In 1969 Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, editors of the prestigious comedy magazine The Harvard Lampoon (and soon-to-be creators of the National Lampoon) co-wrote a deeply silly parody of Lord of the Rings called, wait for it, Bored of the Rings. It turns out that a long, debauched scene at the book launch for Bored of the Rings features prominently in David Wain’s (somewhat fictionalized) recent biopic of Kenney, A Futile and Stupid Gesture. While I was watching the film I realized that (a) I had the book, and (b) I had somehow never read it. And thus this week’s TBR Stack is born!
I have to say, I was shocked by how many interesting comedic thoughts Kenney and Beard stuffed in under all the silliness.
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Bored of the Rings
As a comedy nerd I’ve been maybe a little obsessed with the Lampoon. I’ve always been interested in the fact that a group of guys with Ivy League educations were the ones who paved the way to both the mainstreamed anarchy of early SNL and the entire school of “slobs vs. snobs” comedy that defined the early ’80s. So it’s especially cool to look at this book, written while Kenney and Bear were still in school, before they had any idea that their comedy hobby would become a real career.
When I started the book I found it slow-going: they open with a salacious scene between a Boggie (read: Hobbit) and an elf maiden, and then dive right into some obvious (and cheap, imo) gags by renaming Bilbo Baggins “Dildo Bugger” before crowing about how they’ve only written the book for a quick paycheck, and then spending entirely too much time on a chapter called “Concerning Boggies” that made me want to throw the book across the room. I thought this was going to be a lonnnng 160-page paperback.
But then the comedy kicks into a different gear when they begin mashing consumerism up with high fantasy tropes. The heroes of the story are renamed for junk food: Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin become Frito, Spam, Moxie, and Pepsi. Boromir becomes Bromosel; named after the antacid, Bromosel seems to be aware of the fact that he’s in a story, and breaks the fourth wall to comment on the action. Aragorn son of Arathorn, called Strider, is now Arrowroot son of Arrowshirt, called Stomper, the first in a variety of riffs on Disney. Gandalf isn’t a wizard because there’s no magic here. Instead he’s Goodgulf Greyteeth, described as a “discredited Rosicrucian,” “32nd Degree Mason,” and “Honorary Shriner,” and his great battle is with a “Ballhog” clad in a Villanova jersey. This is all silly and fun, but more telling is that the Goodgulf’s subsequent transformation is entirely cosmetic, centering on gleaming white bellbottoms, a Nehru jacket, and a far out medallion, rather than any spiritual growth.
The riders of Rohan become Riders of Roi-Tan, who are pretty clearly, um, Nazis, written in the same over-the-top parody style that Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner used to mock unspeakable horror, with drinking songs:
Ve dance und sing und valse und two-step
Und never ever mach der goose-step
Peace is vhat ve vhant und do have
Und a piece of anything you have
There’s a slightly sharper stab when the Roi-Tanners side-eye Gimlet, son of Groin, because he looks so…Dwarfish—a nice nod to the charge that Tolkien’s Dwarves were too close to anti-Semitic stereotypes. This more pointed satire jostles against the Narcs of Fordor, cast as a black leather-clad motorcycle gang, Tim Benzedrine and his old lady Hashberry, and Birds-Eye of the Vee-Ates, a Jolly Green Giant/Treebeard mashup who speaks entirely in produce puns. Again, silly. But Bored of the Rings does have a slightly more interesting current running through it: like Lolita, it took an easy, marketable hook, and used it to create a cutting satire of shallow consumerism and the good-old-fashioned American road trip.
BOTR was published in 1969. The American highway system was first codified by various ‘auto trail associations,’ which banded together to number the country’s highways by the mid-1920s. The Interstate system was formed in the mid-1950s as part of a gigantic public works program helmed by Eisenhower, in an effort to bolster a national defense system. But much like the internet, a program originally intended for military use was soon overrun by American civilians in search of escapism, and by 1960 the romantic ideal of a cross country drive had been cemented in the US collective consciousness. Whether it was a wholesome family traveling together and reading Brylcreem ads aloud, a lone searcher as in On the Road or Travels with Charley, or the weekly woobies of the Route 66 television series, the idea of getting various types of kicks on the American open road was irresistible, and ripe for parody.
BOTR takes the fellowship not to the Prancing Pony, but to a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, already retro and nostalgic by 1969. They head to an “orange-and-green flashing sign” and find:
…a gaudy plexiglas and chrome inn, whose blinking sign portrayed a boar, rampant, devoured by a mouth, drooling. Beneath it was the names of the inn, the Goode Eats & Lodging. Passing through the revolving door, the party signaled the bell clerk, whose name tag read Hi! I’m Hojo Hominigritts!. Like the rest of the staff, he was costumed as a suckling pig with false sow’s ears, tail, and papier-maché snout.
