how many times a day a hobbit might like to eat breakfast (at least twice). It makes this first sentence unique and original. It is also a fine first sentence because of its simplicity and it's ability to immediately get your imagination going.

I was eleven when I undertook reading The Hobbit and Tolkien's other LOTR books. I had been long obsessed with C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and read somewhere that the two men had been friends and had influenced each other a great deal. So out I set to the school library and from the first sentence I didn't stop. I read while walking; before sleeping; while eating; basically any chance I could get (including hiding the books inside my textbooks during class; and when I had finished all four of the books I read them again.

Over the years I've read a or a few books from Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia nearly every year of my life. The last time I read the Tolkien books was when the first of the films was set to come out and only to see how true Jackson was going to be to Tolkien's much beloved material. While I have my complaints (mostly surrounding Elijah Wood) about the films I still enjoyed seeing some of my favourite fictional characters come to life. Especially Gandalf.

Living in a forest it's hard not to think about Tolkien's books and Middle Earth. Once on a long walk unsure of where to go me and my friend thought, how would Gandalf decide what road to take when he encountered five separate paths in the wood? Then when my neighbour's son started reading The Fellowship of the Ring I decided it was time to read the books again. So naturally I started with The Hobbit.

But I had to buy it as I had lent the set I bought before The Fellowship of the Ring came out in theaters and it was never returned, which really upsets me as they weren't a valuable set, but they happened to be the first books I ever bought at The Strand  and I happened to find them under a set of shelves as opposed to on them. They were covered with thick dust that made them seem all the more magical.

I bought a cheap paperback copy of The Hobbit (I could have had a first UK edition for 200,00 euros but I couldn't afford it) in Amsterdam at The Book Exchange and read that first line again, but this time with the perspective of someone who would love to write something as brilliant for children..."In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

If you're looking for news more on the movie than the book this is a pretty decent website, but I warn you that any true fan of the books isn't going to like the initial news. Yes Orlando Bloom is one sexy Englishman and I loved his portrayal of Legolas, but he isn't in the book. Jackson's "tinkering" around with details and well just between me and you I don't approve.

Why don't I approve Mr. Jackson? For the same reasons why I didn't approve of your other "tinkerings". For the past twenty + years I've been entranced by that one opening line alone, nevermind the entire book. Why change it? Why make it more Hollywood? If something has lived in the hearts of its fans for such a long time I would think it's good enough to be left alone.

But reading this book after so many years has made me smile. Like Bilbo, I'm there and back again to a time when my imagination was all I needed to make a book come to life.

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