… The Anti-Tolkien - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm not a huge Tolkien fan, but it seems obvious that his work resonates with something in the psyche of an immense number of people. Writers like Moorcock, on the other hand, appeal merely to a coterie.
He lost me at “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class.” Those are the kind of words that sound as rich as they are meaningless.
ReplyDeleteActually, that pulled me up short, too.
ReplyDeleteIt's amusing to see the New Yorker publish a piece about a SF/fantasy author who flourished circa 1980, with a link on the same page to a piece that introduces the magazine's readers to A Canticle for Liebowitz, which came out in 1959. I don't fault the writer of the Moorcock article for this at all, but I find it fascinating when a supposedly culturally-aware magazine reveals that it's actually decades behind the times.
ReplyDelete