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David44's avatar

I loved this (and I read The Hobbit out loud to my daughter, and I totally agree with the overall premise!). But I don't think your objection to Richard Hanania really holds water.

The key thing with Tolkien is that he manifestly expects us to notice the incongruity - to see the sheer oddity of the very middle-class English Bilbo engaged on this heroic quest for treasure with dragons and elves and dwarves and the like. A lot of the humor of The Hobbit (and it is a very funny book) depends precisely on that incongruous meeting of different world-views. But the incongruity also allows us to appreciate the sheer heroism that Bilbo finally is able to steel himself to: precisely because he doesn't look like a "classic" hero, his courage is all the more noticeable and moving.

But with the modern "social justice" anachronisms that Hanania critiques, we are precisely supposed NOT to notice, NOT to perceive them as anachronisms. We are supposed to pretend that there is nothing odd about the multi-racial sisters in The Little Mermaid, or about a world where people of different races fail ever to mention their skin-color, even while commenting on other aspects of their physical appearance. And that is jarring in a different way, one which feels much more damaging to the coherence and believability (in a broad sense) of the story-universe.

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Christopher Booth's avatar

It is lovely to be reminded of a favourite childhood book later in life. All beloved books hold special places in the heart, children's more than others, perhaps.

Thank you for the insight on Tolkien's metre - I enjoyed reading the book out loud to my boys, and now I see why.

The Hobbit has something else that raised the bar for books in my childhood: a brilliant map. Like the Winnie-the-Pooh Hundred Aker Wood by EH Shepherd, it is the cartography of wonder that I would flick back to when my young mind was choked on words guzzled too quickly and needed a pause for digestion.

Those maps are still guides to landscapes I take seriously today.

Did you ever visit The Eagle and Child in Oxford, where he and CS Lewis met to talk books as The Inklings? A 3D proto-Substack, if ever there were one. It has closed, I think. How one fails to make money in a tourist Mecca running a pub where the Lord of the Rings author drank is totally beyond me.

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