XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: steuard@slimy.com   
      
   In message , Stan   
   Brown  wrote:   
   > On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 19:13:43 -0000 (UTC), Steve Morrison wrote:   
   >> has anyone analyzed Bilbo?s ?half of you half as well? remark to   
   >> determine whether or not it /did/ come out to a compliment?   
      
   I was very relieved that my 7-year-old daughter didn't ask me to   
   explain this one when I read it to her for the first time last   
   week. :)   
      
   > "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like   
   > less than half of you half as well as you deserve."   
      
   > Translated into American, the first part is straightforward: "I wish   
   > I knew most of you much better."   
      
   I agree entirely.   
      
   > The second part is actually a statement about Bilbo's admittedly   
   > flawed evaluation of his neighbors: "I should like most of you much   
   > better than I do."   
      
   I don't think I quite agree with this reading, though. I read it more   
   as "I like most of you the proper amount, but there's some minority of   
   you (between 0% and 49%) whom I ought to have liked much better." That   
   is, he knows that he's been unfair to *some* of his relations, but he   
   feels okay about how he's related to most of them.   
      
   So is that second half of the phrase a compliment? I think rather that   
   it's an apology, one that's broad enough for anyone who's felt   
   slighted by him to hope that it was meant for them, but ambiguous   
   enough to leave room for Bilbo having genuinely loathed some of the   
   guests without intending any apology to them at all. (After all, I   
   rather suspect that he categorized his dislike for the   
   Sackville-Bagginses as being exactly what they deserved.)   
      
   	Steuard "What do you mean, where have you been?" Jensen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)