Choice Review
J. R. R. Tolkien's literary reception has remained at peak since 2000. Today's literature professors grew up with Tolkien, and the popularity of movies of his books has led publishers to issue books about him. But one aspect of Tolkien's work remains beyond rehabilitation: his much-derided prose. With patience and attentiveness, Walker (Brigham Young Univ.) hypothesizes that readers are not supposed to admire Tolkien's prose in a disinterested fashion; they should actively involve themselves in the prose, actually produce meaning. Walker concentrates less on specific quibbles (e.g., he does not mention Hugh Brogan's famous castigation of the "tushery" in the "King of the Golden Hall" chapter of The Two Towers) than on reframing the sense of Tolkien's prose. His goal is to reveal how its very incompleteness elicits the "implicit potential" of unfolding of both characters and text and accentuates the hobbits' "character apprenticeship." Walker's angle on the prose is psychological, not aesthetic; his book is less a defense of Tolkien than a plea for an enlarged, interactive view of words. Though Walker could have cited more recent and theoretical scholarship--he emphasizes the first wave of analyses published during Tolkien's lifetime--this nuanced, caring study clears the road for future Tolkien criticism. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. N. Birns The New School
