‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.
You may not
remember, but that is the very last line of the third and final part of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
And, ever since I first read it, I have always considered that line unsatisfactory.
The problem
is not that the words don’t form a satisfactory ending – they do. The problem
is that the order is wrong; at least to my ear.
As soon as
I first read the line I said to myself, No, no, that really won’t do. In my
opinion the order of the words quite spoilt the effect which the last line of a novel or story is
supposed to have.
That word
‘said’ is really so feeble, and anticlimactic. ‘He said,’ indeed. Doesn’t work.
Ought to be entirely the other way round. The sentence ought to read: ‘Well,’
he said, ‘I’m back.’ Or possibly even
with a full stop in there: ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m back.’ That’s better, I think.
In any
event, the important part is to get that final staccato sound of the K at the
very end of the sentence; the point being that we need to have a real sense of
the fact that this truly is the end –
at least of that particular book. Of course it would have been far better to
end the book on a letter T, if the author could have managed it. ‘Well,’ he
said. ‘That’s the end of that.’ Or something similar. Needs work, but you get
the point, I hope.
All of
which, of course, is a roundabout way of saying that the Grumpy Old Bookman is
hereby revived. Rip Van GOB is roused from his twenty-year slumber. Or whatever
it was. I can’t promise to be as prolific as I once was. But occasionally, from
time to time, there will appear here some comment or other on the current book
world. Or perhaps even the world in general. And it’s all getting terribly
interesting, isn’t it? Such times we live in!
Actually, I
tell a lie. I suspect that, in practice, the very occasional posts here will be
shameless plugs for my newly published books in digital form. I am writing some brand-new stuff,
it’s true; but more often I’m reviving some of my previously published books in digital forms. Because they're really rather good and I'm quite proud of them. Worth reviving, imho.
More later.
