Tolkien in America
How America (and Comintern) Embraced Tolkien, by Jen Kawasaki, tor.syn.uasr, 2019
In 1983, writer Michael Moorcock, later the head of the Entente Section of Comintern International, was invited to visit America by a group of Fantastik fans, who were fans of his works in New Worlds. By then an ESCI politburo member, he traveled to a convention in DeLeon-Debs to meet with fans on the other side, and have a bigger venue to advocate the ESCI peace and anti-nuclear line. He would write about the experience in The Red Flag Diaries in 1993, where he had a mostly positive, if frustrating experience. Whilst obviously impressed with American communes, the truly free democracy and the freedom and support he found compared to the FBU, he was troubled by some Americans who tended towards “militarism that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Tory conference”, and noted how, while some fans cheered when he called for FBU peace with Communists, they seemed actively contemptuous of other American SF writers if they talked about American or Comintern peace with the capitalists.
Among his revelations about America, one of his panels was about his 1978 essay “Epic Pooh.” Thinking it was going to be a lecture about the conservatism and romanticism in English fantasy, he was shocked when he found it was actually a debate between him and Dani Meld*, the Chairman of the American Tolkien Society. Shocked that there was an “American Tolkien Society,” at all, he learned that JRR Tolkien and his six book “Lord of the Rings” series had a strong cult audience in Comintern. Moorcock discusses his confusion at the time as to how “Americans Red to their veins could possibly embrace the retrograde philosophy of Tolkien.”
Indeed, the American Tolkien Society is still around, clocking over 300 thousand members as of 2019. Current Chairman Maurice Evans* states that “many of our new members came in because of the popularity of the films”, referring to Peter Jackson’s international co-productions, “but we’ve also had a ton of immigrants from the capitalist sphere, who loved the books growing up.” The Society is full of Tolkien imagery, particularly from the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, and copies and translations from around the world. Evans even shows me his first copy, a French translation which he bought as an Army officer in Kinshasa.
When asked how they reconciled socialism with Tolkien’s strong sense of conservatism, Evans states they don’t. “Should we discard Homer, because he wasn’t a socialist? Dante? Jane Austin? Tolkien is a conservative, traditionalist Catholic. To ignore or excuse this is to ultimately declare the creative choices that went into the works as non-existent.”
The American Tolkien Society was founded in 1967, during the early stage of Tolkien fandom in America. The story of Tolkien’s American reign, of course, begins much earlier:
The Hobbit published in 1937, received generally positive reviews in the United Kingdom, and was exported throughout the globe, including the nascent UASR, through New Pioneer , the official publishing house for the Young Communist League. It received little attention, but mostly positive in the few places it was reviewed. “Charming children’s adventure,” said a small review supplement in the Sunday Worker, “with an interesting fantastic world in the vein of Baum’s Oz.”
The true origins of Tolkien fandom lies, of course, in the “Lord of the Rings' ', released in six installments between 1954 and 1955. The books reached the UASR through Random House Canada, initially, due to Cold War restrictions on trade.
These initial printings received mixed reception in the UASR. While noted literary critic Edmund Wilson dismissed the sextology as “juvenile”, the fantastik fandom embraced it, with regular discussions and debates in fanzines during the late 50’s. The Hobbit also came back to prominence thanks to the release of the Franco-British Powell and Pressburger adaptation, which was released in the UASR as The Reign of Smaug in 1955 (heavily reedited to seem more of a science fiction film).
“There was a small Tolkien fandom scene in the UASR with the hardcover books and the film,” says Revmira Tershkova*, author of Fantasy: A History, “but it never got big with mainstream culture, only within fandom circles.”
That changed with a fantastik book editor named Donald A. Wolheim. Originally part of the Cultural Revolution era “troika” of the SF magazine Speculative Worlds with Fredrik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, he became an editor at pioneering paperback company Avon, and by the early 1960’s was an editor at “Bogdanov Books”, a press focused on fantastik and Tektology books.
