A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
Nonetheless, every camp has its battery of canons which are drawn up and arrayed for battle. We're almost to the point of devising a canon numbering system. We may change them frequently, but we know our canons like we know the backs of our enemies' hands. A good canon is well-tended with loving care. It is nourished and fed with only the richest detail from the most intricately researched of debates. The Care and Feeding of the Tolkien canon may one day appear on bookstore shelves, and only someone who has never asked, "Were the Silvan Elves really the Avari?" will laugh.
The neatness of one's canon is all too easily disturbed by the rowdy intrusion of someone else's canon. That is most likely why there will never be a single, accepted universal Tolkien canon. Never mind the fact that there could never be such a thing. If we all agreed on one canon for anything, too many people would have to admit to being wrong about something. All the ambiguity with which we have laced Tolkien's words would vanish in a puff of reality. All the fun would be taken out of the debates, and we'd have nothing left to argue over, except whose fault it was for bringing us to such a pass.
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