Not All Who Wander are Woke

Hari Kunzru puts aside childish things

When I looked at the headline on the cover of the latest Harper’s magazine – “The Lord of the Rings Enters the Culture Wars” – my blood ran cold, obviously, since that formulation is already tired and can never bode well for piece itself. 

The piece was titled “Leggete Tolkien, Stolti!” – even more ominous – but it was written by Hari Kunzru, which calmed me for the few seconds between reading the name of an author I generally like and then reading the menacingly idiotic words he actually wrote. 

He opens the piece by describing his long-standing relationship with JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – long-standing, that is, until he hit the ripe old age of 10, when he outgrew the book as all self-respecting grown-ups do. This early disenchantment was nudged along by his growing awareness of something, well, icky in this big book he’d once so innocently loved. “I had also become aware of the political conservatism of [Tolkien’s] vision of yeoman hobbits puttering about in the organic rural idyll of the Shire,” he writes. “Though I never lost my affection for Middle-earth, [sic] I put it aside as one of the childish things that, as an adult, I no longer needed.” 

Such a relief, isn’t it, to leave those old childish things behind! So much mental bandwidth freed up for good books, adult books … and, as it turns out, right-thinking books. Now, years and many layers of wisdom later, Kunzru took his young son to the “Tolkien: Man, Teacher, Author” show at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art to see what it offered. Kunzru’s son is ten – so, just about the age when right-thinking sophisticated readers leave childish trash like The Lord of the Rings behind – and the two of them toured the show, which was intended to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Italian edition of Tolkien’s masterpiece of children’s literature. 

And the culture war element? Well, it turns out Italy’s fascist political elements all love The Lord of the Rings. “Though the Tolkien display in the National Gallery avoids any mention of politics,” Kunzru writes, “Tolkien is a cultural talisman of the Italian far right, and the exhibition is a major victory in a campaign to counter what it sees as a leftist stranglehold on cultural institutions.” 

At which point Kunzru’s piece reaches a crossroads. It can either do the common-sense responsible thing and ironically discuss the reasons why Italy’s fascists might have latched onto Tolkien’s book, why they’d be so proud of this lackluster museum show – or it can assume those reasons, lump The Lord of the Rings in with the fascists who profess to admire it, and drizzle condescending contempt on the whole thing. And since Kunzru left Tolkien behind long ago for far better and wiser books, he doesn’t hesitate to break out the condescension and take Path #2. 

“Aesthetically, fantasy was often opposed to neorealism, a preferred aesthetic of the left,” he writes, in one of his short piece’s disconcertingly high number of nonsense claims. “Intellectual battles were fought, with leftist figures like Umberto Eco rounding on Tolkien’s defenders.” Nonsense – and also dirty pool, which is the true disappointment of the piece. The clear soft implication throughout is that the fascist far Right is warranted in loving Tolkien’s work, that Tolkien’s work invites this kind of ideological embrace, and most of all that the only adults who will still love The Lord of the Rings are probably smug, goose-stepping fascists. Hence the borderline-deceitful mention of Umberto Eco “rounding” on Tolkien’s defenders and by clear insinuation “rounding” on Tolkien himself, despite the fact that Eco was very vocal in his love and admiration for The Lord of the Rings. Kunzru doubtless knows that, hence the slimy sleight-of-hand here, or when, while introducing Michael Moorcock’s criticism of Tolkien’s writing, he makes sure to introduce Moorcock as a “lifelong antifascist.” No mention of what a generally crappy judge of prose (his own or that of his rivals) Moorcock was – just the heavy-handed insinuation that if a lifelong antifascist criticizes Tolkien and fascists love him, welllllll …. You know …. 

Considering the alt-Right’s love of Tolkien and the alt-Left’s desecration of his work in Amazon’s “The Rings of Power,” it’s undeniable that The Lord of the Rings has indeed entered the culture wars – but only as a blunt object, not as a book. The blunt object can be wielded by grinning fascists or blue-haired avocado socialists – or by patronizing putzes who pause only long enough to sigh, “I’m so glad I left that swill behind when I turned 11.” 

But the book itself sails above it all, like Vingilot the ship of Eärendil. You kids.