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Olivier Bonhomme

Musk Fictions

Musk Fictions

Elon Musk, JRR Tolkien and a relentless cultural and political war

By 
Published today at 8:00 pm (Paris)

6 min read Lire en français

Canadian singer Claire Boucher, better known by her stage name Grimes, is an avid reader of The Lord of the Rings. So, when she met Elon Musk in 2018, she drew on the world of JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) to express her attraction to him. It wasn't Aragorn, Legolas, a hobbit or a dwarf; rather, Musk reminded her of Gandalf from Tolkien's universe. He's a wizard, bearded and gray-haired, but as the saying goes, love is blind.

Charmed by this reference to the imaginary world he reveres – before becoming an entrepreneur, Musk reportedly aspired to equal Tolkien's literary achievements – he subjected Grimes to a barrage of questions about Tolkien's works. Grimes passed the knowledge test with flying colors, as she told Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson.

Is it necessary to introduce the author of one of the most widely read literary sagas of the 20th century, whose film adaptations by Peter Jackson marked a generation of viewers at the turn of the millennium? Tolkien wrote a trilogy that sold millions of copies, as well as other works that are slightly less well-known, almost all of which are set in a world populated by wizards, elves, and rings of corrupting power.

Throughout their history, the peoples of Middle-earth, the name of this universe, have been threatened by a Mephistophelian sorcerer. This villain, Sauron, seeks to subjugate everyone with the local equivalent of technology: magical rings. Why is he so evil? No one truly knows. But do we know why humans so often aspire to do evil?

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