Hey there, fellow travelers. I recently joined fellow Tolkien enthusiast Andrew Snyder on
his Mythic Mind podcast for a discussion of on fairy stories and all things Tolkien.
For those of you who don't know, Andrew is doing great work on
the Mythic Mind and is currently spending some time with the Tales from the Perilous
Realm. I highly recommend you check it out. Here's a sample of our
recent conversation. In order to hear the whole thing, head on over to
Mythic Mind it subscribe. To make it easy, I've set up a convenient
URL via Tolkien Road dot com slash Mythic Mind, and now enjoy this sample
of my recent interview on the Mythic Mind. What is this essay about and
why do you like it so much? Well? If I refer to it
just very shorthand as Tolkien's literary manifesto, I think the thing you know,
as I mentioned when I when I became fascinated by Tolkien after the Jackson movies
came out and I read and I you know, so the first Jackson movie
comes out two thousand and one, I see it in the theaters. I
quick I quickly saw it again for the second time because I loved the first
one so much. And then I was like, now I gotta wait a
year for the next one. So I'm going to go ahead and read the
books. And I read them. I probably read them. I think I
read them twice in that space, uh, the whole Lord of the Rings
before the next one came out. And then you know, kind of started
to wonder, like, Okay, I just this is the greatest thing I've
ever read. What's going on here? And so you start trying to find
other other works, and so that led me to on Fairy Stories eventually,
and and I think on Fairy Stories is not it's not an easy read,
like it's not. It's not something that just kind of um, I will
say to bring up his his his good friend and fellow inkling C. S.
Lewis, Tolkien was not the same kind of writer that Lewis was.
Tolkien could be a little can be a little frustrating at times in his sort
of this isn't really the right term, but like wordiness, especially when he's
just when he's just writing, he can be a little can be a little
elliptical. He's a little maybe a little like Saint Paul in that way where
it's it's kind of like, Okay, you're saying I can tell you,
you're saying some really amazing things that maybe isn't the most quotable way of saying
it, but okay, but you you spend time with it and you figure
out where he's coming from. But I think you know it's what it's how
he rounds it all off. Right. It's those last couple of sections that
really drive it home because you know, the next to last before the epilogue,
you have the section on Recovery, Escape and Consolation where he starts talking
about like the emotional and spiritual impact of good fantasy and the role it has
to play. And that to me was like, oh wait, because because
we have in our minds, uh, you know, in the modern world
that fantasy storytelling it's just kind of the distraction, right that it really doesn't.
Um, you know, it's just it's just something we do to to
kill time until the end, right, Um. And maybe some of it's
better than the others, but it's kind of a you know, it's almost
like a utilitarian view of of fantasy and of storytelling in general, right,
Um, But what Tolkien does is he he drives at home to have this
much greater significance for us as human beings. Right, that these are not
simply distractions from uh, from the dead ugly truth right of our mortality,
and that the you know, like like this this nihilistic view of creation and
of a reality, that that these things have deep meanings and call us to
a greater understanding of reality, that that there are, that there is,
that there is something real beyond uh, you know, the veil of this
world, right, that there is something greater than our reality. Um.
He goes through at the end and he talks about recovery. You know,
recovery is recovery is the way, is this ability to see things not as
they are, but as they are meant to be seen. Right, That
there's a meaning that transcends what we may think about something to escape, right.
So I love the I love the twist he does on escape because you
know, people who are you know, creative and things like that will be
accused of escapism a lot. Right, you know, you're just trying to
escape from the you know, from your responsibility to reality and these sorts of
things. And he turns, I love what he does, He turns it
on his head, and he says, of course we are right, Like
who wouldn't want to want to escape from, you know, from being falsely
imprisoned, right like you know, by some tyrant right. Um, we
we applaud, we applaud those when we think about, like, you know,
the the escape stories of like World War two is giving from the prison
camp or from a you know, a you know, from a Gestapo holding
cell. Right. He almost, I think uses that sort of image there,
and um, you know he's like, we deploy, we applaud those
people when they when they escape, right, and but we when we want
to escape from people who tell us reality is this ugly thing we are told
where we're wrong because of it? Um, and and just the consolation of
the happy ending, right um. And then he ties he ties all of
that into this notion in the epilogue that um, we are inside of the
great fairy story of the great of the great fantasy tale that's in fact not
fantasy at all. Right, Um, we're inside of this story that is
the gospel. Uh, that is the that culminates in this and it coins
this term U catastrophe right uh. In in the the happy turn the ucatast
fee of the incarnation, and in that story of the incarnation, there is
the happy turn of the crucifixion leading to the resurrection, the passion of Christ.
