Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 4

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 4 · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Are you really buying a car online on Auto Trader right now?
• 0:03
  Really?
• 0:04
  At a playground?
• 0:05
  Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
• 0:07
  Wow! Your search can really get that specific.
• 0:10
  Really? And you just put in your info and bone.
• 0:12
  Cars in your budget.
• 0:14
  Mommy needs a second, honey.
• 0:15
  You can really have a deliver?
• 0:17
  Really. Or I can pick it up with the dealership.
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  One sec, sweetie.
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  Mommy's buying a car.
• 0:22
  Mommy wants it.
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  I think kid is walking up the slide.
• 0:25
  Kyle, again, really?
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  Auto Trader.
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  Buy your car online.
• 0:29
  Really?
• 0:35
  Hello, and welcome to the Mythmakers sidecast.
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  An author's journey.
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  A chapter by chapter journey through Lord the Rings,
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  looking at it from an author's perspective.
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  My name is Julia Golding.
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  And today we have reached chapter four
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  in the Fellowship of the Ring, which has the wonderful title
• 0:53
  A Short Cut to Mushrooms.
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  And this falls is just after Frodo Pippin and Sam
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  have met Gildor and the elves in the woods in the Shire.
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  If you have primarily familiar with Lord the Rings
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  from the film,
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  you'll have only seen a glimpse of this in the extended edition
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  where there is an Elven procession going through the woods.
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  They don't actually interact with the elves in that version.
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  It would have taken too much film time to do it.
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  Maybe they'll do that in the mini series.
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  But Gildor and the elves themselves do actually provide
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  an important missing link
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  because they are the ones spreading the word
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  that Frodo has set off in the absence of Gandalf.
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  And there's a ripple effect through other characters
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  where it becomes important that this was known.
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  Anyway, we start the Short Cut to Mushroom still solidly in the Shire
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  and it starts with Frodo waking up
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  after an exciting evening of speaking with the elves.
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  And what this passage reminds me,
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  it's right at the start, it says,
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  in the morning Frodo woke refreshed.
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  He was lying in a bower made by a living tree
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  with branches laced and drooping to the ground.
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  His bed was a fern and grass,
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  deep and soft and strangely fragrant.
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  So here we have a microversion of something
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  that Tolkien does regularly throughout the book
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  because the overall journey is to a dark and terrible place.
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  But he makes sure all the way along
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  to give us these spots of refreshment,
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  particularly in nature,
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  which feel like little holidays from the unbearable pressure
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  of the quest to destroy the ring.
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  So obviously an extended version of this is in Rivendell.
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  Even more so, I think, in La Florian,
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  because that's after they lose Gandalf,
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  they really need the comfort at that point
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  and it's an incredibly beautiful place.
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  So he's had a very strong image in my mind, La Florian.
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  I'm looking forward to getting to that chapter.
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  But another time when we get this is when they Frodo and Sam
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  are being led by Gollum
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  and they don't go through the gates
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  and they're going to Ithilian,
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  which is like a kind of wounded paradise.
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  And that's where they meet Fermi.
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  So another little micro respite.
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  And there's even a tiny, tiny one
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  when they're on the trail in Mordor
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  where they find some water.
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  So keep putting in these notes
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  to lift up the sort of,
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  otherwise could be a quite heavy journey
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  fleeing from trouble.
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  Also, what then follows is a rather techy conversation
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  with Pippin, who's full of energy
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  and Frodo is not a morning person at this,
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  on this particular day.
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  And it feels very real,
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  makes their conversations feel like those
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  that would happen between friends.
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  We know that Tolkien would often go on walking holidays
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  with his friends and fellow inklings.
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  I came across a reference during the war
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  to his plans for what might happen after the war.
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  The inklings were saying they wanted
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  to book out and in for a whole week
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  and just have conversation and walking.
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  So clearly it's something he enjoys doing.
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  So he knows what it's like to wake up
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  after a night spent,
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  not that comfortably out in the wilds.
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  Then we get another passage here,
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  which again later has influence on what he said.
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  Tolkien, with the way he wrote,
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  is he didn't plan,
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  he had an overall arching idea
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  of what he was going to do.
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  And he occasionally sketched forward
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  what he thought was going to happen
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  in the future chapters.
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  But he was very often writing into the dark.
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  He really didn't know who was going to pop up,
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  what was going to be important.
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  He did it discover his writing journey
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  as he was writing.
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  Many of us writers are like that.
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  You will meet those who plot very carefully,
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  but they're often writing
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  the pillars or crime-detective stories
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  where you need to weave in clues
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  when I've been writing detective stories.
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  That's the approach I take.
