Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, by Lin Carter (Ballantine, paperback, 95¢). When the author of this pleasant but not very rewarding book is discussing Tolkien himself, and when he is recounting his own discovery of the names of the dwarves, in The Elder Edda, what he has to say is to the point. (Parenthetically, it may be noted in this connection that The Hobbit is in many ways a Norse tale, but that the Norse aspects of The Lord of the Rings are not often so evident as the Welsh or Anglo-Saxon.) However, when he discusses the history of fantasy, he seems to be walking on unfamiliar ground—not to mention ground rather distant from Middle-Earth—and the value of what he has to say is questionable. Moreover, even where Mr. Carter’s philological discussion is not demonstrably inaccurate it is clearly inexpert. One cannot escape the impression, although Mr. Carter is a devoted Tolkienist, that the book was rushed into print to take advantage of the current Tolkien mania. On the other hand, this is not the worst book to be written on the subject, and while Mr. Carter’s discussion of William Morris, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison and others is at best tangential to The Lord of the Rings, it is probably a good thing to be reminded that others besides the master have tried their hand at heroic fantasy.
j. c. lobdell
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