by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Carl Hostetter (823 Tol)
In the years following the
publication of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien continued to
explore and develop the concepts in his works, both published and unpublished.
His son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, asked NASA programmer and
amateur linguist Carl Hostetter to edit and prepare for publication a set of
manuscripts that came out of these explorations. The result is this book that
is alternately fascinating and difficult.
The difficulty partly comes from
the nature of the material. Even though Tolkien’s texts presented here were
mostly hand-written, many of them nonetheless had footnotes accompanying them.
Hostetter also often uses footnotes of his own to mention details about the
manuscripts, such as emendations Tolkien made on them. The result is that there
are places where there are footnotes even within footnotes.
The content itself, though, will
either be fascinating or unbearably abstruse, depending on the reader’s level
of familiarity with Tolkien’s legendarium. Many of the manuscripts deal more
with characters and themes in The Silmarillion than with those from The
Lord of the Rings. In fact, an appreciation of this book will depend to a
large extent on familiarity not only with those works, but also various
posthumous books edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher: Unfinished Tales,
the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series, The Children of
Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin.
About a third of the book is
dedicated to Tolkien’s shifting conception of the relative rates of aging
between humans and Elves. But some of the more intriguing texts are very brief
(one or two pages). Here we see Tolkien’s thoughts on the Elves’ “mental
communication,” whether or not Elves reincarnate, and which species have
beards, and many other details. Many of these writings grew out of linguistic
notes on the Elvish languages, and so this information is spread intermittently
throughout the book as well.
Whether this book should be
considered an essential read depends on what kind of approach you take to reading Tolkien. If you read Tolkien only for
the adventure and your favorite characters, this book may not be for you. But
if you are the kind of reader who analyzes the grammar of the Ring inscription,
then yes, this book should be considered essential reading.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien: the Illustrated Encyclopaedia by David Day, The Atlas of Middle-Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad or The History of The Hobbit (Parts 1 and 2) by John D.
Rateliff.)
( Wikipedia entry on The
Nature of Middle Earth )
Recommended
by Peter J.
Virtual Services Department
Have you read or listened to
this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog
individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the
reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Posts
