The Books: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs:

Next book on the Memoir/Letters/Journals shelf is The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

I’m not a Tolkien fanatic, although I love The Hobbit (it’s my favorite), so this book is rather tough-going for someone not up to speed on the complexity and sheer VOLUME of material Tolkien had compiled about Middle Earth and his entire mythological world construct. The letters here are primarily to his sons, his editors, and then also to the legions of fans who would write to him with obsessive questions, which he would answer in full. These letters to his fans continued on through his life. Some lady in New Zealand would send him a note asking him about the origin of Orcs or whatever, and she would receive a 20-page reply. Many of the letters included in this volume are just drafts, which must have been found in his papers upon his death. So I imagine him, a Hobbit himself, crafting a 20 page letter about the sex lives of Elves or Sauron’s early childhood years or what have you … and probably, at some point, forgetting to whom he was writing and what the question was in the first place … and letting the draft taper off into nothing, never sending it. He was voluminous and brilliant in his understanding of what he had created. But it really can sound like a bunch of gobbledygook if you’re not up to speed (which I am not).

One of the best things about these letters, though, is to see just that: a writer, so in charge of what he had created, that he spend the rest of his life TALKING about it, with the masses of people who wanted to hear more. He never got sick of it, he never got tired of it, he never was like, “Oh DAMN these Hobbits and their shire. I wish I had never written the damn thing!”

He would contact people who had reviewed his books – either favorably or unfavorably – and engage with the arguments of the reviewer. There’s one famous letter to Auden (Auden had reviewed the Trilogy for The New York Times). Tolkien was well aware of the widespread love of his books, and he corresponded with children around the world who would write to him. Some of these letters are included in the collection here, and they are lovely. He writes to a 10 year old in the same way he writes to a 60 year old.

Tolkien’s marriage and fatherhood was also very important to him, and the detailed long letters to Christopher Tolkien (he who was responsible for releasing a lot of this material after Tolkien’s death) are fascinating. Christopher and his father would battle it out in letter after letter. The meaning of Frodo’s journey, the purpose of Allegory, Christian themes in the book, the eternal nature of Evil… Christopher took his father’s books at face value, and challenged his father to explain himself. You really feel how fun these conversations must have been, an intellectual and philosophical battleground between two people who wanted nothing more than for the conversation to continue.

Like I said, if you are not a Tolkien fanatic, reading a 20 page letter about the derivation of the word “Galadriel” can be a bit boring. But what I love about the collection is its frank portrayal of a giant intellect, a philosopher, a theologian, who was OBSESSED with what he had created. OBSESSED. I love obsessives. If I could spend my time only with those who were OBSESSED with something, I would be happy. I do not understand people who do not get OBSESSED with things. Tolkien had created something: it all came from his own head, and it became bigger than even HE could handle. He needed a small workshop of drones to devote themselves to his project, in order to keep up with the questions. But … HE was the only one who could answer the questions. Middle Earth is not real. You can’t have a research project about something that is fictional. Tolkien’s the big boss man – only he can know. That’s what’s so unique about the Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit: a world is created that is so real, so complete, so evocative (you can FEEL the myths and legends behind everything, like any other culture in real life), that you would swear that you had either been there, or at least had read a non-fiction about it. Like a book about ancient Venice, or the Sumerians. Tolkien’s anxiety about how much he HADN’T said in The Lord of the Rings was acute, and so that’s where The Silmarillion came from. Gradually, he moved away from character and narrative and went straight to the creation myths. He had to. He was that obsessed. He was an arduous brutal editor. The things he had to “leave out” haunted him, obsessed him, but he understood the need to move the story along. But he had so much material, so much to SAY, that those choices made along the way – discussed at length in the letters – were necessary. But Tolkien lost nothing.

When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in 1936, he submitted it to publishing house Allen & Unwin. Stanley Unwin, one of the founders, gave it to his ten-year-old son Rayner to read (in manuscript form) and he paid him to write up a report on it. His son’s favorable review was what convinced Unwin to accept The Hobbit. The Hobbit was a huge success, and Stanley Unwin was responsible for pushing Tolkien to write a sequel, which, of course, became The Trilogy.

The correspondence between Stanley Unwin and Tolkien is great, and here is one of the letters Tolkien wrote to Unwin.

Excerpt from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

To Sir Stanley Unwin
[Tolkien lunched with Unwin in London on 9 July, and agreed that Rayner Unwin should see Book I of The Lord of the Rings which was in ‘fair’ typescript. On 28 July, Tolkien was sent Rayner’s comments; Rayner wrote: ‘The tortuous and contending currents of events in this world within a world almost overpower one … The struggle between darkness and light (sometimes one suspects leaving the story proper to become pure allegory) is macabre and intensified beyond that in ‘Hobbit’ … Converting the original Ring into this new and powerful instrument takes some explaining away and Gandalf is hard put to it to find reasons for many of the original Hobbit’s actions, but the linking of the books is well done on the whole … Quite honestly I don’t know who is expected to read it … If grown ups will not feel infra dig to read it many will undoubtedly enjoy themselves .. The proof reader will have to correct a number of omitted changes from “Hamilcar” to “Belisarius”.’ Despite these criticisms and hesitations, Rayner judged the book to be ‘a brilliant and gripping story’. Tolkien wrote the following reply on 31 July, but did not send it until 21 September, for reasons given in the letter of that date.]

31 July 1947
Merton College, Oxford

Dear Unwin,

I will certainly address you so, cum permissu, though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of ‘professor’, a title one has rather to live down than to insist on.

