Everybody Is Wrong: Lord Of The Rings

And so. Another Wednesday, another ‘Everybody Is Wrong’ - the weekly feature in which hecklerspray takes something (or someone) widely heralded as being fantastic and buries it under a big pile of poo.

This week it’s the turn of Hobbit-bothering epic Lord Of The Rings.

Okay. So here’s the twist. hecklerspray isn’t talking about the films. They’re overlong, overblown and over-acted, sure, but they’re pretty entertaining nonetheless. Peter Jackson did a good job.

In fact, Peter Jackson did a great job. It’s amazing that he made the trilogy at all watchable. Because - dear Christ - have you ever read the books?

hecklerspray has. And we’re not happy.

In the great library of the over-rated - brimming with copies of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and anything by Ian McEwan - the Lord Of The Rings volumes must take pride of place, a giant slab of monotony-lined pages centring the room like a big boring monolith.

Hear hecklerspray roar. The Lord Of The Rings is possibly the most uninvolving, tedious and inexplicably popular book ever committed to paper.

And here are some reasons why:

  - On film, the battle of Helms Deep is an astonishing nightmare-scale bombardment, a cinematic showdown unlike anything ever witnessed before. In the book? It’s about as enthralling as a trip to the post office.

- It’s a game of two halves: either twee Enid-Blyton nonsense or Games Workshop drivel. Or occasionally both.

- Listening to people herald it as a masterpiece is like eavesdropping on a private joke that you just don’t find funny.

- People have since learnt Elvish. And have big Elvish gatherings. Where they all speak Elvish. Elvish.

- Tolkien’s waffling, ongoing literary ’style’. Thirty-seven pages on the curvature of Gandalf’s hat? Thanks, JR. Thanks a lot.

- The most badly-drawn female characters this side of a Guy Ritchie movie.

- The Scouring Of The Shire (utterly pointless epilogue to those not in the know). For Christ’s sake - your story has finished! Stop it! Just stop!

- And what’s this? A MILLION APPENDICES ON THE MOST TRIVIAL, NONSENSICAL BULLSHIT IMAGINABLE? STOP! JUST STOP!

Ahem. hecklerspray must rest now. Maybe we’ll curl up with a good book - a collection of Amy Hempel stories, maybe, or a spot of Michael Chabon.

So long as there isn’t a Balrog involved.

[story by C J Davies]