Douglas Charles Kane’s Arda Reconstructed is an attempt to take those published sources and answer some of these questions. Kane painstakingly, word for word, traces each line of The Silmarillion and locates from where in JRRT’s early writings it came. When first I’d heard of Arda Reconstructed from a fellow fan, I was over the moon. I had attempted this on my own as part of research projects before, and it is not an easy task. To have a book providing at least a starting point for this sort of research would make my own forays into Tolkien’s legendarium that much easier. However, I also operated under the assumption that the results of such a study would make for rather dry reading and would stand primarily as a reference, to be opened at need and otherwise unread.

I was wrong on the latter as well. Kane’s research reveals several interesting trends as far as the construction of The Silmarillion is concerned. Several of them hit my own buttons as a researcher and fan-writer.

During a discussion of Arda Reconstructed on the SWG mailing list, the most frequently asked question was, “Exactly what is this book?” I feel like the book has two important components. Firstly are the charts–one per chapter with the exception of the chapters where CT has already provided a similar breakdown of sources as part of the HoMe series–that detail the sources of each line of The Silmarillion. At times, CT (and Guy Kay) took whole swaths of JRRT’s original sources and plunked them, nearly verbatim, into the published Silmarillion. At other times, they created a patchwork from numerous sources by cutting and pasting in ways that are dizzying to behold. These charts show this and, for me, these alone are worth the price of the book. I don’t even want to imagine the combined number of hours spent on such sleuthing. I’m just glad that, now, I don’t have to do it.

The second component of the book is the author’s commentary, which is largely based on observations made while, presumably, compiling the charts. Here, the book gets interesting and here, also, the book will prove problematic for some. The saying goes that if you put two Tolkien fans together, you will end up with three opinions, and Kane is not shy about expressing his, which I’m sure will imperil him in the minds of others in the community. But so it goes.

He traces several trends that occurred during the compilation of The Silmarillion that I found particularly interesting because, as noted, they relate directly to research interests and “canon” interpretations of mine. Firstly is the diminishment of female characters during the compilation of the published Silmarillion. I’ve already heard this idea poo-pooed: They were minor characters to start and were cut as part of a general goal of downplaying minor characters. Only this isn’t what Kane’s evidence shows. Nearly all of the women of Aman, for example, had at least one detail removed by CT and Guy Kay, seemingly without reason. Other roles were eviscerated, shoving female characters into the background when, according to Kane’s research, it seemed that JRRT intended them to maintain more prominent roles, often illustrative of some of the philosophical ideas that the “Silmarillion” was meant to include.

Míriel Serindë is one such character. With the total elimination of “The Story of Finwë and Míriel,” not only is Míriel moved to the margins of the story, but the philosophical and cultural concepts that she was meant to illustrate are lost as well. Ungoliant undergoes a diminishment that greatly reduces her complexity: the complexity of character that JRRT achieved in very few words being one of the truly notable aspects of the “Silmarillion.” Nerdanel is reduced from a strong and independent woman to one who, as I illustrated in my essay A Woman in Few Words, receives only four mentions in the text, all of which concern her status as a wife and mother. JRRT’s original material on her character, as my essay also illustrates, shows her importance beyond her relationship to important males.

Still other female characters–like Andreth and Nellas–were eliminated from the published story altogether, despite evidence in the published sources that JRRT meant to include them.

Also taken from the published Silmarillion are all references to the mythological sources of the stories being presented. Again, this is an argument that I have been making for years, largely in the context of fan-writings and the attempt to establish an absolute “canon” regarding events and characterizations. My point has always been that this is complicated–even rendered impossible–by the fact that JRRT framed his stories as tales told not by himself as an omniscient and omnipresent narrator but by sources that either lived through the events being described (as in Pengolodh’s depiction of the fall of Gondolin) or received information from other sources (as in Rúmil’s construction of the Ainulindalë based on what he was taught by the Valar). That this was JRRT’s intent is hard to argue against, even though I am generally averse to assigning “authorial intent” to any of the posthumous published works. From The Book of Lost Tales on through the final written sources, JRRT often directly ascribed a source of the tales he was telling or information he was presenting. Some of his later ideas–such as the attempt to integrate a round, heliocentric world with his existing mythology–directly rely on this framework. Yet this information is completely missing from the published Silmarillion. Where did it go and why?

