I haven’t seen anyone point this out yet, but consider this: Cormac McCarthy will go on television for an Oprah interview, but Jonathan Franzen won’t?

I’ve wondered why hobbits always seem to be employed in the service sector. You never really hear of hobbit attorneys, hobbit investment bankers, hobbit doctors, hobbit teachers, or hobbit intellectuals. Really, a hobbit’s only apparent purpose is to run around like an asshole and accompany humans and elves on their quests. Which makes them sidekicks. Thus, hobbits are there to provide nothing more than comic relief. But life isn’t just about providing comic relief. Even in the role of servant, one must take some responsibility for one’s actions.

So what was the point of hobbits? Why for example didn’t they get it on with elves and have a half-elf, half-hobbit love child from time to time? Hell, why didn’t they have any sexual desires? I presume that hobbits were small yet integral in some way to Middle Earth’s economy, there to befriend non-hobbits like Aragorn and Gandalf and to remain more or less subservient the entire time, never expressing a singular self-interest. Thus, I have developed the theory that hobbits were the Burger King employees and janitors of Middle Earth, even though they seemed to possess a good deal of free time. Perhaps they didn’t need a service sector because nobody was ordering frappuccinos and everyone had settled upon drinking standard mead and blowing smoke rings.

But let us consider vocation: When wandering outside of the Shire, hobbits are not unlike antebellum slaves. Unchained, to be sure, but still the token inferiors. Even when the hobbits hit Bree in Fellowship of the Ring, they were largely ancillary figures, there to observe rather than participate. It was almost as if all the other characters put up with them because they were cute and subservient, as opposed to the intellectual and cultural equal to the men and elves. Why, for example, were there separate rooms for hobbits and men at the Inn of the Prancing Pony? Even accounting for the fact that hobbits are smaller, why not equip the rooms to serve both hobbits and men? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective, particularly at a highly frequented inn with limited vacancies, simply to have a few small roll-away beds for hobbits for the larger rooms? That such an expense would be actively carried out by the Inn of the Prancing Pony suggests a more ominous Jim Crow-like treatment between hobbits and everyone else. While hobbits do not have dark skin, they have hairy feet, as if to imply that they are a Morlock-like underground savage that has been skillfully domesticated to serve the master race of warriors and wizards.

If you ask me, Tolkien had Nietzsche very much on the brain.

This is probably why I don’t care much for Tolkien.

(Thanks to Tao Lin for inspiring these thoughts.)

I’m now only twenty days of email behind: the best it’s been in some time. Bear with me. I’m replying as fast as I can.

The entries for this year’s Best American Fantasy have been announced. To whet everybody’s appetites for this interesting and variegated collection, I’ve provided links to all of the stories that are online:

“A Hard Truth About Waste Management” by Sumanth Prabhaker
from Identity Theory

“The Stolen Father” by Eric Roe
from Redivider

“The Saffron Gatherer” by Elizabeth Hand
from Saffron & Brimstone (M Press)

“The Whipping” by Julia Elliott
from The Georgia Review

“A Better Angel” by Chris Adrian
from The New Yorker

“Draco Campestris” by Sarah Monette
from Strange Horizons

“Geese” by Daniel Coudriet
from The Mississippi Review

“The Chinese Boy” by Ann Stapleton
from Alaska Quarterly Review

“The Flying Woman” by Meghan McCarron
from Strange Horizons

“First Kisses from Beyond the Grave” by Nik Houser
from Gargoyle

“Song of the Selkie” by Gina Ochsner
from Tin House

“A Troop [sic] of Baboons” by Tyler Smith
from Pindeldyboz

“Pieces of Scheherazade” by Nicole Kornher-Stace
from Zahir

“Origin Story” by Kelly Link (excerpt)
from A Public Space

“An Experiment in Governance” by E.M. Schorb
from The Mississippi Review

“The Next Corpse Collector” by Ramola D
from Green Mountains Review

“The Village of Ardakmoktan” by Nicole Derr
from Pindeldyboz

“The Man Who Married a Tree” by Tony D’Souza
from McSweeney’s

“A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” by Kevin Brockmeier
from Oxford American

“Pregnant” by Catherine Zeidler (excerpt)
from Hobart

“The Warehouse of Saints” by Robin Hemley
from Ninth Letter

“The Ledge” by Austin Bunn (excerpt)
from One Story

“Lazy Taekos” by Geoffrey A. Landis
from Analog

“For the Love of Paul Bunyan” by Fritz Swanson
from Pindeldyboz

“An Accounting” by Brian Evenson
from Paraspheres (Omnidawn)

“Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot” by Daniel Alarcón
from Zoetrope: All-Story

“Bit Forgive” by Maile Chapman
from A Public Space

“The End Of Narrative (1-29; Or 29-1)” by Peter LaSalle
from The Southern Review

“Kiss” by Melora Wolff
from The Southern Review