Tolkien Compared to Contemporary Authors

[onewhitetree]

To answer my own question, I'd throw out a couple of names.

A.S. Byatt, who is widely respected among scholarly Victorianists (read: about 50 people worldwide ), became better known in the '90s for penning Possession. This was the first of her books I read, and while it took a while (it's something like 600 pages, small type ), it was one of those books, like The Silmarillion, that is like eating a rich meal. You have to go slowly, enjoy it bit by bit, and appreciate the complexities. What impressed me the most was the sheer variety of writing styles, all of them mastered. The book contains prose, poetry, letters, diary entries, and jumps from the 1980s to the Victorian era and back again. In fact, I thought of Tolkien constantly as I read the book - never had I read anything that had anywhere near the same depth and richness, and sheer mastery of written word as his works before!

Once I had read this book, I found some short stories by Byatt, in a compilation called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. A couple were also printed in Possession, but several were new. They are like fairy tales for adults - creepy, but with that certain handling of language and image that creates the exquisite feel of a true fairy tale. I guess it's one of those things that's hard to put your finger on, and maybe a subject for another post. Nevertheless, though Tolkien doesn't have "short stories" per se, there are many condensations of much longer tales within his greater works that have that same feel (like the tales of Beren and Luthien, or Turin Turambar).


Another name I'd throw out there is somewhat better known, at least in my mind, Anchee Min. She wrote her autobiography, Red Azalea, about growing up in Maoist China. Her writing is very simple, not at all on the same level as Tolkien with nuance and subtlety, but her expressiveness is really what touches me. It was like reading 1984, only it was a true story. It was terrifying, hopeless at times, but she masters one theme in particular that Tolkien did as well - courage, and the triumph of the human (or hobbit) spirit in the face of certain destruction.

Well, those are my thoughts. I tried to relate aspects of the above choices back to Tolkien to keep it appropriate for this forum. I can't wait to hear some of your answers!

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Excellent thoughts on an interesting topic, onewhitetree! I'm moving this to the Novices and Newcomers area of the forum so that it will be widely noticed and hopefully garner a good deal of participation!

[Lush]

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson. I enjoy her later fiction as well, but this, her second book, is her masterpiece, I think. It's a postmodern fairytale set in an English village in the early 1960's (mostly -- the story goes back in time a lot). I discovered it before I discovered Tolkien, but I think I go back to it for similar reasons. Human Croquet is much more psychologically brutal than a book like Lord of the Rings, but, like Tolkien, Atkinson loves her characters, and, for a postmodern author, she does seem to believe in absolute evil, which is interesting. Her sense of place and atmosphere is also something I admire.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. It's the scope, it's all about the scope. And amazing daring.

I'll be coming back to this later.

[Bêthberry]

Interestingly, there's another writer aside from Byatt who mines the old veins of Victorian literature for her work, Susanna Clarke. Her Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell might be called fantasy or it might be called an alternate history but she does for the myriad styles of the nineteenth century what Tolkien does for the style of the old Northern epics and like Byatt she uses the tools of scholarly style to instill a sense of verisimilitude. (Is that too Victorianist a word to use here? ) She's particularly good at naming names, another Tolkien trait. Her exploration is with magic and fairie and it's both scary and macabre. Also filled with a few historical anachronisms too, although hers is a bit more significant than Tolkien's umbrellas.

[Lush]

Agree wrt Strange & Norrell. Great, great book. I think having read Tolkien before helped me appreciate it that much more. Once again, there are certain writers whose scope and ambition you have to hang back and admire, before you even get into the details of why you love them.

[Guinevere]

Since I discovered The Lord of the Rings (at the age of fifty!) I have been “hooked” by very few other books.
Among these are Mary Renault’s historical novels set in ancient Greece. She evokes this distant time and place in a way that I feel transported there.(Similar to the way I feel transported to Middle Earth.)
Her characters speak and act fitting to their time and culture, they are vivid and plausible. (there’s much historical fiction that doesn’t succeed in this: just contemporary characters and attitudes promenading before superficial historical settings.) My favourites are "The Persian boy" and "The last of the Wine" but I also love Renault’s “The charioteer” which is set during WW II.
Renault’s books are compelling and moving. Same as with Tolkien’s works, I can reread them several times –and often discover things I have previously overlooked, for Renault is very subtle, and some things are just hinted at.

(By the way, Mary Renault was one of Tolkien’s students and he himself read and liked at least some of her novels!)

Someone here on the Downs recommended A.S.Byatt’s “Possession” to me and I started reading it, but sadly didn't get really into it, so I never finished the book.

[Thinlómien]

I have yet to read Atwood in a large scale (only read The Handmaid's Tale and The Penelopiad this far), but I believe she might be one of the authors we're looking for.

And even though she writes fantasy, I just have to nominate Ursula Le Guin, because she's so much more than your average fantasy writer. Her books are full of wisdom, and there is a certain simplicity in her work which reminds me of Tolkien. And she has, of course, written other stuff than fantasy as well - very critical science fiction for example, and her newest (?) piece of fiction, Lavinia, is a historical novel and homage to Vergil's Aeneis, but also a very intriguing and beautiful read for someone who has not waddled through the original epic (like me!). I liked it very much.