Kane makes a compelling argument that, in an effort to achieve consistency, CT eliminated these attributions because they themselves presented inconsistencies. JRRT ascribed tales as being passed through two lines: from the Elves on Tol Eressëa to the mortal mariner Ælfwine, or from the Elves via the escaped Númenóreans. Kane suggests the CT thought it should be one or the other but not both–that having both would introduce inconsistency into the story–and so struck them altogether. Kane regrets this choice, and I agree. As a reader, it adds the illusion of historical depth and context that the published Silmarillion lacks. As a fan-writer, I wonder, if these attributions had been made clearer, would we see a greater allowance for imagination and invention in Tolkien-based fanworks? It would be more difficult to argue something from The Silmarillion as inarguable fact with a living, breathing narrator easily perceived just on the other side of it.

Kane makes a third intriguing point: the complexity of characters presented in The Silmarillion. The characters in all their shades of gray are what first seized my imagination about the book over even LotR, which is much more prone to dualism where its characters are concerned. “Silmarillion” characters, though, have always defied such easy classification. Just ask a room full of Tolkien fans whether Fëanor or Maeglin or Manwë are good guys or bad guys and observe the variety of responses that you get.

Yet Kane demonstrates a tendency of CT, during the assembly of the published Silmarillion, to edit the texts in such ways that characters are greatly reduced in complexity. Ungoliant has been mentioned; Melkor receives similar treatment. Fëanor and his sons are deprived moments that show them more sympathetically. Manwë’s tendency to look like an ignorant buffoon is not present in the source texts, but many readers walk away from The Silmarillion with this impression–I certainly did. Kane doesn’t suggest this, but I wonder if these changes were aimed at satisfying the notions of really evil villains and really fabulous heroes that seem present in many of the epics on which The Silmarillion is patterned. Garnering sympathy for the bad guys is a relatively new phenomenon and still not one that is universally liked, especially among fantasy fans. Perhaps CT felt that taking the book in this direction would be keeping truer to the epic form and make it appealing to the same fans who adored LotR.

Without having researched any of Kane’s claims for myself, I come away from Arda Reconstructed with just one major complaint. Arda Reconstructed uses only the published source texts–The History of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, and so on–which is advantageous in that it allows any reader to reconstruct Kane’s work (Arda Reconstructed Reconstructed?) but is also limiting as far as drawing conclusions about the correctness of CT’s decisions in putting together The Silmarillion.

Kane acknowledges this up front in the book:

It is possible, even likely, that som eof hte changes, omissions, and additions that I describe reflect textual material not included (for whatever reason) in those works, or some other source only available to Christopher (including, perhaps, personal conversations taht he had with his father). (pg. 25)

However, as the analysis proceeds, the reality of the methodological limits of the book sometimes seems to fall by the wayside in favor of expressing a strong, certain opinion about how The Silmarillion was created. On the one hand, I understand this desire. Few are the Silmarillion fans who don’t maintain a least one negative opinion as far as CT’s choices go. At the same time, one of the quips I hear uttered at times by Silmarillion fans is, “I could have done a better job of putting together The Silmarillion than Christopher Tolkien did,” and this unfailing makes me grit my teeth because, no, chances are that if just about anyone besides CT had attempted to create The Silmarillion, we would have an inferior book. I think that–given the time and effort put into it–the “mistakes” in the published text illustrate the enormity of the task more so than any shortcomings CT possessed.

Kane doesn’t go so far as this, obviously; in fact, he speaks in gratitude for CT’s role in bringing JRRT’s posthumous writings to fans and also points out the special relationship between them that made CT the ideal choice for compiling his father’s writings. But even with all of this, I don’t feel as though his conclusions are qualified enough in terms of their shortcomings. For example, when he discusses the diminishment of women in the published Silmarillion, he is often quick to place the responsibility for this onto CT’s shoulders, identifying these changes as wrong or, at best, puzzling. For example, in discussing the removal of the detail that Nerdanel, as well as Fëanor, learned metalsmithing from Mahtan, Kane remarks, “This is one of the most blatant examples of how Christopher’s changes appear to weaken an important female character” (pg. 80). And, true, the changes are puzzling, but the reason doesn’t necessarily lie in any choice that CT made. That is a spurious conclusion to draw based solely on the fact that the published material does not immediately illuminate the reason behind such changes.

