It seems we're often confronted with the job of separating the artist from their work, because of distasteful personal failings of the artist.<p>It's awfully nice when it's not necessary, and the artist turns out to be a decent human being.
I wish people still wrote so eloquently in their everyday correspondence. It seems like the further you go back in time the more beautiful the language used to be. Some of the letters back and forth during the American Revolution were very nice, like between John and Abigail Adams. Going back further the letters between Erasmus and Thomas Moore were also very nicely written. Now it's all emoticons and lol.
My favorite part of this letter is where Tolkien pretends to not understand what the Germans mean by "Aryan", and initially answers as if they are referring to what we now call the Indo-Iranian language family[1]. Obviously he knows quite well what they really are asking, as the rest of his letter makes clear.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranian_languages" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranian_languages</a>
Somewhat related, my favorite letter from Kurt Vonnegut:<p><a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html</a>
Would you be so kind as to change the title, which is ambiguous now I come to read it again, rather than misleading, to something like<p><pre><code> Tolkien verbally pistol-whips Nazi publisher who wanted
proof of Tolkien's Aryan ancestry before publishing `The
Hobbit`.
</code></pre>
The thing that worries me, and that Tolkien conceded, is that these were probably not bad people, just people obeying the law. Problem was they were not good people, willing to disobey the law.