Re: A Tolkien criticism

George Peatty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: This is part one of a two part post, containing an excerpt of a conversation
: between me and another poster at the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)
: concerning Tolkien.  The second part of this post will be a reply from me to
: this one with the background to this conversation.  Overall, the conversation
: has evolved from flame bait with each of us baiting and goading the other into
: something I thought might be of interest here.  Join us over in the Classic Film
: group of the imdb if inclined, or post your responses here.

: The first paragraph is the other poster who goes by agorelik quoting me as I
: attempt to characterize his previous posts with a syllogism.  The second
: paragraph is his response, which I found interesting, provocative, and worth
: sharing here:

: "Tolkien fans dress in costume 
: Dressing in costume is stupid 
: Ergo, Tolkien fans are stupid, 
: and Tolkien is stupid. " 

: No, I believe my argument is more subtle than that. I'm arguing that there is a
: class of literature that is particularly susceptible to unwarrented and immature
: worship. This literature tends to pander, usually overtly but also sometimes
: covertly, to questionable traits within many readers. I think Tolkien, insofar
: as his some of his writings are in that class, consciously participated in the
: flaws of this type of literature.

: I admit, usually these types of books are quite harmless. But, considering that
: numerous people are taking large amounts of time with this type of book when
: they could be reading better books in addition to their reading of Tolkien,
: Herbert, Hubbard, etc., yes, I think these types of books are not good things.


I think the word that best describes this is 'escapist', which is not
necessarily a bad thing.  I do agree with you that that should not be all
that one reads, and sadly it does seem to be the case that that is all
many people read.  Escapism appeals to what we are not and never will be,
as opposed to what we are or could be.  Dressing up as the characters is
all part of fun of escaping from what you really are.

Of course only a tiny percentage of Tolkien fans, or even fantasy fans
in general, ever dress up in costumes (outside of Halloween).  Even among 
Trekkies, costume wearers are among the minority.  

I do not think Tolkien was conciously attempting anything other than
to write a good story when writing Lord of the Rings.  I do not think
he was trying to pander to any questionable traits, unless you think
enjoying a good story is somehow questionable.  Personally I think
he would not approve of the behavior of many of his fans.  In his
Letters he laments people reading LotR when they are too young, because
to his mind there was not enough time to read something more than once,
given all the stuff there was to read.  In another letter when discussing
detractors of his book, he says that not all the fools are in the other camp.

Stephen