I was surprised to get the instalment of The Ring back so quickly. It may be a large book, but evidently it will be none too long in the reading for those who have the appetite. And it was very kind of you to send me Rayner’s impressions. Any criticism from outside the small circle that has known the thing as it has grown (and becoming familiar with its world have long ceased to be overpowered) would be welcome; but this critic is worth listening to.

I must now wait with patience until he has seen more. I will send another instalment at the end of August. And I have now another urgent reason, in addition to the clamour of the circle, for finishing it off, so that it can be finally judged.

I return Rayner’s remarks with thanks to you both. I am sorry he felt overpowered, and I particularly miss any reference to the comedy, with which I imagined the first ‘book’ was well supplied. It may have misfired. I cannot bear funny books or plays myself, I mean those that set out to be all comic; but it seems to me that in real life, as here, it is precisely against the darkness of the world that comedy arises, and is best when that is not hidden. Evidently I have managed to make the horror really horrible, and that is a great comfort; for every romance that takes things seriously must have a warp of fear and horror, if however remotely or representatively it is to resemble reality, and not be the merest escapism. But I have failed if it does not seem possible that mere mundane hobbits could cope with such things. I think that there is no horror conceivable that such creatures cannot surmount, by grace (here appearing in mythological forms) combined with a refusal of their nature and reason at the last pinch to compromise or submit.

But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect ‘Allegory’. There is a ‘moral’, I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even in the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals – they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such.

Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting something in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human ‘ literature’, that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read ‘just as a story’; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work. You cannot write a story about an apparently simple magic ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously, and make things happen that would happen, if such a thing existed.

Rayner has, of course, spotted a weakness (inevitable): the linking. I am glad that he thinks that the linking has on the whole been well done. That is the best that could be hoped. I have done the best I could, since I had to have hobbits (whom I love), and must still have a glimpse of Bilbo for old times’ sake. But I don’t feel worried by the discovery that the ring was more serious than appeared; that is just the way of all easy ways out. Nor is it Bilbo’s actions, I think, that need explanation. The weakness is Gollum, and his action in offering the ring as a present. However, Gollum later becomes a prime character, and I do not rely on Gandalf to make his psychology intelligible. I hope it will come off, and Gandalf finally be revealed as perceptive rather than ‘hard put to it’. Still I must bear this in mind, when I revise chapter II for press: I intend, in any case, to shorten it. The proper way to negotiate the difficulty would be slightly to remodel the former story in its chapter V. That is not a practical question; though I certainly hope to leave behind me the whole thing revised and in final form, for the world to throw into the waste-paper basket. All books come there in the end, in this world, anyway.

As for who is to read it? The world seems to be becoming more and more divided into impenetrable factions, Morlocks and Eloi, and others. But those that like this kind of thing at all, like it very much, and cannot get anything like enough of it, or at sufficiently great length to appease hunger. The taste may be (alas!) numerically limited, even if, as I suspect, growing, and chiefly needing supply for further growth. But where it exists the taste is not limited by age or profession (unless one excludes those wholly devoted to machines). The audience that has so far followed The Ring, chapter by chapter, and has re-read it, and clamours for more, contains some odd folk of similar literary tastes: such as C.S. Lewis, the late Charles Williams, and my son Christopher; they are probably a very small and unrequiting minority. But it has included others: a solicitor, a doctor (professionally interested in cancer), an elderly army officer, an elementary school-mistress, an artist, and a farmer. Which is a fairly wide selection, even if one excludes professionally literary folk, whose own interests would seem to be far removed, such as David Cecil.

At any rate the proof-reader, if it ever comes to that, will, I hope, have very little to do. I was bowed under other work and had no time to look over the chapters I sent in. Belisarius must have been scribbled as a suggestion over the name Hamilcar in a few cases. The choice matters little, though the change had a purpose; but at any rate I hope that most detestable slovenliness of not keeping even a minor character’s name firm will not disfigure the final form. Also: it is inevitable that the knowledge of the previous book should be presumed; but there is in existence a Foreword, or opening chapter, ‘Concerning Hobbits’. That gives the gist of Chapter V ‘Riddles in the Dark’, and retells the information supplied in the first two pages or so of the other book, besides explaining many points that ‘fans’ have enquired about: such as tobacco, and references to policemen and the king (p. 43), and the appearance of houses in the picture of Hobbiton. The Hobbit was after all not as simple as it seemed, and was torn rather at random out of a world in which it already existed, and which has not been newly devised just to make a sequel. The only liberty, if such it is, has been to make Bilbo’s Ring the One Ring: all rings had the same source, before ever he put his hand on it in the dark. The horrors were already lurking there, as page 36 and 303; and Elrond saw that they could not be banished by any White Council.

Well, I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other. I fear it must stand or fall as it substantially is. It would be idle to pretend that I do not greatly desire publication, since a solitary art is no art; nor that I have not a pleasure in praise, with as little vanity as fallen man can manage (he has not much more share in his writings than in his children of the body, but it is something to have a function); yet the chief thing is to complete one’s work, as far as completion has any real sense.

I am deeply grateful for being taken seriously by a busy man who has dealt and deals with many men of greater learning and talent. I wish you and Rayner a good voyage, successful business, and then great days among the Mountains. How I long to see the snows and the great heights again!

Yours sincerely,
J.R.R. Tolkien

Talking about revising The Hobbit. Any alteration of any radical kind is of course impossible and unnecessary. But there are still quite a number of misprints in it. I have twice, I think, sent in lists of these, and I hope they have been corrected this time. Also there are minor errors, which the researches of fans have revealed, and some closer attention of my own has discovered. I wish there could be a chance of putting them right. I enclose a list again.