What I learned about the JRR
The most interesting thing I did today was an interview with Mike Drout, professor at Wheaton college (the liberal arts school in MA, not the Bob Jones-ish one in IL) about the life and thoughts of JRR Tolkien. Apparently, young J was soldier at The Battle of the Somme, one day of which was the bloodiest British history. 58,000 killed. By the time J was 22, all of his friends were dead. The first time we know of him writing fantasy fiction is in a military hospital where he was being treated for a near-fatal case of trench fever. That story, "The Fall of Gondolin" is about an elven city of wisdom of wonder that is laid to waste by beastly armies.
Professor Drout brought this up because lots of critics accuse J of glorifying war. And I don't doubt that someone will do it again soon with the likely enormous success of the Two Towers movie. When the first movie--coming 3 months after 9/11--made tall piles of money, culture writers said, "We long for tales of good vs. evil." With the whole war on terror a good bit murkier a year later, some culture writers will chafe against those stark lines. One writer will call it escapist, and then another will point out that JRR wrote about "swarthy" orcs. That will give hacks a greenlight to spout off about the film's jingoistic undertones.
It's cliche, but true that JRR loathed war but accepted that it might at times be the only choice. Professor Drout told me how JRR would write letters to his son in the 40's while he was serving in NAfrica. Attached to each letter was another serialized chapter of Lord of the Rings. So when Gandalf muses to Frodo about how "we don't ask for evil to come into the world, but when it does we have to stand up and fight" or somesuch, remember that those words were first written by a soldier father to his soldier son.
Another thing Mike taught me: Hitler killed the study of Anglo Saxon literature in the US. WIth the exception of JRR, who was a certifiable genius in linguistics, almost all the authorities on Anglo Saxon lit were German. But then in the 30's, even as the Swastis were perverting Anglo Saxon lit for propaganda, German philology academics' output fell to nil. Were they shot? Intimidated? Assimilated? Don't know. But when the war was over, the whole genre and all its stars of reeked of fascism, prompting campuses to drop them. JRR saw it coming and held it as one more personal grievance against Der Shitbürger.
Drout also explained to me how prolific a writer JRR was. He says he's convinced that the man wrote for two hours a night every night of his life. I'm about at that point tonight, so in that spirit I sign off.
Incidently, I pitched all the above information to an editor a year ago when the first film came out, and he wrote back that he "couldn't see how this would be interest to our readers." Silliness.
