[BellsOnSunday]

A lot of the points you raise aren't much to do with it being dated IMO, merely the style in which its written. You say "we'd do this, we wouldn't do that" (where "we" is presumably modern day fantasy writers), but he made those artistic choices. It sounds like you consider writing fiction to be a technological domain, where advances are made that make old forms obsolete. Maybe fantasy writing is -- I don't read it, although I have read LOTR -- but that makes fantasy sound like an even more limited genre than I thought it was. I'm an avid reader BTW, but of literary fiction, for want of a better term.

I absolutely agree that no one can write sincerely in the style of a bygone age. But having been written in the past doesn't in itself make, say, Anthony Powell's books (to pick someone writing in a different style at a similar time) dated. It's not like we learned more about how to write novels since then, or novelists of today would be easily able to do better than Powell, which I don't think they are.

Your points about racism etc do make sense though, things like that can be jarring, and it's always a bit disappointing to me to remember that our favourite writers were subject to the reality tunnels of their time.

[veddox]

> and it's always a bit disappointing to me to remember that our favourite writers were subject to the reality tunnels of their time

As are we. Don't forget that.