Quote:
|
It has the same discomfort with cities, the same 'volkishness' you get in proto-Nazi stuff. It scares me a bit, but not that much because times have changed. It would have scared me more if it had been published the year it was conceived.
|
Sometimes these literary folk drive me bananas! So many categories and oversimplications that bear no relationship to reality..... I don't think they've read one page of actual history in their life. I suppose Thomas Jefferson's discomfort with cities also qualifies him as a "proto-Nazi"?
Seriously, some very legitimate criticisms of Tolkien can be made. But isn't it interesting how many of the more extreme opinions require the reader to subscribe to a particular set of values, one that essentially limits the set of possibilities open to consideration in a particular world. It would be so much more honest to say this: "I personally don't like X, and since Tolkien shows X in his writings, I simply don't like his approach." I could accept that statement of personal preference. Instead we are
all asked to subscribe to a particular philosophy or point of view as if that was the only legitimate one in the entire universe.