I love Jolkein Rolkien Tolkein as much as the next gal, but the prose and tone of this made me suspicious. This doesn't sound like my Oxford blowhard (affectionate). So I dug a little. Marcel R. BĂźlles was ahead of me in this.
Y'all, it's Ursula K. Le Guin. And while she references Tolkien in the larger context of this quote, these words are all hers. It's a shame to misattribute this to Tolkien when he had his own and very differently flavored screed (though they're both still standing in defense of Escape). Let's get them both into circulation shall we?
Here's Le Guin again (for the screen reader folks):
There is an area where SF has most often failed to judge itself, and where it has been most harshly judged by its nonpartisans. It is an area where we badly need intelligent criticism and discussion. The oldest argument against SF is both the shallowest and the profoundest: the assertion that SF, like all fantasy, is escapist.
This statement is shallow when made by the shallow. When an insurance broker tells you that SF doesnât deal with the Real World, when a chemistry freshman informs you that Science has disproved Myth, when a censor suppresses a book because it doesnât fit the canons of Socialist Realism, and so forth, thatâs not criticism; itâs bigotry. If itâs worth answering, the best answer is given by Tolkien, author, critic, and scholar. Yes, he said, fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, donât we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if weâre partisans of liberty, then itâs our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can. [The Language of the Night, Urusula K. Le Guin]
I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which âEscapeâ is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.
Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the FĂźhrerâs or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery. In the same way these critics, to make confusion worse, and so to bring into contempt their opponents, stick their label of scorn not only on to Desertion, but on to real Escape, and what are often its companions, Disgust, Anger, Condemnation, and Revolt. Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the âquislingâ to the resistance of the patriot. To such thinking you have only to say âthe land you loved is doomedâ to excuse any treachery, indeed to glorify it. [Escape in: On Fairy-Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien.]
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