[Child of the 7th Age]

A number of posters have made excellent statements about what they see in Tolkien that is outstanding or unique: believable characters, plausibility of plot and world, terrific plot, and appropriateness of language. I could second many of these points. Yet, for me, there is something more going on. Perhaps, Mythopoeia summed it up best. It isn't the characteristics that I see and admire in Tolkien that defines his importance as a writer. Rather it is the personal impact--intellectual, emotional, and imaginative--that those writings have had on me over the years. And it has, indeed, been many years!

I can name individual fantasy writers who made skillful use of language or others who do an excellent job with plotting. Yet, when you get right down to it, I can think of no other creator of myth who so hits me in the solar plexus as Tolkien. My reading of LotR and the wider Legendarium has always been tangled up with my search to find myself. With other fantasy writers, I am reading about someplace far away, a distant and exotic world that is very attractive and holds me spellbound for a given space of time. I set the book down, and the spell ends. With Tolkien, the characters and situations have a much more intimate meaning--they speak to my own personal situations and needs. Because of that, the impact of the writings linger long after I've turned the last page.

I grew up in a tight and loving working class family. My dad was a factory worker. It was a world with great depth, but also a very narrow world. I was searching for a way out. Like Samwise, I was chasing after Elves and Dragons in a culture that was fixed on meat and potatoes. I could identify with Sam and other characters in Lord of the Rings in a way that was immediate and personal. There were other times in life when I was going through periods of definition or struggle. And often in those situations I reread Tolkien and found some episode or character that spoke to me on a personal level. It wasn't just the surface action that attracted me: it was the values and meaning that framed and stood behind those actions. From year to year, my point of interest changed. Sometimes it was Tolkien's loving descriptions of the earth, the struggles that Frodo endured, or the implicit sprituality that shines through certain characters and their ethical choices. But always there was something worth looking at.

I have read a ton of fantasy over the years, starting in the mid-sixties. That was when the Ballentine series came out, along with Ace, Daw, and DelRey, the major providers of fantasy and sf. I've found many authors I've enjoyed to the hilt, but few have made as personal impact an impact as Tolkien. The one other fantasy author I would put in this category, and Cailin mentioned him earlier, is T.H. White and The Once and Future King. Interestingly, I recently ran across an interview with Shippey where he talks about his own affinity for White and how White and Tolkien were in some sense similar. Both authors were affected and repelled by the horrors of war in the 20th century, yet recognized the fact that the conditions we face in the world sometimes require good men to stand up and fight. In both White and Tolkien, I sense what difficult dilemmas the world sometimes presents to us and, as I get older, I gain greater appreciation of how these two authors managed to encapsulate this dilemma in the actions and choices of their characters.