Can people stop bumping old threads? Especially when they are not adding anything new to an already dead thread? We had these conversations years ago. IF someone wishes to revisit them, would it not be better to start a new thread?
Can people stop bumping old threads? Especially when they are not adding anything new to an already dead thread? We had these conversations years ago. IF someone wishes to revisit them, would it not be better to start a new thread?
Let’s see: if JBI likes a novel (or an “epic”) it is because of his refined good taste. If anyone likes Lord of the Rings it is “by accident”. That appears to be JBI’s suggestion, at least. What’s wrong with LOTR? For one thing, it isn’t at “true epic”.Originally Posted by JBI
There have (of course) been “true epics” (long poems celebrating a culture hero’s deeds) that have little literary merit. Only the best of them remain in our literary canon. So whether a work is a “true epic” has little to do with whether it has literary merit.
In addition, a great many “epic heroes” are “flat” as characters. Literary fiction (as JBI and every high school English teacher have long made teenage fantasy fans painfully aware) revolves around “character development”. Fantasy – and many epics – do not. The character of the hero is established from the start – the tale describes how that character will react to situations.
Phillip Larkin, one of Tolkien’s students, complained about the master’s “Beowulf” lectures: “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in. What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.” To each his own.
Tolkien’s innovation in fantasy was twofold: he begins Lord of the Rings with a Birthday party for hobbits. As Adam Gopnik said in the New Yorker, the book represents a marriage between the “Elder Eddas” and “Wind in the Willows”.
In addition, Tolkien created a pre-modern, religious world-view in which the past is inevitably more glorious and advanced than the present, and in which the future will fade even further. Literary fiction concentrates on “character development” and moral dilemma, but fantasy concentrates on knowledge, which is equally important to teenagers being initiated into adulthood. The rings were forged by the wise, and their power can both create (look at the elven rings) and corrupt. Control of this magical technology is a form of power, as is knowledge of the past. The teenager must learn to control magical technology to become an adult (learning to drive a car, for example, is one rite of passage). He must also learn the lore of the land to possess adult power (that’s why he goes to school for all those years).
T.H. White in “Once and Future King” tried to tell an epic in the terms of literary fiction – character development and moral dilemmas abound. Tolkien (with a few exceptions, like Gollum) eschews both character development and moral dilemmas to concentrate on lore. Becoming an adult involves maturation in terms of character development and moral development. It also involves mastering a culture’s knowledge and technology.
Finally, JBI’s snarky and supercilious attitude (“(Tolkien) is merely a cultural phenomenon which has survived by being raised on a cultural pedestal by the inhabitants of many a parents' basement.”) is ridiculous. He is entitled to his preference for literary fiction over fantasy (or other forms genre fiction), and he is correct that fantasy appeals to teenagers. However, many literary critics (including the previously cited Gopnik) admire Tolkien, and parents’ basements are perfectly comfortable domiciles, that do not detract from their residents’ taste in literature. On the other hand, silly ad hominem arguments like JBI's SHOULD detract from his credibility on this board.
ETA: Whoops -- didn't see that JBI's post was several years old. Oh, well, I still had fun writing my critique of it.
Last edited by Ecurb; 04-26-2013 at 01:51 PM.
Yours seems a pretty silly Ad hominem argument anyway. Besides which, Tolkien is boring and flat, and his characters have no growth or depth. Frodo is not Achilles. Get over it, his books are mediocre. Now my opinion has changed, it isn't even hippies reading him, merely disgruntled teenagers.
I'd agree that Tolkien's characters lack "growth and depth", but his world has a great deal of both. World-building was his main interest, developing fleshed-out characters as opposed to character types wasn't (though he did manage that occasionally also, when he cared to). Every author has strengths and weaknesses, and Tolkien's strengths were very strong indeed.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Coming up with an imaginary world is not a strength. Who cares about imaginary worlds? His prose and ideas all seemed borrowed. The more you read his source materials the more you feel his world is less impressive.
