Has it all been said?

[davem]

It seems that most of the new Tolkien related books coming out are mainly about Tolkien himself, rather than about the stories & the world he created. The focus now seems to be on his life & infuences, rather than on the creation.

Is Tolkien himself as, or perhaps more, important than the stories he told - or is it simply that there is only so much one can say about stories which we love without pulling them to pieces & just being left with vaguely interesting 'shreds'? Certainly the next two major works - Hammond & Scull's Tolkien Companion & Guide & Routledge's Tolkien Encyclopedia seem to be more about the creator than the creation.

A 'good thing'? Well, Tolkien himself was not a fan of 'biography' - as he stated on numerous occasions. He felt that his stories were what mattered & saw a real danger in looking too deeply into his own life & influences. Even in-depth analysis of the stories & their 'meaning' wasn't something he seemed very keen on - despite his own tendency to over analyse his work (cf the Letters).

For most of us it is the actual experience of being 'in' Middle-earth that matters. My own forays into 'analysis' with the recent LotR CbC read through was an odd one. I learned a lot, but I'm not sure it was all worth learning. Usually when I read the book I just let the experience 'wash' over me & let myself just be swept along without analysing what's going on - & to be honest that's what I enjoy about it. Its why I avoided the Hobbit CbC in the main. The more the author & his 'sources' intrude on my consciousness the more of a 'false' construction it all seems to become.

The recent 50th Anniversary edition of LotR had 300-400 changes made to produce the text 'Tolkien really intended' to give his readers, & I wondered why they bothered. Subtle changes of a word here or there, the capitalisation of a previously un-capitalised word, etc, seems obsessive (not that Tolkien himself wasn't obsessive - but shouldn't an artist be obsessive over his creation? That doesn't require us to be equally obsessive, does it?). This, it seems to me, is due to an obsession with placing the creator above the creation, placing him in the dominant position, when he himself wanted the opposite to be the case.

So, are we destined to see the creation become increasingly placed in the service of finding out more & more detail about the creator? And, if so, will we actually gain all that much from doing so? I just found myself in the position of buying either the latest volume of Tolkien Studies, which includes lots of analysis & investigation of the man & his background sources, or the Houghton Mifflin 50th Anniversary edition of LotR. I bought the latter, 'cos its LotR, it looks nice (production values nowhere near as high as the superior Harper Collins 50th Anniversary edition btw - if you're stuck choosing between them). Now, I'll probably get around to buying TS3 eventually, along with the Companion & Guide. I may even save up for the Encyclopedia. But I'm not sure whether I'll get too much out of them that will stay with me.

Of course, after exploring Middle-earth we all want more, but is the latest tendency - to give us more of Tolkien himself - really satisfying that need, or is it leading us down a blind alley to a dead end? I'm starting to wonder whether what we're all looking for isn't more likely to be found in (good) fan-fic than in 'Tolkien Studies'.