What is it about Tolkien?...

[Helín Anyára]

...Tolkien himself who has become my captor.

Yes! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] I think this is it. I have thought about this... If Mark Twain or Clancy had tried to write the LotR novels, the results would be either silly or ridiculously clumsy. Yet their works, and many others, are remarkable accomplishments in their own right.

What makes Lord of the Rings what it is, I think, and Tolkien what he is, is that in every syllable of every book, there is something unique that makes what might have been a decided failure in the hands of another, now an enchanting world to millions of people: Tolkien loved what he wrote. It was his; he cared not for the opinions of others; he just loved it, and that came through in every word he penned, to even the smallest detail of Middle Earth and all its beloved inhabitants. And because he loved it, instead of thinking it small or strange, his readers love it, and think the same.