Eglerio! Praise them! I want to type fast and congratulate American Youth on the (J.R.R.) Tolkien Cult before it is over. Perhaps it ends today and thousands of people, shutting Volume I or II or III of The Lord of the Rings, are now never to know if Gollum came back or Frodo came to. Still, I would hope that no one, even on the West Coast where the time lags, missed the Door Scene in which two necromancers exert two separate spells, one to open a door and the other to shut it. The molecules of the door, flustered by these opposing influences, lose their grip on each other and go off every which way. The door achieves absolute Doorlessness.

The addiction of young people to scenes like that is unrivaled in its purity. In late and jaded adolescence, they have demanded their right to...