As a person who loves Tolkien but dislikes a lot of the fantasy on the bookshelves these days, I would like to say that people respond to his books for many valid reasons: the language, the themes, the creative force behind them.
In my case, I am drawn first by the incompleteness of Middle-Earth. LOTR, The Hobbit and The Sil are all presented as parts of one history. (To paraphrase Sam Gamgee, he and Frodo are in the same story as Luthien and Beren, just further on.) Often in fantasy and sci-fi, there is a tendency to explain every last aching detail of background, leaving nothing for the imagination to do except form mental images. In Tolkien, there's endless room for the reader to speculate, ponder and fill in for him/herself.
Reading the UT is as exciting as reading about the latest finds in archeology in the real world - another piece of knowledge which answers some questions yet whets the curiosity even more.
Sorry if this post is short or incomplete; it's after 4 am here and I must sleep. I just had to respond before getting offline.
__________________
Not all those who wander are lost . . . because some of us know how to read a map.
|