Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005)

A considerable decline in quality from Carpenter's book on Ezra Pound, which, to my mind, is one of the best literary biographies on offer. A quick scan of the index to this book gives the reader a mighty good clue as to what Carpenter is up to. By far the two most populous entries are, under the general heading "Britten, Benjamin, Character" -- "sexuality" and "estrangements." Britten's homosexuality is clearly considered to have driven everything in his life, including his music, his show more family connections, his friendships, his ambitions, his hypochondria, really the list is inexhaustible. As a result, he is portrayed as an unregenerate seducer and abandoner -- not carnally, but emotionally. Great care is taken to establish that there is no evidence of Britten's ever consummating a sexual relationship with any of the young boys he took pains to befriend over the course of his life. Indeed, it appears that Britten's sex life may have consisted only of a monogamous, on his part, commitment to the tenor Peter Pears. Yet the book details a long litany of instances of Britten's success in serially charming men, women and children, only to reject them, often quite brutally, when they ceased to fill his need. At least, that's Carpenter's take. I suppose, like any other entertainment, biography succeeds best with a hearty dose of sex & violence (at least of the emotional variety.) Thankfully, the freudianism is fairly muted, only dwelling on outcomes and not on etiology. What cannot be countenanced, however, are the mind-boggling number of misprints, typos, gaffes and obvious howlers that are absolutely astonishing considering Carpenters previously immaculate productions on Pound and Auden. Deadlines -- they're a bitch! show less

Until I read this, I didn't know that biographies could be so engaging. Carpenter paints a vivid picture of Tolkien's life, skillfully balancing discussion of his day-to-day life with those elements that might tell us more about how his great works came to be. The writing style is immensely enjoyable, that even the mundanities of Tolkien's daily commutes seem like activity bursting with vitality.

I fell in love with The Lord of the Rings when I was in high school. Nevertheless, this biography has remained unread on my shelves for over fifteen years. Why? Some authors are an absolute disappointment to read about. I guess I didn’t want to know if the Professor was one of them.

He’s not.

If you had to write a fictional biography for Tolkien it would look much like this.

Orphaned at an early age, he fell In love with a girl, also orphaned and living in the same boarding house.

His show more fascination with languages, learning ancient languages and even developing his own secret languages based on strict linguistical rules, showed themselves at an early age.

The only disappointment to me was that his fascinating circle of friends didn’t include women. He was a complete product of his time, attending boys’ prep schools and colleges. Only in the very later years is a female graduate student mentioned. This is often reflected in his books, where usually (but not always) women have secondary roles, leaving the adventuring and hero-ing to men.

Highly recommended. show less

As a teenager I was a huge fan of [[J R R Tolkien]], to the extent that I read quite widely about him, as well as repeatedly poring over [The Lord of the Rings] and then, to a more limited extent [The Silmarillion]. I also shared some of Tolkien’s fascination with the history of English, and the complex evolution of the Germanic languages from their early roots back in the fourth and fifth centuries.

Among my ancillary reading was Humphrey Carpenter’s fascinating biography of the man show more himself, which I remember reading while I was still at school. One point that I don’t understand is why I was never drawn to read this book earlier. After all, in addition to a marked interest in Tolkien, as a child I had loved the Narnia stories of C S Lewis, and repeatedly devoured the retellings of ancient myths by Roger Lancelyn Green, who also proved to be one of the members of The Inklings.

On balance, it might have been better if I had read this shortly after its publication in 1978, when, at the age of fifteen, my cynicism was far less developed. Reading it now, I found it harder to overlook a lot of the less pleasant, indeed more unacceptable traits that it would be difficult to deny were prevalent among the group. It has frequently been noted that female characters are largely absent from Tolkien’s Middle Eart. Yes, Galadriel is a mighty eleven Queen (although even she professes to be subject to her husband Celeborn) and Eowyn participates in an act of immense courage, but that is more or less it. Arwen is kept in the margins and under a veil form most of the book, and cannot aspire to the heroics ascribed to her in Peter Jackson’s film. Unfortunately, Carpenter’s book shows that this reflected a lot of Tolkien’s view about women and their place in society, or at least in academia.

My mother was another Oxford medievalist, although a generation behind Tolkien and Lewis. She certainly knew Tolkien and met him a few times although as her field of study was more on medieval French than the Germanic languages beloved of Tolkien, contact was limited. I now wonder whether that was also a consequence of her gender, and her fellowship at the women’s college Somerville, of which it seems he might have been rather dismissive.

However, I should not blame Humphrey Carpenter for any shortcomings in the attitudes and behaviour of his subject. I found his account interesting, and I was intrigued to learn about Charles Williams, another of the Inklings of whom I had scarcely hear previously. show less