Author Gush: Tolkien
One meme to rule them all
Ah, the granddaddy of fantasy. The mighty author whose work permeates the primordial soup of nerd culture whilst crossing the fields of modern literature with the strides of a colossus.
In the vernacular: when Tolkien swings dick, everyone else better duck.
Yeah, Aragorn. I went there.
What to say about the man that hasn’t been said before? The dude invented one of the most in depth literary universes ever conceived simply to house a language he made. Let that statement sink in. Entire tomes of story and a stupid amount of appendices covering art, culture, genealogy, and geography all generated just to house one man’s creation of his own language.
That is some next level high-nerd shit right there.
While The Lord of The Rings is probably the most famous of his works, the Silmarillion is arguably the most representative of his general mythos (at least if you ask the hipsters), while to me the most beloved is by far The Hobbit. There truly is a work of Tolkien for all ages, all set in the same world, with the same (relative) stakes, characters, and themes. That in and of itself is mind blowing. That all of these works are critical and commercial successes is nigh on impossible. Hell, even the random collections of poetry and rough drafts found in Tolkien’s attic are legendary for just how fricking good they are.
And that’s just the stuff the guy deemed unworthy of publication- he had whole trunk loads just stored away in his attic!
Seriously the man was prolific
Even without the film adaptations boosting The Lord of The Rings’ visibility in popular culture, Tolkien’s sheer manipulation of language has enraptured generations of readers from day one. Whether it’s the crisp gravitas of the Silmarillion or the warm wit of The Hobbit, Tolkien has writing for any occasion. His poetry can portray joy, tragedy, love, and loss. His hand drawn pictures are somehow mythological in their stylizations as if you’re looking out into Faerie. Am I gushing? I’m gushing (don’t give me that look you should have read the title).
And how can I not gush given the impact Tolkien had on my own reading career? Seeing the runes across my first copy of The Hobbit (which you could actually translate!) was enough to get me hooked. Add to that the fact that when I first picked it up I had just moved to Seattle and was just about to enter first grade (with all my friends half way across the country) and was able to see Mt. Rainer from our house and…well…reading a book about a small person going on an adventure in an unfamiliar land with an end goal of The Lonley Mountain? It was like this book was tailor-made just for me.
It had charm, wit and magic. Most importantly it had mischief.
You can evolve right along side Tolkien’s writing, revisit them like a favorite memory. You can savor them like a good whiskey and get drunk on them like the same. With all of the accomplishments the man and his estate have managed to achieve in literary purposes (not to mention the extraordinary life of the man himself) is it any wonder that people across the world list him as one of the greats?
Not all that glitters is gold, dear reader, but anything by Tolkien certainly is.
The post may be finished but you know you want to rewatch these movies now