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Objectivity is not the word, since everything objective is useless. Things only become useful when they become subjective. (note, I stole this from Descartes) There needs to be a degree of subjectivity, but the subjectivity must vary from personal aesthetic to all other interpretations. It is not enough to just provide your view on a work, you must look for other views, and then attack every view from every thinkable angle to create a general consensus.
While I think Joyce fullfilled the Romance in levels that no one else even got close to it, I would not put him to fight with Faulkner about who produced better books. Shakespeare was amazing but a few writers produced better tests than him, Dom Quixote is nowhere perfect but who knows...
Anyways, Tolkien is a good writer my opinion. His best book is not Lord of the Rings, but Silmarillion. His merit is writing an epic - when the age of epics was supposed to be dead - in prose. He used geography and language (the fictional one he created) like few others. But that is all. His characters are indeed static (I would argument that in epic narrative characters are walking steryotipes like Tolkien's) and he showed a limited domain of narrative techniques even being a intelectual guy that dominated as schoolar all of those.
Joyce??? Geez, tricks and tiques, the guy was a walking master of literature - knowledge, references, languages and techniques put together in two ambitious (and sucessful) books. Not easier to be copied but Finnegans Wake is a shadow that covered all romancists after him. Plus, just like the Comedia, it is was just Good. Simple as that.
IF you knew anything about epics, as a genre, you would not have posted that. The Lord of The Rings is not an epic. It doesn't even come close to being an epic.
Lord of the Rings is a fantasy and a series of famous movies (a book for "I have seen the movie"-type of folks). I can't stand fantasy literature and I think we have a separate forum for this kind of writing. I have read The Hobbit though, excellent stuff for children.
Fantasy as a concept isn't bad. In practice however, it suffers from lack of creativity, mediocre writing, and cliché plots/characters. It seems to be in league with most of the other major genres, in the sense that they have set up such definite genre borders that they are having trouble/are not desiring to tear them down. Fantasy is still a selling power, however, which will probably bring about a couple good authors writing in it. Le Guin is readable, that for sure, as is Roger Zelazny. The problem is however, all those thick 1000 page 10 book series "epics" that tell nothing, and waste trees.
In terms of google fights, I was playing around, and nothing seems to even phase American literature in terms of hits. That, of course, is fun, but means absolutely nothing.
What about RL Stevenson or Sir Walter Scott? Or Dylan Thomas or Robert Burns? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by F.Emerald
CS Lewis was from Northern Ireland.
He wasn't a good author though. Pseudo-Christian allegory with somewhat privative morals, and misogynist themes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
Wales has produced, also, many fine poets writing in the original. Unfortunately, Welsh doesn't translate well at all.
Oh how very Shakespearean! For one minute I thought you were talking about TS Eliot! Any way, I haven't got much love for Lewis although I respect his erudition and try to ignore his Christian bias because it tends to offend my atheistic bias. Such clashes scare critical judgment away. I have heard the movie was blatantly Christian. Apparently its sequence, Prince Caspian will be out later this week. My boy read the whole Narnia series when he was 7. It was strange seeing him sitting down reading the huge mammoth of a book.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Dylan Thomas was Welsh, though he wrote in English.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Actually no they are not. Your inept reading of the text is your problem, not a problem of the text itself. The four hobbits-Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam all change during the novel-they "grow up", so to speak, become wiser away from their 'ignorant' hobbit roots.Quote:
Look. Each character in Lord of the Rings is no different than in the beginning of the novel
[QUOTE]Knows everything about everything, and yet does nothing. His flaws go as far as to forcing him to save the day. He is less round than even a Dumbledore. He is not a character, but simply a walking textbook, who happens to have useless magic to throw into the mix, which never seems to save the day.[QUOTE]
Again your reading is ignorant-Gandalf does not know everything about anything, he was essentially a Angelic spirit spent to Middle-Earth to help them battle against Sauron, in becoming 'humanized' he lost a great deal of his prior foresight and powers. As for him "doing nothing"-that is his role, to help and guide not to coerce, to understand minds and not to dominate them, that is his personality. He was sent to offer the inhabitants of Middle-Earth guidance, not to make their choices for them. As for him being 'useless' it is untrue-he kills the Balrog and drives away the Nazgul on several occasions.
