J.R.R. Tolkien: A Guide for the Perplexed by Toby Widdicombe

Abstract

Reviewed by: J.R.R. Tolkien: A Guide for the Perplexed by Toby Widdicombe David Bratman J.R.R. Tolkien: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Toby Widdicombe. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. ix, 194 pp. $22.95 (softcover). ISBN 978-1-350-09214-3. Though presented as a subtitle for the volume, "A Guide for the Perplexed" is actually the name of the series in which this book appeared. Bloomsbury has published several dozen short, introductory books under this heading, most of them in theology or philosophy, dealing either with concepts or important writers. A few are on literary subjects, either fields (modernist literature, science fiction) or authors. The 20th-century authors covered are otherwise canonical modernists (Eliot, Joyce, Kafka, Woolf), so to find Tolkien in their company is a notable mark of his growth in perceived literary status. Toby Widdicombe, English-raised and now a professor of English literature at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, is a scholar of eclectic interests whose books include an edition of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and an encyclopedia of Raymond Chandler. In teaching Tolkien's works in the classroom, he writes, he finds that his students have questions which suggest that what they need is an orientation to what Tolkien's works are and how they fit together: How are the pieces of Tolkien's legendarium related? How is Tolkien's legendarium connected to the rest of his output as a creative writer? How could one man produce academic and creative work that is so remarkably insightful and so varied? And how, finally, are the works published during Tolkien's lifetime connected to those that were published posthumously? (1) A book designed to answer these questions might begin as a runthrough of the volumes of Tolkien's creative work, both those of his [End Page 269] lifetime and those published posthumously, explaining what each contains and how they connect, before turning to broader and more underlying questions. But Widdicombe has not chosen to take this approach. Nor has he taken the traditional road for an introductory work on Tolkien of beginning with a summary of "On Fairy-stories" as an outline of Tolkien's theory of writing: a hazardous approach, as Tolkien did not write "On Fairy-stories" as a guide to his own fiction. In fact, Widdicombe hardly mentions "On Fairy-stories" at all, alluding to its concepts of sub-creation and eucatastrophe only in passing. Among earlier books on Tolkien, what Widdicombe's work most closely resembles is Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards by Michael N. Stanton (2001), also the work of a professor of English who teaches Tolkien's writings and wishes to address questions raised in the classroom. The mental image that both books bring to my mind is that of an auto mechanic peering under the hood. Both Widdicombe and Stanton are primarily concerned with the mechanical construction of Tolkien's sub-created world from the internal perspective often called "Middleearth studies," though they do not neglect the perspective that this is the artistic creation of an author who is trying to make all the pieces fit together. Both scholars claim to be addressing readers new to Tolkien, but they both have a tendency to leave such readers behind and deal with matters at a more experienced reading level. Widdicombe is fairly good on relating the legendarium to its packaging, and thus addressing the first and last of his class's questions, but he deals with the insight question mostly by implication, and hardly mentions any of the rest of Tolkien's creative output at all. Where Widdicombe scores most highly is in his repeated dives from describing the mechanical details of the writings into quite cogent observations on the themes and patterns of Tolkien's works, the ideas or principles that Tolkien was trying to express through his creativity. This is brought to the forefront in the concluding chapter, a set of mini-essays directly addressing what Widdicombe or other scholars consider the major themes of Tolkien's writing. To open his book, in place of introducing the Tolkien bookshelf or describing the theoretical essay, Widdicombe presents a brief biography. This is where his attempts...