Pubs Around Nunhead: 17 - Closure?

So. It appears the Rye Hotel is about to shut - imminently - for "Refurbishment".  Since it is currently quite horrid, we can only hope...

The Pubs Around Nunhead: 15 - Pub Paused

As expected, the Rye Hotel has been sold.  So fpr a few days it is closed, silent - Paused even - while its new owners, the Capital Pub company, presumably take stock and put their plans into operation.

One can only hope that the new plans include (i) removal of the large, hideous, over-photoshoped photographic prints that litter the walls, (ii) a brighter paint job than the ubiquitous battleship gray with which the pub is currently blighted, and (iii) fresh, new wallpaper that (at the very least) does not have a predominant colour of mud.  Of the wallpaper that the previous owners favoured, one of our offspring has pointed out that it is exactly the wallpaper they use on Dave - only substantially less colourful.

Oh, and proper lighting would be quite nice, as would an attempt to get rid of the annoying small flies that flit around the bar.

I'm not asking for much...

The Pubs Around Nunhead: 14

It is finalised. 
"They" are selling The Rye, as previously reported.  But to another landlord (The Capital Pub Co., I'm afraid), rather than for flats, so that is good(ish).

The Pubs Around Nunhead: 13

Rumour has it that the Rye Hotel is being sold by its current owners.  Which is why the stocks of spirits have been creeping downwards, and the range of wines has decreased dramatically in recent weeks. 
Because why would you bother to stock up your pub if you are selling it?

The Pubs Around Nunhead: 10

A rebooted series because I realise there were several pubs I didn't mention the first time around, including The Rye Hotel.

This pub is mentioned in Muriel Spark's The Ballad of Peckham Rye, but is no longer a proper boozer like it was then.  It has turned into an expensive gastropub.  Rumoured to be hard on the staff from time-to-time, it has a pleasant feel, is gay-friendly, and despite the high prices has been mentioned approvingly - but very briefly - in the Guardian (but only for being accommodating to dogs). 

Probably the biggest asset is the huge garden out back, which is often full to brimming on sunny days. 

But not in today's snow.

On Tolkien, Harry Potter, Books and Films

Famously, the tone of voice Tolkien uses changes dramatically between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In the former he often uses a chortling, avuncular tone of voice, occasionally twee, and from time-to-time addressing the reader directly. Chosen at random:

“You will hardly believe it, but poor Bilbo was really very taken aback. So far all his thoughts and energies had been concentrated on getting to the Mountain and finding the entrance. He had never bothered to wonder how the treasure was to be removed, certainly never how any part of it that might fall to his share was to be brought back all the way to Bag-End, Underhill.”

(The Hobbit, p.192)

‘You will hardly believe it’, ‘poor’ Bilbo – ‘very taken aback’. Examples multiply throughout the story.

The published text of Lord of the Rings is very different, of course. Although the first chapter or so does border on this style (I know several people who have found the first chapter so annoyingly twee they couldn’t get past it), it quickly settles into the more epic (cod archaic?) prose style that we know so well. Again at random:

“The host rode on. Need drove them. Fearing to come too late, they rode with all the speed they could, pausing seldom. Swift and enduring were the steeds of Rohan, but there were many leagues to go”

(The Two Towers, p.131 – near the beginning of ‘Helm’s Deep’)

It took Tolkien some time to achieve this shift (and to be fair an argument can be made that it began in the later chapters of The Hobbit). For example, looking at the manuscript evidence published by Christopher Tolkien:

“It is no good talking to hobbits about dragons: they either disbelieve you, or feel uncomfortable; and in either case tend to avoid you afterwards.”

(From the second version of A long-expected party, The Return of the Shadow, p.19)

If the direct address to the audience tails off fairly quickly as the story proceeds (and mostly disappears after Bree in the first draft), the full tone of the final work still took a while to be achieved. Famously, Aragorn originally – and for some time - was a hobbit called Trotter.

J K Rowling does something similar in the Harry Potter series. When Harry arrives at Hogwarts for the first time and is waiting to be sorted, she writes:

“A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you’re very nervous. What if he wasn’t chosen at all?”

(Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, p.90)

That aside (“as horrible thoughts always do when you’re very nervous”) parallels the Tolkien writing in  The Hobbit. Rowling is in semi-parental mode, reassuring the reader. By the last few books of the series the tone is of course very different. These direct addresses disappear completely (at least I can’t find any).

