Written be devoted (and financially limited, as they reiterate often) fans of JRR Tolkien, in 1969 (nice). It has since been published and republished and translated into twelve languages. In 2012, it got an audiobook and an updated prologue with Adam Sandler references.
I honestly thought I’d love this. I love Tolkien’s world, but not enough not to poke fun at it. Or maybe precisely enough to poke fun at it? Also, as can be demonstrated by the first sentence of this review, I am a child who is amused by juvenile jokes. Dildo Bugger?! Fucking hysterical.
What I got instead was a deep contemplation on the evolution of humour, and how incredibly context specific it is, and how little it can make sense to someone who doesn’t have that context.
For me, a good satire makes you appreciate the source material, draws your attention to details, gaps, insights that maybe you missed. It pokes fun in a way that appreciates the source material. This does not do this. It literally just tells the same story, but faster and worse. The humour, for me (a millennial whose parents were toddlers when this book came out, and also living in a culture that had a very different sense of humour), just seemed lazy. There is nothing I would consider an actual joke. Pippin’s name is Pepsi now! Isn’t that hilarious?! Is it?? What am I missing?!
I had a long existential talk about this with my husband who quite wisely opined that humour may just be another name for “transgression.” At a time when to be respectable was synonymous with being serious and solemn, just messing with an epic, beloved tale by throwing in crass words and disrespecting Pippin (that poor guy cannot get a break, even pre-Peter Jackson!) is transgressive. For the right audience the absolute height of humour.
For me, whose entry to the LORT was memes, this book feels like a downgrade from the absolute genius of things like my all time favourite:
And really, this is probably the same. It’s taking the same epic source material, taking one of the saddest parts of the LORT, the absolutely tragic relationship between Denethor and Faramir, and turning it into a bland facebook post where Denethor, either deliberately or not, does not to recognize his own son. This will be so goddamn funny to someone who grew up with the early internet and social media, when people still did things like post bland pictures of family events and whatnot with bland captions that reveal more about them than they realize. For 99% of all people who ever lived and who will ever live, this will be nonsense, and they will question the intelligence of people who find it funny. And fair enough.
And maybe that’s why comedy that truly transcends time (I was once kicked out of English class for the transgression of laughing as we read Taming of the Shrew) is so valued. It binds us across decades and centuries and millennia. Across borders and cultures and niche references. No joke is universal, and they don’t all need to be, but when they are, might be the closest thing we have to magic.