Several months ago on the Ink Desk I highlighted the absurdity of works such as the Oxford Companion to English Literature which excluded any reference to Tolkien from their pages or which gave him only a passing and dismissive mention. I accentuated the absurdity by supplying a list of unknown, little known or entirely forgotten writers who warranted more space in such volumes than the author who wrote the greatest work of the twentieth century. I concluded the post by stating that Tolkien is unharmed by such neglect whereas the writers and editors of such volumes had merely made themselves objects of ridicule in committing such grotesque sins of omission. Now, however, as Adam Schwartz complains in today’s Crisis Magazine, the author of a book sub-titled “Catholicism and English Literature, 1850-2000” has also managed to exclude all discussion of Tolkien. How, one wonders, can anyone writing on the Catholic Literary Revival fail to mention that very revival’s greatest genius? It is akin to writing a book about the Napoleonic Wars without mentioning Napoleon, or writing a book about the Oxford Movement without mentioning Newman. It’s quite frankly risibly absurd. Laughable. Ridiculous.
Not surprisingly, the author of the ridiculous book is a theological modernist, which probably explains his literary blindness. For those wishing to read more about this intellectual pygmy’s efforts to ignore the giant in the room, here’s the link to Schwartz’s review of the book:
The anti-Tolkien snobbery of some of these intellectualoids is appalling. The irony here is that, in terms of technique, i.e., plot devices, the use of irony, story structure, language, and more, tolkien was a complete modernist. But he was too smart to buy into modernist theology or philosophy (and, indeed, his villians are philosophical modernists). That may be why other modernists hate him so much. He beat them at their own game, all the while never departing from orthodox Catholic belief.