The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Stories!!
Review: Two other books were published the same year as The Lord of the Rings; The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Both are excellent, and they are still read today. I can highyl recommend them. They are even in the same fantasy genre as Lord of the Rings, and both Anderson and Tolkien drew on the same nordic mythology. Why is then Lord of the Rings so outstandingly popular? Especially Gormenghast rivals LOTR in complexity and brilliance. Maybe the answer lies in the fact that Tolkien poured all of his soul in his books. These are not mere books; they *are* Tolkien. I have heard that Tolkien wrote to escape a dreary life - therefore he created the ultimate escape fantasy. I remember how hypnotised I was as a child reading them. Tolkien weaves such a rich tapestry that as in no other fantasy book have I ever felt that the author is describing a real world. The only book I can think about that comes close is Frank Herbert's Dune, but it is also obviously inspired by LOTR.
So, the combination of a will to create a fantasy world to escape to with the imagination and education to do it and a remarkable writing ability has created a literary masterpiece. I think that he created the modern fantasy genre with these books, and all role-playing games up until the mid-eighties were directly modelled on Middle-Earth.
However, I must add that I have some caveats: The moral of the books is rather primitve - static rural countryside/good, dynamic industrial society/bad. There is a total dualism; you are either with the good guys or with the bad guys (and gosh, are the bad guys BAD!). There has also been a lot of commercial exploitation of Tolkien; his family has published material that was never supposed to be published, and I fear that it is more driven by money than respect for his legacy.