New Wolfe essay

There's an essay by Wolfe about Tolkien in December's "Interzone": "The Best Introduction to the Mountains". It's mostly autobiographical: how he discovered LOTR in 1956, the experience of reading it, poetic inscriptions he made in the individual volumes, and the transcript of a letter from Tolkien to Wolfe. In particular Wolfe praises the books because their medieval setting embodies a system of social order and responsibilities, of defined duties and freedoms - the Christian order itself, even if there is no sight of God himself in the books. Curiously, the ultra-Catholic Lafferty despised LOTR because he thought it was a diminished fantasy world of second-hand people and concepts with a big fence set up around it and a flashing sign that proclaimed "God Keep Out!". Matthew Davis

"No sight of God" is literally true, but God is busily arranging coincidences, prophetic dreams, and stuff like that. Sort of like TBotNS, as a matter of fact. I wonder whether Tolkien was Wolfe's model in that book.

It's also interesting, at least to me, that as a child I felt a bit betrayed when I realized that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was Christian propaganda, and I'm glad LotR didn't do that to me. Obviously I've gotten over this, since I like Wolfe. Jerry Friedman