One of the backhanded gifts of the pre-Internet age was encountering things stripped completely of context or even the potential for context. Everything was surrounded in a fog of war. (This was why Jon Stewart would be so devastatingly effective.)

You could, if you made an effort, look things up at your local library, but many things were unavailable there. (TV shows, for example, could not be gotten for love nor money, and any episode you missed became a fabulous creature; many Simpsons episodes were legendary, in the original sense, as it might be a decade before they came around on reruns again, pre-DVD box sets, assuming one caught it at all.) Your default was ignorance. When I read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, my sole knowledge of “C. S. Lewis” was more or less, “presumably some ancient British man”; I was surprised to learn years later that it was a Christian allegory, by a famous Christian apologist. That is how things were.

So one day, on a ski trip with the Boy Scouts as an 11 year old or so, we returned to the rental house and, changed into blissfully dry clean clothes, and possibly with a mug of hot chocolate in hand (memories do embellish), I wander around the house, exploring and looking for something to do. The house has a bare handful of books, as a token furnishing effort, I guess, and I pick up a slim dark hardcover volume with no cover: The Two Towers (1965_61ya), by a “J. R. R. Tolkien” (who? must be like “C. S. Lewis”, another Inkling—itself a term I would not know for a long time).

Post-Peter-Jackson, with medieval-fantasy so pervasive that there are popular franchises which could be defined as parodies of parodies of parodies, it may seem impossible anyone could not know—but it was easy back then.

I open the book and there is little or no critical apparatus to provide context or spoilers—no long introductions about how this is the second volume of one of the most influential novels trilogies of the 20^th century, the single-handed maker of modern fantasy, a series that will still be read centuries from now, loaded down with half a century of debate and interpretation and homage and simplifications.

The text on the page just… begins—with Rangers and “Hobbits” and “Orcs” and elves and dwarves, and curled up on the uncomfortable armchair, within not that many pages, we read:

…Now they laid Boromir in the middle of the boat that was to bear him away. The grey hood and elven-cloak they folded and placed beneath his head. They combed his long dark hair and arrayed it upon his shoulders. The golden belt of Lórien gleamed about his waist. His helm they set beside him, and across his lap they laid the cloven horn and the hilt and shards of his sword; beneath his feet they put the swords of his enemies. Then fastening the prow to the stern of the other boat, they drew him out into the water. They rowed sadly along the shore, and turning into the swift-running channel they passed the green sward of Parth Galen. The steep sides of Tol Brandir were glowing: it was now mid-afternoon. As they went south the fume of Rauros rose and shimmered before them, a haze of gold. The rush and thunder of the falls shook the windless air.

Sorrowfully they cast loose the funeral boat: there Boromir lay, restful, peaceful, gliding upon the bosom of the flowing water. The stream took him while they held their own boat back with their paddles. He floated by them, and slowly his boat departed, waning to a dark spot against the golden light; and then suddenly it vanished. Rauros roared on unchanging. The River had taken Boromir son of Denethor, and he was not seen again in Minas Tirith, standing as he used to stand upon the White Tower in the morning. But in Gondor in after-days it long was said that the elven-boat rode the falls and the foaming pool, and bore him down through Osgiliath, and past the many mouths of Anduin, out into the Great Sea at night under the stars.

For a while the 3 companions remained silent, gazing after him. Then Aragorn spoke. ‘They will look for him from the White Tower’, he said, ‘but he will not return from mountain or from sea.’ Then slowly he began to sing:

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
‘What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?’
‘I saw him ride over 7 streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.’
‘O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.’

Then Legolas sang:

From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies, from the sandhills and the stones;
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans.
‘What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve.’
‘Ask not of me where he doth dwell—so many bones there lie
On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky;
So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing Sea.
Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!’
‘O Boromir! Beyond the gate the seaward road runs south,
But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea’s mouth.’

Then Aragorn sang again:

From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls;
And clear and cold about the tower its loud horn calls.
‘What news from the North, O mighty wind, do you bring to me today?
What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away.’
‘Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.
His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;
And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.’
‘O Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.’

So they ended. Then they turned their boat and drove it with all the speed they could against the stream back to Parth Galen.

‘You left the East Wind to me’, said Gimli, ‘but I will say naught of it’.

‘That is as it should be’, said Aragorn. ‘In Minas Tirith they endure the East Wind, but they do not ask it for tidings. But now Boromir has taken his road, and we must make haste to choose our own’.

You can do that?, I asked in shock. Yes. Yes, you can.

There was not time to read it all there, nor did I take it with me, for the mountain called—but I did take a name: “J. R. R. Tolkien”.

And that is how things were.