Fantastic Metropolis

Driblette also offers what is one of the most comprehensive and sympathetic biographies of Tolkien yet published, and his account of Tolkien’s disappointments in the years following the publication of The Lord of the Rings is quite poignant. Initially lost in the clamor surrounding the ongoing publication of Mervyn Peake’s wildly successful Gormenghast novels, The Lord of the Rings was received by the public in a decidedly lukewarm fashion. Tolkien’s muse, however, would not let him rest, and in 1956 he turned in the manuscript for another novel, The Tale of the Silmarils (which, sadly, has not survived), also set in Middle-Earth. Among Tolkien’s surviving papers is a letter from Stanley Unwin, then Chairman of the publishers George Allen and Unwin. In the letter, Unwin courteously but firmly informs Tolkien of his feeling that The Tale of the Silmarils is “simply not viable commercially.” Unwin, however, does urge Tolkien to have a go at another novel, “perhaps something more Gormenghastian in tone” (Driblette 215). However much we may fault Unwin in hindsight for his lack of vision, it seems clear that he was essentially right in his appraisal. With readers everywhere infatuated with the darkness and baroque complexity of Peake’s trilogy, Tolkien’s work stood little chance of winning widespread public acceptance.

Tolkien did submit one more novel to Unwin in 1959, and although this manuscript has also been lost, surviving letters reveal that Tolkien had taken Unwin’s advice to heart and had written an intricate, dark novel simmering with a barely-suppressed violence and sexuality. In the crowning misfortune of his ill-starred career, Tolkien’s submission of the manuscript coincided with a brief upsurge in the popularity of The Lord of the Rings, and in what must have been a crushing irony for Tolkien, Unwin’s readers returned the manuscript along with the suggestion that he undertake something closer in spirit to his first novel. Specific suggestions include “The Further Adventures of Strider the Ranger;” “Gandalf: Wizard for Hire;” and “The Revenge of Sauron: The Return of the Dark Lord” (Driblette 278). It was the last straw for Tolkien, who immediately renounced writing and spent his remaining years pouring his creative energies into perfecting his imaginary language. In a further irony, Tolkien’s invented language enjoyed the very popularity that had eluded his novels, and “French,” as Tolkien called it, is now spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Rescued from Oblivion is small but important effort to stem the tide of neglect and disinterest that has unjustly plagued a writer of singular talent and ability, but Driblette himself points out that it seems unlikely that Tolkien’s work will ever capture the imagination of the reading public. In his afterword, Driblette makes the ironic observation that his study constitutes the single critical examination of Tolkien’s work, while in the last six months millions of words of analysis and criticism have been devoted to James Cameron’s recent film The Swords of Lankhmar and its stars, Russell Crowe and Willem Dafoe. Such, it appears, are the vagaries of fate.

Despite a profligate and misspent youth, Jeff Topham has somehow become a responsible adult. He lives with his wife Anne and daughter Judith in a very nice old house on a shady street in Louisville, Kentucky. He welcomes comments at tophamj@earthlink.net .