Out of courtesy, Wolheim contacted Tolkien to ask about publishing a paperback version. When Tolkien refused, calling paperbacks “degenerate,” Wolheim, feeling personally slighted, decided to take revenge. He realized that Random House Canada technically didn’t have distribution rights in the United Republics, as the sold books were often secondhand Canadian copies.
Hoping to beat rivals Ballantine Books to the market, Bogdanov Books published an unauthorized paperback version in 1965. The slicker, smaller format and Jack Gaughan ’s bizarre covers allowed it to spread amongst the counterculture of the era, turning it into a surprise success. However, Tolkien grew incensed upon hearing about this, and attempted to stop the unauthorized printings.
However, since there wasn’t already an official publisher and Bogdanov didn’t need permission, Tolkien had virtually no legal avenues to stop the publishing (he refused to join any of the official American writers’ unions). Instead, he called on American fans to pressure Bogdanov into paying the royalties he was owed from this edition. Wanting to avoid any negative press, Bogdanov began paying Tolkien. Not wanting to be outdone, Ballatine released their own version, with Tolkien’s appendices and new illustrations by Barbara Remington.
Regardless of the internal politics, the paperbacks from both Bogdanov and Ballantine would be instrumental to spreading Tolkien’s works across America and into the wider Comintern world, with a Russian translation of the Ballantine version in 1968.
The American counterculture saw many parallels between Tolkien’s fantasy world and contemporary American society, with Mordor symbolizing either the looming nuclear threat or the old party system. Tolkien was dismissive of his “American cult”, and complained about the strange allegories he’d hear, but was moderately impressed that he could get through to the communists.
The obsession with Lord of the Rings was satirized in “Bored of the Rings”, a text supplemental in Solidarity Comics’ satirical MAD Magazine by Harvard students Doug Kinney and Henry Beard with parody illustrations of both paperback versions by Michael K. Firth (later famed for his work with Jim Henson) and large supplemental information corresponding to Tolkien appendices.
The rise of Tolkien societies across the Comintern coincided with Halas and Batchelor’s 1967 animated adaptation of “The Hobbit.” While Tolkien himself was moderately positive on the film (regarding it as “superior to Disney”, whom he loathed), the adaptation did infuriate New York animator Ralph Bakshi, a longtime fan of Lord of the Rings and a fantasy filmmaker himself. He began work on an animated adaptation following Tolkien’s death in 1973, which was eventually released in six installments between 1975 and 1981, riding the wave of fantastik blockbusters of the period, to critical and commercial success. Bakshi’s popular adaptation brought a whole generation of younger fans to the series, and subsequently to the fandom. It was also the first American adaptation shown in Europe.
The growing field of tabletop gaming would also be influenced heavily by Tolkien during this period. Whilst the popular series Dungeons and Dragons largely took from the more distinctly American Howard and Lovecraft brand of fantastik, Tolkien did provide much of the other races, such as hobbits and Balrogs and even some of the languages within D&D.
Tolkien societies and scholarship, burgeoning in both spheres, were bolstered by Christopher Tolkien’s posthumous work on his father’s unfinished work the Silmarillon, which expanded the history of Middle-earth into a full mythological history. The Silmarillon, released in full in 1977, would form the final part of the “octology” that forms the basis of Tolkien fandom and scholarship, though fan works, especially in Comintern, would also spread. Many recontextualized the story from the perspective of Mordor, or made explicit parallels between communism and capitalism or even a very classical Marxist conflict of capitalism and feudalism.
