Terrible ‘Tolkien’

I will be the first to admit that I am a sucker for branding. Slap ‘Tolkien’ or ‘Middle-earth’ on anything and I’m likely to buy it – unless it’s too expensive or seems a little ‘sus’. But if it’s deeply discounted or at bargain prices, I can seldom resist. 

This has led me to several poor purchases. For every true scholar like Tom Shippey or Holly Ordway there are at least half-a-dozen grifters like David Day or David Colbert, attaching themselves like leeches onto the juggernaut of The Lord of the Rings, or numbers of ‘scholastics’ like Anne C. Petty or Randall Helms, who use the popularity of Middle-earth as a launching platform for their own inimical philosophies, or evangelists tacking their own messages onto Tolkien rather than mining the admittedly Christian subtext of the books, or biographers* just wanting to make a quick buck on his sudden popularity thanks to the films. I include several DVD documentaries which must be, by their very nature, superficial. There is even a LOTR 'oracle', which would no doubt make Tolkien recoil, as he did with people using replicas of the One Ring for wedding rings. "You know nothing of my work."

But I have got them all, searching each volume, hoping to glean one new fact or insight about Tolkien or at least about the ‘deplorable cultus’ that has accreted around his work. Do I need them or even want them at this point? Almost certainly not. But once having expended my time and money, it really wouldn’t help much to get rid of them – unless I really needed the space.

I was brought to this meditation by ‘Tolkien Geek’ on the Tolkien Lore channel, about just such a book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNPRAlPK3Js

This sounds like the sort of book I would have been tempted by during the lean years of Tolkien fandom. Thanks to this video, I am well warned away from it. But if I found it cheaply in a used book outlet? Who can say what I’d do? It is, after all, ‘about’ Tolkien – for a certain value of ‘Tolkienity.’

*How many copies of the terrible biography by Daniel Grotta-Kurska do I have to have? Thanks, Brothers Hildebrandt!