Tag: books
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A Roadmap to Fairyland: an “On Fairy-Stories” Analysis
The road to Faërie is a perilous one. For starters, the realm itself is indescribable (though not imperceptible). If we are to commit to this journey, “we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive.” While in early development of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote an essay titled On Fairy-Stories in which…
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Fever Dreams & Delusions of Grandeur – Part 2
“Dark have been my dreams of late,” King Theoden says, triumphing against depression as Gandalf literally shows him the light, “but I feel as one new-awakened.” The more I read and live, the more I realize that the meaning of life is art. Centering art as the meaning of life entails the following prescriptions: 1)…
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Art not Power
J.R.R. Tolkien was a prolific letter writer, so much so that there is an entire tome compiling his correspondence. In Letter 131, Tolkien writes that “[Elvish] ‘magic’ is Art… and its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination.” Distilling this into a theme of Art versus Power, this magic of Tolkien had already meant…
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Hope in Decline
Decline is something I find myself thinking a lot about these days, for obvious reasons as I gesture at the state of the world, at the state of America. A few weeks ago, I saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in theaters for its 25th anniversary. Having seen it so many times,…
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The Magic of the Song of Durin
You, the first-time reader of The Lord of the Rings, experience the events of the story exactly as some of its more unknowing characters do; that is, you have no idea what’s going on: there’s all this talk about destroying the One Ring, which you’ve come to understand is essentially a symbol of pure evil,…
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Your wish becomes somebody’s command
A dull yellow schoolbus rumbles to a halt and out comes a sole student – Mitchell Green. Without looking back, Mitchell begins his short walk home – no more than a mile. He feels the bus rumble away behind him, the vibrations pulsing through the road up through his sneakers and body. A forward swing…
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Different
Everything could be done differently. In fact, everything is done differently; that’s the (beauty of the) subjective human experience. But, that’s me ignoring the question. What could I do differently? A lot of things, certainly, but many things are probably so ingrained and unconscious that they’d be extraordinarily difficult for me to do differently. Anyway,…
The AM Intrigue 