Bored of the Rings is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, who later founded National Lampoon. It was published in 1969 by Signet for The Harvard Lampoon, and, unusually for a parody, has remained in print for over 50 years. It has been translated into at least twelve languages. The parody steps through The Lord of the Rings, in turn mocking the prologue, the map, and the main text. The text combines slapstick humor with deliberately inappropriate use of brand names.

Book

Approach

The parody closely follows the outline of The Lord of the Rings, lampooning the prologue and map of Middle-earth; its main text is a short satirical summary of Tolkien's plot. The witty text combines slapstick humour and deliberately inappropriate use of brand names. For example, the carbonated beverages Moxie and Pepsi replace Merry and Pippin. Tom Bombadil appears as "Tim Benzedrine", a stereotypical hippie married to "Hashberry". Her name alludes to Haight-Ashbury, a district of San Francisco nicknamed Hashbury for its hippie counterculture at that time. Saruman is satirised as Serutan, a laxative, who lives in a "mighty fortress" with "pastel pink-and-blue walls" and a "pale-lavender moat crossed by a bright-green drawbridge", giving access to an amusement park for tourists. Minas Tirith appears as Minas Troney, designed by Beltelephon the senile. Other characters include the boggies (Hobbits) Dildo Bugger of Bug End and Frito Bugger (Bilbo and Frodo Baggins), Goddam (Gollum), and Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt (Aragorn, son of Arathorn).

Main text

The main text broadly follows the plot of The Lord of the Rings, its ten chapters roughly corresponding to key chapters of Tolkien's novel.

Other materials

Aside from the main text, the book includes:

Reception

The Tolkien scholar David Bratman, writing in Mythlore, quotes an extended passage from the book in which Frito, Spam Gangree (Sam Gamgee), and Goddam jostle on the edge of the "Black Hole" (a tar pit), commenting "Those parodists wrought better than they knew". He explains that Tolkien, in his many drafts, came very close to "inadvertently writing the parody version of his own novel", though in the end he managed to avoid that, in Bratman's view, remarkably completely. The author Mike Sacks, quoting the book's opening lines, writes that the book has had the distinction, rare for a parody, of being continuously in print for over 40 years, was one of the earliest parodies of "a modern, popular bestseller", and has inspired many pop culture writers including those who worked on Saturday Night Live and The Onion. Leah Schnelbach, on the science fiction and fantasy site Tor.com, writes that the book is full of "interesting comedic thoughts ... stuffed in under all the silliness". In her view, it takes "an easy, marketable hook" and creates "a cutting satire of shallow consumerism and the good-old-fashioned American road trip". She remarks, too, on the rescue of the Boggies Frito and Spam by the eagle Gwahno. The eagle "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". Schnelbach writes that after a picaresque journey through American 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."

Artwork

The Signet first edition cover, a parody of the 1965 Ballantine paperback covers by Barbara Remington, was drawn by Muppets designer Michael K. Frith. Current editions have different artwork by Douglas Carrel, since the paperback cover art for Lord of the Rings prevalent in the 1960s, then famous, is now obscure. William S. Donnell drew the "parody map" of Lower Middle Earth.

Derivative works

Delta 4's Bored of the Rings is a 1985 text adventure game inspired by the book, but it was not directly based on it. In 2013, an audio version was produced by Orion Audiobooks, narrated by Rupert Degas.

Translations

The book has been translated into several languages, often with a title that puns on The Lord of the Rings:

In the media

The book is featured in the film A Futile and Stupid Gesture, which follows the times of its authors at The Harvard Lampoon and National Lampoon.

Sources