By Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
J.R.R. Tolkien believed that myth is inherently true and material progress inherently evil. You could call that radical, reactionary or romantic, but it’s a distinctively modern phenomenon. Modernity and the Enlightenment notion of progress have to exist before you can reject them, and once again we see that “The Lord of the Rings,” for all the magic it employs to repopulate England with its ancient wraiths and spirits, belongs finally to the 20th century. [More]