[Boromir88]

Oh a new thread today too. Today is a good day. Like the other posters I'm just first hearing about this new book. Posting here to stay updated.

From what I've gathered/heard about it (so take as whatever hearsay is worth to you), Holly Ordway attempts to disprove Carpenter's biography; that Carpenter presents Tolkien as a "backwards thinking medievalist" but actually he enjoyed modern literature and authors as well.

Granted, I don't know anything about Carpenter other than his Tolkien biography. The biography seems a bit narrow-minded, or perhaps selective in what influenced Tolkien. I'm also reading Letters this year as my resolution, and they were probably careful/selective over what to make public, but I never got the impression that he was being dishonest/disingenuous to Tolkien. I'm just enjoying reading the insights of a brilliant author.

In general, Carpenter doesn't seem much different from other Tolkien scholarship I'm familiar with and/or have read. There is so much of it out there and I would say there's more bad than good. As with most Tolkien scholarship, I think they fall into a similar trap of narrow-mindedness. They sort of zone in on a singular argument and then stretch out their argument beyond what the evidence they gathered proves.

I bring this up because you have piqued my interest in this new book, as well Bb. Thank you! And like I said, reading through Tolkien's letters this year, I would agree with Holly Ordway if the premise of her argument is, Tolkien enjoyed and was inspired by modern literature as well as medieval literature. So far, from what I've been able to find is she seems to want to prove Carpenter wrong, or that his biography is a disservice to Tolkien scholarship. I hope that's not the case, because I think it could be interesting learning more about how modern literature might have influenced Tolkien, but I do get turned off when scholars get tunnel-vision.