So he rounds it all off by saying, guess what we live inside
a fairy tale? We inhabit a fairy tale. And when I read that,
I was like, there it is that is that is this man's genius
right there. Um, that his his that his his secret fire that he
is serving. Um and uh, and you know it, it has just
fascinated me and kept me, you know, coming back to this work,
you know, referring to this work for you, there's a lot, you
know, there's so much there's so much wisdom in the uh, you know,
just in regards to like literary sort of literary theory. Um. You
know, in the first half of it, um, leading up to those
final parts that I just kind of glossed over. But um, you know,
little little notes like um, you know, his his argument that we
as moderns want to kind of say, like, oh, fairy tales or
these nice cute little things we tell to you know, to kids, but
they don't really have any purpose for adults and he's like, it's like,
no, a good fairy tale, a good fairy story, good fantasy should
be oriented towards adults. Right. If you oriented towards children, you're not
doing a good job, right. Um. And uh, and even just
getting into like the origins, like why do we as human beings do these
things? Why did ancients you know, begin telling these tales? Going against
the notion that, um, you can kind of like like the reductionist attitude
that says like, well, this story is really just this story, right
with with some little extra stuff added on. And he's like, no,
it's precisely the details that make it worthwhile, right, It is precisely that
it's this this maximal like creative maximalism, right that instead of this like minimalist
um sort of mind and set. Anyway, So I've been drunning on about
it for about all of this for a while, but uh, I mean,
that's it's it's it's one I just come back to constantly because Tolkien gives
us the I think he unlocks it all for us. And he says,
this is where I'm coming from, right when in all of my work and
all of my stories and my legendary um, this is where I'm coming from.
Yeah, I think it's a great overview. And as you pointed out,
we really see that his literary philosophy is inseparable from his real his theology,
right, his deepest health philosophy, and so it's all intimately connected.
And this is why when you read Tolkien you understand that something else is going
on, right, and so on one hand, yeah, obviously he's not
writing allegory or it's not Chronicles Narnia. However, he's writing out of a
deeply held belief that words ultimately have transcendent, eternal significance, right, and
so naturally his storytelling is going to present that, um again in a very
natural way. Right. Yeah, and so now kind of going back to
the beginning of hitting on some of those points in a bit more detail.
Um, on the most basic level, you know, he's talking about fairy,
which he identifies with the perilous realm. You know, hence the title
of this collection that we're that I'm going through. Now, what for Tolkien,
what exactly is fairy or the perilous realm? What does that mean?
Yeah? Um, this is this is where um, you know, it
starts getting it's I think it starts getting a little challenging. You know,
we've been Um, we just did an episode on Smith of Wooten Major,
um, which you know you'll probably be getting too soon enough um and UM.
It's interesting because Smith of Wooten Major is a really really challenging work for
me. UM. But it has to do with that same question. It's
basic. It's it's essentially this story of of uh, this this figure who
enters into the perilous realm and and what is this? Interestingly enough, Tolkien
wrote it towards the end of his life, and it's really the perilous realm
is this place, um that it it goes, it goes beyond our reality,
and there's no there's no easy way of entering into it. Um.
Within the story of Smith of Wooten Major, it's like, uh, you
know, you enter into the you you enter into the character enters into the
woods and he kind of and it's never really clear how he eventually comes to
this place, but it almost seems like it's it kind of coexists with our
own world. Um, you know, uh, but it but it seems
to you know, it it seems to go beyond it. UM. I
think for Tolkien he himself was always kind of, you know, kind of
like trying to get out how do I how do I connect it with our
own reality? He almost he almost seems to be like, it's not just
something you you know, enter into through a portal or something like that,
like through a kind of a special you know, a special portal or something
like that. But you go off and you and you decide to go on
an adventure and you you enter into this other place. I hope you enjoyed
that sample of my recent interview on the Mythic Mind podcast. There's a lot
more where that came from, so be sure to head on over to Tolkien
Road dot com slash Mythic Mind to listen to the whole thing. Thanks for
listening, and until next time, the Road goes ever On