The Two Towers

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Year: 1954
Genre: Fantasy

After whiling away a summer afternoon with Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring movie, I wanted to continue the story. So, I bought the DVD of The Two Towers online, and reread the book while I waited for it to arrive. Of course we watched the movie as soon as it got here, and of course my attention was drawn primarily to the differences between the book and movie versions.

Now, I'm not one of those die-hard LOTR fans who finds fault with any deviation from the original. On the contrary, out of the four most important variations I noticed, two of them were positive:

• In the book, Merry and Pippin convince the Ents to fight against Saruman. In the movie, Treebeard is reluctant to join either side in the war, and Merry has to trick him into walking near Isengard and seeing the devastation for himself. I like Merry's having to do something clever (any redeeming moments are welcome for those two troublemakers), and it's really effective on film to see the horror of deforestation from an Ent's perspective.
• In the movie, but not in the book, the elves come to the aid of the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep. This led to some cool fight scenes and gave Viggo Mortensen the chance to speak a little more Elvish. More important, though, the alliance between elves and men is one of the recurring themes of the epic, and it's thrilling to see the Anglo-Saxon-like Rohirrim and the numinous Elves fighting together.

I also noted two differences that I thought took away from the story:

• Tolkien's Faramir is immune to the Ring's temptation, while Jackson's Faramir actually kidnaps Frodo and tries to bring him back to Gondor. I believe that Jackson is making the point that all men are corruptible, but the point of Faramir in the story is just the opposite. He represents the noblest tendencies remaining in the fallen race of Gondor, the nobility of Númenor that persists in his line. In the movie, he wants to steal the ring, but in the book, he says to Sam, "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it."
• On a related note, the sibling rivalry between Boromir and Faramir is played up much too strongly in the movie. Mostly, I don't like Jackson's interpretation of Denethor (who doesn't even appear in the book until The Return of the King). The Steward should be mad with despair, for regardless of whether Mordor or Gondor prevails in the war, the reign of the Stewards will end. He should have a sense of mortality and impending doom on a grand scale, not just for himself but for his family, as if he had failed his noble ancestors. With such a hopeless outlook, he should have no interest in playing favorites between his sons.

On balance, I consider the book and the movie to be complementary ways of telling the story. Tolkien's writing is strongly visual, presenting a challenge to which Jackson's production design responds admirably (while also working wonders for the New Zealand tourist board).

The Penelopiad

Author: Margaret Atwood
Year: 2005
Genre: Literary fiction / Mythology

Margaret Atwood retells the story of the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, interspersed with commentary from the twelve maids that Odysseus kills after his return to Ithaca. These days, there seems to be a trend of new fiction based on classic literature (see Finn and March), and Penelope is an obvious character to pick up, especially for someone like Margaret Atwood.

The book did have its interesting parts. I liked the look at Penelope's early days as a sheltered princess in Sparta, ugly-duckling cousin to the slutty Helen. It's easy to forget that those mythological royal families had more intermarriage than the 19th century crowns of Europe, and that characters who are generally considered to symbolize different aspects of femininity are also people who would have known each other. In fact, I'd say in general that Atwood succeeds when she reconsiders mythological characters as people, rather than symbols.

Unfortunately, though, through most of the book, she uses the characters of the Odyssey as symbols that suit her own agenda. Her treatment of the maids is the most glaring example: in Homer's version, it's true that they are needlessly slaughtered by Odysseus and Telemachus, but there's not much more to say about them. Atwood inflates them into figures of more importance by saying it over and over, albeit in different literary forms: there's free-verse poetry, folk music, courtroom drama, and even a sea shanty. The introduction notes that "the maids form a chanting and singing Chorus," but this isn't the sort of chorus you'll find in Aeschylus; rather than commenting on the action of the main story, they have their own story to tell. And to repeat. In the end, I didn't feel sorry for them anymore, just guilty and defensive on behalf of men for the mistreatment of women throughout the history of the world.

Squids Will Be Squids: Fresh morals, beastly fables

Author: Jon Scieszka
Year: 1998
Genre: Children's

Another delightfully offbeat Scieszka-Smith collaboration. These guys have got to be the They Might Be Giants of picture books. (Sadly, They Might Be Giants have released a picture book, and shown that they are not, in fact, the They Might Be Giants of picture books.)

Meaghan showed me this book ages ago, but I forgot about it until the other day, when I was reading an article about books with simple language and sophisticated concepts, suitable for use in teaching English and/or literacy to teenagers. Squids Will Be Squids is such a book -- its fables satirize a lot of common foibles in such a way that my students would recognize themselves and their friends -- but it succeeds because it's not designed to be this kind of book. Textbooks read like textbooks; no matter how "fun" they are, they're never really fun. Squids can be funny for kids and parents, something like Sesame Street. It can make you laugh, it can make you think, and it won't make you worry too much about vocabulary.

The Hungry Coat

Author: Demi
Year: 2004
Genre: Folklore

I was already familiar with this story, one of the better-known of the Turkish stories of Nasreddin Hodja. (It's also one of the more moralistic, reading almost like an Aesop fable where other Hodja stories are whimsical fantasies or even jokes.) What was new to me, though, was Demi's beautiful artwork. Her illustrations are a tribute to the decorative arts of Turkey, from miniature painting to Anatolian rugs and Iznik tiles.

The incorporation of real Turkish art into the illustration shows Demi's respect for the culture that she takes her story from. Unfortunately, the text itself isn't quite so authentic; this version of the story is more moralistic than any other I've encountered. Whether she felt it was necessary for American audiences, for her own aesthetic, or to fill out pages 31-32 of the picture-book format, Demi concludes the story with a two-page spread that restates the moral about three more times. Without the last two pages, it's a beautiful book; with them, it's a beautiful book that teaches you a lesson.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall

Author: Bill Willingham
Year: 2006
Genre: Fantasy

I was always skeptical of Bill Willingham because I first heard of him as someone who took over Sandman characters when Neil Gaiman was done with them (for example, Thessaly and Merv Pumpkinhead). In fact, his adaptation of folktales to tell his own stories is very similar to Gaiman, and his multiple stories - multiple artists format is familiar from Sandman collections like World's End, but the stories themselves are imaginative and draw on different influences (mostly from fairy tales, while Gaiman prefers mythology).

Although I had never read Fables before, I found this book to be mostly accessible. It tells a lot of backstory of what I assume are familiar characters; when prior knowledge of the series was not required, the stories were quite enjoyable, and when it was required, I just said "Huh."