V: Gatekeeping

There is nothing wrong with loving Dogtanian and the Three Muskhounds and having not the slightest intention of ever reading Dumas. 

You really don't have to wait seven years for your ticket to Bayreuth before you are allowed to think that Ride of the Valkyrie is a good tune. 

You're not a bad person because you like your steak overcooked.

Actually, food is interesting edge case. It is very likely that a steak chef, or a coffee barrista, or a sommelier really, really, likes steak, coffee and wine and really, really wants you to like it as well. So he may be tempted to say "I think you will like that coffee better without sugar" or "That cut of steak really needs to be enjoyed pinkly." And I think some of them might out-and-out refuse to chill your red wine or serve your white wine at room temperature. "If you want latte, sir, I am using this coffee: I am not prepared to put milk into these unusual and expensive single estate beans." 

But many others would probably allow you to ruin the food you have payed for.

Gate-keeping is very annoying. But the contrary, which I might as well call "gate-leaving-open" is very nearly as bad. If I happen to mention that I am a big fan of Victor Hugo's original novel, the gate-leaver-open is apt to think that I have somehow spoiled his enjoyment of I Dreamed a Dream. If I remark that Bob Dylan's later work repays close listening, the gate-leaver-open may think I have prohibited from liking Blowing in the Wind.  To the gate-leaver-open, any criticism is an attack and any negative opinion a prohibition. 

If I say that 1970s Doctor Who was the best Doctor Who (which it obviously was) it does not follow that I am declaring the ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteen and fourteenth Doctor's non-canonical.  And even if I am, that does not mean that I am declaring that the tapes should be expunged.  And even if I am, no-one is likely to pay any attention to me.  Your enjoyment of Jodie Whitaker is not impacted by my enjoyment of Tom Baker, any more than my enjoyment of Tom Baker is impacted by your enjoyment of Jodie Whitaker. 

It is equally true that some people will read any positive criticism, or any push back against negative criticism, as gate-leaver-openerism. 

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IV: Fantasy

Some time ago I confessed that I didn't particularly like comic books. What I like is superheroes. I grok that Heartstopper is marvellous, but I don't generally read YA romantic fiction when it's written in words, so I am not likely to read it when it happens to be told in words and pictures. However marvellously.

Here is a much worse confession.

I don't particularly like fantasy.

Please read the next paragraph before throwing your computer out of the window.

Tolkien created a new thing. We can see him creating it, right there on the page, as part of a dialogue with his friends in the pub: the fantasy novel. There had been fantasy stories before, obviously. And there had been novels about wizards and magic, not all of them necessarily for children. And there had been modern prose romances -- that line that goes from William Morris to ER Eddison via Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell. But a long prose work about dragons and goblins, told in the narrative voice of a naturalistic novel was something new and strange. As if Enid Blyton had developed Toytown in the style and on the scale of Middlemarch and turned Big Ears into a tragic hero.

Which might, as I always say at this point, have been awesome.

Tolkien didn't have a novelistic model in mind when he began creating his, if you insist, legendarium. Or he wouldn't have written "know then aforetimes that in the days of Inwe" on the one hand or "this for their hearts uplifting did Halog sing them as the frowning fortress clasped then and nethermost night in its net caught them" on the other.

I don't think the pictures we see in our head when we read Lord of the Rings are necessarily the pictures that Tolkien wanted us to see. The Pauline Baynes map illustrations he partially endorsed; and that Jimmy Cauty poster that everyone had on their wall in the 1970s are a long way from Peter Jackson and even further from World of Warcraft. Tolkien never quite told us what a balrog looked like. He didn't describe orcs, but I think he probably imagined them as rough, grotesque, humans; not piggy faced Games Workshop miniatures or dark skinned CGI ogrons. Lord of the Rings begat Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons begat Games Workshop and Games Workshop begat genre fantasy and genre fantasy begat Peter Jackson and Peter Jackson begat the Rings of Power and there is now a Consensus Fantasy Universe which these kinds of stories happen in.

I spent a lot of time playing Dungeons & Derivatives and feel quite at home in Consensus Fantasy Land. But if all you see in Lord of the Rings are ugly orcs and beautiful elves and funny dwarves and talking trees and grey wizards and dark lords on dark thrones in lands where there are very probably some shadows, you are only seeing about 12% of what Tolkien actually does.

I once said that I liked Dickens, apart from the Dickensian parts. I am quite tempted to add that I like Tolkien apart from the Tolkienesque bits: at any rate, the Tolkienesque bits are not the bits I like the most. It's the operatic dialogue and the mock epic scenes which I return to over and over again. This will I take as a weregild of my father. Through the fate of Arda is bound up in it, you will think me generous. Master of doom by doom mastered. Nevertheless they will still have need of wood.

And the little character moments too. Sam sulking because the farmer gave Frodo a slap when he was little. Pippin wanting to quit smoking because he misses Theoden. The rabbit stew. Silly songs in the bath-tub. There are no Games Workshop box sets recreating those scenes.

So am I, after all, a gate keeper? Am I saying that if you go to Tolkien to get your fix of orcs and wizards but have not the slightest interest in variant reading of the Lay of Lethien then you are a Dyson Airblade? [*]

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III: Canon

It is often said that Tolkien never finished the Silmarillion. It would perhaps be truer to say that Tolkien finished the Silmarillion several times; leaving a paper trail of mutually contradictory versions in his wake. Christopher Tolkien had to select material: the published Silmarillion can't, by definition, represent Tolkien's final intentions. Christopher didn't automatically regard the last thing his father wrote as authoritative: he went for the versions that were most polished, most finished, most consistent with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, or simply "best". And we know that not every word in the Silmarillion is exactly what Tolkien wrote: Christopher made amendments and added bridging passages to create a sense completion and consistency. That's what editors do. At some point between 1980 and 1983 Christopher decided that this had been a mistake and embarked on a thirteen year project to produce a scholarly edition of the exact words his father wrote, false starts and contradictions and crossings out and all.

We could, if we wanted to, say that the only canonical Middle-earth texts were the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings ("including appendices"): since these were the only works that Tolkien approved for publication during his lifetime. We could add -- I think most people implicitly do -- the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales, because they contain writings that Christopher Tolkien felt to be broadly consistent with what was already published. You can read the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, in that order, with the Unfinished Tales as a kind of appendix, and feel that you have read a complete history of an imaginary world in various styles and from various points of view.

It would seem odd to say "the island of Tol Eressea is canonically England" (because that was Tolkien's idea in the very early Lost Tales manuscripts), or "Numenor canonically became the continent of America" (because Tolkien explored that idea in a very late "round earth" revision). But it would be equally odd to say that the story of Sam's daughter Eleanor becoming Arwen's hand-maiden was "apocryphal" or "part of my headcanon" because it occurs in an epilogue which Tolkien was persuaded (fairly reluctantly) to take out of Lord of the Rings. And I assume that no-one in their right mind would say that the magnificent ending of Beren and Luthien ("The quest is fulfilled; even now a Silmaril is in my hand!") was "only fan fiction" because it was one of the manuscripts that was published posthumously.

So perhaps, if we are talking about Tolkien, "the canon" had better refer to "what Tolkien actually wrote" (as opposed to what was invented by David Day, Iron Crown Enterprises, Peter Jackson or Amazon TV.) 

But "canon" can too easily become a weapon to be wielded in fan disputes. It is not enough to like Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Unless and until you jump over twelve heavily footnoted hurdles, you are a Dyson Airblade. (*).

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