Customer Reviews

The Life and Work of J.R.R. Tolkien ( Critical Lives )

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the third full-length biography of Tolkien, after Humphrey Carpenter's and Daniel Grotta's. Carpenter's is accurate, well-written, and insightful. Grotta's is none of these, and White's reminds me much of Grotta's. The writing is abysmally clunky, and the text is riddled with completely amateur factual errors on every level, from confusing Dorothy Sayers with Dorothy Parker to inflating Tolkien's discomfort with Charles Williams's work into a seething personal hatred for which there is no contemporary evidence: rather the opposite. White's task, as the title suggests, was to analyze Tolkien's work as well as to recount his life, but there is no literary criticism as such in this book. White starts off his analysis badly by declaring that "the published letters relate almost nothing of his private life," which could only be thought true by someone disappointed at not finding the "personal demons" and "inner drives" (his words) that he thinks Tolkien ought to have. Accordingly, he supplies them. For instance, White reduces Tolkien's motivation for writing his mythology into a simple Freudian longing for his lost mother, and then adds insult to injury by claiming that this oversimplification takes nothing away from Tolkien's achievement. White shows no understanding of what made Tolkien tick, and replaces him with a textbook psychological construct.
Parts of the book are not this bad. White is less digressive than Grotta, and he shows at least a minimal knowledge of Tolkien's posthumously-published works. He concludes with a rousing defense of the value of Tolkien's work, but doesn't really engage with the criticisms. Against elitists who half-believe that popularity is a sign of worthlessness, it's no reply to emphasize Tolkien's popularity.
At one point White criticizes Tolkien for objecting to errors in a publisher's blurb. Tolkien didn't understand the publisher's publicity needs, White says. But no publisher needs to be factually inaccurate, and neither do Tolkien's biographers. This book is likely to be a source of factual and interpretive error for years to come. It adds nothing useful to Carpenter's biography, the one book all persons curious about Tolkien's life should read.

Michael White's new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien is a competently written book and people who are just now discovering Tolkien and his works will most certainly find his book most useful. BUT everyone who has read e.g. Humphrey Carpenter's landmark biography from the late 70s or the ground-breaking studies of Tom Shippey will find nothing new in it. Unfortunately, White only uses second-hand sources and has no new conclusions to offer. Moreover, his book is flawed by some truly sloppy research mistakes, such as calling Dorothy Sayers an "American" and making the Habsburgs the rulers of the "Prussian Empire" (he is clearly confusing Germany with its neighbor Austria-Hungary).
Carpenter's biography although some 25 years older is the far more substantial biography, and although White introduces more historical background material than Carpenter, his background explanations (e.g. about the First World War) are never above schoolbook level. Recommend only for Tolkien newcomers.

The author notes (p. 149) that Tolkien was a stickler for accuracy. He does not share this with his subject. Nor does he have Tolkien's ability to write clearly.

p. 18 -- refers to Mabel's (Tolkien's mother) religious beliefs as "orthodox" before her conversion to Catholicism. Does he mean that Catholicism isn't orthodox? He uses the word again on page 150 and page 213, again giving no hint about what his standard for "orthodoxy" is. It seems to be pretty much filler.

p. 21 -- Newman was received into the Catholic Church before he went to Rome, contrary to what's said here.

p. 51 -- One does not "take Benediction", nor need one be Catholic to attend Benediction. (This is another persistent problem in the book. I don't claim one need be Catholic to write about Tolkien, but some understanding of it would seem to be essential to write about someone who so intensely identified with Catholicism.)

p. 135 -- As a previous reviwer notes, the author has confused Dorothy Parker with Dorothy Sayers.

p. 145 -- the author seems aghast that Tolkien actually believed in demons and devils. For one thing, their existence happens to be an article of Catholic faith. For another--he mentions this as a reason Tolkien didn't like C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, apparently unaware that Lewis believed they were real too.

p. 149 -- the details of Joy Gresham's interactions with Lewis are mangled.

p. 214-215 -- another misunderstanding of Catholicism, though he does mention the right analogy later. The Ring is destroyed on March 25 because it is the Feast of the Annunciation, not because it's the traditional date of Good Friday. (I believe this is covered in one of Tolkien's letters.)

p. 215 -- "imposing his faith on a pagan world" is a nice (albeit accidental) hint about the biographer's actual position. Middle Earth is Tolkien's creation, not an independent entity in its own right. There was no "imposing" to be done; the world is what Tolkien made it.

p. 215-216 -- his portrayal of Tolkien's Catholicism is clueless.

p. 222 -- He claims CSL wrote the Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory, and that's why Tolkien didn't like them. Lewis didn't like allegory any more than Tolkien did (even though he really did write one [Pilgrim's Regress]), and that wasn't why Tolkien didn't like them. He thought they lacked the meticulous internal consistency of Middle Earth.

Add to all of the above vary bits of parlor psych applied to Tolkien and Oxford dons in general.

Buy Carter's book, or Pearce's, instead.

Compared to the other previous reviewers who shot down this book, this book was my first ever biography on Tolkien. The book was short, briefed and I thought it was pretty well written and explains many things about Tolkien and what make him click. I do not believed that Michael White meant his book to be an authoritive biography but as an introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien. I thought he did a pretty fine job although he probably did make few errors along the way (like the "Prussian Empire" bit as one of the previous reviewers pointed out).

The reasons why this book only got three stars instead of four or five had more to do with the general content. Not enough seem to be written on Tolkien's last years of life and for the life of me, I do not understand any sort of biography without any photos to go with it. That cost one star by itself.

But this book serves the purpose, its a good introduction to Tolkien for anyone who may not want to tackle a more detail versions of other biographies. With only 250 pages, I thought the author did a creditable job on Tolkien and tied in with his most famous works, Lord of the Rings.

After seeing the movie "Lord of the Rings" I wanted to find out more aboout the man who had authored such an ambitious work of fiction. I remember for years hearing that the writing and the story were so spectacular that it was impossible to translate to the screen. I found Mr. Tolkien to be a very interesting subject and would recommend this book.