Lin Carter, Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings (Ballantine, 1969)

Forget the title. Carter's book has about as much to do with Lord of the Rings as Silence of the Lambs actually has to do with lambs. They get mentioned now and again, but are really quite unnecessary to what's going on.

Carter's interesting little tome is actually more of an encapsulated history of fantasy literature up to the time of Tolkien-- the sources from which Tolkien got his ideas. LOTR serves as a convenient linchpin and a good jumping-off point, but Carter is truly in his own when he's discussing the Elder Edda or the epics of Homer and his contemporaries, and tracing how the stories got from the ancient texts into Tolkien's hands. It leaves behind a wealth of wonderful reading material for the interested fantasy reader to track down (assuming most of it can be found; Carter laments that many of the works of which he speaks have been lost to the ages), and this is its chief strength. As for weaknesses... well, there really aren't any. Carter spends too much time summing up LOTR when he could be telling us about Egyptian legends, and he makes a number of guesses about things in LOTR, since The Silmarillion hadn't been published yet (and for all its annoyances, The Silmarillion did answer a whole lot of questions about the First Age), but it's impossible to count that against Carter and still remain fair. I'd just liked to have seen more of the old stuff, and less of the new. ***

Día nublado con llovizna perfecto para hablar (escribir) acerca de este ensayo. Tolkien es y será por lejos mi escritor favorito así que no es el primer ensayo acerca de su obra que leo. Este es uno de los más completos, en términos de contextualizar la obra. La verdad es que aportó poco a lo que sabía, pero si te gusta el autor y no has leído ningún ensayo, este sería un excelente comienzo. Tiene una buena síntesis de los cuatro libros principales: ESDLA y El Hobbit. Se hace un poco tedioso el detallismo en su recuento de obras precursoras de la novela de fantasía épica. Pero tiene un par de anécdotas sabrosas y trocitos de cartas que desconocía. Entretiene, es para fangirlear tu ídolo literario o si estudias literatura para apoyar un ensayo. No es interpretativo y descarta, en parte, la alegoría nazi que suele hacerse de la saga. Un buen libro. #esdla #Tolkien #ensayoliterario

I loved this. Surprisingly, this was two parts compleat history of fantasy lit to one part Tolkien. The constant asides and insights made this something special. It makes me want to read more books from the Middle Ages. Great egghead read.

I was going to give this some slack when it says from the get-go that this was first published in the sixties, before The Silmarillion was even published. But then it spends a good chunk of paper summarizing the trilogy, which makes little sense because one would think the target audience for this book is people who've already read the whole thing. So I skipped those-- I skimmed through it to see if there was commentary as the author summarized, which would have been mildly interesting, like listening to the commentary track on the dvd of a film, but nope, just summarizing. And then, it spends another good chunk of paper talking about fantasy and myth and other fantasy stories and writers that only very marginally relates to Tolkien's stories. Skipped those too. From what I gather, they're included in this book simply because those stories are in the same genre as LOTR (is this a tiny bit understandable as the fantasy epic apparently wasn't as popular in the 60s as it has been in the past couple of decades?)

I think I've finally gotten to a part where it actually talks about Tolkien's influences, but it's already more than half of the way through the book. I'm glad I got this off the bargain bin.

*2.5* Written very much like we’re listening to the author’s ‘stream-of-consciousness’; but who am I to judge considering my stream of consciousness sounds pretty much the exact same?

I found it to be very interesting i enjoyed about the characters and their backgrounds.

Underrated and underappreciated. This is a marvelous book and a comprehensive full span with no waste. It's a breeze to read thanks to Lin Carter's thoughtful, easy-going and actually buoyant style here. Find this and you'll read it in one night, enthralled.

Cet ouvrage de Lin Carter est vraiment passionnant ! Si à l'origine il parle de l'oeuvre de Tolkien, il nous apprend surtout tout un tas de chose sur la littérature fantastique et ses origines. Je recommande tant aux fans de Tolkien qu'aux amateurs d'heroic fantasy en général.

A large portion of this book is devoted to a summary of each of the Hobbit and LOTR (four chapters in all), then a discussion of fantasy in different periods of time without mentioning Tolkien at all. There is also a short biography of Tolkien himself. This is a short book, with 16 chapters, yet only 5 seem to talk about the actual subject matter it professes to talk about.

Worse, he describes Eowyn as Theoden's daughter at least twice. Not ideal.

Lin Carter quiso escribir sobre un tema de moda. La pena es que no supiera de que estaba escribiendo.

Jedna z prvních knih, které byly o Tolkienově díle napsány. Tato kniha je určena prvotně pro ty, kteří jsou alespoň trochu znalí Tolkienova díla. Nedokážu si představit, že by někdo po knize sáhl bez potřebných znalostí. Je však pravda, že autor dost často odbíhal hodně daleko od Hobita a Pána Prstenů. Nicméně nemohu říct, že by mi kniha nic nedala.

A little gem of literary criticism. It's very charming and references several other books I'd like to check out. But the whole middle section on Homer and Greek epics was so unrelated