'Leaf by Niggle' – J.R.R. Tolkien (Harper Collins)


I'll come out and admit it... I'm one of those people who have read 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' about as often as you'd expect but outside of those two books, ask me if I've read anything else by Tolkien and... ummm... yeah...

I read 'The Silmarillion' once and that was once enough for me (a post for another time maybe) and I've got a vague memory of reading 'Farmer Giles of Ham' back in high school, that's it though. I'd heard of 'Leaf by Niggle' but never touched it until the other day when I found a copy looking all lost and lonely in the 'Cancer Research' shop. That was all the excuse I needed really and I ended up reading 'Leaf by Niggle' over the course of yesterday's lunch break. Let me tell you all about it...

Niggle is a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he has so many other things to do. For some time he has been obsessed with one particular canvas – a curious picture of a tree with a vast landscape stretching out behind it. The painting keeps getting bigger and bigger, but Niggle has a journey to make.

I came to this book with pretty much no idea of what 'Leaf by Niggle' (apart from a vague recollection of reading about it in a Tolkien biography, years ago) was all about or what had led to it's creation. I'm not going to lie, Tom Shippey's Afterword really dug me out of a hole there but I really wish I'd skipped ahead and read it before reading the story itself...

Allegory and I don't get on particularly well at the best of times; I haven't got the time to mess about these days and just want a story that gets on with it instead of showing off and being all fancy. After a day spent searching for hidden meaning in the morass of office politics... I was not up for the fight and so was left with a vague notion that Tolkien wanted to get some stuff off his chest and this was where he was doing it. What was it though? Niggle is an artist so that leap was fairly easy to make, it seems like Tolkien was a details man and couldn't get past that in order to finish his work; neither could Niggle. What I wasn't so clear on (at the time) though was this whole thing about a great journey and all the things that happened to Niggle after getting off the train. Again, Shippey's Afterword was a great help but I'd still be pondering over Niggle's journey if it wasn't for that.

Niggle ends up in a better place but Tolkien's thoughts on Niggle's legacy are very sobering. You do what you can, in the time that you have, but then it's really out of your hands. I don't know if that helped him finish his book but it does give you a lot to chew on here, that and all the other little bits of allegory that disguise Niggle's journey. If there's one thing that I personally took from the book, it's that I think there's a little bit of Niggle in all of us. Not that we're writing a book or painting a picture (although we might be, I don't know, are you?) but that we're all afraid to let things go until they're absolutely perfect. And looking back at 'Leaf by Niggle', I can't help but feel that Tolkien was telling himself (and maybe us as well) that it's all very well doing that but you're missing out on so much more in the meantime. Not that it seemed to matter much to Niggle but, that's the feeling I got.

I'm glad I finally gave 'Leaf by Niggle' a go and I suspect that there may be a couple of re-reads yet in this short story. If you're thinking of giving it a go, I suspect that this is a book where some background reading, for context, will pay real dividends.

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