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  There's something like this,
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  which is a quest story.
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  You can actually be a bit freer
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  and do a discovery writing.
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  And things that you put in earlier,
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  you then use later.
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  So probably a teacher will say,
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  oh this is foreshadowing.
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  But I think what it is is Tolkien rereading
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  manuscript and saying, ah, yes, that was a good line. I must remember that. And the one in this case
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  is Sam reporting on what Gildor and the elves told him, which was, don't you leave him? And
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  when we get to what happens in sheelobs and there, Sam goes back to thinking about that.
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  You know, I was told don't leave him and I did and that was a mistake. So it's what's really
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  great about talking as a writer is he connects all parts of his story. So a small scene here,
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  because this isn't a fireworks chapter. It's a great chapter, but it's moving the journey along,
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  but it's not like the bowrog or something like that. But you get these details which then are
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  repeated and echoed later on, which gives the whole work a sort of unity. It's great writing.
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  And then we also see here and it's pointed by Frodo that we're getting a different Sam
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  because Sam had said he wanted to leave the shire to see elves when he was first given the job
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  by Gandalf. And Frodo says, well, now you've seen them. Do you want to go home? Have you had
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  enough? And we see a more sober, more mature Sam and we get a shift of the relationship here
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  because they start off as Sam is Frodo's employee and they move to being friends and
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  real sort of heart friends by the end because they are a kind of soulmate almost,
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  not in the romantic sense, but like a brother in arms perhaps is a better way of putting that.
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  And we also get Sam giving voice to the sentiment that Tolkien often spoke of as being the one
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  that his generation felt facing First World War and that he was writing to his son who were fighting
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  in the Second World War. And that is the sentiment that I've got something I have to do. I can't turn
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  back. It isn't to see elves now nor dragons nor mountains that I want. I don't rightly know what I
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  want, but I have something to do before the end and it lies ahead not in the shire. I must see it
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  through Sir, if you understand me. So it's this idea that I can't shirk my responsibility.
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  And when you're not in charge of the politics, but being swept along by the politics, be it
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  a declaration of war or being landed with a ring, that's how you step up and we see Sam doing that.
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  And then after that, quite sober statement, we get the funny little exchange,
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  my favourite sort of poverty moment in this chapter, which is Frodo saying he wants to take a short
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  cut and Pippin, who's normally probably more of a risk taker, he goes, no, no, no, short cuts make
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  long delays. And then it all turns out that he wants to go to the pub, the Golden Perch, which
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  sadly we never get to visit. And I imagine it's a lovely little Bijou pub.
• 8:41
  Are you really buying a car online on Auto Trader right now?
• 8:44
  Really, I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget.
• 8:49
  You can really have a delivered or pick it up. I think kid is walking up the slide.
• 8:53
  Really? Auto Trader, buy your car online really. And Frodo caps that phrase with
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  short cuts make long delays, but ends make longer, which I love. And then we move through,
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  we're now setting off, we're moving through the shower. And I think that one of the reasons why
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  Tolkien's world feels so real is that there is a vicarious experience here of what it's
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  like to walk through the English countryside going off a footpath. So it's not a,
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  fortunately, not a countryside full of creepy crawlers that can kill you or fierce and beasts
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  aside, in this case, aside from the black riders, but the English countryside that Tolkien
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  the main things that you meet in terms of barriers, of fences, ditches, brambles,
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  undergrowth, that kind of thing. And they can nettles, they can be real barriers. And this
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  passage is actually quite hard to read because you get, I feel as though I'm sort of laboring
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  with them. It always stays in my mind as a longer passage than it is because in fact, it's only
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  like two pages. If that, no, it's a page where they're having trouble waiting through
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  trying to get to the ferry. But their frustration is conveyed so well that it feels as though
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  it's really tough going. And within that, we've got Pippin basically his expression saying,
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  I told you so, where he says, first check, you know, referring back to the golden perch conversation.
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  So, you know, the joke continues. But it's not just a joke, of course, because what they're trying
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  to flee is the, the sense, the pressing sense of the black rider. Oddly, this chapter might be
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  my desert island chapter, parts of it anyway, because I do feel reading it as though I'm really going
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  for a walk. Odd choice, I know. But on a desert island, the idea of rambling through brambles
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  might be quite attractive. This is all the one that comes later in the El Forest, which is a similar
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  experience of frustration whilst walking. And again, we get one of our mini breaks, our mini
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  refreshments where they're singing and they're sitting under an elm tree. Just as a sidebar here
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  to mention to those who don't live in the UK, the Elms were a huge part of the English landscape,
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  but a lot of them were lost in the 70s to a terrible disease called Dutch Elm disease.
