Customer Reviews

Understanding Tolkien and the "Lord of the Rings"

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As a student and employee of Marquette University, I am grateful to William Ready for his foresight in acquiring the Tolkien manuscripts. But as far as understanding Tolkien's work -- Ready does not. The research is sloppy, there are factual inaccuracies, and his understanding of the role of Catholicism in Tolkien is faulty. This is probably the single worst piece of Tolkien literary criticism that I have ever read.

As a student and employee of Marquette University, I am grateful to William Ready for his foresight in acquiring the Tolkien manuscripts. (How he managed to do so is still beyond me! But as far as understanding Tolkien's work -- Ready does not. The research is sloppy, there are factual inaccuracies and his understanding of the role of Catholicism in Tolkien (both his life and in his work) is faulty. This is probably the single worst piece of Tolkien literary criticism that I have ever read.

It is interesting to note that the book is panned in Carpenter's official biography of Tolkien. Apparently the family had the same view of the book as I do!

William Ready's Understanding Tolkien (original title, The Tolkien Relation) was written nearly 40 years ago, while Tolkien fandom was in the process of forming. Obviously, later research outdates some data, but it stands up well and can serve as a forceful manifesto of perhaps the most important "Party" within that fandom -- the "catholic" Party (whether that is lowercase for you, or upper, Roman Catholic). The book also serves to take readers back to the intellectual and aesthetic debates that swirled around Tolkien as a young man and even after publication of Lord of the Rings. As other reviews here make clear, that will not set well with many fans of Tolkien. Ready criticizes everyone, Tolkien included, but Lewis and the other Inklings notably.

As near as I can see, Ready came set up to reject much that Tolkien stood for -- but was simply bowled over by LOTR. He is someone who can see both that The Hobbit is the best introduction to LOTR and that it will turn off people who are ideal readers for the rest -- Ready himself was one of them!

If you're a fan (particularly of Lewis, but also if you're in the Shire Party or love "the interminable appendices" (p9, paperback), be prepared to be offended. In return for the annoyances, you'll get an excellent statement of catholic positions -- such as dismissing Teilhard de Chardin as a Tolkien soulmate and pointing out that the "unromantic, unblinking philosophy" of Jacques Maritain "fits Tolkien's Trilogy as a sword its scabbard" (p67).

And you'll get a clear understanding of just how unblinking Tolkien was in looking at mankind. One of the other reviewers misunderstood Ready's point that time works against the Good. Tolkien would agree -- when Evil is loosed in the world, it is not mankind's virtue, or courage, or intelligence, or whatnot, however necessary, that will save the day -- it is Grace. Period. Full stop. End of discussion.

If you want a window on debates that counted for people like Tolkien, and can get hold of a copy of Understanding Tolkien, do so. The 1969 Paperback Library edition is a scant but potent 96 pages. The 1968 Regnery original, The Tolkien Relation, may be hardback, I don't know.

. . .with the previous reviewer. This book is AWFUL! I strongly suggest that if Mr. Ready (the former acquisitions librarian at Marquette University) had written this garbage PRIOR to purchasing the manuscripts for the university archives, the sale would never have been made.

Hobbits, as everyone should know, like books which set forth things that are already known, fair and square with no contradictions. The average hobbit knows more about the life of the great Professor Tolkien than (apparently) does Mr. Ready. The inconsistencies and errors begin with the basic biographical information -- and continue downhill.

All the author has demonstrated, is that he does NOT understand EITHER JRR Tolkien OR The Lord of the Rings.

Mr. Ready's examination of the life of Tolkein and the lives of his creations--or subcreations--is deep, astute, and as wonderfully explained as some of Tolkein's own best words. Profound comparisons of Tolkein's characters and plots to themes about goodness, death, and even politics are compressed into a mere 96 pages in this little paperback. I found that I better understood Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and the "Inklings" with each paragraph, and I gained an even deeper appreciation for the Rings trilogy. With our own Sauron trampling what's left of our own Middle Earth in the U.S., I appreciate Tolkein's foresight as explained by Ready. If you are a devotee of Tolkein, then this book should be included in your library and nevermind the criticisms of the over-educated, possibly jealous, reviewers who have given a thumb's down here.

