Michael D. C. Drout

There are any number of references to the life and works of J. R. R. Tolkien, from the thorough but specialized (Robert Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth) to the more general but a little slapdash (Colin Duriez's The J. R. R. Tolkien Handbook) to the worshipful but utterly dull-minded (anything by David Day).

This book is an altogether different kettle of footnotes. Exceptionally large (more than 700 eight and a half by eleven pages) and with a high-powered editorial board (including Tom Shippey, the greatest Tolkien expert of all time, and three other big names, Douglas A. Anderson, Marjorie Burns, and Verlyn Flieger), it covers Tolkien's writings, his life, his family and much of the material he published or studied in his academic career. It is intended as both a scholarly reference and as a readable general reference. It doesn't include every name and event in Tolkien's major works on Middle-Earth, as Foster's book does, but it covers all the major themes, and it also gives the context of Tolkien's life. Along with references to items used to compile the entries. More than one hundred scholars contributed articles, and all articles are signed by their authors (though there is no index of articles by each author, which I would have liked).

It is, without question, the most extensive and authoritative Tolkien reference now available, and probably always will be.

And I still have to urge some caution with it. I can't help but think that editor Drout and his board assigned the various articles to the numerous contributors -- and then paid no attention to what they submitted. I won't cite examples, but the number of sloppy items (numbers that don't add up, places where the text has become garbled) is significant -- not a huge number, but enough to make you really wonder what is going on. Didn't anyone read these things?

And while most of the articles, and most of the contributors, are distinguished, there are some of each that really should not have been accepted. To pick on just one particular author, Bradley J. Birzer is the author of a book that approves of Andrew Jackson. As in, the American president who committed genocide. Yes, Tolkien was a political reactionary -- but not a fundamentalist, and definitely not a racist; there is no meeting of minds there. As I was reading one of Birzer's articles, I started feeling as if I were sinking into slime -- and then I saw who wrote it, and understood. Birzer is the worst, but there are a few others who, I think, just don't "get it."

Also, some early Tolkien criticism was Freudian, and this early criticism created (e.g.) an idea that Shelob was a threatening mother-image, which is why she was larger than her mates. Ahem, people: very many spider species feature females that are much larger than their males, and who eat the males. Tolkien -- who was very knowledgeable about botany and zoology -- was not producing a Freudian image, he was following actual biology! The Shelob thing needs to be dropped right now -- psychology has realized that Freud was absolutely wrong, so why can't Tolkien studies?

So between the lack of editing and the inclusion of "scholars" who aren't really scholars, there are a few bad articles in here. How many? It's a small minority. If you want to do Tolkien research, this is a great place to start. But don't trust it absolutely; if you're going to cite it, be sure to check the original source first. That, plus, keep in mind that, if it looks ridiculous, it probably is ridiculous.… (altro)

Always enjoyable listening to Drout. I'm one of those people who studied engineering and are now really getting into the liberal arts for the first time as an adult. The liberal arts do have value, I'm sure of it, but it is the rare few who are still carrying on the tradition in academia. That is why Drout's work for "The Modern Scholar" is probably just as important, or more so, than his work as a professor. Mature adults can take a lot of interest in this stuff, but the majority of college students lack the maturity to really think about it, anyway.

I'm writing this as the scandal about Claudine Gay's plagiarism is all over the news. She's a member of the ruling class; she went to Phillips Exeter Academy where she was supposed to learn those skills to rule, those liberal arts, then Princeton and Stanford for undergraduate, then Harvard for her doctorate. Drout was warning about Critical Theory ten years ago, this is where we are now.… (altro)