David Lean’s 1983 adaptation of The Hobbit (starring Alec Guinness as Gandalf) would not be released in America until 1991, whilst an American adaptation of the same work by Hyperion would flounder. Meanwhile, tabletop games would supplement the growing computer market. Some official adaptations would proliferate in the wake of the film in the FBU, which were then ported to American computers and consoles. While Tolkien fandom in the FBU became embroiled in the moral panic of the 80's, with some fantasy works inspired by Tolkien being labeled "satanic" or "dangerous", the fandom in America continued unabated, primarily focusing on more explicitly Middle-Earth tabletop and video games
In the 90’s, Tolkien website, fan pages, and discussion forums began popping up on the internet, connecting fans across the world. With this came international conventions celebrating the property, and new encyclopedias for new fans to explore their passion.
In 1999, New Zealand director Peter Jackson would team up with United Artists (the studio behind the Ralph Bakshi adaptation), Culver City, and MGM to produce an international co-production, an adaptation of the first book in the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the Shadow. This would start off Jackson’s own award winning sextology, culminating in The Return of the King in 2009, which would be the highest grossing international film of all time.
Jackson’s series, like other adaptations, would introduce new readers and subsequently new fans to places like the Tolkien Society. The internet also sees new art inspired by the films, with the American Society even adding an art section led by comic artist Colleen Doran. Video game have also been increasing, with games exploring the full mythos of Middle Earth.
The book even received notice in the 2006 People’s Book Award winning magic realist novel, The Life and Death of Sanjay the King, by Ganesh Narmathan,[1] where the titular character, who fashions himself an “Indian Tolkien”, uses the Lord of the Rings as a reference multiple times, especially in comparing notorious Indian Prime Minister Gayatri Devi to Sauron.
With Guillermo del Toro’s success follow-up adaptation of the Hobbit in 2015, and the Galaxy network announcing a Jackson led international TV co-production of “The Silmarillon” recently, Evans doesn’t see American fandom turning on Tolkien anytime soon.
“There will be more adaptations, more versions, and people will keep the work around, even as we enter full communism.”
---------------
[1] A reference to a piece I tried to do a while ago. I may still find the energy and clear thought to finish, so watch out for it.
And to squash any confusion before it begins, the names of the six books of the Lord of the Rings TTL:
The Return of the Shadow
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Treason of Isengard
The Journey to Mordor
The War of the Ring
The Return of the King
In 1983, writer Michael Moorcock, later the head of the Entente Section of Comintern International, was invited to visit America by a group of Fantastik fans, who were fans of his works in New Worlds. By then an ESCI politburo member, he traveled to a convention in DeLeon-Debs to meet with fans on the other side, and have a bigger venue to advocate the ESCI peace and anti-nuclear line. He would write about the experience in The Red Flag Diaries in 1993, where he had a mostly positive, if frustrating experience. Whilst obviously impressed with American communes, the truly free democracy and the freedom and support he found compared to the FBU, he was troubled by some Americans who tended towards “militarism that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Tory conference”, and noted how, while some fans cheered when he called for FBU peace with Communists, they seemed actively contemptuous of other American SF writers if they talked about American or Comintern peace with the capitalists.
Among his revelations about America, one of his panels was about his 1978 essay “Epic Pooh.” Thinking it was going to be a lecture about the conservatism and romanticism in English fantasy, he was shocked when he found it was actually a debate between him and Dani Meld*, the Chairman of the American Tolkien Society. Shocked that there was an “American Tolkien Society,” at all, he learned that JRR Tolkien and his six book “Lord of the Rings” series had a strong cult audience in Comintern. Moorcock discusses his confusion at the time as to how “Americans Red to their veins could possibly embrace the retrograde philosophy of Tolkien.”
Indeed, the American Tolkien Society is still around, clocking over 300 thousand members as of 2019. Current Chairman Maurice Evans* states that “many of our new members came in because of the popularity of the films”, referring to Peter Jackson’s international co-productions, “but we’ve also had a ton of immigrants from the capitalist sphere, who loved the books growing up.” The Society is full of Tolkien imagery, particularly from the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, and copies and translations from around the world. Evans even shows me his first copy, a French translation which he bought as an Army officer in Kinshasa.
