I do have another amusing anecdote that Tolkien himself recorded in a letter to his son Michael (
Letters #267, January 1965):
Quote:
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I am neither disturbed (nor surprised) at the limitations of my 'fame'. There are lots of people in Oxford who have never heard of me, let alone of my books. But I can repay them with equal ignorance: neither wilful nor contemptuous, simply accidental. An amusing incident occurred in November, when I went as a courtesy to hear the last lecture of this series of his given by the Professor of Poetry: Robert Graves. (A remarkable creature, entertaining, likeable, odd, bonnet full of wild bees, half-German, half-Irish, very tall, must have looked like Siegfried/Sigurd in his youth, but an A s s.) [Sorry, had to space the last word so it wouldn't get asterisked out - it is the direct quote of Tolkien's own words.] It was the most ludicrously bad lecture I have ever heard. After it he introduced me to a pleasant young woman who had attended it: well but quietly dressed, easy and agreeable, and we got on quite well. But Graves started to laugh; and he said: 'it is obvious neither of you has ever heard of the other before'. Quite true. And I had not supposed that the lady would ever have heard of me. Her name was Ava Gardner, but it still meant nothing, till people more aware of the world informed me that she was a film-star of some magnitude, and that the press of pressmen and storm of flash-bulbs on the steps of the Schools were not directed at Graves (and cert. not at me) but at her...
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I left the anecdote in the whole context because I find the descriptive story-telling amusing, because it shows Tolkien's own humility, and because he tells us that he is not very 'aware of the world'. I think it is frequently so that very busy and creative people do not have much time for passive consumption of other creative works unless those are very important, very widespread, or relative to their own field of interest. At any rate he had not heard of (nor seen, obviously) a star of such magnitude as Ava Gardner.
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth..
.'