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  I don't know why it was called Dutch Elm disease. It probably came in, I don't know, nothing,
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  not the fourth of the Dutch. Anyway, that's what the disease was called. And so these beautiful trees
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  have largely gone from the landscape. And so for me, this is Elagiac, this passage. They sit
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  under an elm tree. Its leaves were fast turning yellow, were still thick, and the ground at its
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  feet was fairly dry and sheltered. And they find that the elves have filled their bottles with this
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  golden drink, which seems as though it's, wow, could it be alcoholic, I suppose, but it gives them
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  that sense of euphoria. And there's a lovely line here very soon. They were laughing and stepping
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  their fingers at rain and at the black riders. But before we get too comfortable, suddenly it's
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  undercut by a whale and it bumps them out of their hobbit tree. If we have too much of them
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  being carefree, I think that we lose that sense of danger and adventure. So it's always
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  flipping back to the sense of pressure. And now we get the section where Pippin is the one
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  leading the way. It's interesting how the hobbits do swap leaderships throughout. So sometimes
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  Mary leads sometimes, well, not so often, but occasionally Pippin leads in Mordor Sam leads
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  and Frodo has like overall command. They are a fellowship in that sense that they do swap
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  who gets to call the shots. And Pippin, because he is familiar with this territory, because he's
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  been here with Mary, get a sense of them knocking around for a long time in the area not too far from
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  or Brandy Hall. He knows that when they reach Farmer, maggots land, and then we get this humanising
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  hobbyising section about Frodo being scared of Farmer maggot. He's being chased by Black
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  riders, but suddenly the most scary thing, calling up his childhood fears is Farmer maggot and his
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  dogs. And as an author, you need your characters to be good storytellers if they are going to
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  project back into the past. A couple of times this happens in this chapter. So Frodo is giving
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  voice to what Farmer maggots said to him. He doesn't just say, oh, he told me to go away. He actually
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  does the reported speech. Sealad, he said, next time this young varumet sets foot on my land,
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  you can eat him. I'll see him off. That's probably more of a literary device than something
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  someone would do in a real conversation. But it brings alive that confrontation. We get this
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  happening again very quickly when Farmer maggot recounts to the hobbits about seeing the Black
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  riders. So Farmer maggot comes, doesn't know who they are to start with. Pippin is the one who greets
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  them, greets Farmer maggot and recognition happens. And when he hears, when Farmer maggot hears that
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  Frodo baggins amongst them, that trips the recollection of what has just happened,
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  which is he has just spoken to a Black rider. So there's several things happening here. The Black
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  riders have been at a distance and overheard at this point. But now we actually are talking to the
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  person who had a long conversation with one. And again, this is where your characters need to be
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  good narrators because we basically get that dialogue pretty much looks like verbatim.
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  So you've got Farmer maggot saying, this lane don't need anywhere. And wherever you may be going,
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  your quickest way will back to the road, so basically get off my land. And then he characterizes
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  the Black rider like this. I come from Yonder, he said slow and stiff like pointing back west over
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  my fields, if you please. Have you seen baggins? He asked in a queer voice and bent down towards me.
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  And so until you've got a very fun maggot, it's not easily cowed. We later find out he's a friend
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  of Tom Bombadil. So he probably copes with a Black rider better than many though. Having said that,
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  Gaffa Gamji also sent them on their business. So at this point, the Black riders are not showing
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  their full awesome sort of power. They're letting Hobbits turn away because they are fixed on
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  finding Frodo. They don't want to start a fight unnecessarily at this point, quite different from
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  the Battle of Plano Fields version of the Black riders. But we also, what's helpful about this
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  passage, you want to hold back your villains so that you don't, so you build the sense of menace.
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  But we get it here from a character who is telling us what happens and also his reaction of his
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  dogs. So you get the sense of the visceral fear that a Black rider produces. I do like looks of him
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  and when Grip came out, he took one sniff and let out a yelp as if he'd been stung. He put down his
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  tail and bolted off howling. So obviously dogs have good instincts about people so you get a sense
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  of the Mordor energy about the Black rider. I think it's important to meet maggots
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  because at this point Hobbit world is very much just Hobbitan. When you think about it, we don't see
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  much of the shy really. When I was listening to it recently, I noticed that Michael Delving is
• 17:15
  like the main town and that's only mentioned as a couple of times, the place where characters are
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  locked up under the Saruman regime and where they keep the records. But it's bigger than Hobbitan.
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  One assumes, but it's certainly where the mayor hangs out. It's the capital in a sense. So there's
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  a lot of the shower we don't see. Plus we've got two cland and we've got Brandy Hall which comes
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  up in the next chapter. So maggot is in a way of expanding our knowledge beyond Hobbitan.
