John Garth (1)Besprekingen

Nová kniha odborníka na Tolkiena Johna Gartha skúma miesta, ktoré inšpirovali autora Pána prsteňov k vytvoreniu fiktívnych krajín a ďalších motívov jeho Stredozeme. Garthov výklad sprevádza viac ako 100 ilustrácií vrátane Tolkienových vlastných kresieb a malieb, príspevkov od iných umelcov, archívnych snímok, máp a pôsobivých fotografií z posledného obdobia. Miesta, ktoré sa pre Tolkiena stali zdrojom bohatej inšpirácie, sa nachádzajú v celom Spojenom kráľovstve - najmä v jeho milovanom West Midlands a Oxforde -, ale aj v zámorí na všetkých svetových stranách. Autor v knihe identifikuje predobrazy Hobitonu, elfských Bradavíc, trblietavých jaskýň Helmovho žľabu a mnohých ďalších kľúčových bodov na mape Stredozeme, od hôr a lesov po rieky, jazerá a pobrežia. Svety J. R. R. Tolkiena sú tematicky usporiadané a ponúkajú bohato ilustrovaného sprievodcu životom a predstavivosťou jedného z najobľúbenejších svetových autorov, skúmajú vzťah medzi skutočným svetom a svetom fantázie a povzbudzujú každého, kto by sa chcel vydať po Tolkienových stopách.

John Garth, reconocido experto en Tolkien, investiga los lugares que sirvieron de inspiración al autor de El Señor de los Anillos para crear sus localizaciones ficticias y otros aspectos de la Tierra Media. El libro contiene más de 100 imágenes, entre las que se incluyen ilustraciones del propio Tolkien, contribuciones de otros artistas, imágenes de archivo, mapas y espectaculares fotografías recientes.

Se revela en este libro la fecunda interacción entre los viajes realizados por el propio Tolkien, sus muchas lecturas y los profundos conocimientos del profesor de Oxford. Garth se vale de sus amplios conocimientos acerca de la vida y obra de Tolkien para desvelar sus extraordinarios procesos de invención, refutar determinadas ideas populares en torno a las inspiraciones de la Tierra Media, y presentar sus propias teorías ...

A nicely illustrated and mostly well explained exploration of place in Tolkien's works, and how his ideas were inspired by places he might have known or known of.½

I've been meaning to read John Garth's "Tolkien and the Great War" for ages now, but have never gotten around to it, so I picked up this work sort of as a way to ease in to that endeavor. As for this book, it's basically a gazetteer of all the places in real life, and literature, that Tolkien mentally assimilated in his effort to create a mythology that he considered worthy of England, and it's a very cool book; if only for all of Tolkien's own art that went into it. In the end, Garth concludes that Tolkien did better than create a mythos for one land, he created a mythos for all those who would wish to preserve the land, and a certain sort of basic humanity, from the depredations of modernity at its most corrosive.

For me, having only read (and reread) The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, with a single reading of The Silmarillion many years ago, this is an occasionally fascinating, but often too detailed, book for the general reader of Tolkien.
Beautifully illustrated with photos, paintings, posters and some relevant maps, these eased the tedium of the esoteric references to Tolkien’s lesser known books and poetry. Although there are some very interesting insights into places that inspired The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, this is a book for the enthusiast of all Tolkien’s work, rather than just his famous ones.

Kiinnostava esitys siitä, mitkä tekijät ja ainekset olivat Tolkienin tuotannon lähtökohtia ja innottajia. Sitaatti teoksen loppusivuilta: "Tolkien oli myös kaukonäköinen tavalla, jota tuskin tarvitsee enää mainita, kun panokset - kamppailussa sekä ympäristön että ihmisarvoisen elämän puolesta - tuntuvat kovenevan vuosi vuodelta. Hän loi Keski-Maan kuvastamaan sitä, mitä sydämestään rakasti ja syvimmin inhosi. Keski-Maa taittuu lukemattomiksi oikeiksi maisemiksi ja paikoiksi, niin nykyisiksi kuin muinaisiksi, niin luonnontilaisiksi, hoidetuiksi kuin turmelluiksi. Voisi sanoa, että maisema itse on kirjoittanut painokkaan viestinsä Tolkienin taruston sivuille. Niinpä hänen tarustonsa ei lopulta ole mytologia vain Englannille tai Britannialle vaan koko planeetalle, joka tarvitsee kipeästi kaikki mahdolliset inspiraation lähteet pelastaakseen itsensä." (S. 184.)

The definitive Tolkien biography. Great book.

A brilliant, absorbing, and detailed look at Tolkien's life with of course most emphasis on his life during World War One. A must read for anyone interested in the background of the man behind Middle-earth.

Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Tolkien as an artist.

