Sanders Bernstein, NJ Winner Level III (Grade 11)

Letter to Humphrey Carpenter, author of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography

Dear Mr. Carpenter,

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Those words were my first experience of Tolkien. It was my first step in the magical journey that led me through The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. I spent hours on the sofa, in my bed, in that foreign land called Middle-Earth, somehow transported to that world. I thougt it magic. But then, I read your biography of Tolkien and a great change came over me; I realized that the magic did not lie inside the book but in its creation. I learned that the magic was not hidden within the elves or dwarves or ents but in language.

I have read your book twice now, and both times it has profoundly affected my life. It has inspired and uplifted me, and taught me much about myself. I received your book as a Hanukah gift from my parents who thought that it would be a pleasant accessory to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a work I had devoured many times over. They never realized that your two-hundred-and-eighty-seven page book would have a greater impact on my life than Tolkien’s entire saga.

I first read your book two years ago, in ninth grade. If someone had asked me then what my passion was, I would have immediately replied, “Reading.” I love to read. I finished my homework to read. I did not rush off to play videogames or to play sports (though occasionally I did both) but to my room, to my books. Every minute of spare time was spent with these faithful companions, in the car to and from school, waiting for an appointment, at the table when my mom was not looking.

You changed that. Reading your biography of Tolkien showed me the magic of writing and of languages. And I fell in love with that magic. Your words made Tolkien’s love of creating language and writing come alive. His devotion to those two subjects was apparent thoughout your book. But, not only did you portray his feelings effectively, it was infectious. Reading how Tolkien, as a boy, had created Nevbosh, “New Nonsense,” and the Spanish-influenced Naffarin made me put down the book, get out of my chair, and actually experiment, trying to develop my own private language. I even partially succeeded, though it is only a mixture of French, Spanish, and English with certain vowel-consonant shifts. As a result of reading about Tolkien’s exploration of Norwegian, of reading its ancient myths, of seeing his creation of Quenya, how he would write that mundo meant bull and then try to figure out the word’s etymology, I have begun to study Latin and French in addition to my Spanish. I have stopped simply trying to learn how to speak the languages, but have immersed myself in them and have attempted to learn about the languages themselves. I have tried to find similarities and now am beginning to see some. How exciting it is to do so! You truly brought his love of languages to life and with that you discovered my dormant love of them as well.

Reading of Tolkien’s painstaking exploration of Middle-Earth, I longed to undergo an equal experience of my own. But it was not just the normal momentary euphoria of any book that lasts only as long as I read it and soon fades afterward. No, it was more than that. In your characterization of Tolkien, both as a boy and a man, I recognized myself. Because Tolkien was portrayed not as the hero and legendary figure that he was, but as the real man he, paradoxically, also was. I realized I share the same intellectual curiosity, the same longing for a familial mythology and history as he did. But what truly led me to believe that one day I could become an author, that I can write stories, is that I saw many of my own flaws in Tolkien’s darker side. I saw in Tolkien’s social detachment and aloofness some of my own. I could relate to Tolkien’s difficulties with women, his occasional shyness in their company. The rapid speed with which he talked, his intelligibleness, I share that trait with him. I have known his black moods where he felt as if the world was going to end and I understand his irritation when he was interrupted at work. This connection, that Tolkien and I share the same flaws, shook my notion that to be an author was to be preordained as such. I cannot explain where this idea came from, where I got this notion in my head. But what I can explain is that by understanding that authors such as Tolkien, authors of great imagination and limitless talent, were flawed, that they were not gods or higher beings, it was as if a floodgate opened in my mind. My wish to write and my will to do so, which had previously been a low buzzing behind my ears, transformed into a deafening roar that I could not ignore.

Unable to block out the new yearning your book had awakened, I did write a a story, a short story, and loved writing it; it was, in an approximation of another author’s words, a disease that only ending the story would cure. I then submitted it to my school’s writing contest and won second place. I have been writing ever since and have enrolled in several creative writing programs. I have loved every single minute of it.

You wrote that W. H. Auden said to J. R. R. Tolkien, “I don’t think I have ever told you what an unforgettable experience it was for me as an undergraduate, hearing you recite Beowulf. The voice was the voice of Gandalf.” Well, Mr. Carpenter, your book has been for me the voice of Gandalf. Like Gandalf was in The Lord of the Rings, the wise man, the counselor, aiding the Fellowship in their fight against Sauron, you have acted as my wise man. Your book opened up my eyes to a Middle-Earth I had never before seen, a world of writing and of languages to which, despite my many journeys into Tolkien’s land, I had been blind. And for that, I will always be thankful.

Sincerely,
Sanders Bernstein