Comparison

Shakespeare was a literary luminary, so much so that Theodore Dalrymyple (a British moral essayist) thinks him to be the zenith of the English language, such that it has been downhill since the bard passed. It is hard to gainsay Dalrymple; language has certainly taken a tumble if a lot of today’s writing is evidence - poor grammar and expression, expletive driven dialogue, crass sexualization, etc. It is easy to be cheap; beauty is more exacting.

Tolkien is similarly a literary luminary. His insights into the nature of evil and good, human strengths and weaknesses, beauty and ugliness (of spirit) are profound and enduring. You don’t have to like myth and fantasy books to appreciate his grasp upon the big themes of our humanity: love, fear, beauty, ugliness, greed, kindness – you name it. His genius is often in his restraint, by which he adds a nobility to his characters, that dumbing them down never does. Certainly, he creates an ideal – an almost impossible ideal – but he brings to his tales a vision of truth and beauty, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. These are the enduring themes of being fully human. This is not something Jack Reacher does (much as I enjoy his escapades).

Whereas Shakespeare is less used less these days as a gold standard, Tolkien continues to be. He is the grandfather of modern fantasy and the heirs apparent are lining up if you are to believe the promotional blurbs of writers such as Brooks, Pulman, Fawcett, Rundell, etc. Enjoyable though these writers are, they don’t hold a candle to Tolkien, neither Shakespeare. And yet we are told they are the new Tolkien. I’d be embarrassed if I were one of them; I suspect (hope) some of them are.

It’s like saying popular self-help authors are today’s equivalent of the writers of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, or Dr Suess is on par with Tolstoy.

Tolkien and Shakespeare are in class of their own; applying an egalitarian framework to them doesn’t do justice to their genius – and that is what they were, geniuses; they are the few and far between.

When we try to make others as great, we denigrate the truly great, aside from putting an unsustainable burden on the shoulders of lesser luminaries. Comparisons may sell books – but they don’t make for better writers.