Tolkien is unrealistic and that’s what I like about him
Late last year I decided to do something that I’ve never done before.
I’ve read a lot of difficult books in my life. Hell, I like difficult books. I like Cormac McCarthy. I like Faulkner. Hell, I even read Moby Dick and liked it! A lot! But somehow I never got around to The Silmarillion.
Tolkien is my favorite writer. Every winter I try to reread one of his books. Last year I reread The Hobbit, which was truly delightful. This year I decided on The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s short but core-of-the-sun-dense telling of the entire history of Middle-Earth.
I like reading difficult books. It forces me to slow down and reprogram the reading part of my brain. I have to take the book on its own terms. It’s either do that or have a miserable time. The end result is a reading experience that is deeply immersive. I stop caring about pages-read-per-day and plot machinations. It’s just the text and me. Me and Tolkien.
And, wow, what a rewarding text The Silmarillion is! Once I got acclimated, I found the density to be a real strength of the work. There are 20 page chapters that could easily have been an incredible 1000 page novel. Hell, Amazon is getting 5 seasons of TV out of what amounts to less than 30 pages. It’s dense but never dry, packed to bursting with intense, evocative prose depicting royal families, troubled heroes and countless Elf lords whose names all start with the letter F or T. I’m shocked it took me this long to get to it.
After I finished The Silmarillion I went back to reread The Return of the King. Having reread this book twice now in the last 10 years, I finally stopped picturing the movie in my head and got to really sink in and enjoy it on its own terms.
As I reached the last handful of chapters (which might be my favorite part) I couldn’t help but think of Star Wars. In the last 10 years my relationship with Star Wars has waned considerably. The fandom has been so relentlessly toxic it’s siphoned so much of the love I had for the world and its characters. It’s okay to not care about something as much as I did when I was a kid. To be honest, Star Wars is a series that’s easy to grow out of. Maybe that’s partly why the adult fanbase is so upset. Star Wars magic can’t last forever.
But by god is that not the case with Middle-Earth. Even The Hobbit, a book squarely aimed at children, brings me so much joy when I read it. Tolkien’s prose is so weird and anti-modern and his characters act completely unlike anyone I know. That’s what I love about it. His world nothing like my world. His work feels out of time and place for me. Like it was dropped out of a magic portal.
Tolkien was a grown man who had lived through two world wars when he wrote the Lord of the Rings. He infused this into his writing, but steadfastly in his own way. In the end that’s what I love about Tolkien. The world of Middle-Earth is nothing like my own, but I can still take so much from it. I don’t sing when I walk or weep every time I get sad, but it feels good to live in a world like that when I read his books. It’s a fantasy I can enjoy no matter how old I get.
