Some years ago now I wrote a blogpost called "The Tolkien Industry." It seemed to cause a bit of a stir at the time, and even ended up being reprinted on the Scoop Review of Books (16/6/09).
What I thought were some fairly mild remonstrances at the relentless commercialisation of J. R. R. Tolkien's literary remains apparently touched a raw nerve in quite a few readers. A certain "Mister Lit" enquired:
... does Ross the academic subscribe to the increasingly meaningless dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture which sees meaningless ‘poetry’ by so-called ‘postmodernists’ studied in great depth while popular, human-oriented authors like Tolkien and Wilbur Smith are regarded as not ‘good enough’?To which I'd reply (some 16 years later): No, not then and not now. I have to say, though, that I do find the juxtaposition of Tolkien and Wilbur Smith somewhat eccentric. So far as I know, no-one's yet been tempted to publish Wilbur Smith's scribbled notes and papers in vast, annotated, scholarly editions. Perhaps it's just a matter of time, though.
The next comment, by a Henry Saltfleet, was even more indignant:
Jack Ross writes: “What’s a poor collector to do? A poor completist collector, that is.” Well, in his case I think he should get rid of his collection and take up a hobby more suited to his intellect — perhaps bowling. His main argument against newly published Tolkien material seems to be that it takes up shelf space. But what is more egregious is his underlying belief that because (for whatever reason) he isn’t interested in such material that he thinks those of us who are interested in it should be deprived of the chance to read it. Fie on him.That sideswipe at bowlers and bowling seems rather more egregious than any of my own misdeeds, I must say. What did they ever do to get dragged into this argument? Bowling is (by all accounts) a sport requiring great visual acuity and muscular skill, which puts it a fair few rungs above balancing books on shelves, I would have thought. If only I had chosen to cultivate it in my misspent youth, how much better off I would be now!
As for the rest, I think Mr. Saltfleet rather missed my point. It wasn't that this material isn't interesting - more that this piecemeal, over-annotated and commentated mode of publication doesn't really do it justice. However, my lament (in 2009) that we still lacked a decent Collected Poems for Tolkien, has finally, a decade and a half later, been met by a massive 3-volume boxed-set edition edited by Tolkienophiles extraordinaire Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond.
WHICH I JUST GOT FOR CHRISTMAS! (all those heavy-handed hints to Santa must have paid off ...)
"Thrills for Noddy!" - as some of the coarser denizens of my old school used to say when encountering excessive displays of enthusiam. Never mind. Damn them if they can't take a joke. It is quite a thrill - for me, at least.
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But wait, there's more. As a suitable companion volume, I'd already decided to invest in another absurdly over-elaborate piece of book design, a new edition of Tolkien's The Silmarillion illustrated by its own author!
I look forward to rereading it over Summer, savouring Tolkien's clumsy daubs and line-drawings, and perhaps even comparing them from time to time to Ted Nasmith's perhaps slightly over-skilful illustrations for his own 2004 version of The Silmarillion.
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Curiously enough, I had much the same experience recently comparing two different illustrated texts of Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings.
On the one hand, there's this sumptuous new hardback edition, with illustrations culled from the author's papers, which I purchased when it first came out in 2021. I mean, what reasonable person could resist the temptation of owning "the complete text printed in two colors, plus sprayed edges and a ribbon bookmark"?
But then, on the other hand, there's this thirty-year old veteran I picked up second-hand a couple of months ago, with illustrations that now look rather prophetic of much of the visual imagery of the feature films.
Not, perhaps, that that's all that surprising when you consider that Alan Lee (together with Canadian illustrator John Howe) was one of the two main concept designers on The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) - as well as working on its prequel, The Hobbit (2012-14).
There's never a shortage of arguments for getting new books, unfortunately - it's persuading yourself that you can jettison some, or (better still) not buy them in the first place, which is hard.
I'm not falling for this one, though. I can promise you that! I mean, who needs it? I already own a nice old hardback copy of the original edition, which was already "illustrated by the author":
And, if that's not enough, I also have copies of the two books below which (between them) surely provide more Hobbit-iana than even the most exigent fan could require:
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What else? Well, there's an intriguing new addition to the Heaney canon, to stand alongside Marco Sonzogni's excellent 2022 edition of The Translations of Seamus Heaney:
There's also the latest Murakami novel, of which I have high hopes after a couple of duds from the Japanese literary superstar:
To return to Tolkien, though ("Tollers" to his friends - just as C. S. Lewis was "Jack" and his brother Major W. H. Lewis "Warnie").
If by any chance you're still having difficulties disentangling the relationships between his various works: the two main ones published during his lifetime - The Hobbit (1937) & The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) - and that other, posthumous compilation - The Silmarillion (1977); together with its myriad supplementary texts - you could certainly do worse than have a quick squiz at the diagram below:
Clear as crystal, wouldn't you say? In any case, this is just to wish you all a similarly
MERRY CHRISTMAS
& A Happy New Year
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