printI have no time for Tolkien and his “hobbit-worshipping” “hobbitomanes,” as writer R. J. Stove dubs them.
In “Vanilla Pie-in-the-Sky with Diamonds” I wrote:
The Lord of the Rings was once considered a children’s book. It appealed to adults with a proclivity for hobgoblins and gobbledygook. Never would I have predicted that grown-ups would levitate so far above their rational minds as to find this flight from reality worthy of such gush. At some stage it would seem developmentally appropriate for adults to cease craving a steady entertainment diet of fantasy, and develop an interest in real people, in relationships and in how flesh-and-blood make their way—and interact—in a complex world.
“Hollywood’s Hateful Hooey About the South” offered a variation on the theme:
Confronting Tolkien’s mediocre, myth-obsessed mind, Hugo Dyson, a member of Tolkien’s inner circle, let rip with a spontaneous slip of the tongue. As writer Kevin Michael Grace related, Dyson “once reacted to a Tolkien reading with, ‘Oh no! Not another f—ing elf!’ …
Recent ferment makes the nation’s entertainment choices even more alarming than I had previously thought.
In fact, it is particularly significant that a country which has created its own fable of reality in Iraq manifests a disturbing preference for entertainment with mythical and infantile subject matter. The American solipsistic view of reality lends itself nicely to the preoccupation with Tolkien, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan.
Having said this, let me offer a correction: Tolkien appeals to adults who believe in hobgoblins—the kind who believe that hobgoblins can make WMD vanish and can also unleash democracy from a genie bottle.
Now comes Stove and does one better in “The Pen and the Cross,” a book review for The American Conservative. Please note that Stove’s hobbit-hating interlude was provoked by the atrocious literary taste of the author whose book he was reviewing. Here is Stove’s response to said Tolkien terrorism:
Regarding Tolkien: here, launching timidly and vertiginously into the first person, I must declare a fault which may well scandalize at least half of TAC’s readership. I can no longer read any Tolkien; have never finished any of his books except (under duress) The Fellowship of the Ring; and have never been inspired by Tolkien to any emotion except sheepish ennui. Therefore I must take on trust Pearce’s glowing assessment of JRRT’s magnum opus. Evidently Lord of the Rings means more to him than even the Chesterbelloc does. If a Catholic Tolkienophobe may respectfully address a Tolkienophile, I would point out the oft-forgotten fact that although millions of Catholics now regard Tolkienophilia as an article of faith, this is an extremely recent phenomenon. During my 1970s adolescence (Pearce and I were both born in 1961), his cultists consisted largely and perhaps wholly of hirsute flower-children – beards imperative for both sexes – who regarded LOTR as a 1000-page acid trip. Hobbits, man, forests, man, far-out, man, groovy, man. Nobody ever told either the flower-children or me that the character of Galadriel alludes to the Virgin Mary. Nor, if we had been told it, would we have believed it. The championing of Tolkien by hippies, whom he would have rejected with the most blatant scorn, has implications for those who confuse other artists with such artists’ more asinine groupies. (Wagner, anyone?) Clearly Tolkienophiles will need Pearce’s latest exegeses to devour, to digest, and doubtless to argue about.