|
I doubt it would really be possible to fill Tolkien's shoes. To write new M-E stories might be possible, even if one expects a standard rather higher than that of typical pulp fantasy; but to reproduce the magic? Tolkien was Tolkien precisely because he was an intimidatingly intelligent and learned man. Who else could remotely reproduce the story-mould of that utterly unparallelled mind? It's like those computer programs that can spit out a "Bach" fugue: technically correct, but lifeless. The hand of the Master is missing.
(I might as well throw in the elegy (almost certainly by Ford) which Norton insisted on including in its latest Shakespeare anthology, even though a blind mule could tell the Bard never so much as spat upon that piece of turgid dreck).
|