Review: ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century’ by Tom Shippey

by NDK Creative Artist

I’m influenced by good work, that’s it. If its good, it’s an influence.

There are several authors who stand out in our civilization, but none so recently or so much as J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings who has perhaps had as much influence on culture as any other arising from the 20th Century. The Hobbit and LotR were novels among others that my siblings and I consumed with great gusto. My sister and I still read fantasy, and now I’m writing my own.

A lot of young adults and fantasy writers I’ve run into have told me that they have trouble reading The Lord of the Rings. I find that interesting, amusing and intriguing because it was a 9-year old who reviewed the book and gave the green light to the publisher, his father. “Dumbing down,” could it be..? Makes you wonder, that’s for sure, but hopefully that’s just isolated literacy problems and the book sales for fantasy are a strong reflection of reading ability around the world. I’d like to think so.

Once published the story of Lord of the Rings languished for about ten years. And then it took off in the late Sixties and early Seventies. I wondered why that was, what made it such a pop culture phenomenon? And then I realized that rock band Led Zeppelin popularized it. I didn’t realize this by finding the site that’s linked in the previous sentence, I came to this understanding by listening to lyrics of a band on my favorite radio station, the oldest and only surviving pirate radio station in the world, Radio Hauraki. Their classic rock that rocks list still plays artists whose songs I used to drum to, first in the basement and then on stage with bands I’ve performed in in my youth, playing at such places as Auckland University with my fondly remembered geek mates.

I think it’s pretty cool that one art form helped another achieve popularity and so long as that is accomplished with integrity, then it’s all good.

But that’s about what helped make a book that languished for 10 years after publication before finally finding its audience. It took artists to market an artist’s work successfully, and that’s an important observation to make. It was not marketers that did so. It was high quality communicators (artists) who found something worth communicating to popularize, and they happened to be right. It has taken artists to once again market Tolkien’s work and achieve even more sales and expansion of a genre that is arguably one of the strongest in the world today.

Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is one of the better references I’ve read though there are a couple more I’ll likely review here. The jacket flap says it all, but I’d like to add a few observations of my own that demonstrate why I think writers of fantasy should have this work on their shelf among a few others I’m recommending here and there.

What I liked most about Tom Shippey’s account of Tolkien’s work is the way in which he decribed and related the tools used by Tolkien to record and develop storylines. But aside from that Shippey gives one a real appreciation of the sort of work that authors like Tolkien, Rowling and others are faced with when they begin to create epic fantasy.

Shippey’s book is an example of how one work can inspire others, and ultimately end up becoming a powerful franchise and this, even when pooh-poohed and denigrated by those who are supposed to know about such things. I’m referring to the Dons at Oxford who at the time of publication were of the opinion the book would never amount to anything.

Millions of book sales later, it has also become one of the most celebrated film achievements in history, thanks to the remarkable film making talents of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philipa Boyens and co. I guess artists are still marketing Tolkien’s work.

When a book does as well as The Lord of the Rings, it’s smart to find out as much about it and the author as you can. USA Today reported:

“Ballantine has sold more than 68 million copies of The Lord of the Rings (books) and The Hobbit,” she says. (Jackson has said he’d like to tackle The Hobbit, the kid-friendly book prequel to Rings, after he finishes his remake of King Kong.) “The effect the film has had on the sales has been tremendous.”

And,

Consider: Ballantine sold 32 million copies of the Rings books from 1965 to 2001. But since the release of the first film two years ago, Ballantine has sold an additional 14 million — almost half as much as the entire preceding 36 years.

Shippey’s book provides insight not only into academia’s scorn for Tolkien, but also for the state of the market as a result of Tolkien’s work and the production of The Lord of the Rings.

Shippey’s research is thorough, drawing upon a wide range of sources and criteria and he does not fail to neglect to compare the market today with the market of the 1950s when Tolkien first published. It demonstrates and confirms something my own studies and considerations have revealed and confirmed, and that is that the author knows the market better than the companies who are “Johnny-come-lately” to those who love reading the material and make it a passion.

Works of this degree of complexity are dedicated works that are deliberately made to last and be honored and the men and women who make them deserve a better look, for they know something others don’t and they are, always, in time, borne out as being right, and it is high time the industry and society learned these lessons, and how to identify those who manage to somehow perceive a future zeitgeist that others are but dimly aware of. What it means for such authors, of course, is that they should take heart when they are ignored, discouraged or criticized, for at the end of the day, their dedication to nothing more than an idea has proven correct.

There is an entire section in Shippey’s book devoted to describing how Tolkien mapped out his plots. It is very useful. Tolkien’s loving attention to the details of his character lives and the chronology of the story puts paid to the notion that it was plot driven rather than character driven and demonstrates that the two were as they should be: inextricably woven together and appropriately balanced for the setting of Middle Earth.

We now know that all is good between Peter Jackson’s Wingnut and New Line and that The Hobbit will be produced and delivered. That is thrilling news and I, like many others, am looking forward to this new shot in the arm for the fantasy market.

There are other books one can read that demonstrate Tolkien’s influence, including those of author-publisher teams who unashamedly cloned the stories and enjoyed mild success by comparison despite the lack of authenticity, but in my mind Tom Shippey’s book has been the most useful for it showed me how Tolkien created and when I consider how deeply Tolkien’s work has influenced our world, so firing the imaginations of programmers in the computing age of the latter part of the 20th Century and giving rise to the huge number of fantasy games that are now engaged in by players everywhere through modern technology and helped popularize computers as tools for entertainment and creativity, well I think it’s a miraculous demonstration of the power of story to have a positive effect on the world, and it’s time such consequences were truly appreciated.

The arts therefore fly in the face of the establishment as they always have, keeping the balance, and ensuring that important ideas stay alive so that new ones can help us take the next leap forward together.

An excellent book on the craft of a master storyteller whose work has truly influenced lives, thank you, Tom Shippey.

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