This work, originally a school task, is a tribute to fiction, and a celebration of the perennial legacy of great authors.
Dear Mr. Tolkien
I am writing to thank you for the many—albeit unwitting—blessings you have given me. Your work has made me who I am.
I remember picking up The Lord of the Rings for the first time. It was a hefty tome, dusty, crisscrossed with an extensive network of booklice tunnels, its cover faded into a soup of green and grey. I loved it. Your words, sir, took me on an adventure—an adventure of the best sort, the sort that never ends. You see, the characters, places, and stories you created inhabit my internal cosmos; they are the constellations of my life, implicit in my every encounter with the world—a sort of Fellowship, if you will. More concretely, your novels catalysed my love of reading, which, so many years later, has birthed a love of writing. Other than my own birth, this must be the most extravagant gift I have received.
You have given me my great passion, eyes full of wonder, and a career. Death has not subdued you; your pen writes on—not on the page, mind you, but in the hearts and minds of millions. I, nay, we, will forever be grateful for the legacy you have left behind.
Your distant devotee,
Louis
