The real surge of interest in Tolkien's writing has been among high school and college students. Students make strange and varied works their own, and if there is any significance to their adoption of The Lord of the Rings—beyond the fact that it's a good book—the hell with it; one or another of our explainers of the young will take note of it pretty soon. But there is one possible reason for Tolkien's popularity that I would like to put forward, because it concerns the real strength of The Lord of the Rings. Young people in general sense the difference between the real and the phony. They don't know it—when they begin to know that difference, and to try to articulate it, then they are adults and subject to all the pains and fallibilities of that state. They can be misled by fools or madmen...