Tolkien and the Nature of Making

Rumor has it that something besides streaming-media market share inspired Amazon’s quest to score The Rings of Power: namely, Bezos has professed deep personal admiration for Tolkien’s work. In some ways, this feeling of kinship makes perfect sense. Tolkien’s vast imaginarium – he invented not just a fictional world, but a cosmos, replete with two classes of gods, fracturing supercontinents, dream-augmented flora and fauna, three evolving humanoid peoples (depending on how you tally), and a glorious profusion of tongues – is among the few literary achievements that might rival Amazon’s sense of scale.