XPost: rec.arts.books.childrens, rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: lumley@purkiss.demon.co.uk   
      
   In article , G. M. Watson   
    writes   
   >>In what way were they stuffy with Tolkien that they were not with Wodehouse?   
   >>   
   >>   
   Who are 'they'?  I'm always entertained by the repeated tendency to   
   overstate the opposition faced by successful novelists.   
      
   Auden liked Tolkien, both as an Anglo-Saxonist and as a writer.  Reviews   
   of LOTR were mostly enthusiastic, though Tolkien himself felt he'd been   
   snubbed by a few people who were reacting not against him, but against C   
   S Lewis's praise of him.  British literary gurus have always been very   
   tolerant of fantasy writers (e.g. Ruskin, Morris).   
      
   The Angry Young Men and the Movement didn't like JRRT of course, but   
   that was because they associated him (not unfairly) with anti-modernist   
   ancien regime ideals.   
      
   On the other hand, no-one thought LOTR was as good as War and Peace of   
   Bleak House or Middlemarch, and of course it wasn't.  It wasn't trying   
   to be.  it was trying to do something else.   
   --   
   Jane Lumley   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)