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Study 009 - Leaf by Niggle (Patreon)

Published:
2022-09-09 22:08:46
Imported:
2026-06
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Acclaimed author J.R.R. Tolkien makes his first appearance on the show with the short story "Leaf by Niggle"!

Special thanks to reader Chad Fess!

Next up: One Other by Manly Wade Wellman

Comments

Ben A

So glad you have chosen this story, it's one of my favorite Tolkien 'deep cuts'. Listening now!

Hieronymus Tosh

Who's this Tolkien fella? Has he written anything else worth reading?

Rob Gillie

a few episodes of Airwolf? Shut up and take my money!

Elisheba

How do we sign up for Ding Dong Tron? And is the Dollar Whisper club bundled with that subscription?

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I found the story well written but far too on the nose. There was plenty of space to do something strange or unexpected, and the fact that it didn't go there felt like a waste to me.

Matt Baldwin

Apparently Ding Don Tron recently secured exclusive rights to stream Manimal.

MonsterTalk

Excited to get another Wellman story coming up. I can't remember you guys mentioning it before but there is a movie based on Manly Wade Wellman stories called "The Legend of Hillbilly John." It's an indy and - as the source material demands - a country musical horror fantasy. And yes it's all available in dark and muddy glory on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwS46mr2kHc

Ben A

Having read a lot of Tolkien, including fragments, this story escaped my attention, so I'm glad you guys covered it. Great conversation about making art and the journey we take when we're creating. I agree the story also seems to make an argument that Niggle felt that his art could only ever approximate the beauty of reality, like an echo. This isn't a sentiment with which I necessarily agree, but I know a number of artists and creatives who think much the same as (I presume) Tolkien did. I tend to think art enhances our experiences and brings to light truths that we’d never see otherwise. I'll add that there are definitely early echoes in this tale of Frodo and Sam--the explorer and the homebody, the individual who wants to see over the next hill and those who prefer the comforts of the familiar. It seems these are themes Tolkien wrestled with throughout his life. Looking forward to the return of Wellman! One Other features a journey up and down a mountain, so I'm seeing a bit of a theme here...

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

IIRC, an indulgence was supposed to get the soul out of purgatory faster, otherwise they spent some amount of time there before continuing on to heaven.

Ledge

If you are interested in more Tolkien deep-cuts, he actually has an unfinished science fiction novel called “The Notion Club Papers”. It is the result of a challenge between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis to see who could write a better “modern novel”. Tolkien set out to write a time-travel story while C.S. Lewis decided to write a space travel story. Lewis finished his, “Out of the Silent Planet”, and later expanded this to a Trilogy. However, Tolkien never finished his. The portion that he did write can be found in “Sauron Defeated” volume 9 of the collections that his son, Christopher has published of his father’s work. I will admit that “The Notion Club Papers” is a little dense. However, it is certainly “weird” and proposes some really interesting ideas. I definitely found it worth the read.

KateSherrod

Like most of us, I suspect, I went through a period of my life in which friends and family gave me everything Tolkien just based on the name and figured I would like it. I had somehow convinced myself at that time, though, that I didn't know enough yet to appreciate Leaf by Niggle and I needed to save that for when I was older. I remember informing my parents of this conclusion with all the pomposity a tween girl can muster (which is more than most people expect). Anyway more than one decade has gone by since then, and I never got around to it until you guys studied it strangely. Thanks for niggling me into finally reading it.

Patrick J McManus

As Strange Studies' Resident Catholic (albeit a lapsed one, at that), I can offer perspective. First off, Indulgences, or "buying" one's relatives out of Purgatory, ended with Martin Luther and the Counter-Reformation. It was totally a cash-grab by Rome, and contributed to the charges of corruption levelled against the church that nearly brought down the institution. Catholics see Purgatory as a kind of waystation for the soul for those who didn't live a good enough life to go straight to heaven, but can eventually reach their eternal reward after doing their time. Catholics can speed up this process by praying for the "repose of the souls in Purgatory," kind of like special pleadings for early parole. I agree with the earlier comment that, for Catholics especially, the story was a little too on the nose.

Jamie Brittain

I always loved reading about how Tolkien was considered by his students at Oxford, long before his fame as a hobbit fancier: From the New Yorker: “At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable. “Incoherent and often inaudible” was Kingsley Amis’s verdict on his teacher. Tolkien, he reported, would write long lists of words on the blackboard, obscuring them with his body as he droned on, then would absent-mindedly erase them without turning around. “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in,” Philip Larkin, another Tolkien student, complained about the old man’s lectures on “Beowulf.” “What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.” For my money, Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf, “The Monster and The Critics” is one of the most brilliantly argued pieces of criticism I’ve read, and, as I understand it, was pretty fundamental in restoring a lot of the magic and mystery of the poem and indeed all old English literature.

Michael Cunliffe

I think that Niggle’s ‘reward’ makes a lot more sense in context of Tolkien’s creative interests. The Lord of the Rings was a story, but his real creation was Middle Earth - an invented mythology for England that would be akin to the Norse, Greek, and Celtic. The painting, which Niggle struggles with in life and in some ways causes conflict and unhappiness, is eventually discarded and forgotten (as is his name) as an ephemeral curiousity. However, in the spiritual world, he collaborates with his neighbour instead of being vexed by him to create something bigger and more rich than just the tree, which ultimately enriches the afterlives (comforts the souls?) of many more people and is the product of further collaboration too as Parish’s wife and others continue to add their own distinctiveness to the place that lives on without the original author’s hand. Is this in fact the reward of the originating work being lost but the mythology living on, in the same way that few people read the Edda (and no one heard the original tales) but millions still daydream about Thor and Loki? If so, I think Tolkien would have been very happy about getting some black elves on screen (or at least happier than Lovecraft would have been).

