1. So I have a few thoughts on H.G. Wells, Henry James, Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport, National Review & how sci-fi & fantasy became the lingua franca of political discourse.https://twitter.com/MattZeitlin/status/1135636580629143553 …
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11. Kenner caught the Tolkien bug and toyed with the idea of using a quote from Lord of the Rings to open the big critical book he was working on The Pound Era. The idea being that Tolkien was a popular version of Pound's project of recuperating tradition.pic.twitter.com/NvCOoMFNNC
12. Interesting, Kenner also notice that there was no paperback version of Lord of the Rings. He tried to push his publisher (Beacon) to do the book. If they had, they would've made millions. In actuality, the lack of paperback led to a pirated edition from Ace.
13. But the National Review rightists weren't the only ones interested in Tolkien. The pirated Ace edition (published using a loophole in copyright law) carried an introduction by Peter Beagle which claimed Lord of the Rings for countercultural environmentalism.
14. The thing with allegories is that they can be read in different ways, and its easy for competing factions to repurpose them for different ends. Were orcs evil reds or rapacious industrialists?
15. All of which is to say that it's natural to use fantastika to describe the world, so @paulkrugman & @mattyglesias reference Asimov's Foundation, resistance liberals Harry Potter, feminists Handmaid's Tale, Bernie supporters Dune, & NR types Tolkien.
16. I should add, of course, that these political readings are not the only way into s.f. & fantasy. Guy Davenport also wrote a beautiful essay about Tolkien as a teacher and also what he might have gleaned from a Kentucky friend:https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/23/archives/hobbits-in-kentucky.html …
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