Hard to Imagine

My brother John posed me an interesting question: what would my life be like right now if Tolkien had never published? I’ve tried thinking about that now and then, and my mind boggles. Not only has Tolkien been “the center of my secret knowledge” since at least middle school (though my introduction began years earlier with The Hobbit play I saw in 3^rd Grade), much of my reading and interests has been sparked by subjects related to or mentioned by Tolkien (Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Old English and Medieval Literature). He inspired my first efforts to write and to draw. If Tolkien had never published, how many of the writers I read would be very different, if they had ever ‘taken off’ at all without his influence, or indeed the growth of Fantasy genre that the Professor’s works fueled?

It is an interesting question that takes a bit of untangling. As it’s posed, it’s ‘if Tolkien had never published,’ not ‘if Tolkien had never existed.’ He could still, of course, have had that life-changing talk with C. S. Lewis that led to the apologist’s reversion to Christianity. Lewis might have still read and been influenced by Tolkien’s unpublished works.  But would I have read any of Lewis’s work without a connection with Tolkien? Would I be a Christian, let alone a Catholic, without Tolkien’s published presence and example?

Is there any myth or ‘intellectual property’ that could ever have taken Middle-earth’s place? I had several interests already that might have developed in its stead: Arthurian tales, Norse and Greek myths, and the ever-lurking Shakespeare (never greatly developed in my childhood but an intriguing presence). Tolkien only served to deepen those interests. Several popular ‘mythos’ had my attention: Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, and monsters both legendary and cinematic. There was Oz, which went further than I even guessed. But could any of them ever have moved me in the same involved way as Tolkien?

So what would ‘my’ life be like if Tolkien had never published? Well, I wouldn’t be the ‘me’ I am today. I mean I must have been ‘me’ before I ever found Tolkien, but his work has become so bound up with what I am, and do, and have, that if one was to rip Middle-earth and whatever it influenced out of my life, I’m not sure how much would remain. If it was completely eliminated from my timeline … as I say, the mind boggles. It might be worse; it might be better. But whatever my life would be like, it would be incomprehensible to the me I am. As it is, “I’ve based my life on Krusty’s teachings.”