The author begins by losing his audience immediately. He compares Tolkien to a wizard and then accuses him of doing everything Saruman did. The style of writing is that of a confusing mystic in the worst sense of the word, for example "mist in a mask, chronicler of...Earth...the exhalation of Man" (7). Ready then states there is no worship in the books, despite obvious tributes to Elbereth. He states "Time is the enemy, ever on Evil's side" (7). That is blasphemy if I ever heard it in contrast to Tolkien's longing to be in time and walk in it as he writes in the <u>Lost Road</u>.

Ready then delves into Tolkien's life and his early tragedies, his scholastic life and obsession with language, and many other unimportant details. The author then puts down Lewis, saying comparing the two is like "making a jolly green giant out of Gargantua" (19). He does cover how intimately Christopher was involved with the books. Ready then degrades each of the Inklings in turn, and puts up Tolkien's use of language as perfect and that it makes all others "sound pale" (29) when, as all honest fans admit, Tolkien has one of the worst styles of writing when it comes to language. Only blind obsession could cause such a falsification.

"Tolkien came to his fame by word of mouth" (42). His lectures were packed out and his students adored him. When <u>Lord of the Rings</u> was published, it was known only to those who had heard about it from someone else. The author then claims that many people are put off from Tolkien "because <u>The Hobbit</u> has repelled them" (47). Ready then goes on to make a series of completely unfounded assertions. He cannong help but start reading into the books all sorts of complicated patterns which Tolkien specifically said were not there. The author then systematically puts down Tolkien and the other Inklings on a very personal and ad hominum level. For example, he makes fun of Williams as not being religious and mysterious enough and that a scene in a Knights of the Round Table book by White was much better. This is an obvious attack on Williams lifelong and extreme devotion to the Round Table and Holy Grail. And this is all from a man who insists <u>Lord of the Rings</u> is a trilogy of books! About the only good thing that can be said of this book is that at least the author knows how to spell Middle-earth.

The only reason to buy this book is to burn it so nobody else can be forced to read it.

In all my experience I've never endured such a rambling rollercoaster of incoherent, ill-written, and contradictory misinformation about Fantasy's grand master -- ever. The author, supremely self-aware (especially that, having been spurned by Tolkien, he has very little solid information to go on) and overzealous in his (1968) effort to appear erudite among his academic fellows (perhaps also to 'cash in' on the Frodo-mania of the late 60s?), through horrific, transparent ignorance of Tolkien and his work does extreme disservice to him. The writing is appalling -- in spelling, grammar, content and style. His proclivity for unintelligible run-on sentences, which themselves run on, must be the stuff of professorial nightmares.

Ready praises Tolkien's titanic literary achievement in one breath, only to mock his quaint, provincial, amateurish ways in the next. It's as if he cannot make up his mind on which side of the literary-criticism divide he wishes to cast his vote (with Lewis and Auden, or Wilson and Toynbee?). His pathetic attempts at balanced assessment, in fact, are themselves contradictory throughout, ill-considered. And yes, we get the Man-Hobbit similitude thing, but what with the whole 'Relations' concept that laboriously (for the reader, painfully) he tries to weave throughout?

UNDERSTANDING TOLKIEN? ... Really, Mr. Ready? Apart from fully off-the-mark declarations about the famous Oxford don and his work, what follows is surely more than editorial oversight: Granted, we know you wished to show your Tolkien scholarship of the Numenorean Man Isildur, telling us of his tragic death in the river, but you referred to him as 'Isildur the Elf'(!) Compared to practically all else that precedes and follows this, however ('Arriven' for Arwen, 'Baramir' for Boromir, 'Elberth' for Elbereth?), it's but a minor infraction.

Still, I'm not quite sure what that mishmash-of-a-chapter, 'Man For Tolkien', was all about: something about ice floes, Boards of Control, euthanasia, phantasmagoria, pies in the sky, and Dan'l Webster.

The book's final 'dedicatory' paragraph is curious: 'This book about him will not please him, nor is it meant to. It is no bouquet, but it's not a brickbat either [though that term smacks of it precisely]. It is only one man's view of him and his relation [there's that word again!]. Tolkien's work is great; its flaws help to make it a unique contribution to English literature. I dedicate this book to him.'

The Chicago Daily News blurb on the back cover -- 'It seems unlikely that anyone will beat Mr. Ready's understanding of The Lord of the Rings ... remarkable intuitions' -- is, needless to say, utterly laughable. I can't think of a Tolkien critic since who hasn't surpassed Mr. Ready's 'scholarly contribution' in spades ... and certainly given us a clearer understanding.