It takes them into Riv’n’dell, the Last Homely House East of the Sea and Gift Shoppe (Barca-Loungers in every room!), and then into Lornadoon. Where Rivendell is recast as a gingerbread village, Lothlorien is a high-fantasy Knott’s Berry Farm or South of the Border, like any number of little roadside attractions that gradually outgrew their humble origins to become destinations in their own right.
On the far bank of the river they found a thick strand of dead trees covered with signs in Elveranto which said, “Come to fabulous Elf Village,” “Visit the Snake Farm,” “Don’t miss Santa’s Workshop,” and “Help Keep Our Forest Enchanted!”
“Lalornadoon, Lalornadoon,” sighed Legolam, “wonder of Lower Middle Earth!”
At that a small door in the trunk of a large tree opened, revealing a small room filled with postcard racks, loudly clicking cuckoo clocks, and boxes of maple-sugar candies. A greasy-looking elf slipped out from behind a taffy machine.
But it’s when we get to Saruman (renamed Serutan, after a laxative) that the claws really come out:
Down in the low valley lay the pastel pink-and-blue walls of Serutan’s mighty fortress. The entire city was ringed with walls, and around the walls was a pale-lavender moat crossed by a bright-green drawbridge… Beyond the walls the expedition saw the many wonders that had lured countless tourists through its portals in the past.
Amusements of all description lay within: carnivals and sideshows under permanent tents, fairies’ wheels and gollum-coasters, tunnels of troth, griffin-go-rounds and gaming houses where a yokel could lose an idle hour, and, if he wasn’t careful, his jerkin… Everywhere, they noticed, were the brainless grins of Dickey Dragon. Pennants, signs, walls all bore that same idiotic, tongue-lolling face, But now that once-beloved creature had revealed itself to be the symbol of its creator’s lust for power, a power that had to be ended.
And imagine my astonishment when this reliance on road trip cliches settled a longstanding debate in Tolkien fandom! Because now when Frito and Spam are rescued by an eagle (in this case Gwahno, The Windlord) it actually ties the book together perfectly. Gwahno is efficient to the point of rudeness, yelling at them to fasten their seatbelts, snapping at them to use the barf bags if necessary, and complaining about running behind schedule: he’s the encapsulation of everything wrong with air travel. After all their picaresque adventures in Americana and kitsch, they end firmly in the angry, efficiency-at-all-costs Jet Age. And thus this ridiculous parody becomes a commentary on the perils of modernism, just like Lord of the Rings itself.
Fair warning that much of the humor is dated (and there’s a Br’er Rabbit rewrite that’s not so much dated as racist) but there’s also some fun satire, and a genuine sense of affection for the source material that makes the whole enterprise worth the read.
Leah Schnelbach knows that as soon as this TBR Stack is defeated, another will rise in its place. Come give her reading suggestions on Twitter!
There’s actually a wide variety of parody fantasy, such as the much lighter Myth books by Asprin, Sir Apropros of Nothing, or the Eye of Argon.
BOTR is also now a “museum” of obsolete or vanished brand-name products (anybody else remember that “Good Gulf” was the lowest-octane “regular” gasoline sold by Gulf stations?)
I have fond memories of this book, being a fan of low puns (rather like the senior Mr. Bugger). While much of the humor is iffy, I have a fondness for the best line in the whole book:
“He would have slain him then and there, but pity stayed his hand. ‘It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets’ he thought.”
I know this isn’t the place for it, but I was reminded because you’re talking about a work derivative of LotR… Please, oh please, Tor, please cover the book Astra and Flondrix by Seamus Cullen. Please. I’ll send you $11. Please.
To fully appreciate this book, it really helps to have some knowledge of late-60s American culture: Good-Gulf gas (already mentioned); the victory parade of Harold Stassen (seen in the Mirror of Galadriel), etc.
@1 You do know that “The Eye of Argon” wasn’t an intentional parody?
Names like Bromosel and Serutan, as well as songs like “A Unicef clearasil.. hey nonny nembutal”, are an on-point satire of Tolkien’s conlangs: he tried to make Sindarin pretty by filling it with nasals and liquids, as many l’s, r’s, and n’s as possible, which is just what brand names do.
4, there is a submission option at the bottom you can use.
6, know? No, I don’t know. I consider the stories to be indeterminate. I am aware of the controversy, but didn’t think to mention it.
