Back when The Two Towers came out in theatres, Salman Rushdie published an article describing Tolkien's language as "stilted... with deliberate archaisms..." so you're in good company with that opinion, Krull, though Rushdie does remain a fan of the books, and the films as well nonetheless... Most definitely, I wouldn't vote it best book of the 20th Century (that honour should probably go to either Joyce's Ulysses or Nabokov's Pale Fire, if you ask me).
Anyway, The Silmarillion gives only a limited account of the origins of the Istari, so I would imagine you'd have to go pretty deep into the histories that Tolkien wrote to find the kind of detail that's provided in the online Encyclopedia of Arda:
http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/g/gandalf.html
Here, you'll see that Gandalf is one of the ancient Ainur race, and is very, very old (he arrived in Middle Earth in the year 1000, and didn't even meet up with Bilbo until the year 2941!!!). Probably a good thing the Gandalf you'll play in Wiz 8 won't suffer from the old Wiz 7 aging system, eh? I'm sure this is more than anyone needs to know about this stuff, but couldn't resist... Cheers all!
[ 02-08-2005, 02:35 AM: Message edited by: Sinteuil ]