When I Say I Like Tolkien. . . .

Everyone has those authors they adore as well as those they hate. And it's hard to hear the writers you adore dissed. But, chances are you probably hate the authors someone else adores, so it all evens out "in the wash" as my family says (personally, I can't stand Hemingway, and every time I see a Flannery O'Connor quote, or story or anything, I just want to find her ghost and punch it's face–she makes me very cranky).

But, I do get tired of people dissing my favorite authors, so I just wanted to put this here:

Letters from Father Christmas, J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator, Illustrated version of The Hobbit, A Tolkien Miscellany, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Used to have a book comparing Tolkien and Lewis, but I sold it on Amazon over Christmas to make rent, etc.

I first read the Tolkien trilogy in about 1976/77; I was 12. I read The Hobbit after I read the trilogy. My friend Peter had me read them (fellow comrade in arms in the imagination department). I can't remember if he lent them to me or I checked them out at the library. But I remember spending all of 8th grade (around 1978) exchanging letters with him written in runes. We'd both practice writing in a calligraphic style on paper that we'd stained with coffee or tea (I got into so much trouble with mom for wasting the coffee that way!). His letters had really cool pictures and decorations. We didn't even say all that much, really, but it was all in rune, or in English dressed up like runes, so it felt cool.

My "runic" writing.

For Christmas 1982, my Aunt Lola gave me a box set that included The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. They were beautiful, yellow, blue, green and red, with gold foil on the box. Of course, I hadn't yet learned that lesson about not loaning out books (even though I'd lent out some of the Narnia books to friends; mom had bought them to read to us and we never to saw them again - my sister is still pissed about that). So years later I picked up another copy of The Hobbit, but it wasn't the same. Still a good story. And I did get the illustrated one. I think it was on sale as a remaindered book, plus I had my employee discount at WaldenBooks.

And although I don't have them pictured here, I've read The Silmarillion, parts of The Children of Hurin and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which is in the Miscellany). And The Complete Tolkien Companion is around here somewhere, too, I just couldn't find it to include in the picture above.

When I was nine years old I used to say I was going to "grow up to be a writer like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott" (I added Lucy Montgomery later on). After my introduction to Middle Earth and Narnia it was, "I'm going to take classes from J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis." I was distraught to learn they'd already died. So of course I did all I could to read and try to make up stories like the ones they wrote (and then felt like I'd discovered a grand secret when I found out about Charles Williams and read some of his stories).

I love a number of writers, but their worlds all end up getting compared to Tolkien (and by extension Lewis and Williams). From Patricia McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books to Brooks' Sword of Shannara and Castle for Sale to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Novels, Anne McCaffrey's Pern series and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, and on to Charles DeLint's Newford stories and whatever Neil Gaiman happens to be writing at any time. All of them are held up to Tolkien. Is the world as rich and full of history and possibility? Could I go there and camp out for a week and feel as if I'd really been somewhere else?

As a writer, I pull from a number of places to get inspiration. Mythology, different belief systems, the stories of my favorite writers (see above). And when I think about world, story and character creation, it begins with a foundation layer of Tolkien, and then all the rest get added in "to taste" - like a big smorgasbord of a dish to make my very own version of whatever it is I am creating.

Until the movies came out I would take out the trilogy and reread them all once a year - every year. Last night I realized how long it had been since I'd read my favorite friends of Middle Earth and I pulled a book down off the shelf and fell in.