and now, the answer to that question

[calimac]

Yesterday, I posted a quotation about the reviewer's dilemma on how to give proper recognition to a really outstanding book. It was an excerpt from a review of one (or what the reviewer considered to be one), and I challenged you to guess the identity of the book, and who wrote the review.

Some thought it must be The Lord of the Rings; another said it couldn't be The Lord of the Rings.

The unexpurgated original paragraphs, including a date stamp which might have provided a clue, and the citation, are as follows:

A reviewer tries to exercise relative judgment. In a year (like most years, it must be admitted) when nothing is, in the eyes of the Ages, of the absolute first rank, he recommends and praises the best of what's available. But then what does he do when he's present (or so he thinks) at the birth of one of the pure unquestionable classics of the century?

What happened 27 years ago when the mystery reviewers who had been praising Fletcher and Van Dine met up with Dashiell Hammett? How did the drama reviewers of the turn of the century differentiate between the relatively commendable plays of Jones and Pinero and the masterpieces of George Bernard Shaw? What did musical comedy reviewers who had lauded Rio Rita and My Maryland say when they heard Show Boat?

Well, to be honest, the answer is that in most cases they saw no marked difference in kind; critical hindsight has its advantages over the contemporary reviewer.

Still, I wish I could readily establish some kind of qualitative differentiation between my praise of the average good (or even very good) fantasy novel and my urgent recommendation of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

Anthony Boucher, "Recommended Reading" column, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1956, p. 91.

He'd also written brief interim reviews, equally appreciative ("Among 'pure' fantasy novels, The Fellowship of the Ring may well be the major achievement of the year or even of the decade. I cautiously say may because the 200,000 word titan is only the introductory portion of a trilogy, an unrounded fragment"), of the first two volumes (April & August 1955).

I sought these out when working on an aborted book project to put together writings on Tolkien by otherwise noted authors. We had W.H. Auden's LOTR reviews (some of which have never been reprinted), the original long text of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship, even X.J. Kennedy reviewing The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Unfortunately the project fell aground on one deceased author's agent's inexplicable belief that our little project would disrupt their large-scale plans for the author's reputation. But I still have all the collected materials.

And, while it's true that LOTR got some harsh criticism on first publication (you should read what Helene Hanff of 84 Charing Cross Road fame had to say about it), it also got ecstatic praise, not only from Auden and Boucher and C.S. Lewis, but from Naomi Mitchison (who burbled incomprehensibly), and from Michael Straight, who grasped that this was not an escapist fantasy but a book that "illuminates the inner consistency of reality" and who ended his review with the eminently pull-quote-worthy: "There are very few works of genius in recent literature. This is one." (The New Republic, Jan. 16, 1956, p. 24-26)

So with that cheerful thought,

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

That actually sounds like a very interesting project. Did you really need the comments of the one particular author whose agent balked? Because even without that one, it could be a very intersting thing to read.


Translation: stop sitting on it and get on with it. Even though you know it will have a gap you wanted to fill. ;-)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Gap is far too critical. Best step would be knocking the agent on the head again. It's been several years, and somebody less impatient with idiocy (for ghu's sake, this is a small-press project that's not going to be driving big name publishers off the shelf) should do it. I'm thinking about bringing it up.

But I have another project more vital - for this stuff, at least, is available, if only in dusty old libraries - to work on first.