However, I think something else also happens in the Harry Potter sequence. To explain it, it is necessary to look at the sequence of book and film publication:-

1997 Philosopher’s Stone (Book)
1998 Chamber of Secrets (Book)
1999 Prisoner of Azkaban (Book)
2000 Goblet of Fire (Book)
2001 Philosopher’s Stone (Film)
2002 Chamber of Secrets (Film)
2003 Order of the Phoenix (Book)
2004 Prisoner of Azkaban (Film)
2005 Half-Blood Prince (Book); Goblet of Fire (Film)
2006
2007 Deathly Hallows (Book); Order of the Phoenix (Film)
2008
2009 Half-Blood Prince (Film)
2010 Deathly Hallows part I (Film, planned)
2011 Deathly Hallows Part II (Film, planned)

By 2002, when presumably Rowling was writing the fifth novel, the first of the films was out. Certainly, by the time she was writing the last two books, two or three films were circulating. And I think this has a subtle effect on how she writes some of the key characters in the novels.

Take Severus Snape. The Alan Rickman performance in the films is very strong, and to a degree helps to fix our picture of the potions master. And I think this has an effect on how she describes him in the later novels. For example, in the first book his hooked nose is described several times (see eg p.94) and in Chamber of Secrets he is:

“… a thin man with sallow skin, a hooked nose and greasy, shoulder-length black hair.”

(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, p.62)

But Rickman isn’t thin, and doesn’t use a false nose in the films. Aa a result, I would argue, in the later novels, these elements of Snape’s description are, mostly, quietly dropped (although the young Snape is described as thin and “stringy” in book seven). Instead, the descriptions concentrate on his thick greasy hair, pallid face and glittering black eyes.

If the physical descriptions of Snape change after the films begin to come out, I believe something similar happens to his patterns of speech. In Harry’s first potions lesson we have:

Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the register, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry’s name.
‘Ah yes,’ he said softly, ‘Harry Potter. Our new – celebrity.’

(Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, p.101)

Rickman delivers that pause and sneer brilliantly, of course, and his performance through the whole scene is extremely powerful. I suspect his delivery here and in other scenes from the first three films begin to subtly affect the way in which Snape is written in the latter novels. Certainly that end-of sentence pause seems to occur more towards the end (where possible).


Also I don't want to dismiss Rowling's use of the different responses of Fliotwick and Snape to the presence of Harry in their respective classes to quickly define some of the differences between them - I merely want to focus on a different aspect here.

Something similar – and perhaps a little more apparently - happens to McGonagall. Unlike Snape, her appearance doesn’t change in the later books, unless it may be that she seems slightly older, as there are few physical differences between Maggie Smith and the Head of Gryffindor as described. But I would argue that as the sequence progresses the writing makes her sound more and more like Miss Jean Brodie. Consider:

‘Potter!’ whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart. ‘Potter – you’re here! What -? How -?’ She struggled to pull herself together. ‘Potter, that was foolish!’
‘He spat at you,’ said Harry.
‘Potter, I – that was very – very gallant of you – but don’t you realize -?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied him. ‘Professor McGonagall, Voldemort’s on the way.’

(Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pp.477-8)

‘Foolish’ – and even more ‘Gallant’ - are words that seem written for Smith/Brodie. It isn’t that they are wholly out of character for McGonagall, rather here her characterisation is subtly adjusted, warped towards that of Muriel Spark’s character.

How conscious this is on Rowling’s part – or, indeed, the consistency or extent of the change in general – is not part of my argument. Although I could go further and discuss the Dursleys, for example, in a similar manner. I just wanted to note that these changes do seem to be there.

So, finally, if a film of The Hobbit had been made before The Lord of the Rings had been written, how would the resulting epic have been different?

The Pubs around Nunhead: 5

He got back into the little Fiat and drove away along the Grove and up to the Common where he parked outside the Rye... and entered the saloon bar...

He walked across to the White Horse and drank one bitter. Next he visited the Morning Star and the Heaton Arms.  He finished up at the Harbinger.

               (From the first page of The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark, (1960))            

As noted elsewhere, the Heaton Arms is now demolished, the Morning Star is now the Nag's Head, the Rye Hotel is now simply the Rye and the Harbinger is probably a composite.

 

(Note however that  this reference is wrong on other details.  The Clock House also overlooks the Rye and - re note [4] - Kings on the Rye/The King's Arms was demolished around 10 years ago, so it would have been around in Muriel Spark's time).