Why In Middle-earth Would I Write Tolkienesque?
I’ve been told, more than once, that Tolkienesque is an odd thing to write. I suppose it is a fair question: Why would I write a humorous retelling of the works of J.R.R.Tolkien set in modern-day America—and in New York of all places? Isn’t New York the opposite of the bucolic English countryside that inspired Tolkien? Maybe. But growing up in the urban part of the state, one finds a kind of awe upon leaving the city and discovering the splendors of rolling mountains, deep forests, and majestic rivers waiting in the lands beyond the five boroughs. As a child, I yearned for the natural world and experienced a great relief when granted an escape from the grid of side streets. I longed to lose myself in the forests of upstate New York where my family had what we called a “Country Home”.
When, as a preteen, I read the Hobbit and imagined the green hills accented by round doors, it wasn’t some far off English Countryside I envisioned. No, I painted the vibrancy of the Shire from a palette of my own experiences. While New York State might not be the ideal setting to evoke Tolkien’s themes, I couldn’t have written with the necessary devotion about any other place. Writers have to start with what they love. Besides, The Lord of the Rings is not about a geographic place as much as it’s about a psychological feat. We all have our own Shire, formed from our fond memories and associations. It is the idyllic past (that perhaps only exists in our fantasies) that we have set out from and the home to which we yearn to return.
The idea of Tolkienesque evolved slowly. It certainly is inspired by my love affair with New York’s Hudson Valley. This began with my clinical internship in psychology. I moved to the tiny Hudson Valley city of Kingston, New York, to work for the Ulster County Department of Mental Health. Kingston charmed me. It was, when I lived there in 2004, not yet experiencing the economic resurgence that would come later. It seemed a place of great beauty that was struggling to retain its prestige in the aftermath of losing its principal corporate benefactor, IBM. But I was struck by the proud row of Victorian homes on Washington Avenue, the covered walkways of the Stockade District and the meandering green sidewalks that took me past the stonework of a Dutch Church and to my hobbit-hole of an apartment on Green Street. I only dwelled there for a year, but I absorbed as much of the essence of the place as I could while I provided therapy to its citizens.
Over a decade later, I was still traveling and exploring the Hudson Valley when my wife and I had the opportunity to move to the area (Northern Westchester). Before long, we owned a house here, and I opened my own private practice as a psychologist. As I settled into the small village, I took note of the myriad ways that my new community was changing my view of the world. From these experiences I created a series of small pieces I titled, The Back Porch: The City Shrink’s Guide to Village Living. I named the riverside village in these stories Harmony On Hudson, to distinguish it from my actual village. I was, after all, a newcomer, and I don’t feel qualified to be my village’s storyteller. That simple name change was significant—it meant I needed to create a place of my own.
Once I decided to create a fictional village, I wanted to give it a sense of its own unique history. This is not all that hard to do. The Hudson Valley is rife with historical treasures that date back to before the revolutionary war. In my travels, I’ve visited grand homes such as Lyndhurst, Olana, and Kykuit. I’ve sought the bridge that the Headless Horseman galloped over, walked on the Old Aqueduct Trail, sat in Sleepy Hollow’s Old Dutch Church, and explored the treasures of Hyde Park.
As I tried to imagine a history for my village, I kept thinking of Tolkien. As Spring of 2020 dawned, I was reading (for the third time) the Silmarillion. Even in the bleakness of the pandemic, seeing Tolkien’s grand story unfold and resolve was, as ever, a soul mending spiritual experience. Tolkien’s themes of nature, shunning despair, holding onto hope, and finding redemption are deeply ingrained in me and they very much affect how I see the world. I don’t think this unique to me. I assume something similar happens to every Tolkien-reader who opens themselves up to the deeper themes in his masterworks.