In fact, another secondary work about J.R.R. Tolkien underscores the perils of drawing such conclusions. Shortly after finishing Arda Reconstructed, I found a copy of Paul H. Kocher’s Master of Middle-earth at the library. Master of Middle-earth was published in 1972, five years before The Silmarillion, so nearly everything about the Elder Days was left to piecing together details from LotR and The Hobbit or pure speculation. Even after the publication of The Silmarillion, The History of Middle-earth, and the other supplementary texts, I was often amazed at how on-target Kocher was in his speculations about the Elder Days. Yet, at times, he was also dreadfully off-base. For example, he writes,

If the navigable sea has any such boundaries Middle-earth cannot be a rounded sphere as we now conceive Earth. In the imrama tales this point posed no dificult to the wonder-oriented Celtic mind of the Dark Ages, which popularly accepted the world as bounded and flat anyway, or, when it did not, was quite willing to forget roundness under the spell of a good story. But is such a prescientific cosmology intended by Tolkien for Middle-earth? He never discusses the question explicitly one way or the other. He leaves us to survey the text of the epic and its Appendices for ourselves. Quite possibly he considers the question to be of no real importance to the story, and so is indifferent whether it is raised or not. (pgs. 12-13)

Never explicitly discussed? Of no real importance? Indifferent?? With access to the texts we have now, we know to be as wrong-headed as Kocher’s assertion that Idril must have become a mortal because she married one. The question of how to integrate scientific reality–so important to the underlying philosophy of “subcreation” that JRRT used in his stories–with the primitive but beautiful myths he had constructed actually pre-occupied JRRT quite a bit at the end of his life, and he’d even begun changing some of his writings to reflect a round, heliocentric world. My point isn’t to berate Kocher for not having read texts that weren’t even close to publication when he wrote his otherwise insightful book about JRRT’s mythology. My point is that the sources that build all of JRRT’s works are unbelievably complex, and even after the publication of The Silmarillion and more than a dozen texts to support it, there are still troves of unpublished notes and documents to which most of us don’t have access. And this is to say nothing–as Kane himself admits–of conversations between JRRT and CT to which even the most devoted researcher will never have access.

It may well be that CT is a misogynist intentionally bent on diminishing the roles of prominent women; it may be that he possesses a less nefarious (but no less harmful) bias that caused him to choose certain details over others when editing the book to a reasonable length; it may well be that he simply made some unfortunate changes in the interest of slimming and simplifying the text that gives that impression. Or it may be that there is somewhere a scribbled note indicating that Nerdanel should not have learned her father’s art. Or it may be that JRRT expressed to CT his uncertainty about the direction Ungoliant’s character was heading. It may be that we will never know, or that what seems a “trend” is really no more than an unfortunate coincidence, and the label of “misogynist” is too dire, in my mind, to attach to a person without full proof of malevolence or ignorance underlying his decisions.

And this, I think is the major shortcoming of Arda Reconstructed. If CT’s theoretical intellectual heir publishes another twelve volumes of the History of Middle-earth illustrating why CT made the changes that he did, then Kane’s book will become as much of an anachronism as Kocher’s: useful in some regards but generally unreliable for its opinions that fail to account for texts and information that it knows exists but cannot access and the possibility that such information will fundamentally alter one’s conclusions. It is not that those opinions should not be expressed. To the contrary, I suspect that Kane’s conclusions will make for some wonderful discussion and debate in the fan community. But I think the book should have done more to remind readers of the limitations posed by its methods and should have taken more care in assigning responsibility for choices with which the author did not agree.

So should you buy the book? Its price tag was a little wince-worthy on my starving student’s budget but, yes, it is worth every penny. As a researcher, I cannot be anything but grateful to Kane and relieved at not having to compile the information that he makes available in tidy tabular format in this book. The tables alone are worth the price of the book and, I suspect, will be well-thumbed in the years to come. The discussion is lively and moves surprisingly fast, given the density of the material that Kane covers. Aside from my misgivings about his certitude at points, he brings to light interesting trends that I think are worth considering and discussing, even if we never reach any definite conclusions.

As a fan-writer, too, Kane’s work if anything demonstrates the frailty of what we fans often identify as “canon”: that notion that there exist facts in JRRT’s writings that can unequivocally be determined as “right” or “wrong.” Several of my fellow fan-writers raised the question of how Kane’s work will change how fiction based on JRRT’s writings is perceived. Pie-eyed optimistic heretic that I am, I believe that Arda Reconstructed defends a less stringent notion of canon. It is a firm reminder of the state of flux in which many of JRRT’s writings were at the time of his death. While any single fan can take a work or works and pin it down as “This is truth to me”–as many do with the published Silmarillion–that really cannot be defended beyond personal preference, and Arda Reconstructed illustrates why.

I give Arda Reconstructed 3.5 Keebler E.L. Fudge “Elves Exist” cookies out of four.