More Important than Real Life
The beautiful and talented Mrs.Wright has a guest column from the admirable and learned Bruce G Charlton . Mr Charlton maintains a blog inspired by Tolkien’s The Notion Club Papers, and has written some of the most stirring and striking observations about the modern world it has ever been my privilege to read, including THOUGHT PRISON and ADDICTED TO DISTRACTION.
Here he visits that most interesting of topics, fairy stories, reality, escapism, and the jailers of the imagination (who are our direst foes of all my honored readers, and men of good will everywhere).
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2017/01/10/on-fairy-stories-and-why-they-matter/
Fantasy Fiction Is More Important Than ‘Real Life’: completing the argument of JRR Tolkien’s essay On Fairy Stories
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I believe that Tolkien’s argument can legitimately be extended to a stronger sense, which offers a ‘primary’ status to Fantasy fiction when understood in the context of the modern, mainstream world of public discourse.
More specifically, I believe that Tolkien’s argument about Recovery contains the seeds of a much more powerful explanation of Fantasy being (at its best) more real than (so-called) ‘real life’.
That Fantasy is (in some important respects) more real than real life I will take as an assumption rather than trying to argue; because it is something that all serious Fantasy readers already know to be true from personal experience (and it is, of course, why we continue to read Fantasy). But what is so-far lacking, and what Tolkien may be seen to imply, is an explanation for why and how it is true.
I think an explanation is valuable, and perhaps necessary, if fantasy, as a genre, is to be regarded (whether by ourselves, or more generally) as more than just a pleasing pastime – as something that is of potentially great cultural importance.
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Read the whole thing. I think this essay contains one of the most curt yet most trenchant criticism of modernity I have yet seen. Your time will be well rewarded.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