I concluded that Tolkien was, as far as I was concerned, completely successful in his attempt to give England a mythological foundation. Listening to the ‘Tolkien Road’ Podcast, I was prompted to reread a letter from J.R.R.Tolkien to a potential publisher, Milton Waldman, written in 1951. In this letter Tolkien discusses the work that would become the Silmarillion. It is here he outlines his early hope that he could create a “body of more or less connected legend, ranging from, the large and cosmogenic, to the level of monastic fairy-story” that would replace the lost stories of England’s Celtic past. He states, “The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.” He then, perhaps with strategic humility, labels this idea “absurd.”
This idea of “other hands” struck me. I believe that as he opened the “floodgate of excitement” he felt at considering this project, he was envisioning the potential for his stories to fulfill the role of foundational myths of a people. If that did indeed happen, we would expect those myths to be celebrated in many ways. One means of celebrating a myth is to transport it to new times and places.
After all, celebrations of the Greek myths pervade our culture. Multiple best-selling books have joined James Joyce’s Ulysses in being retellings of the Greek myths. Even movies like ‘My Fair Lady’ or ‘Oh, Brother Where Art Thou’ transport the flame of ancient myth to new lands. It is as if our culture believes the Greek myths definitively mapped out the collective unconscious and more modern works can only access those deep places by tapping into the ancient wells first dug by Hellenistic myth makers. No doubt the Greek Myths are wondrous and do occupy a central space in our cultural lexicon, being so tied to the society that gave rise to Western Civilization. They are, however, still the works of a long gone world. Can we not elevate newer works to the level of myth? For me, the works of Tolkien provide a much more applicable mythic foundation for modern life. Tolkien’s themes run throughout the ongoing drama of today’s world. Hope vs. Despair. Humanism vs. De-humanism. Unfettered industry vs. environmentalism. Even restrain vs. compulsion—Whose cell phone is not ‘their precious’ this days? These myths are as good or better a map to our world and our psyche than the ancient myths could be. That is why I put Tolkien on the shelf next to Homer. Manwë is my Zeus. Melkor is my fallen angel.
I was hesitant, however, to tell a story that rhymed with Tolkien’s. But the point of no return came one day when I was watching the sunlight rippling along the surface of the Hudson River. I find a feeling of sadness and longing when I gaze at that distant shore. Yes, I know I could just hop in my car and drive across the Bear Mountain Bridge, but in a deeper way, the other side of any river is forever unobtainable and unknowable. That led to the absurd idea that set Tolkienesque in motion: the Hudson River was like the great sea that divided Middle-earth from Valinor. After that, the wellspring of ideas continued to flow: the forbidden estate, Fëanor dying in a pistol duel, the varied kinds of folk that might inhabit a village having rough parallels to humans, elves and dwarves. It was ridiculous, irreverent, and irresistible.
My mind kept going with (tentative, far-fetched) connections. Then the last piece slid into place. I wanted a write a psychological story with a psychotherapist at its center, but I have zero desire to write a word about my actual clients (I’m no Irvin Yalom much as I enjoy reading his work). But I would definitely be down for a psychological analysis of the heroic and fantasy archetypes. This was the strangest idea of all. I could write about a psychologist working with cases that bear an uncanny resemblance to fantasy characters. Gimli and Legolas on the therapist couch? It was too delicious to resist.
It seemed obvious that the psychologist at the center of the story then had to be a stand-in for Frodo. From there, the “inheritance” of a house from an uncle was only natural. It was incredibly satisfying to sketch out the Emeritus family tree. The characters, like dwarves knocking on the door to Bag End, showed up one after another, each with their own new modern American raiment.
I have endeavored to create something comical, with whimsy, but that is also sincere and that respects and reflect Tolkien’s deepest themes. Will all Tolkien fans adore it? Certainly not. Most will take no notice, and some of those who do will, no doubt, object to my transformations. Gender-swapped characters, ethnic diversity, and even the American-nature of the tale will invalidate it from the approval of many. Writing about characters inspired by Tolkien is a highly subjective business. Any other Tolkien fan doing such a thing would come up with something quite different. But my hope is that those who can look past all of these flaws will see a work of admiration and of love.