Interesting interview with Philip Pullman discussing Tolkien, libraries, etc.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Paging afleitch.

I'm in partial, but quite strenuous, disagreement with Pullman about what the artistic flaws of The Lord of the Rings are--the excessive homosociality of Tolkien's world is a flaw, but the relative sexlessness is not; it is a valid artistic choice to which I think Pullman's ideological preconceptions blind him--but the stuff about libraries at the end is fantastic. I agree with every word he says on the subject, and about the continued importance of physically printed books in a society in which we're increasingly alienated from our physical selves and physical surroundings. (One might say Pullman after all believes in "words made flesh" in his own idiosyncratic way!)

[afleitch]

Good article!

I agree that the main issue with Tolkien is that his world is overly homosocial and I agree with Pullman that it's probably a product of their own socialisation. I think the sexlessness stems from that rather than anything particularly conscious.

I totally agree with the points raised on the printed book and libraries. I am fifty yards from a library which has been shut due to COVID and has been threatened with long term closure. I've helped put out a call for any spare books for my 93 year old nana who is starved of reading material. There's community in sharing books, either from libraries or passing from reader to reader and it's a disgrace we're losing not only printed words but printed pictures.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

One thing to keep in mind is that female characters are far more prominent in Tolkein's legendarium than in the works published during his lifetime. After the unexpected success of The Hobbit, he attempted to get parts of his legendarium published but was rebuffed, so he wrote something sellable, The Lord of the Rings.