“He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees.” — “Leaf by Niggle,” J.R.R. Tolkien, 1945
On Aug. 1, 1996, George R.R. Martin published A Game of Thrones, the first book in what was proposed to be a three — later five, then seven — volume series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Additional books followed on a semiregular basis, until a noted six-year gap between publication of the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, and the fifth, A Dance With Dragons. Now, nearly seven-and-a-half years later, and despite frequent rumors of imminent publication, fans of the series are still waiting for book six, The Winds of Winter, with no firm release date in sight.
Meanwhile, the HBO TV series “Game of Thrones,” which began airing shortly before publication of A Dance With Dragons in 2011, has since overtaken the books’ story progression, with warnings from Martin the two no longer can be considered the same. Martin himself has been involved in a handful of other projects in the interim — all to a chorus of “finish the book already” from even his most avid supporters (Full disclosure: This sentiment can likewise be found on this author’s own Twitter feed).
But what if Martin’s fans are mistaken in urging the author to “just finish” instead of in his own time? Consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of The Ring: While World War II and a postwar paper shortage contributed to the delay, the long-awaited sequel to The Hobbit did not publish for a jaw-dropping 17 years following the surprise success of the 1937 children’s story.
In J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter recounted how Tolkien’s perfectionism constantly retarded progress. Tolkien originally wished to publish The Silmarillion, a massive, mythopoeic work encompassing the entire history of his Middle-earth; he ultimately lost that battle with his publisher, Stanley Unwin, settling instead on The Lord of the Rings, a piece of that history. Nevertheless, Tolkien continued to pore meticulously over the details of his larger narrative, even changing “Riddles in the Dark,” a key chapter in The Hobbit, to perfectly align with the new sequel.
With no social media in Tolkien’s day, pressure to publish was driven mostly by his own financial needs. However, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien include a handful of responses to letters from ardent fans inquiring about continuation of the Hobbit story; doubtless he was asked often in person. In the mid-1940s, while working fitfully on The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien surprised Unwin with an unrelated short story about “Niggle,” a painter with erratic productivity and a chronic frustration that his beautiful leaves did not come together to form a glorious tree. (The publisher rejected, and Tolkien later claimed a distaste for allegory.)
Art simply cannot be rushed into existence, and no credible critic would accuse Tolkien of loafing on the job. So why Martin? He, too, is tending an intricate web of storylines, spanning thousands of miles and hundreds of characters, all requiring precise development and resolution while adhering to an overarching narrative canon. Done properly, you get Lord of the Rings. Done hastily, you get The Last Jedi. What would be the purpose of two ill-conceived, monstrous books written solely to end (and to bank a stupendous paycheck)? The reason there is so much interest in final books is the wonderful complexity of the previous five, combined with curiosity over unrevealed divergences between the televised and novelized storylines. It’s better to wait for a Winds of Winter in full bloom.
Martin is keenly aware his enormous fan base is displeased. He lamented in a November 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly: “I know there are a lot of people out there who are very angry with me that The Winds of Winter isn’t finished … And I’m mad about that myself. I wished I finished it four years ago. I wished it was finished now. But it’s not.”
For those who can’t get enough of Westeros, Martin published in November Fire and Blood, a 700-page history of the Targaryen family’s rule. The first of two volumes (yet more waiting for a new Martin book!), Fire and Blood is itself an expansion of The World of Ice and Fire, released by Martin in 2014. Unlike the expository prose of Ice and Fire, Fire and Blood is written in an academic textbook style and includes dozens of additional pages of fine artwork by Doug Wheatley. It’s not The Winds of Winter, but it’s a good read.
In mid-December, a seemingly reinvigorated Martin confirmed we will indeed get an ending to Ice and Fire, but, of course, not immediately. Apparently, there are still more leaves to paint before the tree is completed.
Nathan Wurtzel drinks, and he knows things. That’s what he does. He is also a veteran GOP political consultant and the owner of Reprise Consulting.
