tolkien's successors

Brian Lindenmuth · 02 Dec 2004, 13:59 · from 2004-December.txt.gz

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From: blindenmuth at jkharris.com (Brian Lindenmuth)
Date: Thu Dec  2 13:59:18 2004
Subject: (urth) tolkien's successors
Message-ID: <01C4D890.4DD03F00.blindenmuth at jkharris.com>

I have been a lurking for a long time now and would like to contribute more 
but I just cant seem to make the time.  Any way, I think that you can 
compare Tolkien's influence: good, bad, intended, unintended, forced on him 
by critics and fans and detractors alike to someone else in a diffrent 
entertainment field altogether.  Bob Dylan.

When Dylan came on the scene his impact was so tremendous that he himself 
almost was crushed under the weight of it.

But more importantly, because Dylan's shadow loomed so large over the music 
landscape everyone from that point forward had to react to him in some way 
to him, whether in a positive or a negitave way.  He became the base line. 

Critics for years after would say things like "The next Dylan..." or 
"Dylanesque..."  or "Wanna-be Dylan..."   and invariably musicians were 
crushed under this weight.  But there were some artists who persevered and 
went on to claim there own legitimate place in the rock canon and make 
there own music and create their own vision.  Springsteen might just be the 
best example of this.

I apologize for my first post ever not metioning Wolfe (well I guess I just 
did), but I did see some comparisons and just wanted to share.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Matthew Malthouse [SMTP:matthew.malthouse at ntlworld.com]
Sent:	Thursday, December 02, 2004 4:24 PM
To:	James Wynn; The Urth Mailing List
Subject:	Re: (urth) tolkien's successors

At 02:31 02/12/2004, Crush wrote:
>Surely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- "We're
>all Tolkienites now".

To my mind the "Like Tolkien" tag is a bad reviewers tag.

There aren't any writers like Tolkien.  Oh, there are some who on their own 
merits are just as good or perhaps better if one is prepared to compare
apples and oranges. But no one is doing precisely what Tolkein did and it's 
possible that because he did it already no one will.

I don't think it's to be disputed that Tolkien is an irradicable influence
on contemporary writers and to that degree they might all be Tolkienites.

Matthew

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