Happy 127th, J. R. R. Tolkien!

One hundred and twenty-seven years ago today, this quintessentially English author was born in South Africa, where his father had taken his wife and had a job being a representative for the bank he worked for. Tolkien and his younger brother had been moved back to England when he was three, for his mother's health, and while there his father had died unexpectedly. A complete orphan from the age of thirteen, a Catholic convert in an Anglican milieu, and poor, he struggled with his education in philology, his pursuit of the love of his life, Edith, his perceived avocation as poet, and just as he was maturing into adulthood, the calamity of the First World War. He survived to achieve all these quests, and in the process became one of the most recognized and influential authors of the Twentieth Century, whose dreams are still going strong in the Twenty-First.

I have been following the Straight Road that leads to Elfinesse since 1973, the year he passed away, when I first went to see a dramatic version of "The Hobbit" at our local high school. Now I'm wondering, with the publication of "The Fall of Gondolin", the last volume of Tolkien's original work to be overseen by his son Christopher, if I should, so to say, 'close the book' on the Tolkien Phenomenon for myself. Not to stop reading him, of course, but perhaps to step back from the cultural roller-coaster that seems to have developed around his Legendarium. I have watched it, in the hands of others, move farther and farther away from his original vision. Some of it, of course, can be seen as development; but it is painful to observe what is all too obviously deviation.

And so, after forty-six years, I think it might be time to step off the popular culture ride. I know we've got a five-year Amazon LOTR series on the horizon, but I just don't have the faith to pin any hopes on it. I'm not sure if I'll have the time, treasure, and attention to follow it. But perhaps there will be a miracle. Perhaps the vigor of the source material will be strong enough to shine through. Maybe the old tree will put forward a new leaf for the next generation. Maybe.

May it be.