I have now read Dune. I first conceived the ambition more than a year ago, and at last I have done it. So, do I recommend it? Well, yes, but not without reserve. Dune is written with undoubted skill and
Beowulf is a poem famous for, among other distinctions, having no faithful film adaptations—famous, also, for its connection to J.R.R. Tolkien, who both revolutionized the Beowulf scholarship of his day and incorporated copious influences from it into his little-known The
I’ve no familiarity at all with the work of Wyndham Lewis, this article’s partial subject, or Dr. Gilfedder, its author, and my knowledge of Shakespeare is small. men against darkness, published in Islander #5 doubtless possesses certain interests for the
Eowyn stands as perhaps my favorite female character in all of fiction. A few there are which stand near her- Harriet Vane, for instance- and a few I will acknowledge as being, to my experience, as well written- Orual (Till
Santa Claus and Bacchus fit comfortably in the Narnian metaphysic. In reading The Chronicles of Narnia, you have perhaps gotten the occasional fits of the Tolkiens: uncontrollable disjointure from the narrative upon encountering Santa Claus or Bacchus. Indeed, to the reader
Three articles in a single go. The last three articles in Islander 5 we’ll take at a go, because (1) this series has gotten long enough (if I repeat it with #6, it’ll be less comprehensive) and (2) I have
Hollywood stories have been getting a bad reputation- ‘Hollywood’ being a catch-all for the big money film industry, here. The Rings of Power show, for instance, possibly had greater cultural impact in how its critics pulled it apart than in
Martin, Warhammer, Tolkien: The Relationship of Morality With Power Morality’s relationship to power is a classic problem (one I brush up against in my novel). Is righteousness doomed? Does might make right? Is morality a silly pretense in a world of
The modern day is cold and swift and made of mechanism, number turning number…. To Eomer, nephew of Theoden, Aragorn declared a reminder apt to us in the modern day (as Tolkien is wont to be): “The green earth, say
Recently Ben Shapiro added another hot take to his history of bad media analyses when he went after It’s a Wonderful Life. He asserted that Mr. Potter had the right of it: lending should be run as Potter ran it,