davem,
I enjoyed your post and thoughts but I had some questions about it that I hope you could clarify for me.
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Isn't the greatest risk of the spell being broken if we don't firmly shut the door between the worlds behind us, so that the noise of the outside, 'primary' world remains to disturb us.
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How does one go about dropping all of the "baggage"? I just find it improbable that one would be expected to do that. If you know of a way please tell me. I try and supress all of my primary world views but I just don't see that it's entirely feasible. Which leads me to my next question.
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So, it seems to be an entirely subjective thing - its not the author's fault. He doesn't break the spell - we do, by what we bring to our reading. Its not the author's faillure
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I realize that we are speaking about well written books, but isn't it a bit specious to assume such infallibility in an author? If the author's intent is to enchant us, then is it not his or her responsibility to do so with our baggage in mind? This would make it so that obviously not everybody would be fully enchanted all of the time. This would make more sense to me and would give an explination why all great litterature isn't univerally loved. (As much as I can't understand it I'm forced to say that not all people are raptured by Tolkien.)
Obviously you used my explination of TH in your remarks and called it my view of "children's literature" as the reason I don't enjoy the hobbit as much as the other books. But I would disagree, I read TH first and enjoyed it but wasn't enchanted whereas children are able to read it and receive the enchantment but they don't receive it while reading LoTR. Why? Because the author intended them to be for different people. I personally feel that he captured his intended audience in both books but they are intended for different age groups.
I do not disagree that if we bring excess primary world baggage into the secondary world then it doesn't matter how well written a story we won't be enchanted. But to assume a universal liking of "good literature" if we drop all baggage is short sighted, because it is impossible to affect everybody universally.
Hope this makes some sense.