The Riddles of The Hobbit by Adam Roberts
You can't get too far into The Hobbit without seeing a riddle. The prime ones are in the challenge Bilbo and Gollum give each other, a riddling contest ended unfairly by the hobbit. Such games of one-upmanship have been seen in many cultures over many hundreds of years, and certainly are in mythological texts such as were of great interest to Tolkien. They focus the mind, sometimes in a poetic way, sometimes in a more cryptic lateral-thinking manner, on an aspect of life. Roberts, with an exceedingly academic manner, takes riddles and runs with them, making as many aspects of The Hobbit a riddle as he can – from why the instrument of power was a ring, to what was a hobbit in the first place, and even why Tolkien featured what he did in his riddle contest.
| The Riddles of The Hobbit by Adam Roberts | |
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| Category: Entertainment | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: Make no mistake, this lengthy discussion of factors concerning Hobbits and Rings is purely for the academic. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 208 | Date: October 2013 |
| Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan | |
| ISBN: 9781137373632 | |
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The most valid side of this book is that which says 'look, riddles are inherently important to the book and its author, ergo they must be important to us'. I could not complain about the background and how the feel of the original riddles Roberts features adds a layer of appreciation to the Tolkien. The riddles have a bluntness when one is given the answer, through their being limited in focus to things Medieval Man thought important – household objects, climate, and only sometimes some spiritual elements. They ground or disguise the subject in a specific way, depending on which type of riddle one uses.
But Roberts being Roberts has to see riddles where there might be none, and provides answers to what might not have been questions. To him (and he's doubtlessly not alone, for literary analysts seem to club together in claiming their own individuality) there has to be a solution to why Bilbo and Gollum quiz each other on their chosen subjects. The way Roberts goes about it, deciding this is this and that is that and bending things around a bit to get something that might raise a tingle is just like the contents of trashy pulp novels miles removed from The Hobbit, and brings him into the territory of those books that Dan Brown cribbed from. There's a thin line between being authoritative and deciding Tolkien decided or knew this or that when there is no evidence towards these answers, beyond a fulsome appreciation of an alleged riddle, and Roberts crosses that line often.
He also will alienate many people with his high-falutin' vocabulary. A diremption is here and I don't know if it's a synechdocal one or not. He has (perhaps eucatastrophically, perhaps intersubjectively – because I don't have the foggiest at this point) made sure this is not going to fit well on the shelves of 99.999% of those who see the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. Even those who know a lot about Tolkien will gulp at mention of his Boethian/Acquinian theological perspective – although I've quoted from various late-on pages, and the introduction itself is the biggest riddle to combat.
There is always a place in the world for books about books, even if they have a genre leaning such as Tolkien's. Especially so, of course, with Tolkien, for as this proves there is a lot of history and culture imprinted on his pages at whatever depth one chooses to look. It's just I doubt very much if many people will choose to look at the riddles of The Hobbit – or even possibly anything else – with as much detail and self-given purpose as Roberts does. I even took umbrage at him capitalising Fantasy – does it really need that defence, to be given that importance in such a way? One of the ancient riddles Roberts quotes asks its audience to read this riddle I pray thee (if you modernise the spelling, anyway). 'Read' here is to understand, and solve. Many others require you to ponder. Well, with The Hobbit perhaps it's best to ponder less and just stick to the modern sense of 'reading'.
I must still thank the publishers for my review copy.
For a much more basic grounding into the world of Tolkien, 3-Minute JRR Tolkien: A Visual Biography of The World's Most Revered Fantasy Writer by Gary Raymond does well. And for further fantasy - not just because Roberts quotes it as the best borrower of Tolkien's sensibilities - we still love the five-book series starting with A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin.
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