Subject: The Best Introduction to the Mountains

From: Alice K. Turner <aturner3 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 00:14:55 +0000

Thank you, Andy Robertson, for sending the URL. Here it is, for those who,
like me, may have missed it.
http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/docindex.html

I can venture a guess as to why the essay was turned down for Karen Haber's
anthology. It doesn't hang together. Part of it, the part where Wolfe tells
us about his first reading of the trilogy and his correspnondence with
Tolkien is very intense, focussed and joyful, rather like Keats looking at
Chapman's Homer. I gather that the anthology is mostly composed of
enthusiastic pieces like this, perhaps not so well done, but certainly
pretty much in the same key. But the rest of the essay strikes a note of
disgruntled, archly worded old-fartism that I found annoying and I imagine
she did too (or perhaps it was her editor). I don't think it's a defense of
feudalism exactly, but it's certainly right-wing in the belief that people
should know and appreciate their places and wrk hard at their appointed
tasks. I've just been reading a book about British upper-class Fascist
feelings (and approval of Hitler, who knew how things should be) prior to
WWII, and this essay chimes in rather too well.

-alga