Excellent fisking. I first read Gopnik's article after it was linked* from Andrew Sullivan's blog; Sullivan followed up Saturday with a link to this shorter rebuttal (http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/13589267620/modernist-ambiguity-or-realist-emotional) by Alan Jacobs.
Gopnik's complaints about Tolkien's supposed dislike for certain consonants echoes Nick Otty's 1984 essay, "The Structuralist's Guide to Middle-earth":
"I think the aesthetic Elf-identifying English reader is also expected to tremble at ‘unnatural’ combinations of letters such as ‘AZG’, perhaps on the ground that they are harsh, intrinsically ugly or difficult to pronounce. Just how far this is to do with seeing rather than hearing may be judged by listening to the same sounds in, for example, ‘He has grown.’ A statement which one can imagine innocent Hobbit aunties and uncles using all over the Shire without invoking the slightest shadow.
Z seems to be especially wicked."
-MTD/neb
*Sullivan's first post (http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/tolkiens-legacy.html) includes a Youtube video of Tolkien fandom a la The Pirates of Penzance.
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Date: 2011-12-05 06:16 pm (UTC)Gopnik's complaints about Tolkien's supposed dislike for certain consonants echoes Nick Otty's 1984 essay, "The Structuralist's Guide to Middle-earth":
"I think the aesthetic Elf-identifying English reader is also expected to tremble at ‘unnatural’ combinations of letters such as ‘AZG’, perhaps on the ground that they are harsh, intrinsically ugly or difficult to pronounce. Just how far this is to do with seeing rather than hearing may be judged by listening to the same sounds in, for example, ‘He has grown.’ A statement which one can imagine innocent Hobbit aunties and uncles using all over the Shire without invoking the slightest shadow.
Z seems to be especially wicked."
-MTD/neb
*Sullivan's first post (http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/tolkiens-legacy.html) includes a Youtube video of Tolkien fandom a la The Pirates of Penzance.