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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3361213" data-attributes="member: 4937">There is a story they tell in New Orleans about a man who after eating his meal at Gallatoire's then complained to the waiter that it wasn't fit to pay for.  The waiter informed the man, "This is Gallatoire's.  Our good taste is not in question."Are you trying to make my point or yours with this analogy?  As best as I can understand your point, you are arguing for (to overly simplify) "The Author as God", and I am arguing (to overly simplify) "The Author as a Servant of His Muse".  When you raise the example of an author writing a story, not because it was one he thought was cool, but because it was one he found he had to write, it would seem to me to argue very much against what you have hithertoo been arguing.  It hardly matters to my point whether Bunyan was annoyed or not, and the only reason I can imagine you'd be raising this point is you are still stuck on that red herring that I think that JRRT is perfect.I can't believe you think you need to instruct me in something as well known as that.  If I'm half the Tolkein worshiper you think I am - and that bit of character attack seems to be your only point at times - then at least in your derision give me some credit for knowing the facts even if you think that my admiration is blinding me to thier proper interpretation.Sure.  But yet again, that is entirely a red herring, for it doesn't really help your point to say that in some other case there is a mistake or a flippancies or a wrong turn because first of all I've never argued against that, but more importantly what you have to prove is that in this case it is a mistake, oversight, flippancy, or whatever.  And you can't, because it isn't, which is probably why you keep returning to these irrelevant points.First of all, you can't stain Professor Tolkien's.  They are are far beyond your limited power to detract from and they are going to live longer than either of us.But more to the point, there are things in Tolkien's stories that are very much nothing else but he thought they were cool at one point.  As an extreme example, it could be argued that all the Northern European mythic elements like elves, 'gods', magic, wizards, and so forth are in thier solely because he thought they were cool.  None of that has to do with his piety, and he was by his own admission deeply uncomfortable with the presence of such fanciful things in the story especially when people began to take his work seriously.  And the whole battle of Helm's Deep he thought discardable when it came time to write a screen play, so that tells you a bit about what he thought was important.  But when you start dealing with an element that gets tied into his theology, I assure you that you are better off starting with the assumption that it is well thought out than starting with the assumption that it isn't.  You are dealing with one of the brightest minds of the 20th century and his life's work, and there are very few such minds that have poured so much of thier energy into a single body of work.  He spent far more time thinking about his work than you or I have.If you think that is what is going on, you haven't paid very much attention at all.  Frodo understood what you don't.  The author clues you in when Frodo says to Gandalf that the idea that he was meant to find the ring - but not by its maker - does not in fact comfort him (which one would suppose it should), but you have to stop looking just at the surface of the story.</blockquote>

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