[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I wonder what fiction you refer to.

I misunderstood the implications of the title Virgil's Experience. I assumed that it was some sort of historical fiction of the I, Claudius variety. Sorry.

Squatter, I note that your sig is particularly relevant to this particular line of conversation.

I'm very much of the opinion that more and more academic study is being turned towards the goal of creating good little workers, and that subjects that cannot easily be turned to a vocational goal, such as history, philosophy and mythography are increasingly disparaged. Bulfinch caught my mood perfectly: business is not the purpose of existence and some things should be learned because they make one happy, or enhance one's understanding of the human condition, or make one a better person; preferably all of the above. T.H. White was absolutely right: we're not supposed to live like ants.
One thing that really upset me about the criticism offered by Jenkyns was the idea that a book which doesn't have some sort of cynical existentialist epiphany at its climax is not worthy to be considered among the modern classics. I'm fairly sure that he'd disagree strongly if I were to say: "we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" (as you know, astronomy was one of Tolkien's interests). I suspect that Mr. Jenkyns has come to believe that the gutter is all there is, which seems to be what his favoured novels are saying. Truly brilliant literature, in my opinion, reinforces our humanity, rather than deprecating and sneering at it. Certainly we should be shown the worst in humankind, but we should also be shown the best and the indifferent to gain a balanced understanding, and where the world is criticised I would rather see a better alternative offered than a flat denunciation of what is. I also disagree that the loss of faith in God or Man is a sign of growth. As for God, nobody has ever managed to prove or disprove His existence, so coming down on one side or the other is a restriction of the available possibilities. The loss of faith in other people isolates and hardens the heart, which I cannot see as growth, spiritual or otherwise. As for the desire that characters in the novel should give evidence of sensuality: that would spoil the tone of the work, which prefers the higher side of sensual desire, which we call love. Perhaps love without explicit sex seems unrealistic to some, but it's hardly so depressing as a book filled with loveless fornication. If Mr. Jenkyns wants sensuality he will find it spewing from the pens of numerous Mills and Boon hacks and, perhaps, see what Tolkien wanted to avoid. I sincerely doubt that such novels can match the story of Beren and Luthien, or that of Aragorn and Arwen in maturity and spiritual depth, merely in the level of detail.

Having said that, I'm don't believe that Lord of the Rings is the best book of the last century; I also don't believe that such distinctions have any real meaning. How many books were written in the twentieth century? How many of them are so similar in scope or style that they may adequately be compared? How does one weigh The Outsider against The Wind in the Willows or Catch 22 against The Call of Cthulhu? How can one then take just one novel and raise it above others that one may not even have read? I can't even answer when people ask me which is my favourite film/song/novel/play, because it's impossible to rank them and the more I read the more options there are. How then am I to decide which is the objective "best" of a whole century, of which I saw a mere quarter?

I understand Jenkyns' irritation, but he's also blatantly not read the book he criticised for a long time. He should know better than to offer an analysis without first re-reading the material. He should also be able to stick to the point: the chief purpose of a biography is to give us an accurate insight into the life and character of its subject and this is the legitimate province of the reviewer of such a work. Jenkyns makes no attempt to discuss the elements that deal with Tolkien the academic, or Tolkien the man. He concentrates on the rating of Tolkien's literary significance, a significance to which the man himself would have made no claim. I saw no sign that Jenkyns was even interested in the man who gave up his car because he hated what roads were doing to the countryside; the man who never owned a television set or the man who stated that no philologist of English could lay claim to the title who knew no Welsh. Altogether a failure that disappoints, coming as it does from an Oxford fellow, although what can one expect from a man who borrows his titles from the Harvard Lampoon?