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From: "Matthew Davis" <matthew@michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk> Subject: New Wolfe essay Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 19:33:03 -0000 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