21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A good fanbook, but not scholarship, June 20, 2002
This review is from: Visualizing Middle-earth (Paperback)
This book is easily categorized, and is best judged with an understanding of that category. 'Visualizing' is a book aimed at popular fan readership and is thus what has been called a a "fannish" book. That is not necessarily a qualitative statement, but it does set certain parameters. One need only look through the table of contents, what with chapters on 'Happy Hobbit Holidays,' 'Dear Gandalf' letters modeled on Dear Abby letters, an entire chapter on whether or not Balrogs have wings, to understand the direction and intended audience of this book. The author is an energetic fan of Tolkien and participates on numerous web-sites that discuss various fan issues of Tolkien's works. He is also a fan of 'Zena, Warrior Princess,' and participates regularly in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Gaming conventions. The book clearly reflects interests of this nature. There is, however, very little real scholarship to be found in 'Visualizing Middle Earth'. The book, as has been pointed out, is a collection of on-line essays, most from a popular Tolkien fan website that the author administers. Martinez delves very little into the academic and literary sources behind Tolkien's work, and when he does attempt to do so it becomes clear that he is an amateur scholar in the field of literature. I recommend this book to the many young men and women of highschool age (or those adults who still play D&D on the weekends) who want to explore the popular ideas to be found in 'The Lord of the Rings', but I would urge serious students of Tolkien criticism to look elsewhere. See Tom Shippey's 'Tolkien, Author of the Century', for instance.
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38 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This isn't scholarship; it's fannish fluff, October 12, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Visualizing Middle-earth (Paperback)
Michael Martinez may call himself a 'Tolkien researcher', but anyone picking up _Visualizing Middle-Earth_ should be aware that this is not a work of serious scholarship. The various essays collected within are wholly fannish in style, character, and content. Many are just light-heared fannish musings and diversions, such as the essay entitled "Would Sandra Bullock Make a Good Mrs. Isildur?" (the actual title of one of the essays... honest!), or "Dear Gandalf" a humorous series of imagined letters from the Kings of Arnor to Gandalf written in the style of a "Dear Abby" column. Many others consist of nothing more than speculations and rumors about the upcoming _Lord of the Rings_ movies being directed by Peter Jackson and Martinez's musings upon them. Still others address questions as to whether Tolkien fans should consider the commercialization of Tolkien a good thing or a bad thing.
It is not clear to me how these kinds of essays constitute 'research'. Mere musings and opinions, even when interspersed with casually remarkable details derived from Tolkien's texts (such as noting that Isildur lived to be more than 200 years) are not scholarship, even using a broad definition of the word.
There are, I should note, a few essays in _Visualizing Middle-Earth_ (e.g. "As Strange as News from Bree") that seem like they're more scholarly in aspiration. Most of these, however, are conceptually flawed-- and unfortunately for Martinez, the flaw is fatal. Rather than approaching Tolkien's writings as imaginative works of literature in these essays, Martinez [approaches them as if] they were historical sources- and rather than writing genuine literary criticism of Tolkien's fiction, he writes as if he were a historian performing research into the history of Middle-earth. [...] Although Tolkien frames _The Lord of the Rings_ as if it were a kind of history (complete with appendices on genealogy, chronology, etc.), this is (as Tolkien himself noted) merely a literary device-- and Tolkien's writings are ultimately literary works. Trying to use the texts to conduct 'research' into the history of Bree, the dwelling-places of the rangers, or the 'actual' physical characteristics of balrogs may be a fun intellectual game for Tolkien fans to play, a kind of fan-fiction that wears a historian's mask, but it should not be confused with real literary scholarship of the sort done by Shippey, Flieger, Chance, Kocher, Giddings, Curry, Isaacs & Zimbardo, and other literary scholars.
In fact, of the several dozen essays in _Visualizing Middle-Earth_, only two even seem close to genuine literary criticism: "Middle-earth Is Not Medieval Europe" and a follow-up that specifically contends that the Rohirrim are not modelled on the Anglo-Saxons or other early Germanic peoples. Even here, however, Martinez [seems to approach] the question without any real literary critical sophistication or any awareness of how complex the nature of literary influences and adapations are. For example, he dismisses the fact that the Rohirrim have Anglo-Saxon names, that they speak Anglo-Saxon, that they look and dress like Anglo-Saxons, that Theoden's Hall is almost exactly like Hrothgar's in _Beowulf_, that they bury their dead in mounds (as did the Anglo-Saxons & early Scandinavians), etc. on the grounds that there is not a 100% identity between the Rohirrim and the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons, Martinez notes, were a seafaring people, while the Rohirrim are a landlocked people famed for horse-riding. Additionally, he notes, the early Anglo-Saxons were pagans who later converted to Christianity, while _The Lord of the Rings_ says nothing of the religion of the Rohirrim. This, combined with the fact that he's read a whole two Viking sagas (in translation, of course) and saw no fruitful comparisons to the Rohirrim there, leads Martinez to conclude that the Rohirrim are ultimately not comparable to the Anglo-Saxons or other early Germanic peoples.
Ultimately, I suppose that there are some Tolkien fans out there who might enjoy _Visualizing Middle-Earth_. Anyone who likes reading on-line Tolkien newsgroups and chatrooms and just engaging in all sorts of fannish discussion on anything remotely related to Tolkien will probably find that Martinez's book is an entertaining read. But anyone who comes expecting to find a work of serious scholarship and erudition should prepare to be very disappointed.
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47 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Must-have ME history essays, November 22, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Visualizing Middle-earth (Paperback)
Michael Martinez is a dedicated self-made Tolkien researcher with a penchant for detailed Web and newsgroup debates and essays on the fine points of Tolkien's creation. Most (if not all) of the essays in this book have appeared in his on-line columns and commentary. Martinez's main interest is the history of ME, although some essays deal with the pop-cultural impact of Tolkien's books and the upcoming movies. If you (like me) are fascinated by Middle Earth mostly because of it's incredibly detailed pseudo-history and pseudo-culture, then this book is a must have. Although Martinez is, by some definitions, an amateur essayist, his writing is very good, close to that of many well-regarded and well-published non-fiction essayists. My one complaint is that I wish the book were longer. Since it covers mostly his 1999 on-line essays, several more recent ones that I enjoyed are not included. I can only hope for a second volume, or perhaps these essays will be rolled into a larger work that Martinez is planning.
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