Ah, memories of Doug Kenney – America’s greatest little known multimedia comedy star. While at college conceives and writes Bored of the Rings, which was a huge seller and translated into multiple languages. Founds National Lampoon right out of college, hugely successful and influential. Decides to write a movie about college life and – voila – you get Animal House. Decides to write a movie about golf and – voila- you get Caddyshack. And then, of course, with the curse of talent, over-partying and serous neuroses (keep in mind, he chose to act in Animal House playing the weird character Stork), walks off a cliff in Hawaii at age 33.
I read that book back in the early 80’s, after I found a copy at Hole In The Wall Books in Falls Church Virginia, and again a few years ago. It was a lot funnier when I was in my early teens, 40 years ago. Some bits and lines are still funny, but much of the humor was clearly of it’s time.
I glanced at Bored of the Rings once in a bookstore and I didn’t much care for the writing style. Now, National Lampoon’s Doon (Ellis Weiner 1984) hews more closely to its source (Dune, Herbert 1965) — plot, epigraphic chapter headings, neologisms, characters being elliptical in their plots and utterances. To become a parody, all the book has to do is recast the competition between the Great Houses to a matter of desserts and supper clubs.
I remember BotR. Well, bits of it. The bit that tells you that there is nothing a boggie likes better than to stuff himself until violently ill. And the bit where they’re discussing who should take the ring (spoilers omitted).
#7: That link is for people who want to write. I don’t want to write.
Also, The Eye of Argon was definitely not an intentional parody, and Jim Theis was pretty hurt when he found out about the reputation it had garnered. Back in the days of Napster I found a pretty heartbreaking radio interview he gave about it, but that’s probably lost to the aether…
Somebody said that people can just send suggestions there. Worth a shot anyway, maybe?
I’m sure it’s possible you heard that interview, but there are people who don’t believe he wrote the material, or that he was lying. How does anyone check the authenticity?
Ah the 70’s. This was considered the height of humor by myself and my nerd friends; until we discovered Mark E. Rogers Meowara Tomocato books.
I remember reading the back cover and then searching the book in vain for the hobbit / elf sex scene. Add another request for Astra and Flondrix.
@8, I don’t know if you’ll agree, but I think some of the credit for the book goes to Henry Beard. You also might be interested in Mike Sacks’ book “Poking a Dead Frog,” where he (Beard) talks about Doug Kenney and how he died. Oh, and how they wrote “Bored” over a few nights at Harvard. Or was it longer? I’ll have to read it again.
I skimmed this once, and really should read the whole thing. It’s painful to see beloved characters twisted so, but I think the book is flaming brilliant. The long songs (I vividly recall “Hashberry”), the leisurely descriptions, the puns, the plot reconstruction…I don’t know how they crammed so much of the story into that little book. I especially like Shelob as Shlob the troll — Sauron’s embittered ex-wife and the mother of the Ringwraiths. Gollum’s character wasn’t even mistreated too badly as Goddamn, and I normally hate to see anyone sullying his perfection in parody.
This came out when the Ballantine LOTR paperbacks were taking the US by storm, and overnight, young people who had never dreamed of reading SFF were suddenly reading and talking about it. And many of those young readers were completely new to satire as well. So BOTR was also a smash success, and more than one teacher would catch a student sneaking a peek at it in class, and giving themselves away by laughing out loud.
I found the book in the mid 1990s. I don’t remember finishing it. Thinking much of the humor was lost on me at the time.
I remember laughing out loud when the Nazgul started flying over to drop propaganda leaflets.
Yah, the humor is pretty dated. But still good.
This book pretty much got me shunned by my college’s Tolkien society. Even though I had read LOTR more times than anyone there & adored it, admitting that I had ALSO read BOTR & adored IT, well, that made me persona non grata.
21, a lot of people have problems with seeing things that they love taken and distorted, they can’t handle the stretching that can pull anything into the abominable.
@20,
I have always loved (and occasionally quoted) the idea of dropping blank propaganda leaflets on the illiterate populace…
I’m another reader who attempted this but couldn’t make it all the way through. I love me a fun SF parody (e.g. Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, Backstage Lensman etc) but BoTR shades over quite far into satire of 1960s America and even watching all seven seasons of Mad Men can’t prepare you for that if you aren’t of a certain age and very familiar with the US.
Kenney (and most of the rest of the Lampoon crew) is definitely not someone who would survive post-MeToo scrutiny. There is both a recent documentary (Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead) and a bio-pic (A Futile and Stupid Gesture) that covers his crazy sad arc.
I read this as a kid and got approximately none of the references beyond the Wacky-Packages joke names.