This isn't a complete biography of Tolkien but instead a detailed account of the careers of Tolkien and his three closest friends, collectively "the TCBSites" during WWI which goes on to discuss how the war affected Tolkien's creative output, making a convincing case that it is here, rather than in WWII we should look for the influence of real events on Lord of the Rings and other works by the most influential figure in 20th Century fantasy literature. Tolkien's childhood and school days are recounted in fair detail but his post-WWI life is treated in the most cursory fashion. This really is what the title suggests it is. The excruciatingly detailed account of WWI got me, dare I say it? - bogged down in the middle but over-all this is a good, readable book that acheives its aims. The "Postscript" looking at Tolkien's work as and in relation to other literary responses to WWI offered an interesting new perspective to me regarding Tolkien's motives, influences and aims and the descriptions of the basic principles of comparative philology added understanding of how and why language and legend were so intertwined in Tolkien's mind. Fans of Tolkien with an interest in the man, motives and influences behind the stories should read this.

I got hold of a copy of this after seeing the recent Tolkien biopic -- for which it was obviously the principal source. Its main interest is as an exhaustive group portrait of Tolkien and his three friends in the "TCBS." Unfortunately Tolkien's wife Edith remains as faceless within its pages as in the Humphrey Carpenter biography. The charming and intelligent person played by Lily Collins in the movie was apparently made up of whole cloth by the screenwriters, and an excellent job they made of her.

As a Tolkienist whose interest is pretty severely restricted to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the book was not much help to me (through no fault of the author's). Tolkien's experiences in the War were certainly crucial to his work, but the influences ran underground for many years before they surfaced. The worst fault of the movie, to my mind, was that it drew thick lines with a grease pencil that do not stand up to analysis. Take the heavy thud with which the word "Fellowship" is plunked down. In the book the word "Fellowship" does not even occur until quite late in Book II (of six). The phrase "the Fellowship of the Ring" appears exactly once, and not until the "Many Partings" chapter (Aragorn says it). It never occurred to Tolkien that it should be the title of Volume One, because in his mind there wasn't a Volume One until the publishers convinced him that breaking the book into three was commercially expedient.

Maybe John Garth should have signed up for a heavier course load.

Students of the life and works of J. R. R. Tolkien will know Garth as the author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, a vital study of Tolkien's experience as a soldier in the trenches, and of his long recovery from trench fever. That is a long and detailed book containing much material not available elsewhere; it is a vital reference for fans of Tolkien.

This is a completely different product. Available directly from the author (there seems to be no other way to get it, at least in the United States), it is a thin pamphlet (64 pages including the front and back covers) that appears to have been printed on demand on a laser printer. And even that page count may make it seem bigger than it is, because there are many photographs and copies of old manuscripts, plus sidebars about Tolkien's classmates at Oxford's Exeter College. Make no mistake: College was an important part of his life; in addition to earning the degree that let him become a professor after the war, he also gathered the knowledge that he put to use in his literary works.

But there is surprisingly little information about that. Want to know what lectures he attended? A few are mentioned, but there isn't a complete list. Granted, assembling such a list is probably no longer possible. But most of what we learn is about the clubs he was part of; there is very little about his actual academic career. We don't know much about his academic results, either, except that:
1. he earned a second-class result on Moderations (the exams half-way through the course to a degree) that could have cost him his Exhibitionship (a sort of lower-class scholarship) -- except that he did so well on a philology paper that he was allowed to shift into an English course
2. Having moved to English and language and philology, he earned a first-class degree (and headed straight into the army upon earning it)

All of this, and much else about his time in Oxford, can be learned from other sources, such as Scull and Hammond's J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology. When I read Garth's book about Tolkien and the war, I felt I learned something. In this book, I felt almost everything was familiar.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't get it. This is certainly a better read than Scull and Hammond, which really is just a detailed chronology, and it includes more information about Tolkien's college career than the biographies. It also probably does a better job of "translating" what Tolkien did in college for American readers, who have never heard of Moderations or Exhibitionships or First Class degrees. But, just as Tolkien was generally a reserve on college sports teams, because there were stronger, heftier men available, so this is a second-string book. Once you have Scull and Hammond, and Carpenter's biography, and Tom Shippey's and Verlyn Flieger's works, and for that matter Garth's earlier book, then buy this. As a backup.½

This was an utterly excellent book, following Tolkien's own biography and the development of his mythology with excellent detail and attention to nuance. I expect it's all but incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with The Silmarillion, but I've only read the first part of the Book of Lost Tales andI managed quite well. Insightful, interesting, and illuminating. Highly recommended.

J. R. R. Tolkien created the most detailed mythology of the twentieth century. But no mythology can exist in isolation; people won't understand it. It must have roots in human experience.

There are many books on Tolkien's sources, historical, folkloric, and philological. This book is rather different; it addresses a personal source: World War I. It also looks at his relationship with three other man of his age who called themselves the "TCBS." They were four bright literary men who set out to see the world in a new way (or, perhaps, revive an old way, but in any case, to shake things up).

And all four ended up as officers in World War I. Three served in the army; two were killed and Tolkien ended up the victim of disease.

This is the most detailed study of the TCBS and of Tolkien's war service now in print. It includes a careful attempt to show how Tolkien's early writings arose from the conditions of the time -- and looks at how these early influences led to his more mature writings. As such, it is perhaps of the greatest interest to the readers of The Silmarillion rather than The Lord of the Rings.

