But it was a surprisingly narrow contest: I still am rather excited about George R. R. Martin, his initial vision, his brutal but fundamentally only too realistic description of ravaging, raping knights without any conceivable honour, of the pretty actual Middle Ages. Unfortunately Martin got lost though, got gigantism, albeit there is much greatness in that bizarrely complicated narrative even if ever less and less coherence.
Tolkien on the other hand, is all coherence: a beautiful, sad, nostalgic epic thought out to the last exhaustive detail. Leaf by Niggle. The great anti-modernist - so much of criticism simply misses his intentions, his majestic, traditional Christian vision of a fallen world, a true conservative vision. As little as I actually agree with this unreal world view, it is such a coherent view of the traditional Christian spiritus mundi. I still have the books in my bookshelf, ordered and bought decades ago when I was only 11 - he was my religion those early times: the magical, magically imagined world, the history, the languages, the breath taking adventure... And I still have them in my heart.
Two obsessed, odd, freak writers, the best of the genre showing what can be achieved by it. All amidst the spiritless, visionless counterfeits and bad copies that unfortunately dominate it.
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