J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

J.R.R. Tolkien is amongst my favourite authors. I was introduced to him by reading the Lord of the Rings in 1976 while travelling through Europe by train. Indeed, I was criticised at the time for always having my nose in the book and missing all the wonderful scenery! Who amongst us hasn't read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, as well as seeing the wonderful New Zealand movies?

I have a small number of his books in hard copy format in my library

The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
The Children of Hurin

as well as a number of his smaller outputs in ebook format.

I read a biography of C.S. Lewis way back in 2015 (see http://timsbestreads.blogspot.com/p/c.html) and commented at the time that I was now keen to read a biography of fellow Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien. It has taken me 4 years to get around to it.

The biography I chose was that written by English writer and radio broadcaster Humphrey Carpenter. Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources, he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion (not published until some years after Tolkien's death) and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century's most cherished author. Carpenter has also written biographies of The Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams And Their Friends), Spike Milligan, Benjamin Britten and W. H. Auden (alas, he died in 2005) so no more to come.

He shines a bright torch on Tolkien's life, warts and all. An outstanding philologist who was equally at ease in ancient Icelandic, ancient Gothic, Saxon, as well as a whole swathe of other languages, old and new, he invented his own alphabetic letters and languages and sprinkled this books with them.

A flawed genius, he flitted from one project to another, sometimes coming back to finish the earlier ones, sometimes not. He worried over what he had written, revisiting and rewriting time and time again. What he produced, although prolific, varied and wonderfully imaginative, is but a toe dipped in the ocean compared to what a more disciplined writer could have achieved.

Given that this was an authorized biography, you must ask whether it was completely honest or whether it was a little sugar-coated. From what I could see, it was completely honest.

It got me thinking about how we use our lives. So much of our time and energy is taken up with work and family and many such matters (whether it be sport or religion or politics or other interests). It takes an all-encompassing focus to produce greatness in the literary field. Tolkien did not have it and yet he did shine as the brightest star in the firmament.

I am so pleased I have finally read this book. I should now re-read the Silmarillion. As an aside, I have just ordered a copy of The Tolkien Reader from Booktopia.

The Tolkien Reader by J.R.R. Tolkein

As mentioned above, I orderer The Tolkien Reader after finishing his biography. It took a couple of months to come, as it was a 'Print On Demand' book. I received it with some excitement, given the good press it had received in the above biography.

Alas, I was disappointed. Compared to the soaring concepts in his mighty Silmarillion and Rings books, it felt lightweight and underwhelming. Pitched as an anthology of works by Tolkien, it includes short stories, poems, a play and some non-fiction and is a compilation of material previously published as three separate shorter books together with one additional piece and introductory material.

It is interesting that nearly all the reviews on Goodreads are 4 of 5 stars, but I suspect that means they are written by Tolkien buffs who soak up everything he wrote.For my own part, it's 2.5 stars. Sorry!