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I would say that Tolkien's appeal to the youth of the Sixties and early Seventies was rooted in the richness of his imaginary world and the support it lent to their escapist impulses.

That particular phase in youth culture was heavily rejectionist. It sought to turn away from everything established, everything previous generations had taken for granted, most especially what it saw as the "materialism" of America -- a set of influences that appeared to be absent from Tolkien's fantasy world. It was foolish, of course, and not really germane to Tolkien's vision, but note this: very little space in The Lord Of The Rings goes to descriptions of the workaday world of Middle-Earth. Almost all of its focuses narrowly on the wars that close the Third Age, and the incredible adventure of the Fellowship, particularly Frodo and Sam, as they wrought the destruction of the One Ring.

Tolkien himself tried his best to stay unaffected by the absurd levels of devotion his tale inspired. He was reluctant to publish more about Middle-Earth and its sustaining mythopoetry, in part for these reasons. Betty Ballantine and C. S. Lewis nagged him from opposite sides; eventually Ballantine won and he issued The Silmarillion, but with misgivings. I wonder what he'd think of all that's happened to his fictional legacy since his death.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

>>...I would say that Tolkien's appeal to the youth of the Sixties and early Seventies was rooted in the richness of his imaginary world and the support it lent to their escapist impulses. ...<<

Well said.

At that time we had the Vietnam war and riots and unrest at home. Adding to that the normal angst and turmoil of being a teenager, I found Middle Earth a most welcome escape.

Sorry, but The Silmarillion's release had little to do with outside pressure. It was Tolkien himself that wanted to release it. LOTR's release was delayed in part by Tolkien's desire to release both books as one complete package. But since it was unfinished, he was unable to put together a deal at that time. He spent many years working on it, but he never did finish any one complete version of it (at least not since before The Hobbit). Part of the problem was that he was constantly revising his vision of Middle Earth. In the end, with his wife dead and his health fading, he advised his son on what would needed to be done to finish The Silmarillion if he was unable to finish it (and he was quite aware that he wouldn't). While many others wanted to him to publish, Tolkien was way ahead of them in that desire. But it was a tale that he worked on from his recovery after the Somme till his death.

I would say that Tolkien's appeal to the youth of the Sixties and early Seventies was rooted in the richness of his imaginary world and the support it lent to their escapist impulses.

It would depend on where you spent your youth in the 60's and 70's. My buddy first read LOTR while on a PBR cruising the Mekong in 1968. He seemed to remember it as a story of a bunch of guys humpin' the boonies with waves of bad guys trying to overrun them, while folks back home never even heard there was a war going on.

I read somewhere that the hippies grooved on the Silmarilion even more than LOTR. It supposedly gave them a view of an older, purer world that the nastiness shown in LOTR. A few hits on the bong, and they could see themselves as elves, groovin' through history leading lives of beauty and peace, and not having to hustle for a buck.

It's strange, but in the movie, at the great battle before the gates of Mordor, I don't remember any elves flashing a peace sign at that ocean of orcs.

I would say that Tolkien's appeal to the youth of the Sixties and early Seventies was rooted in the richness of his imaginary world and the support it lent to their escapist impulses.

That particular phase in youth culture was heavily rejectionist. It sought to turn away from everything established, everything previous generations had taken for granted, most especially what it saw as the "materialism" of America -- a set of influences that appeared to be absent from Tolkien's fantasy world. It was foolish, of course, and not really germane to Tolkien's vision, but note this: very little space in The Lord Of The Rings goes to descriptions of the workaday world of Middle-Earth. Almost all of its focuses narrowly on the wars that close the Third Age, and the incredible adventure of the Fellowship, particularly Frodo and Sam, as they wrought the destruction of the One Ring.

I was a kid during the Sixties, and the images of the Counterculture I saw on television indelibly impressed themselves on my mind.

There is more to modernity than machinery, and I always looked on the hippies as the absolute epitome of everything modern. I think I can understand the appeal of the "escapism" to these people (though attacks on "materialism" by people who believe that only matter exists has always seemed hypocritical to me). But I cannot understand the appeal of the particular escape provided by Tolkien to people whose general idea of escape was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The cleavage between the two seems absolutely unbridgeable.