When asked how they reconciled socialism with Tolkien’s strong sense of conservatism, Evans states they don’t. “Should we discard Homer, because he wasn’t a socialist? Dante? Jane Austin? Tolkien is a conservative, traditionalist Catholic. To ignore or excuse this is to ultimately declare the creative choices that went into the works as non-existent.”
The American Tolkien Society was founded in 1967, during the early stage of Tolkien fandom in America. The story of Tolkien’s American reign, of course, begins much earlier:
The Hobbit published in 1937, received generally positive reviews in the United Kingdom, and was exported throughout the globe, including the nascent UASR, through New Pioneer , the official publishing house for the Young Communist League. It received little attention, but mostly positive in the few places it was reviewed. “Charming children’s adventure,” said a small review supplement in the Sunday Worker, “with an interesting fantastic world in the vein of Baum’s Oz.”
The true origins of Tolkien fandom lies, of course, in the “Lord of the Rings' ', released in six installments between 1954 and 1955. The books reached the UASR through Random House Canada, initially, due to Cold War restrictions on trade.
These initial printings received mixed reception in the UASR. While noted literary critic Edmund Wilson dismissed the sextology as “juvenile”, the fantastik fandom embraced it, with regular discussions and debates in fanzines during the late 50’s. The Hobbit also came back to prominence thanks to the release of the Franco-British Powell and Pressburger adaptation, which was released in the UASR as The Reign of Smaug in 1955 (heavily reedited to seem more of a science fiction film).
“There was a small Tolkien fandom scene in the UASR with the hardcover books and the film,” says Revmira Tershkova*, author of Fantasy: A History, “but it never got big with mainstream culture, only within fandom circles.”
That changed with a fantastik book editor named Donald A. Wolheim. Originally part of the Cultural Revolution era “troika” of the SF magazine Speculative Worlds with Fredrik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, he became an editor at pioneering paperback company Avon, and by the early 1960’s was an editor at “Bogdanov Books”, a press focused on fantastik and Tektology books.
Out of courtesy, Wolheim contacted Tolkien to ask about publishing a paperback version. When Tolkien refused, calling paperbacks “degenerate,” Wolheim, feeling personally slighted, decided to take revenge. He realized that Random House Canada technically didn’t have distribution rights in the United Republics, as the sold books were often secondhand Canadian copies.
Hoping to beat rivals Ballantine Books to the market, Bogdanov Books published an unauthorized paperback version in 1965. The slicker, smaller format and Jack Gaughan ’s bizarre covers allowed it to spread amongst the counterculture of the era, turning it into a surprise success. However, Tolkien grew incensed upon hearing about this, and attempted to stop the unauthorized printings.
However, since there wasn’t already an official publisher and Bogdanov didn’t need permission, Tolkien had virtually no legal avenues to stop the publishing (he refused to join any of the official American writers’ unions). Instead, he called on American fans to pressure Bogdanov into paying the royalties he was owed from this edition. Wanting to avoid any negative press, Bogdanov began paying Tolkien. Not wanting to be outdone, Ballatine released their own version, with Tolkien’s appendices and new illustrations by Barbara Remington.
Regardless of the internal politics, the paperbacks from both Bogdanov and Ballantine would be instrumental to spreading Tolkien’s works across America and into the wider Comintern world, with a Russian translation of the Ballantine version in 1968.
The American counterculture saw many parallels between Tolkien’s fantasy world and contemporary American society, with Mordor symbolizing either the looming nuclear threat or the old party system. Tolkien was dismissive of his “American cult”, and complained about the strange allegories he’d hear, but was moderately impressed that he could get through to the communists.
The obsession with Lord of the Rings was satirized in “Bored of the Rings”, a text supplemental in Solidarity Comics’ satirical MAD Magazine by Harvard students Doug Kinney and Henry Beard with parody illustrations of both paperback versions by Michael K. Firth (later famed for his work with Jim Henson) and large supplemental information corresponding to Tolkien appendices.