That the war was a great influence on Tolkien can hardly be denied. And this book brings that out. It is, perhaps, less successful at bringing out the full panorama of the war. Although it discusses the fates of Tolkien and his friends Gilson and Smith, there isn't much general perspective on the war, or even on the way the British army was organized, with the upper and middle classes supplying the officers and the lower classes the cannon fodder. And this matters, because the upper classes were by no means guaranteed to contain the brightest minds....

At the end, author Garth tries to sum it all up and show how the Great War influenced Tolkien's finished writings. Many will find this the most valuable part of the book. The rest, sadly, is neither fish nor fowl -- neither a "man in the trenches" view nor a full biography of Tolkien. Others have praised it highly, but I sometimes found myself lost. In the end, this is a piece of the puzzle of where Tolkien's writings came from. But the puzzle is much larger than this one piece.

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings forty years ago or so. I have also watched the recent movie version of The Lord of the Rings. I am not really any kind of Tolkien fan. I liked those books well enough but just never chose to plunge in to any kind of serious study. My sweetheart recommended this book to me, and that mostly because of the focus on WW1.

Actually even more than WW1, this book focuses on a small circle of friends, formed in their teenage years, that included Tolkien. The core was just four young men. They surely had high ideals and high hopes, which were all quite badly treated by the war.

So the point of the book is to show how Tolkien expressed those ideals and their fate in the world through the legendary world he created. The focus is not on The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but on the early predecessors, even before the Silmarillion. Garth walks us though many of these stories in enough detail that one can follow along with no prior exposure to them, at least for the most part. From time to time I did start to feel a bit left out, as Garth shows how story elements foreshadowed later Tolkien works that I am not familiar with. But for the most part this book demand too much Tolkien-ology of its reader.

I must say that I think Garth is quite successful with his argument here, that Tolkien was not running away from the harsh reality of his time but rather presented it in a medium that allowed him to get his points across effectively. Garth puts Tolkien in the company of Milton and Blake - they all created fabulous epics to portray the crises of their times.

The crisis that Tolkien was confronting is one that we are still confronting, though probably we are now in a different phase of the progress of industrial domination. WW1 was probably the most dramatic rise of industrial might. E.g. the British fleet was converted to petroleum shortly before the war. WW2 must have been the triumph, with nuclear weapons etc. Now we are in the decline of industrial power, with the desperate struggle to maintain power that it entails. Maybe this makes Tolkien even more important today. Tolkien portrayed an alternative. Now that some alternative or other is becoming inevitable, not merely possible, our challenge is to choose, to steer our path toward some one of the better alternatives open to us. The noble virtues latent in the common man, this vision of Tolkien might show us a priceless vital way forward.

Fills a gap in the understanding of J. R. R. Tolkien's works.

The author says Tolkien wasn't inspired to write 'Lord of the Rings' because of the war. He had returned to his lifelong interest, the creation of language and myth. But I think the loss of his friends in the war is the reason he didn't kill off Merry and Pippin, as I would have.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/325040.html

This book carries a recommendation by A.N. Wilson to the effect that it's "the best book about Tolkien that has yet been written". While I don't think it is actually better than Tom Shippey's work, it is none the less a very good book, moving well beyond the cliches of equating the Dead Marshes to the Somme. It basically concentrates on the story of the friendship between Tolkien and three of his schoolmates, G.B. Smith, Rob Gilson and Christopher Wiseman, who together formed an intimate group called the TCBS. It could have been the story of any group of naive and idealistic young men, pledged to change the world and to renew a sense of old values through their works of literature, except of course that one of them actually did.

Garth saves his analysis of the effect of the war per se on Tolkien's writing for an afterword, and concentrates for most of the book on the narrative of what actually happened to the four friends. This is very effective. The actual events of the Somme are dealt with surprisingly quickly, but Garth manages to balance a detailed account of where Smith, Gilson and Tolkien were (Wiseman was in the Navy) with a sense of the overall perspective of the agonising shifts in the 1916 front line. (This may be what A.N. Wilson was getting at - I haven't read much else about the first world war, but I find it difficult to believe that there are many other accounts of it that are as lucid as this.)

Of course, the effects of the Somme were devastating. Gilson and Smith were both killed, and Tolkien invalided home with trench fever; he never returned to the front line, fortunately. And it's fairly obvious that the deep friendship between Tolkien and Wiseman was fatally undermined by their war experiences. Garth makes a persuasive argument for the deep impact of the TCBS on Tolkien's writing. I would like to know more about the effect of Tolkien's relationship with his wife Edith, who he was courting and marrying at this time, on his writing. Perhaps there is little to say, or to be discovered.

There are two lengthy postscripts to the main narrative. The first looks at the relationship between what Tolkien was actually writing during the Great War and his eventually published work (two decades later for The Hobbit, four decades later for The Lord of the Rings). The second ranges freely across the whole spectrum of English literature in the twentieth century, pointing out that Tolkien describes both the heroism and the horror of war (where Owen and Sassoon concentrate on the horror, to the point of concealing what they themselves were up to), and concluding with a favourable review from C.S. Lewis about the realism of Tolkien's portrayal of the psychology of wartime.

There's lots more here. Recommended.

Awesome book, I couldn't put it down!