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  And what is interesting here is I think it prepares us to understand that Hobbits aren't just
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  sort of nice nice foolish innocents abroad who dig down and find their courage. They're actually
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  canny. They work it out. In the next chapter, it was find out other Hobbits have been working out
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  what's really going on. And maggot here is putting two and two together about why Black Rider
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  might be after Frodo and goes as far to suggest it. It's about Bilbo's treasures that he brought back.
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  And this is quite unnerving for Frodo because he has done that superior thing of thinking
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  he's the cleverest person in the room. He's possibly the most learned because of his knowledge
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  of Elvish and other things. And he's finding out that there is a common sense wisdom around him
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  that means he's not being so clever as he thought, which is nice. It redresses the balance.
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  And of course, we've got the memory here that maggot says, oh, I know exactly who you are.
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  You were terrible, terrible for going after my mushrooms. In the film version, Peter Jackson made
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  Mary and Pippin the ones who stole from Farmer maggot. There was like a brief scene where they run
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  through the cornfield. Here, none of them are stealing in the present moment because they're a bit
• 19:01
  more grown up than that. But it's Frodo who was the wild boy when he was younger. And actually,
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  I really like that detail about Frodo because there is a danger that Frodo becomes just a little bit
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  bland, but too goody goody. I like the idea that he was a tear away. Remember, he's an orphan
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  having to live with relatives until Bilbo takes him in. You could imagine a much more interesting
• 19:24
  backstory seed with Frodo. We don't get a chance to explore it much further in this book.
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  But it is an interesting area where you could have, you know, the prequel Frodo, the prequel,
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  the trouble team, there you are, just put that out there into the universe. Maybe they could put
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  that into the hunt for golem. And the final section in this chapter is in the maggot household.
• 19:48
  First thing I wanted to sort of draw out here is the farm house household, which means there are
• 19:54
  14 sitting down at the table is already, by the time it's being written, a kind of historic idea
• 20:02
  of what families were like. I'm sure there were large farming families and maybe still are.
• 20:08
  But certainly a projection back in the past where you'd have lots of sons, lots of daughters,
• 20:13
  helpers on the farm, but all eat together. And so there is a sense of the old values of the shy
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  reinforced by this farmhouse household. These are the people who are going to be the heart of
• 20:26
  the resistance in the scaring of the shy. Also just to note that this is the first time we've been
• 20:32
  in a house and not a whole. So potentially the green dragon, well, that's a pub though, isn't it?
• 20:38
  So they lived in a fetched house of which there are many in the UK today. So if you're coming
• 20:45
  here to make a trip out to a village and see a fetched house, I'm surrounded by them in the
• 20:50
  village I live in. Absolutely beautiful. And they do have a kind of poverty field to them when I
• 20:55
  look at them because they're on a smaller scale, smaller doors, smaller windows because of the period
• 21:02
  in which they were built. There's something about the manners in that maggot household though that
• 21:09
  do remind me of an early 19th century set of manners. I know that his wife calls him maggot, not,
• 21:18
  I don't know what his first name is, say his bingo, there we go, an unused talking name. Maybe he's
• 21:26
  bingo maggot or something like that. But his wife calls him maggot and that's the kind of thing
• 21:31
  you see in like a Jane Austen novel where Mrs. Bennet doesn't call Mr. Bennet. I don't know his name
• 21:38
  is either but Fred calls him Mr. Bennet. There is a sort of level of formality and manners again which
• 21:46
  feels quite retrospective world. If you look at Tolkien's own letters, he's not calling his wife
• 21:55
  and his wife not calling him Tolkien. They're calling each other by their first names. So it is
• 22:00
  something of a past generation. There's another thing here which is how this chapter started which
• 22:06
  there is an unexpected leisure and unexpected friends. So we have Gildor with the cordial in the
• 22:16
  slash alcohol. In the bottles now we've got from a maggot his family and the mushrooms with the
• 22:22
  added assistance of helping him and his companions get to the ferry. And we have a minor scary
• 22:30
  episode when they approach the ferry when they see someone else coming towards them which turns out
• 22:35
  to be Mary and not a black rider. But as that forms a whole with the conversation that goes on with
• 22:41
  Mary that follows I'm going to treat that in the next chapter. So a chapter that has a scary middle
• 22:50
  getting lost hearing the whales knowing they're being hunted ends on the similar note of comfort.
• 22:58
  So Frodo woke up refreshed and at the evening time he's smelling the one percent of mushrooms.
• 23:06
  And now we're ready to cross the river and really get started on our adventure.
• 23:17
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• 23:20
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