{"id":71800,"date":"2014-05-26T15:41:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T19:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=71800"},"modified":"2014-05-26T15:41:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T19:41:08","slug":"party-like-bilbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/26\/party-like-bilbo\/","title":{"rendered":"Party Like Bilbo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Alan Hollinghurst is sixty today.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_71802\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/alan_hollinghurst_2011.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-71802\" class=\"wp-image-71802\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/alan_hollinghurst_2011.jpg\" alt=\"Alan_hollinghurst_2011\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/alan_hollinghurst_2011.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/alan_hollinghurst_2011-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-71802\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Larry D. Moore<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HOLLINGHURST<\/p>\n<p>I was rather a goody-goody as a child. I hated the idea of being in the wrong and dreaded being punished. Everyone at my prep school was being beaten by the headmaster with the back of a hairbrush round the clock, and I was keen to avoid that. It was only later on I discovered that you could be naughty and get away with it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n<p>What were you reading at that age?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HOLLINGHURST<\/p>\n<p>There was a bizarre library at the school that had a lot of old-fashioned children\u2019s adventure books by G.\u2009A. Henty and R.\u2009M. Ballantyne. I got very \u00adinvolved with Rider Haggard\u2014I still have the tie-in paperback for the film of <em>She<\/em> with a picture of Ursula Andress on the front, \u201cthe most beautiful woman in the world.\u201d I also became an avid collector of a series called <em>The Pan Book of Horror Stories<\/em>, edited by Herbert Van Thal. I still have these as well, and the gruesome covers take me back\u2014the whole atmosphere of the school suddenly closes in on me when I look at them.<\/p>\n<p>In my school reports, one of the masters was worried about this \u201c\u00admacabre reading,\u201d but by the following year, I had discovered Tolkien, with whom I became totally obsessed. I read <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em> over and over. I made charts of the kings of Rohan and so on. I used to write letters to my friends in dwarfish runes. The English master took a dim view of this and made me read <em>Barchester Towers<\/em> as an antidote, when all I wanted to do was to get back to Bilbo Baggins\u2019s eleventy-first birthday party for the seventh time. I\u2019ve never been able to read Trollope since.<em><br \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u2014Alan Hollinghurst, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/6116\/the-art-of-fiction-no-214-alan-hollinghurst\">the Art of Fiction No. 214<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alan Hollinghurst is sixty today. HOLLINGHURST I was rather a goody-goody as a child. I hated the idea of being in the wrong and dreaded being punished. Everyone at my prep school was being beaten by the headmaster with the back of a hairbrush round the clock, and I was keen to avoid that. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9064],"tags":[3987,9158,9036,1132,5657,7782,10469],"class_list":["post-71800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quote-unquote","tag-alan-hollinghurst","tag-birthdays","tag-horror","tag-interviews","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-the-art-of-fiction","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happy Birthday, Alan Hollinghurst!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read an excerpt from his Art of Fiction interview, on discovering J.R.R. 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