The death of magic (among other things)

James Bowman (“Avatar and the Flight from Reality,” New Atlantis) lambasts James Cameron and other fantasists for seeking to play God and create a whole new reality as opposed to an artistic interpretation of the world around them. One reading of the kind of fantasy concocted by Tolkien and Lewis says that they were trying to recapture the magic of the Middle Ages and, in some cases, of early Christian mythology. Of course, someone whose right hemisphere inhibits unfailingly the emotional impulses processed through the right side of his cortex will be quite immune to the sense of wonderment such wreckers of the Western art canon sought to evoke. And he would fail to see in Avatar anything beyond the lame literal story it recreates. Shall I also mention that in an earlier article Bowman said it was stupid to think that Google was “making us stupid.” I do wish him countless hours on the web free of even minor brain impairment.