Choosing reality

by David Benjamin

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

 

PARIS — The first college classroom I ever entered contained a long table, at the head of which presided John Bennett, a reputedly distinguished poet whose most noted work was a slim volume called The Struck Leviathan: Poems on Moby Dick. Dr. Bennett was stern, austere and laconically Socratic, a combination of qualities ideal for the purpose of frightening freshmen. I briefly accommodated the professor by feeling a little scared. But the feeling faded when I spotted across the table a classmate, the formidable Ellen Skerrett, who seemed to fear neither man nor beast. I shrugged off the spell cast by Dr. Bennett and began my months-long effort to charm Skerrett with my intellect and my boyish good looks—neither of which fazed her even slightly because, as she explained, she was unshakably true to her boyfriend/fiancé (John, as I recall), in Chicago.

Nevertheless, Skerrett helped me brave the bushy Bennett beard and dispel my rookie jitters. Thereafter, I remember more of Skerrett than the prof, except for one declaration he uttered in mid-semester. Out of the blue, Dr. Bennett said one day that The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien is the “perfect novel.”

He didn’t elaborate. However, respectful of his erudition, I read all three volumes, as well as their Bilbo Baggins prequel. Since then, I’ve wondered how, with so many novels to choose from, did Dr. Bennett distinguish this twelve-pound tome as the quintessence of the storyteller’s art?

There are clues. In The Ring, Tolkien checked all the novel-writing boxes. His protagonist, Frodo Baggins, is likable and relatable. Tolkien renders Frodo as Everyhobbit, a normal guy like you or me—or John McClane in the Nakatomi Building—thrust into midst of a maelstrom of danger and wonder, and forced to cope. Tolkien surrounds Frodo with an inner circle of compelling comrades, a cast of thousands, the obligatory wizard and a villain of consummate malignancy, the diabolical, invincible Lord Sauron. 

Crucially, Tolkien provides what Alfred Hitchcock calls a “maguffin,” the object that obsesses all characters and propels the plot. The Ring is the key to the future, or annihilation, of the world (Middle Earth). It must be found.

Tolkien, finally, indulges thoroughly and immersively in one of the storyteller’s joys, the creation of an entire world, reflective of the world we know, but different in ways that excite, magnify, amuse and terrify.

Dr. Bennett deemed The Lord of the Rings the perfect novel, I think, because it’s the perfect escape. Although the three-book Ring saga is complicated, it is relentlessly binary, setting good versus evil without the uncertainties and ambivalence of daily life. Tolkien crafted a rollercoaster of thrills and surprises in a world—both familiar and fantastic—that has been purged of household chores, car problems, illnesses, bosses, crazy relatives, lawn-mowing, leaf-raking, snow-shoveling, homework and a thousand other petty annoyances of earthly existence.  

Tolkien’s story poses an inescapable paradox. We are born into a reality, but the first stories we hear are fairy tales crawling with princesses, wizards, dragons, talking frogs and shrieking eels. We grow up steeped in ambiguity but all our stories pit good versus evil in two-dimensional simplicity. 

When I was in third grade, I already knew I wanted to become a storyteller. A precocious girl in my class, probably Beatrice Dwyer, had begun writing stories— full of knights and unicorns, fairies, elves, trolls and wicked witches. I was instantly jealous and competitive. I wanted to make my own stories, but not like Bebe’s fairy tales. I eschewed frivolity. Rather than creating an alternate world of magic and fantasy, I began my dubious literary journey with my Keds planted firmly on the ground, crafting variations on the themes that every day affected my real, tangible life.

For example, when I started my first novel, at age eight, I named one of my co-protagonists after a real, live kid I had seen on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I named Stanley’s sister and partner in mischief after my sister, Peggy. The thread of my novel was juvenile mischief. My models—from whom I stole storylines shamelessly—were Tom Sawyer, Penrod, Dennis the Menace. My setting was a cozy suburbia that resembled the neighborhoods in “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver.”

I had no idea that I was making a lifelong choice when I started writing stories set in recognizable places, in contemporary times, with characters who resembled my classmates, siblings, teachers and relatives. For some reason buried in my subconscious, I disdained the escape into fantasy offered by Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss. I was inventing fictions but some inner voice dissuaded me from conceiving a cloud-cuckoo otherworld with which to populate my magic-challenged characters. 

Most people don’t become storytellers, novelists or poets. Most of us don’t think about whether we want to cope with real life or plunge through the looking glass into Wonderland. We go to school, grow up, get jobs, have relationships, bear children and, ideally, we live out our lives in a cozy suburb next door to Ward, June, Wally and the Beaver.

But all through that quotidian slog, we harken back to Neverland, Middle Earth, or Starfleet. In the beginning, we were all tricked by storytellers like Hans Christian Andersen or Maurice Sendak, by Tolkien and Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis—even by realitysmiths like me—into visions of another, stranger, scarier but more wondrous and adventurous realm to explore and experience, somewhere beyond the rainbow.

Guys like Tolkien and me, even Dr. Bennett, get to dip our toes into the Saknussemm Sea, or spin yarns that turn this grinding daily reality into mystery, intrigue, farce and Freud. Storytellers are liars. We make stuff up. 

Everyone else—even me most of the time—are stuck with how things really are, whom we actually are, and what to do next. But as we cope, most of us can’t shake the memory of bedtime stories that gave us comfort and joy when we were fool enough to imagine anything. We harbor a dormant dream that—perhaps just for a moment—we could escape this vale of tears and make stuff up.

Whole industries, in publishing, in films, games and advertising, are based on our hunger for escapism, for a path through the woods to Middle Earth or Camelot.

Thanks lately to social media, talk radio, internet bots and Fox News, we have a school of politics composed entirely of fantasy, fear and wild conjecture. Millions of voters in America are convinced—just as they believe in angels, ghosts and Capt. James T. Kirk—that their political opponents are the spawn of Lord Sauron, the minions of Screwtape, the vessels of absolute evil. It is not coincidence that the “alternate reality” populated by internet trolls, conspiracists and Trump cultists is called a fever swamp or—a la Lewis Carroll—a “rabbit hole.”

Dr. Bennett, my English professor, was as real any anyone I’ve ever met, tweedy, tangible, critical and demanding. But when he admitted his affection for the vast fantasy of The Lord of the Rings, he was confessing a thirst for escape that exposed his inner child and mourned his loss of innocence. Sometimes in all our lives, we all wish we could go back, crawl into bed, grow drowsy to the sound of Mom’s voice and find, beneath the covers, a secret passage to Hogwarts, Erewhon, Eden, Lilliput, Neverland, Oz, Mar-a-Lago…