"J.R.R. Tolkien - Bored of the Rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

"the tale grew in the telling," we can allow that this tale (or rather the
necessity of hawking it at a bean a copy) grew in direct proportion to the
ominous dwindling of our bank accounts at the Harvard Trust in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. This loss of turgor in our already emaciated portfolio was not,
in itself, cause for alarm (or "alarum" as Professor T. might aptly put it),
but the resultant threats and cuffed ears received at the hands of creditors
_were_. Thinking long on this, we retired to the reading lounge of our club to
meditate on this vicissitude.
The following autumn found us still in our leather chairs, plagued with
bedsores and appreciably thinner, but still without a puppy biscuit for the
lupine pest lolling around the front door. It was at this point that our
palsied hands came to rest on a dog-eared nineteenth printing of kindly old
Prof. Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_. Dollar signs in our guileless eyes, we
quickly ascertained that it was still selling like you-know-whats. Armed to
the bicuspids with thesauri and reprints of international libel laws, we
locked ourselves in the _Lampoon_ squash court with enough Fritos and Dr.
Pepper to choke a horse. (Eventually the production of this turkey actually
required the choking of a small horse, but that's another story entirely.)
Spring found us with decayed teeth and several pounds of foolscap
covered with inky, illegible scrawls. A quick rereading proved it to be a
surprisingly brilliant satire on Tolkien's linguistic and mythic structures,
filled with little takeoffs on his use of Norse tales and wicked phoneme
fricatives. A cursory assessment of the manuscript's sales appeal, however,
convinced us that dollarwise the thing would be better employed as tinder for
the library fireplace. The next day, handicapped by near-fatal hangovers and
the loss of all our bodily hair (but that's another story), we sat down at two
supercharged, fuel-injected, 345-hp Smith Coronas and knocked off the opus
you're about to read before tiffin. (And we take tiffin pretty durn early in
_these_ parts, buckaroo.) The result, as you are about to see for yourself,
was a book as readable as Linear A and of about the same literary value as an
autographed gatefold of St. Simon Stylites.
"As for any inner meanings or 'message,' " as Professor T. said in his
foreword, there is none herein except that which you may read into it
yourself. (Hint: What did P. T. Barnum say was "born every minute"?) Through
this book, we hope, the reader may find deeper insights not only into the
nature of literary piracy, but into his own character as well. (Hint: What is
missing from this famous quotation? "A ---- and his ----- soon are ------."
You have three minutes. Ready, set, go!)
_Bored of the Rings_ has been issued in this form as a parody. This is
very important. It is an attempt to satirize the other books, not simply to be
mistaken for them. Thus, we must strongly remind you that _this is not the
real thing!_ So if you're about to purchase this copy thinking it's about the
_Lord_ of the Rings, then you'd better put it right back onto that big pile of
remainders where you found it. Oh, but you've already read this far, so that
must mean that--that you've already _bought_ . . . oh dear . . . oh my . . .
(Tote up another one on the register, Jocko. "_Ching!_")
Lastly, we hope that those of you who _have_ read Prof. Tolkien's
remarkable trilogy already will not be offended by our little spoof of it. All
fooling aside, we consider ourselves honored to be able to make fun of such an
impressive, truly masterful work of genius and imagination. After all, that is