Tolkien Escapes

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
~Ursula K. Le Guin possibly in reference to J.R.R. Tolkien

Here is the Tolkien:

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?

Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter."

Whatever the provenance of the quote may be, it emphasizes something I've realized about my reading history. From the "sophisticated" to the "simple" in that list, Tolkien continually rises in my esteem.
If I'm being honest, the feat he accomplished in building the world he did, is at the top of my literary hierarchy. No other work has inspired so many re-reads for me, and a re-read is expensive given how long the list of books-in-waiting.