I assumed the main thesis of the book was more, "how
Middle-earth is viewed 50 years after JRRT's passing"
Just got my hands on a copy of the book, and Groom is very upfront with this in his Foreword.
"This Book is about being inside the story, a wild story. It is not an (apparently) straightforward introduction to Tolkien’s world – not only are there plenty of such primers, guides, and encyclopedias, but they tend to get rapidly bogged down in the minutiae of Tolkien’s ‘legendarium’ or ‘mythos’ (his complex architecture of gods and goddesses, the intricate lore of the many peoples of Middle-Earth, and their entangled histories and tales across thousands of years). Within a few pages, these books are preaching to the converted and are lost in the arcana of the ‘Ainur’ and ‘Maiar’, and purveying imaginary deities to perplexed readers rather than doing what they should be doing, which is, simply, explaining the value of the writing.
[...]
In contrast, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien takes as its starting point the Tolkien phenomenon today: a multi-media mix and fix of literature, art, music, radio, cinema, gaming, fandom, and popular culture – a never-ending Middle-Earth. We cannot return to a purely literary Middle-Earth independent of, primarily, Sir Peter Jackson’s extraordinary films. We should therefore accept that any assessment of newly published works drawn from the Tolkien archives – as well as new adaptations of his tales and imagined histories – are inevitably going to be deeply coloured by the multifaceted twenty-first-century Tolkien ‘industry’, for want of a better term."
To be honest, I haven't read the book in full. From the foreword, it seemed like it could contain some information with worth concerning
the discussion of the status of Tolkien's works as a modern myth, which I am currently interested in, so I read parts of it here and there to make myself a rough picture as I do with every book I consider for research before I commit to the time to read it in full. It seems to be an interesting book for anyone who wants to learn about the making of
the Lord of the Rings as well as the Jackson Trilogy and adds a lot of factoids and relations I wasn't aware of yet. It is undoubtedly a valuable book and written with lots of expertise and love for the subject, and I will probably read it completely at a later point in time. However, there is also something bugging me about it.
Mr. Groom is a wonderful writer and researcher. However, 7/8s of this book is a review of various movie adaptations of LOTR from Backshi to Zaentz to Peter Jackson. All 20th century works
I wouldn't call it like this, but this reviewer seems to be pointing out rightly, that the vast majority of the book that is about adaptations, centres heavily on Jackson's and 'fails' to deliver on the kind of promise made in the foreword about a
multi-media mix and a
never-ending Middle-Earth, that 'overcomes' a purely literary work of canon. To be fair, even though the Jackson Movies are a brainchild of the 90s and therefore not entirely 21st century adaptations, he rightly points out, that Jackson connected his vision of Middle-Earth so thoroughly with the story, that it irreversibly shaped the perception of Tolkien in this century and to this day. So focussing on this might be understandable, but if this overshadows all the other ways of modern engagement with Tolkien, then the focus was too narrow.
This to me was made partially evident with what should be the most recent part of the book to be analysed.
"Twenty-First-Century Tolkien will accordingly consider areas such as uncertainty and the indeterminate, [...] as well as Tolkien in a post-Covid age." This statement made in the foreword makes it seem like there will be a - if brief - highly up-to-date analysis of Covid-Age Tolkien Interpretations but in the end, Covid is mentioned on six pages, with most of the analysis only taking up three and concerning
the Rings of Power Series and some lukewarm guesses about how Tolkien's Works could've helped to overcome lockdown induced feelings of loneliness, which seems to only be loosely based on
this one article. It is certainly within the topic of the book, but a lot less than I hoped for and feel was 'advertised'. In addition, the parts that touch on
the Rings of Power and Covid also circle back to Jackson. He is mentioned at about the same rate as
Frodo, or
elves at well over 250 times.
To me, there are essential parts missing for a book that wants to give insight in 21st century Tolkien. I mean, how do you mention social media only three times in the entire book and corresponding memes using Tolkien/Jackson material not even once, even though they are arguably the most prevalent piece of Tolkien media in existence? Computer games such as Battle for Middle-Earth are only mentioned insofar as they were based on Jackson's movie adaptations and are absent from the narrative afterwards. Fan fictions are completely absent and there are 1.2k Lord of the Rings stories on
Wattpad with views ranging from a couple of thousands to half a million. Fan Forums like this very one? Missing. All of this would, from my point of view, be essential for any thorough analysis of the relevance and reception of Tolkien in this 21st century, which is why I got the feeling, this book is missing out on a lot of things which itself considers its subject.
