As cool as it might have been to have JRR as ones grandfather, the pressure of trying to live up to that genius would be seemingly insurmountable. Still, Simon Tolkien sounds like he has a healthy view on this and is carving out his own path with nary an elf or hobbit in sight.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-tolkien/jrr-tolkiens-grandson-in_b_550097.html
J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson talks about writing
April 26, 2010
Leave a Reply
Yeah, that is how I always imagined it felt for descendants of famous people. It is not as if skill is hereditary, so we are just piling on unnecessary pressure…or perhaps not. The two Bushs made it into the office.
But anyway, imagine to be under that pressure and still have a healthy mindset. This is J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of the modern fantasy genre, through which almost every fantasy from then to even now use as a foundation. Well, that is just my opinion and I am pretty biased.
All you have to do is pick up a single novel and you will see some aspect of Lord of the Rings embedded in it. His influence is inescapable: Warhammer, Dragonage (never played it but it has modern elves), your own writing (directed towards Chris Evans, no offense)…basically anything with orcs. Yeah, he was that important; I applaud anyone who can exist in his shadow and retain his sanity or not shame the name.
I agree, Tolkien’s influence is huge, even when it propels writers to take a completely antithetical position to show how uninfluenced they are by Tolkien which only further establishes his influence.