Tolkien has us spellbound
By Jason Steger
December 6, 2004
When the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was published 50 years ago, 3000 copies were printed. Since then millions have relished the epic adventures of Frodo Baggins and friends on their journey across Middle-earth to thwart the dark lord Sauron. The book’s enduring popularity was confirmed last night when The Lord of the Rings was named Australia’s “favourite read” on ABC TV, its third victory in TV polls. It won in Britain and Germany.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was voted Australia’s second favourite, with the Bible third. The best-placed Australian book was Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, which made fifth spot.
The only other Australian book in the top 10 was A.B. Facey’s autobiography A Fortunate Life, which sneaked into 10th position thanks to a tie for ninth between Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and this year’s publishing phenomenon, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was fourth, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling sixth, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four seventh and Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was eighth.
According to the ABC, which is not releasing precise figures, “tens of thousands” voted online between September 1 and October 22, nominating 5000 titles. In Britain, 750,000 voted from a final list of 21 novels, with 174,000 plumping for The Lord of the Rings. In Germany about 250,000 voted in the poll that included both fiction and non-fiction.
Winton’s Dirt Music came 11th and other Australians to feature in the top 100 were Col Stringer, Emily Rodda, John Marsden, Traci Harding, Bryce Courtenay, Matthew Reilly, Arnold Zable, Henry Handel Richardson, Li Cunxin, Gregor David Roberts, Melina Marchetta, Colleen McCullough and Norman Lindsay.
But missing from the top 100 were writers of the calibre of Patrick White, Australia’s only Nobel prize winner, Christina Stead, Tom Keneally, and Helen Garner.
According to associate professor Ken Gelder, reader in English at The University of Melbourne, the poll shows two things. “Really popular books are global and the fact is that Australian writers haven’t written anything that resonates as intensely as something like The Lord of the Rings.”
He said the list suggested Australian taste was very eclectic and reflected how certain titles, such as Pride and Prejudice, straddled literary fiction and romance. “These titles have been heavily marketed and use the language of romance in that marketing.”
He noticed the absence of high modernist and postmodern literature – “no James Joyce, no Don DeLillo, no Jonathan Franzen” – and said that literary fiction really only appeared in the list with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude at 28.
Professor Gelder said that much of the selection seemed to reflect an element of nostalgia, with people appearing to vote for books they read as children or adolescents. This accounted for the popularity of To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Catcher in the Rye.
Mark MacLeod, project manager for My Favourite Book, was surprised that some of the most popular books in sales and borrowing terms had not appeared. Last year’s bestselling Australian novel The Bride Stripped Bare was not on the list.
He had argued that the ABC vote should include fiction and non-fiction in the program and the dominance of fiction in the voting reflected “a retreat into certainty and security”.
List of Top 50 – http://www.theage.com.au/media/2004/12/05/1102182155956.html
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