The rise of Tolkien societies across the Comintern coincided with Halas and Batchelor’s 1967 animated adaptation of “The Hobbit.” While Tolkien himself was moderately positive on the film (regarding it as “superior to Disney”, whom he loathed), the adaptation did infuriate New York animator Ralph Bakshi, a longtime fan of Lord of the Rings and a fantasy filmmaker himself. He began work on an animated adaptation following Tolkien’s death in 1973, which was eventually released in six installments between 1975 and 1981, riding the wave of fantastik blockbusters of the period, to critical and commercial success. Bakshi’s popular adaptation brought a whole generation of younger fans to the series, and subsequently to the fandom. It was also the first American adaptation shown in Europe.
The growing field of tabletop gaming would also be influenced heavily by Tolkien during this period. Whilst the popular series Dungeons and Dragons largely took from the more distinctly American Howard and Lovecraft brand of fantastik, Tolkien did provide much of the other races, such as hobbits and Balrogs and even some of the languages within D&D.
Tolkien societies and scholarship, burgeoning in both spheres, were bolstered by Christopher Tolkien’s posthumous work on his father’s unfinished work the Silmarillon, which expanded the history of Middle-earth into a full mythological history. The Silmarillon, released in full in 1977, would form the final part of the “octology” that forms the basis of Tolkien fandom and scholarship, though fan works, especially in Comintern, would also spread. Many recontextualized the story from the perspective of Mordor, or made explicit parallels between communism and capitalism or even a very classical Marxist conflict of capitalism and feudalism.
David Lean’s 1983 adaptation of The Hobbit (starring Alec Guinness as Gandalf) would not be released in America until 1991, whilst an American adaptation of the same work by Hyperion would flounder. Meanwhile, tabletop games would supplement the growing computer market. Some official adaptations would proliferate in the wake of the film in the FBU, which were then ported to American computers and consoles. While Tolkien fandom in the FBU became embroiled in the moral panic of the 80's, with some fantasy works inspired by Tolkien being labeled "satanic" or "dangerous", the fandom in America continued unabated, primarily focusing on more explicitly Middle-Earth tabletop and video games
In the 90’s, Tolkien website, fan pages, and discussion forums began popping up on the internet, connecting fans across the world. With this came international conventions celebrating the property, and new encyclopedias for new fans to explore their passion.
In 1999, New Zealand director Peter Jackson would team up with United Artists (the studio behind the Ralph Bakshi adaptation), Culver City, and MGM to produce an international co-production, an adaptation of the first book in the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the Shadow. This would start off Jackson’s own award winning sextology, culminating in The Return of the King in 2009, which would be the highest grossing international film of all time.
Jackson’s series, like other adaptations, would introduce new readers and subsequently new fans to places like the Tolkien Society. The internet also sees new art inspired by the films, with the American Society even adding an art section led by comic artist Colleen Doran. Video game have also been increasing, with games exploring the full mythos of Middle Earth.
The book even received notice in the 2006 People’s Book Award winning magic realist novel, The Life and Death of Sanjay the King, by Ganesh Narmathan,[1] where the titular character, who fashions himself an “Indian Tolkien”, uses the Lord of the Rings as a reference multiple times, especially in comparing notorious Indian Prime Minister Gayatri Devi to Sauron.
With Guillermo del Toro’s success follow-up adaptation of the Hobbit in 2015, and the Galaxy network announcing a Jackson led international TV co-production of “The Silmarillon” recently, Evans doesn’t see American fandom turning on Tolkien anytime soon.
“There will be more adaptations, more versions, and people will keep the work around, even as we enter full communism.”
---------------
[1] A reference to a piece I tried to do a while ago. I may still find the energy and clear thought to finish, so watch out for it.
And to squash any confusion before it begins, the names of the six books of the Lord of the Rings TTL:
The Return of the Shadow
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Treason of Isengard
The Journey to Mordor
The War of the Ring
The Return of the King