For @2/Russell and others re: Good Gulf gasoline, I immediately recalled this commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02cUPyx2dcw
@25, yes! It’s pretty depressing to find out what’s happened to some of the Harvard Lampoon group. I watched some of the documentary you mentioned and was disgusted, and I don’t think they even mentioned the member who–you know what? I’ll let everyone look it up themselves. On a happier note, the Good Gulf commercial–wow. Fifty cents’ worth of gasoline. Amazing.
Oops. I may have made a mistake. The person I was referring to worked on the National Lampoon magazine, but I’m not sure if he was officially a part of the Harvard Lampoon. Since another commenter corrected me sharply last time I made a mistake, I’ll just go and quietly be embarrassed in the corner. Doesn’t change what happened, though.
Somebody admitting they were wrong on the Internet? Stop the Presses!
Oh wait, they’ve been idle for three years already?
Never mind then.
I would seriously love these guys parodying our modern institutions though. The movies made for such ripe fodder.
Thank you, LordVorless, for your kind words!
You’re welcome. But you know, by odd coincidence, I heard a trivia question about the National Lampoon magazine shutting down in 1998.
So I was off by 15 years. Damn it.
Quote from the article:
“There’s a slightly sharper stab when the Roi-Tanners side-eye Gimlet, son of Groin, because he looks so…Dwarfish—a nice nod to the charge that Tolkien’s Dwarves were too close to anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
Leah, I understand that you are simply amused by this. but since people have accused Tolkien of being anti-semitic (whereas I suppose his depiction of the Rohirrim were not stereotypes), readers might like to hear about this:
“What JRR Tolkien said to the Nazis when they asked if he was Jewish:
If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.
My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient.
I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army.
I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride”
Elephant Journal. No documentation provided, but I can definitely believe it.
@31, just because Tolkien wrote that kick-ass letter (which is extremely famous; very likely Leah and most people reading this are already familiar with it), doesn’t mean he was immune to using stereotypical elements in his writing, perhaps accidentally. This is not the same thing as being anti-semitic, but then Bored of the Rings is a parody of the book, not the author. There was a deep discussion of this topic during the Hobbit reread on this site; see there.
I have loved this book for decades. Other People’s Pain is Funny, is the root of most comedy. The slipping on the banana peel.
BoTR is more comedy of the idea, the thought over comedy of others pain.
32. perihelion
I agree with you. More so, some people when asked publicly, may give better sounding answer.
But using stereotypical elements doesn’t always mean using negative ones. Here is an article talking about the idea of dwarves being an allegory for jews, where it takes positive stereotypes and applies them to the dwarves. A people who have lost their home lands, and now are wandering in the world.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/are-tolkiens-dwarves-an-allegory-for-the-jews/
Yes, he might have been inspired by the history of the Jews for his creation of the dwarves of Middle Earth. But not because of their love of wealth and gold. Inspiration isn’t always about the bad.
@31, 32
This is a topic of great interest to me. Clearly the Dwarves in the Hobbit had some characteristics that were similar to stereotypes of Jews present in English society during JRRT’s time and while I don’t think there was evil intent they are clearly visible. He stated in his letters that the Dwarvish LANGUAGE was based on Hebrew, but this was taken in some quarters to equal Dwarves=Jews.
There is much evidence to support my crit-fic theory that if there are any parallels then it is Elves=Jews, Men=Christians.
But there is one other clear tie between Dwarves and Jews that I tripped across recently. When informed of his father’s murder, the Dwarf Thrain wept, tore his beard, and sat in silence for 7 days. This is very reminiscent of our custom of “sitting shiva” i.e., sitting on low stools, withdrawing from the world, and being visited by those offering consolation for 7 days following the death of a close relative.
Re: dated humor: I loved BotR, and I was born in 1989 . Also, seconding the “pity he ran out of bullets” line as one of the best quotes.
@3 (and @36): That’s my favorite line, too. :-) Followed closely by the passages involving the theasaurus with its wide lapels, long dangling participles, and pronounced gazetteer.
BotR was a great favorite among my D&D playing friends back in the day (as to what “day” that was, let’s just say we were overjoyed when the Dungeon Master Guide was finally published). My ranger in our campaign games was of course named Arrowroot of Arrowshirt. A silly read? Surely. But great fun if you’re in the mood for silly.
My wife and I frequently quote from BOTR. We’ve turned “Soon it began to rain/and they all caught colds” into our own call and response whenever we get suitable falling weather.
BoTR also had a fun map in the front, with places like “The Tiny X-Shaped Forest”. I don’t have it in front of me and can’t quote more. The map is much clearer in earlier printings, before the printing plates started to wear out.