I learned how to read novels by reading J. R. R. Tolkien.
My mother had a beautiful edition of The Hobbit on one of our many bookshelves. It was the hardbound edition, that came in a green, it was embossed with gold leaf and had gilt pages. There were lovely illustrations inside, with maps drawn by the author himself.
I pulled it off the shelf and read it when I was in the third grade; when I was finished I began reading it again, and I also The Lord of the Rings, followed by the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales that had been edited and published by his son Christopher after his death. I read these volumes many times over: eight, nine, ten times over…into my early thirties.
Reading and re-reading Tolkien put the idea in my head that I wanted to be a writer. Reading his work over and over again gave me a deep appreciation for the care and craft he put into the construction of his fantasy world.
I remember a sensation I had on my third time through the Silmarillion; I believe I was in the seventh grade at that time. My comprehensive reading list had expanded considerably by that time, to include more than fantasy and science fiction; I read other literary classics, poetry, history and mythology as well as scripture. In addition to these I had begun to read reference materials related to Middle Earth, and through those readings I experienced a heightened sense of understanding of the story being narrated; my vocabulary had expanded and I had become a better reader, making it so that I was able to comprehend more of the material I was engaged with. The picture was filling; I was able to grasp more of the world that Tolkien had created; it was coming to life for me in new and different…more fulsome way.
I even read a biography of the great man himself, which was probably the first piece of non-fiction I ever read (other than histories that had been so mythologized that they felt like fiction).
I found the reference materials compiled by other authors about Tolkien and Middle Earth to be fascinating: The Tolkien Companion, the New Tolkien Companion, along with various encyclopedias, bestiaries and anthologies depicting the arms and armor of this fantasy world.
I added his smaller—lesser known works to the corpus of material I consumed. While still in the seventh grade I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which resonated with my another of my reading interests, Arthurian Lore, and through Tolkien’s Beowulf, I was introduced in a literary way to the Viking sagas.
Through Tolkien I came to have an early appreciation for the power of myth, as well as their malleability, and the potential we have as creative beings to fashion our own myths and communicate them to the broader world.
Through his writing Tolkien dramatized the basic conflicts he saw at work in our civilization, conflicts between the bucolic and pastoral life (which is where his heart was), with the forces of industry that seemed to be destroying the planet (even in his day he saw this happening), as well as the disasters of modern warfare and the suffering they visit on the world, which he experienced first-hand while serving as a signal man in World War I.
In my opinion the collected stories of Middle Earth do what all great literature does, they represent a social critique in the twentieth century more relevant to the human race ever.
We would be wise to be mindful of it.
