photo #5379161

What the Critics Said About the Lord of the Rings When it Came OutThe literary establishment in England was stunned when a major bookstore chain polled English-speaking readers on which book of the twentieth century they considered the greatest. The Lord of the Rings won by a large margin.Three times the poll was broadened: to a worldwide readership, into cyberspace via Amazon, and even to “the greatest book of the millennium.” The same champion won each time.The critics retched and kvetched, wailed and flailed, gasped and grasped for explanations. One said that they had failed and wasted their work of “ed-u-ca-tion”. “Why bother teaching them to read if they’re going to read that?” Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings.Why were the critics of The Lord of the Rings so unnerved? Because Tolkien broke pretty much all the rules of “professional writing” and got away with it. He didn’t use any literary tricks or devices to draw the reader in. He did something entirely different, and it caught the readers’ attention more than any narrative hooks.What inspired Tolkien to create the Middle Earth?As Tolkien himself puts it, the whole legendarium started when he came across a strangely-sounding name of Earendel in one of the Old-Saxon poems. Upon reading the first few lines, he felt“a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words.”In a letter to Mr. Rang, Tolkien says that it was the sound of this name that enchanted him. This sound was enough to plant in him the desire to create myths around this name.For the Inklings, the name is the primary reality. The story — or what happened — is secondary. The main question is “Who?”, not “What?” What happens is always secondary to who it happens to.The Hobbit was conceived in much the same way when Tolkien mindlessly scribbled on a piece of paper: “In the hole underground, there lived a hobbit.” The subsequent story was the elaboration on that name. The primary reality is “Who,” not “What.”“What’s in a name?” Everything. By naming something or someone, we invoke the invisible reality that this name points to.For Tolkien, the name is the ultimate mystery of who we are and what we are capable of. The name is for him “the primary world.” Everything else flows out of it. The reason Tolkien’s writing is so appealing is that WE ALL WANT TO KNOW WHO WE ARE!We want to be called, summoned, and rise to our calling, so that our true nature, our truest self may be revealed. Only then we will be fulfilled.