Book Review: "Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today"
Nick Groom offers a compelling, though uneven, case for the continuing relevance of Tolkien and his works in the present unsettled era.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
I first saw Nick Groom’s Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today in a local bookshop, and I was immediately drawn to it. Of course, I’m a huge fan of Tolkien’s work, but I’ve long also been a fan of Tolkien criticism, the best of which leads one to think about Middle-earth and the legendarium. I was particularly intrigued by the description of the book, which assured me that the book itself would lay out why this particular fantasy author, who died half a century ago, still remains startlingly relevant to the 21st century.
Now that I’ve finally finished Groom’s contribution to the field of Tolkien studies, I must admit that I have some decidedly mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there’s no question that Groom is an engaging and accessible writer, and his love of Tolkien and his vision shines in every chapter, from the moments when he documents the history of the text itself to his discussion of the various adaptations. On the other hand, there’s the pesky problem of the title (and, for that matter, the book description). Reading both of these, one could be forgiven for assuming that Groom would spend most of the book talking about the ways that Tolkien has remained relevant into the 21st century. However, most of the book is instead taken up by textual histories and analyses of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with only the last chapter or so committed to the central thesis. As some other reviewers have noted, much of this has already been done by writers like Tom Shippey, so it remains a bit baffling as to why we would need a retread of this.
To be sure, there are some genuine insights here, and Groom is particularly revelatory when he reveals the extent to which The Lord of the Rings is, far more than is often acknowledged, very much a Modernist text. As he argues, the book is something of a palimpsest, with all sorts of competing voices and narratives and moralities, all jostling for attention. Just as importantly, for all that those in the present like to claim that The Lord of the Rings offers up a simple morality tale, Groom compellingly points out several instances of the ambiguous ethics at play, whether it’s the slaughtering of Orcs by the putative heroes of the tendency of hobbits to engage in burglary (Bilbo being, of course, the most salient example of this phenomenon).
Groom is also particularly erudite when it comes to Jackson’s films, both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Among other things, Groom observes that Jackson’s approach to making the Rings trilogy was remarkably like that of Tolkien while writing the novel. That is to say, neither quite knew where the journey was going to end up when they began the effort, with Jackson sometimes editing scripts on the day of shooting. As a result, Groom offers, both the viewer and the actors themselves cast into this strange and beautiful cinematic world, much as Frodo finds himself thrust into the fate of the One Ring and, by extension, all of Middle-earth.
Furthermore, I must admit that I found myself reconsidering The Hobbit trilogy yet again in light of Groom’s analysis, which demonstrates that there’s more to this bloated trio of films than just blockbuster aesthetics and superfluous CGI. His discussion of the ways in which The Battle of the Five Armies in particular explores weighty issues concerning war and trauma are, I think, quite illuminating and spot-on. Moreover, he makes a compelling case for forgiving Jackson for some of his more noticeable deviations from Tolkien’s text, whether in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.
Moreover, I did appreciate the extent to which he devoted the end of the book to a sympathetic reading of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. If you’ve read the newsletter for any length of time you no doubt already know that I love the series and see it is fundamentally Tolkienian, regardless of what the legions of haters may say. Groom, fortunately, also sees it in this regard, and he wastes no time cutting through the online vitriol and fire breathing to find some of the useful threads in the series, whether that’s the nature of the Harfoots and the emphasis on the contradictions of Galadriel’s characterization.
There are some times in the book when Groom gets a bit too bogged down in the details. This is particularly true when it comes to Tolkien’s writing process, which has been amply documented elsewhere by the likes of both Christopher Tolkien and Tom Shippey and which really does take up far too much space in the book. Groom also gets a bit lost in the weeds when it comes to some of the adaptations of Tolkien’s work, and he devotes a bit too much time to a film version of The Lord of the Rings–to be directed by John Boorman–that never came to pass. At the same time, he also gives a much-needed reappraisal and appreciation of Ralph Bakshi’s (still) underrated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, which remains one of the great what-ifs in Tolkien adaptation.
Toward the very end Groom does get into more of a discussion about how Tolkien still has a great deal to offer us in the age of COVID, but to be honest this portion feels quite underdeveloped compared to what came before. It almost seems as if he realized belatedly that the book he’d just written in no way lived up to its title and so decided to cram it in at the end. I thus don’t find these latter portions particularly compelling, and I wish an editor would have done more to push Groom to elaborate on the book’s central thesis (or, at the very least, expand it so the book is about the 20th and 21st centuries).
While I found myself a bit disappointed in the book overall, I nevertheless would recommend it to fellow Tolkienophiles, if for no other reason than that Groom offers a remarkably nuanced view about the process of adaptation and how that can enrich and deepen our understanding and appreciation of the original work. Given the vitriol that continues to be poured on The Rings of Power, this recognition is still very much needed.