This post is to introduce my readers to a little-known, powerful resource for anyone interested in writing. Or reading.
In March my wife and I were in Panama and I had occasion to recommend this little book to someone who identified herself as a reader of Tolkien. And I realized I should blog about it.
My friend and colleague Darrow Miller put me on to this volume that contains three lesser known works by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m writing here about the opening essay, “Tree and Leaf.” I thought I knew Tolkien until I read this astonishing composition. Reminds me of the first time I saw Crater Lake in southern Oregon and realized I had never seen the color blue until that moment. If you retain a sense of wonder and appreciate the careful use of language you need to read “Tree and Leaf.”
Tolkien begins very humbly. His first paragraph disarms the reader who, drawn into the charm of his prose, wanders into the essay heedless of the master’s spell. Too late, you realize you have been seized and carried off by beauty.
I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer (or trespasser) in the land, full of wonder but not of information.