[Child of the 7th Age]

For me, the diffence between very good and mediocre fantasy is whether it touches the heart. Ursula K. LeGuin, some of Marian Zimmer Bradley come to mind. But my favorite next to Tolkien is one book that's not read much any more--the Once and Future King by T.H. White. I feel for the aging King Arthur who faces the destruction of what he fought for and who sits in sadness before his last battle trying to figure out why mankind alone, unlike other animals, fights his own kind. I can sense some of Frodo's grief as he shoulders his way across the ashen slopes of Mount Doom, seeing only failure and Shadow before his eyes.

Now, if I can see and feel this, why can't many others sense it too? I'm sure there are many reasons, but I will only mention one that seems critical to me. I am an historian by training and profession. In fact, my degree focused on the late medieval period. And the one thing that struck me during years of study is how very much man of the 20th/21st century regards himself/herself as so superior to any other time and age. Never mind that the 20th century saw bloodshed on an unprecedented scale! We believe in our machines, our planes, our computers, our rockets, even our weapons. We can not believe, in our hearts, that those who live in a preindustrial world have much to say or teach us. And much of fantasy is set in such a world, or at least in a world which admits the possibility of going above and beyond science as we know it today. We have lost touch with our myths, with our legends, and even with our own documented history. How can we possibly respond to fantasy when we deny the beauty and relevence of our own past, something that already exists in our folklore and imagination? Sometimes I am amazed that as many people read and write fantasy as they do. Certainly, it is not the mainstream but there is a core group which seems to have been growing steadily since the 1960s. But why can't it get beyond this? At heart, I think it does have to do with our values and perception of ourselves. Modern man thinks he/she is the center of all human existence and the stick against which everything must be measured by. By this measure, fantasy is a very strange beast. So pity the poor, short sighted modern man who has lost so much of his imagination and heart in his inability to consider himself as just one among many possible ways of approaching the mystery of life.

I'm afraid I'm coming off very close to how Lewis and Tolkien viewed themselves as the last of the "true" western men (since this is the heritage they knew and loved). I am Jewish, not a Christian, but there is, I believe,real truth in their alientation from the modern world as having lost its way. Perhaps our inability to sense and love fantasy is just one more symptom of this sad state of affairs. But everyone who reads Tolkien, or who loves Beowulf, or who writes a poem about Middle-Earth strikes a small blow in this battle to comprehend that many important truths can not be conveyed by intellect alone and modern man is not the be-all and end-all of existence. sharon