Every day of school was a day in Goblin Town, as if teachers were the weaponsmiths of a Goblin military-industrial complex, and we were all getting beaten and shaped into tools for a permanent wartime economy. Having moved frequently, school to school, state to state, all I wanted to do was hibernate in my bedroom. Looking back to the first experience as a reader of Tolkien, I was just a hobbit myself. This lost experience is indeed a sad thing in my book. Maybe they saw the films, and that was enough for them, or they couldn’t stomach the prose. Once in a while, I hear from somebody who has never read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.
