Customer Reviews

Literary Companion Series - J.R.R. Tolkein (paperback edition)

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Like Harold Bloom's "Lord of the Rings: Modern Critical Perspectives", De Koster's "Readings on J.R.R. Tolkien" is a compilation of previously printed articles and book excerpts about Tolkien-- and about Lord of the Rings (LotR) in particular. Also like Bloom's book, it's nothing to get excited about. Most of its contents are old and whiskered, filled with passe comments and observations. A few articles are a half-century old book reviews written when LotR first appeared. Many of the older articles (like Auden's and Wilson's) have also been reprinted many, many times before in other compilations. (Strangely, though, a lot of the older articles have had their names changed from the original...)

There are also articles here that were penned more recently... mostly from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but, to be perfectly honest, only a few of these are genuinely insightful... and many of those insights are, in fact, based on critical methods that are no longer current (e.g. psychoanalytical readings). Only one article was written in the 90s, a defense of Tolkien against charges of racism, taken straight from Patrick "Defending Middle-Earth" by Patrick Curry. Curry's defense is passionate and polemical, but he's preaching to the choir on this point, and this excerpted article is not a particularly good example of Tolkien scholarship in the past decade.

On the whole, it's tough to see what value this book has for either a Tolkien fan or scholar. So much of its content is outdated, and a lot of it just isn't all that substantive to begin with. Moreover, the fact is that all of the stuff included here can easily be found (in full, not excerpted) in any good public library or half-decent research library, and de Koster doesn't really add anything in the way of editorial comment or organization to make this edition any better than the sum of its parts.

I can't, however, say the book is wholly without merit, as a few articles, like Shippey's are decent (although folks should just go and read his books, rather than the brief excerpt here), and the old reviews are of importance to those interested in the history of Tolkien criticism) Still, I'd recommend that folks avoid this collection of old and mediocre material and instead take a gander at some of more insightful (and more current) Tolkien criticism and scholarship that's out there...

While this slim volume is definitely superior to Harold Bloom's recent collection of 30-year-old essays that most Tolkien students are already familiar with, nevertheless, "Readings" disappoints in much the same way. There is only one short piece written recently (the one on whether LOTR is racist); the rest are all retreads (important ones, to be sure) from previous volumes and periodicals. Any student seriously considering LOTR for a thesis or paper will be dismayed. All but one of these essays were written before 1983 (i.e., before today's crop of college freshmen were even born).

Why wasn't a chapter from Norman Cantor's superb book "Inventing the Middle Ages" (1991) included? Why wasn't the trouble taken to track down essays written in the 90s? Can it really be because there just isn't any serious Tolkien scholarship?