I haven't read them. Or heard Wagner. Reducing authors to their 'primary sources' is a narrow-minded way of approaching literature.Quote:
The whole "the similarities and differences end with both rings being round" argument was used by Tolkien to dissuade comparison between the two works. Everyone can see exactly where Tolkien grabbed from, if they have read the primary sources (I would love to know which ones you have read, in order to better understand what sort of argument you can possibly be creating). Having read the primary sources, you can easily nitpick exactly who and what everything in Tolkien is
Oh, ho, ho, such witty casuistry. Putting words that don't exist into my own mouth! Great work there. I said his style could be considered archaic and said that if you found his prose boring then that was your opinion.Quote:
Give Tolkien to an adult who read him in his/her youth, and I would love to see the results. His prose, even you admit is terrible.
[QUOTE][stated there are no lessons in his books, and no form of allegorical connection with our world/QUOTE]
That is because essentially there are no lessons in books. What lessons do you seek exactly? Art is art and life is life, books with 'lessons'-existentialism blah blah etc. etc. are so tendentious that is an effort to get through them. Allegory is another banality in literature, another insidious form of propaganda used by myopic Naturalists, Realists and other such trash.
All great books, as Nabokov stated, are fairy tales, literature in essence is an 'escape from reality', to say that literature can only be what your parochially define it as being is just plain silly.Quote:
) escape from reality, which is not the purpose of literature
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Leopold Bloom is a far more developed character than Gandalf. There is no doubt in that, simply because we know his thoughts, we know he varys, we know he has inconsistent views, we know he likes certain things, and hypocritically doesn't like others. We even know his dietary desires. What we know about Gandalf, is that he occasionally scorns the boys, has an indefinite amount of knowledge, which never seems to do anything, and likes to smoke a pipe.
I think that you have a problem with reading what other people write. I said he is no less 'believable' as a character. Yes we do get to hear the thoughts of Bloom and Flaubert, but that is a case of the specific writers style than anything. How is hearing about how Bloom likes liver any different from hearing that Gandalf likes a smoke, a 'dietary habit' of Gandalf. Yes, Joyce is essentially a better writer than Tolkien, his language and syntax is far beyond any other English language writer that is Joyce's main strength.Quote:
Charles Bovary too is very developed in comparison. His character has roots, his actions always seem justified, and yet the justifications are just implied, and his character changes, and reacts. You don't get that in Gandalf
In relation to your point you claimed that Gandalf is less believable than the Wagnerian character because he was "good"-I point out that in all essence characters such as Bloom and Charles Bovary are also "good" characters who, by your definition are unrealistic, that by your logic we should have in the place of the incompetent Charles, a angry husband seeking vengeance, rather than telling Rodolpe that he forgives him. I am not saying that a jealous husband is any more 'realistic' than a non-jealous one, I am using your logic to show that it is flawed in terms of interpreting characters.
Gandalf's justification lies in his own personality and his own mission, he was a guide, he helped people make their decision-he certainly did not have an infinite supply of knowledge.
Wow-first I am somehow ignorant of Indian culture and now I am hack reader. Thanks. To me you are narrow-minded and arrogant, but that doesn't matter I forgive you.Quote:
Did you even read the books? To me it seems like you are just a movie fan, who read a Wiki summary and thinks he knows the secrets.
I thought Tolkien doesn't go into any detail? What is wrong with going into detail? Wasn't it a good thing that we hear about Bloom's dietary habits?Quote:
He provides family trees where names will do, and insists on describing every detail of something before moving on
Your reading problems are now reaching monumental levels. I already explained in a paragraph in my previous post why he deserves to be read. He writes beautifully, yes he writes 'archaically', but I do not find that as aesthetically displeasing as you do. That is life, opinions are like asses, everybody has one, though Tolkien does not have by any means an abysmal writing style. His descriptions of nature are beautiful, he has many 'profound' moments in his novel (in terms of philosophy), his characters are not as static as you would assume, especially in the 'Silmarillion', which contains, in my opinion, some of the most interesting characters in fiction and his creation of a whole new world is magnificent. The ending of LoTR was, for me, one of the most touching moments in literature. LoTR is by no means medicore in terms of language or theme, or those short passages with illimunate a book.Quote:
Why should he be read? You tell me.
Tolkien deals with many important issues in relation to life, if that is what turns you on. His thoughts on power and on death, the main theme of the book, on the power of love, are profound.
[QUOTE][Anyone who has read the books, and other books by his contemporaries, can clearly see his prose is rubbish./QUOTE]
Clearly. And it keeps topping lists of 'Greatest Book of All Time' because....
:lol:Quote:
Oh how very Shakespearean! For one minute I thought you were talking about TS Eliot!
Speaking of Shakespeare, did you hear about that the students from a Jewish school who refused to read him because they felt he was anti-semitic? Honestly, you couldn't make it up....