Meditations on Middle-Earth by Karen Haber Read Free Book Online Page A

terrible thing to embrace the necessity of one’s own death. It touches the soul like the first breath of autumn. It sounds a bell whose ultimate message is goodbye .
    Such a moment requires books that can help us comprehend it.
    As of this writing, my son is seventeen. In less than a year—about the time this essay reaches print—he will leave for college.
    A young man is like a falcon. When you remove the hood and untie the jesses, he leaps from your arm and launches himself into the sky. You look at him dwindling, so proud and so free, and you wonder if he’ll ever return to you.

IF YOU GIVE
A GIRL A
HOBBIT

ESTHER M. FRIESNER
     
    I am a writer. I have received money for doing this on several occasions, so the odds are that I will continue on this unfortunate course until someone catches wise. (If you don’t want a writer to come back, don’t feed him. This is a good, practical rule, and applies to cats as well. Writers are a lot like cats in this and many other respects, except for the part about being able to wash ourselves all over with our tongues. Dang.)
    Having admitted to the crime of Authoring in the First Degree, with Premeditation and Malice Aforethought, I have no qualms about adding to my scroll of malfeasance by saying that what I write is generally fantasy and science fiction. This would be viewed as bad enough, in most respectable venues (i.e., periodicals such as the Pays-in-Copies Review or the Deconstructionist Quarterly) , but I have piled iniquity upon iniquity (which is easier than it sounds, as long as you remember to lift with the legs, not with the back): I have written funny fantasy and science fiction. On purpose.
    Up until now, I simply accepted this deep personal failing as something over which I had as little control as the color of my eyes, the girth of my waistline, or the periodic urge to shout “Macaroni!” in a crowded movie theater. Now some well-meaning prats out there may argue that I do so have the power to change any or all of the above. I can get tinted contact lenses, I can chew less and eschew more; and as for the whole “Macaroni!” thing, well, there is always Pasta-avoidance Therapy (or a gig on Jerry Springer). They claim that it is all a matter of giving it the Old School Try, of getting off my duff and making a valiant effort, of striving ever onward and upward for the night is coming. They may be right. They may also be British.
    But is that the answer I’m seeking? Do I want to learn that I can control the unattractive, unhealthy, or socially unacceptable portions of my life? Do I want to have the golden door of Opportunity for Personal Improvement flung wide by the same kindly hands that are equally ready to frog-march me through same? Do I want to accept responsibility for my actions and the results thereof?
    Of course I don’t want that! It’s too much like work. I’m an American. What I want is to keep on doing exactly what I’ve been doing all along, bad as it may be, only first I want to be told that it’s okay because it is not my fault . Yes, what I need to find is someone else to blame for it .
    I blame Tolkien.
    (No, not for the “Macaroni!” schtick; for my having become a writer. Try to keep up with me here, okay?)
    It all began back in the good old days, when a woman knew her place and the twin pillars upon which civilization rested were: Everything will be all right as long as you have a matching set of china/silverware/crystal/linens/luggage and Real women don’t read fantasy and/or science fiction; boys will think you’re ooky . (Of course, nowadays, the only person upholding the first of these principles is Martha Stewart, but since she is science fiction, I don’t know where that leaves us as far as the second principle goes.)
    Yes, it was a simpler time, and I was a simpler person. I believed with all the ardor of my teenaged heart that as long as I lived my life according to the tenets set forth within the hallowed pages of