posted on 20 Apr 2016

Lost in Middle Earth

I'm not really much of a fan of fantasy writing. There are some exceptions - Alan Garner, Ursula Le Guin and some dystopian fringe science fiction - but I usually find this genre just embarrassing and I don't seem to be able to suspend my disbelief long enough to go along with it. The handful of fantasy writers I can bring myself to read are just great writers rather than great fantasists - after all, the better the author the better chance they have of pulling off the whole fantasy trick.

One fantasy author I do have a real fondness for is J.R.R. Tolkien - but not just because he's a top class academic and author but because of the circumstances in which I first read The Hobbit and then The Lord of The Rings. I know that the time and place I first read these classics was important because I've gone back to try and read them again and I couldn't - the essential chemistry of my first encounter with them was gone.

I was 19 when I was given a copy of both books to read by a room mate when we got to the end of my first term at university. He really pressed them on me; in truth I was reluctant to take them but I agreed in order to avoid offending him. Of course, having worked in a bookshop, I'd heard of them. Hell, I'd even sold copies to dopey looking girls and drippy boys but I'd always done it with a barely disguised smirk bordering on a sneer. After all, I didn't really see why I needed a story of wizards and midgets in my life - hey, I thought, I'm well past that!

So, Christmas 1972, the evenings are cold and absurdly long; television is just three channels which sign off at some absurdly  early hour and parents and bothersome younger brother have shuffled off to bed. I have nothing better to do than pick up the thinner of the two books - The Hobbit. And I almost give up after the first few pages. Those of you who have read the book will know that it starts in a classic 'once upon a time' fairy story style and I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing reading this. But something, I don't know what, hooks me, finds its way under my skin and before I know it, it's 4.00 am and I'm thinking I should get to bed. I do at 6.00am.

Three sleepless nights and one huge paperback later, I'm fully versed in the lore of The Lord of the Rings and I'm spotting all those things Led Zeppelin swiped and the names Tyrannosaurus Rex filched. Clever old Tolkien has got me completely tied in to the logic of the Middle Earth and I feel the jeopardy and the elation of victory, the sweat of battle and the haunting fear of the evil empire.

What I experienced for the first time with these fantasy classics was the capacity for a great story to hold you in a timeless bubble. I'm not sure that anything would have stopped me from just turning the next page. And what I've discovered, for me at least, is that this is extraordinarily rare - being lost in time inside a book comes along only now and then and Tolkien turned out to be the first time for me. I often think about those December nights and in a way I am constantly looking for the next book that will repeat that experience.

Terry Potter

April 2016