[Mithadan]

I feel a long post coming on...

It is always interesting and amusing to watch how discussions twist and turn and how a subject morphs into another. Aelfwine's original topic querying why we need or seek out a Tolkien community has changed into something else that is equally worthy of discussion.

To begin with Aelfwine's original topic, while Tolkien might not have imagined such a thing as an internet (and might not approve, at least in some respects), what we do on these boards would have been familiar to him. Our discussions are akin to Socratic method debate and the study groups that were common to schools of his time, with the added joy that the topic is not required learning -- as Aelfwine noted. While I cannot vouch for his approval of the medium, I suspect JRRT would approve of the method (though he might prefer we discuss northern mythology or Beowulf rather than LoTR). I'll return to Aelfwine's topic soon.

The other direction this thread has taken is a variant of "why do you like Middle Earth" with, perhaps, an emphasis upon common or universal reasons for such appreciation. While this has been discussed many times before, this debate has taken some interesting twists. Inzildun says LoTR appeals to him/her as a "traditonalist", as an anglophile and touches his appreciation of Tolkien's linguistic skills. Mithalwen likes the breadth, depth and comfort of his writing. Aelfwine points to believability and consistency. Davem goes textbook on us and parrots Tolkien himself and his discussion of escapism in On Fairy-Stories. There, Tolkien complains of "The rawness and ugliness of modern European life" and suggests many want to fly from "hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death." Yet Tolkien does not claim that Faerie lacks these things, but rather that they are present in a different form, like "the ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare." He concedes that fantasies are not all "beautiful or even wholesome, not at any rate the fantasies of fallen Man. And he has stained the elves... with his own stain."

"Faerie is a perilous land" partly because of this Mannish stain. Yet, in the complete absence of the modern shortcomings of Man, "stories that are actually concerned primarily with 'Fairies' [elves]... are ... as a rule not very interesting." Good fantasy provides escape and the consolation of the happy ending, which Tolkien terms "eucatastrophe" without excluding the possibility of sorrow and failure ('dycatastrophe"). The litany of modern evils are not absent in Middle Earth, they are present, made appropriate for the time and setting, and attributed appropriately whether to Man, Orc, Dwarf, Elf or otherwise. We do not read Tolkien for these evils, but rather for the escape, recovery and consolation Tolkien refers to in On Fairy-Stories. However, without these evils, Middle Earth would not be interesting.

Returning to Aelfwine's original question, On Fairy-Stories has something to say about that as well. Tolkien dedicates an entire section of that essay to children. Tolkien seems to agree that age is relevant to one's interest in fantasy, though he suggests that the target audience is or should be adults, not children. This being said, Tolkien notes that children have no particular liking or understanding of fairy-stories more so than adults would. Indeed he emphasizes that fantasy should not be "cut off from full adult art." But he concedes that children are "young and growing, and normally have keen appetites so that fairy-stories as a rule go down well enough" but "only some children, and some adults, have any special taste for them." For fantasies to be "worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can."

LoTR was written for adults but appeals to younger readers as well. Kids can't get as much out of it as adults, which leads to re-reading at least for those who have a "special taste" for it. This is why we obsess and this is why we seek out a community. Particularly where Tolkien is otherwise a private vice as Aelfwine comments.