Tom Král

I think it's a pity that you have never read Silmarillion. It certainly has the aspects of a "history book" but it is so much more and there are many beautiful and powerful stories in it and it creates a background for the LotR in a way that it puts it all in a different perspective. Silmarillion also made me more content with my own mortality as it desribes that Men were given short lifespans (compared to the elves and dwarves) as a gift from God. I'd recommend picking one of the books composed by Christopher Tolkien that just dramatize some of the stories from the Silmarillion in a more story-like fashion. Grrat episode as always

Runninghead

For me this story transcends its base nature as a moralistic after-life fantasy of heavy-handed allegory both in its exploration of the artists journey (I feel seen! 😅) and in the wonderful descriptions of distance and beauty. I've often walked far further on some sleepy Summer's day in the country than intended, chasing the illusory lure of some far-off paradise. I wonder how often some other traveller has, at the same time, been on their way to my exact position, having seen it through the filter of simple atmospheric perspective and their own romantic yearnings for a world beyond our mundane reality. I loved The Silmarillion and I'd urge Chris to give it another go, it really gives a lot more depth and very enjoyable background to all the other Middle Earth narratives.

Jim Cannon

Despite being one of those precocious children who read the Lord of the Rings in 3rd grade, my first encounter with this story was via the Tolkien Professor podcast, a college level English course that covered the works of Middle-Earth. But it started off with "Leaf by Niggle" and "On Fairy Stories," because those explain pretty much what Tolkien was trying to do with his made up languages and the world he invented to justify them.

Ethan Cordray

This is certainly a religious allegory, but one thing that really makes this story uniquely Tolkien's, rather than a generic Catholic allegory, is its focus on creativity. Tolkien viewed human creativity as an expression and continuation of God's creativity. And he believed that in some mystical sense, the products of human creation -- such as his own intricate development of Middle Earth, or Niggle's painting -- could become just as "real" as the natural world. So Tolkien's idea of heaven isn't a static place of passive rest and contemplation, but an active place where people can continue their creative work, improving and expanding on the limitless world. Heaven isn't an "afterlife" so much as it is a more complete experience of life, where creativity and reality become one.

Nicholas Sturch-Flint

Love when you guys talk about art and artistic creation. I have to say though, if we all are forced to live in the worlds we create after death then I should write some happier stories.

Sam Harris

Tolkien and Wellman in one month! You guys are the best. I love "Leaf by Niggle," and agree with Runninghead that it manages to transcend the bluntness of its allegory. Niggle and Parrish are drawn in quick strokes, but they're very human, and that last bit with the leaf being loved by a few, preserved for a little while, and eventually lost makes me think of the ending to "The Bridge of San Luis Rey": “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” ...only, here, the focus is on that special subset of love/connection that is art, creative work, "subcreation".

Ben Gilbert

Niggle was a lot like Tolkien who was a famous procrastinator and often didn’t finish projects that he started.

Jake

I did not think this little ditty from Tolkien was for me. But! It is me! Wonderfully told for a short and sweet story.

Michael Littlefield

While this story could be read as an allegory (even though Tolkien was known to hate allegory), it can also be seen as a good example of Magical Realism, where the line between Reality and Fantasy is blurred. In many ways this story is an expression of the frustration of a finite and limited mind trying to observe, process, and express the infinite with all of our limitations and distractions. Niggle's stay in the "institution" can be seen as a representation of Purgatory, where a soul is purged of earthly ties and unrepentant sins (a soul could get out of Purgatory once all of its sins have been cleansed, but this was not usually done through the selling of indulgences, but rather through intercessory prayers and good works from living relations and friends and clergy; indulgences were more used to reduce the punishment one had to undergo for their sins while alive, but they weren't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card). Niggle heading towards the mountains at the end is an expression of how Death really is a gift (as Tolkien describes it in The Silmarillion) as it allows us to break through the finite painting of the world around us and exploring the infinite reality beyond the painting.

Innsmouth Gold

Thanks for this episode! I'm a huge LOTR and Hobbit fan but have never read his short stories before. My favourite Tolkien story comes from a friend. His younger daughter asked what the JRR stood for. Her older sister convinced her that the full name was Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien, a "fact" that she believed for some years apparently! Loving the new direction!

Falconhoof

Absolutely magnificent episode. I see exactly what you're getting at. Do get on with the podcast and don't bother about anything else. We'll arrange for a public pension, so you need not.

Joseph Dawson

No no, The Silmarillion is a story or rather a set of connected stories. I enjoyed their further development in his Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, especially the Fall of Gondolin. It is excellent and prefer it to The Lord of the Rings. The tale of Turin Turambar is a beautiful tragedy.

Wulf Mungus

I love how this new streaming service only has "a few" episodes of Air Wolf(?) .. plus it boasts that you can talk to ghosts, but can you talk to the ghost of a Werewolf??

.Michael .Sanregret

I support everything Michael Littlefield said about Purgatory, and would just add that any soul that is in Purgatory is already saved (i.e., destined for Heaven and not Hell). Purgatory is a process some saved souls, souls with some lingering sin in them, must go through to enter Heaven. At least, that's my understanding of Catholic orthodoxy on the topic.