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A review by steveatwaywords
Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings by Lin Carter
informative
relaxing
medium-paced
3.5
Carter--famous for his own series of sword-&-sorcery works largely steps away from his own ego-driven talks to offer an historical overview of sources from ancient to modern which largely fed the Tolkien universe. (And that slam about his ego is hardly mine alone; he does in fact, close the book with a few sentences about how his own upcoming works--never completed--will echo Tolkien.)
The only real critique I have of this thin book is that about 1/3 of it is relatively useless. He spends four fairly lengthy chapters simply summarizing the four main books for us; does he presume that some of his audience are interested in Tolkien without having read a thing about him? I skimmed these, finding nothing original there.
What is valuable, though, is that historical tracing. While the real Tolkien nerd may find interest in the origins of names like Gandalf and Thorin, places like Numenor or Mirkwood, broken swords and eternal trees--all of this requiring no small amount of digging in pre-internet 1969--what I found most interesting is the tracing of the historical hero and fantasy epic across ages and regions. This makes itself for a great reading/source list for those seeking early incarnations of literary imagination. More, Carter is not afraid to share which are most valuable to today's readers and which may be skipped over for their tedium or poor translation.
So while Tolkien's work stands as a pillar dividing fantasy into Before and After JRR in the 20th century, it hardly exists in isolation. Linguist and scholar Tolkien intentionally worked to modernize regional mythology (much as Wagner did), but more, Tolkien inherited a centuries-old tradition or infrastructure of epic works which, appropriately, his Lord of the Rings sits atop. Everything which follows (A.JRR) are efforts to recapture his genius or to make their own space alongside.
The only real critique I have of this thin book is that about 1/3 of it is relatively useless. He spends four fairly lengthy chapters simply summarizing the four main books for us; does he presume that some of his audience are interested in Tolkien without having read a thing about him? I skimmed these, finding nothing original there.
What is valuable, though, is that historical tracing. While the real Tolkien nerd may find interest in the origins of names like Gandalf and Thorin, places like Numenor or Mirkwood, broken swords and eternal trees--all of this requiring no small amount of digging in pre-internet 1969--what I found most interesting is the tracing of the historical hero and fantasy epic across ages and regions. This makes itself for a great reading/source list for those seeking early incarnations of literary imagination. More, Carter is not afraid to share which are most valuable to today's readers and which may be skipped over for their tedium or poor translation.
So while Tolkien's work stands as a pillar dividing fantasy into Before and After JRR in the 20th century, it hardly exists in isolation. Linguist and scholar Tolkien intentionally worked to modernize regional mythology (much as Wagner did), but more, Tolkien inherited a centuries-old tradition or infrastructure of epic works which, appropriately, his Lord of the Rings sits atop. Everything which follows (A.JRR) are efforts to recapture his genius or to make their own space alongside.