[Nerwen]

Thanks, Davem. That's interesting– I wonder if Miéville's changed his mind in the intervening years, or if this is just a matter of wearing a different "hat".

Originally Posted by tumhalad2

I'm interested in this notion of consolation. Does Tolkien's literature merely console?

No, I don't think so– c.f. Miéville's own more recent comments.

Originally Posted by tumhalad2

Should it challenge us (read: challenge notions of capitalist hegemony) or are we complicit in some exploitative bourgeois idyll?

As I said, this depends on whether you believe that authors have a duty to promote socialist values. I certainly don't, and I'm hardly a conservative. Note also that on this criteria, most of the authors praised in the first article "fail" most of the time.

I also find your use of "complicit" quite troubling here. Whether you mean it to or not, it literally implies that simply reading a book with the "wrong" social values is an immoral act. After all:

Originally Posted by The Concise Oxford Dictionary

complicity: n. partnership in a crime or wrongdoing.

EDIT:X'd with Morth.