Considering the nearby trifecta of the library, several local bookstores, and Amazon, my only excuse is the immense stack I’ve already gotten myself into. But your post reminds me that it ought to happen. I was moved by his passing, anyway, because of the deep effect he has had on so many. Glad there’s someone at the Pub better prepared than myself to write him a good eulogy.

“Frankly madam, I don’t give a damn!”

Ron, to Lavender

If so, his next train of thought must have been as so:

“Right. How do I stop myself from dying? Wait! Here’s an idea! I’ll tear my soul into six pieces by killing people with dark magic, then I’ll seal those torn off pieces of my soul into a snake, a book, a cup, a tiara, a locket and a ring and then I’ll be immortal! And here’s the best part of this plan, the only thing that will be able to destroy these objects (wait for it) is venom from a giant snake. What could possibly go wrong?”

Hmm. Can’t see it working.

I can definitely relate to memorizing the books. Not only did the kids I read to know many books by heart, I did, too. By the time I was reading to my own kids I was able to recite almost every book by Dr. Suess, as well as other authors, including when the child at my feet should turn the pages, while doing the dishes.

There was knifework, axe-work, out there between the barbed wire of Lang and Lit in days not so far back. When I was a young and enthusiastic examiner, to relieve the burden of my literary colleagues (at which they loudly groaned), I offered to set the Chaucer paper, or to help in reading the scripts. I was astonished at the heat and hostility with which I was refused. My fingers were dirty: I was Lang.

or

I first joined the School in 1912 – by the generosity of Exeter College to one who had been up to then an unprofitable exhibitioner; if he learned anything at all, he learned it at the wrong time: I did most of my undergraduate work on the Germanic languages before Honour Moderations; when English and its kindred became my job, I turned to other tongues, even to Latin and Greek; and I took a liking to Lit as soon as I had joined the side of Lang. Certainly I joined the side of Lang, and I found the party-breach already wide; and unless my recollections are mistaken, it went on widening for some time. When I came back from Leeds in 1925, WE no longer meant students of English, it meant adherents of Lang or of Lit. THEY meant all those on the other side: people of infinite guile, who needed constant watching, lest THEY should down US. And, the rascals, so they did!

For if you have Sides with labels, you will have Partisans. Faction fights, of course, are often fun, especially to the bellicose; but it is not clear that they do any good, any more good in Oxford than in Verona. Things may to some have seemed duller in the long period during which the hostility was damped; and to such they may seem livelier if the smoulder breaks out again. I hope not. It would have been better if it had never been kindled.

He makes it sound like the Battle of the Hornburg, doesn’t he?

“Speak no evil of the Lady Galadriel!” Voldemort and Emperor Palpatine chimed in unison.

Thanks, Johnny for sharing your paper. I now know a bit more about Tolkein and Lewis, and was interested to learn how they sized each other up via first impressions. And academic snobbery still thrives, doesn’t it.