Stories tend to rely on characters and plot more than settings. Some books rely on settings more heavily, such as Japanese Samurai novels, American Westerns, or Chinese Wuxia novels. The reasons for this are complex, and I am exploring them in a paper I am writing, so I do not want to say too much. But anyway, we can say that these fictional settings, the Wild West, or the Jianghu, or the Samurai landscape, are rooted in a cultural tradition that expresses a sort of nationalistic, or "romantic" imagery. That is why many, many Western movies have extremely long shots of scenery - The Searchers, for instance, relies heavily on Monument Valley as a sort of visual metaphor.
My problem is that the setting of the Rings does not actually do that. Whereas the setting of space in Star Wars creates an infinite possibility, following the lead of Dune (which is in itself a highly flawed novel), The Rings lacks the characters that make Star Wars interesting - Luke is a far more heroic character than Frodo, the Emperor and Vader are more interesting than the non-present Sauron, or even his ring.
Generally epic-style novels or movies rely on settings in specific ways. First of all, the setting follows a growth - the wide expansiveness is for "exploration" a theme evoked but not demonstrated throughout the Rings. Second, it is to showcase a growth of character. Luke leaving his aunt and uncle in Star Wars becomes the Jedi by the end of the story - he has downed a death star, and redeemed his father. That is what we call the setting, and the adventure used to illustrate the development of a character - he leaves the familiar, and enters the infinite world of possibilities, and then reaches a maturity and fulfills his quest.
Virtually all heroic stories feature a similar trajectory. The hero Achilles is not Achilles until he slays Hector - he fights over a woman, loses his boyfriend, and then becomes the god-made armor clad hero. He is already established of course, but the reason for the conflict propels him from merely prowess to greatness - The same is to be said of Aeneas who if he remained in Carthage, would not be Aeneas. We then must interpret the stories as featuring a sort of plot trajectory.
The rings lacks this. The boys all return to the Shire in the end, except Frodo, who after a period goes off to die. There is no character there, despite the film's decisive inputting of it.
Likewise the villains hold to victorian children stereotypical goblins. We see no depth on their part, and therefore the conflict is rather shallow at best. In point of example, though a bit crass of one, the dwarf and the elf like to compete who can kill the most orcs. Strangely enough, the same contest was written about in Japan, about how two soldiers competed who could butcher the most Chinese people. When they tied, they even went into extra innings.
Now, how does that reflect the book? Which story hits harder, the Japanese or the Elf and the Dwarf. I see that problem throughout the book - the enemy is virtually without any personality, the characters don't grow or make difficult decisions, or actually do any thinking at all. There are so few female characters as to make that element even more silly, except for a sort of Macbeth style death for the Witch king where he is killed by a woman and not a man, which to me seems forced at best.
What are his strengths except for inventing a setting and filling it with languages and concepts and a history. My question is why do we care about his magical world in the first place - we have a far more magical world right here before our eyes, and we have far more persuasive and interesting imaginary worlds in our poetry and literature. The romance landscape of Tasso and Ariosto is far more powerful a setting than the Rings, as are the German mythological cycle settings he borrows from, or the Arthurian cycle he is obliquely referencing.
The main reason for this is simple - these are created out of culture, politics, and tradition - they have a resonance with the people. It is no surprise that Arthur becomes so English during the Victorian age of empire, despite the best original works being written in French mostly. Frye used the term National Pastoral for these settings, and Moorcock equates the setting or pastoral of the Rings to a sort of Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter like world of noble savages, or whatever. We can see that clearly in the Shire, which is like a living thriving version of Lyrical Ballads (which to me all read like elegies in contrast). Such an idea is dated even from the outset, more than 150 years after Wordsworth and Coleridge mourned its death.
I don't see really anything in Tolkien to warrant a reading. It is amazing how he could invent so much, granted, but that does not satisfy the wants of reading a book for the sake of a book. I am not sure if setting alone can carry a novel, and certainly I would say this is an example of a failure.
Whats worse is his prose style which is just boring to read.
JBI, they are winding you up. And you write this: The main reason for this is simple - these are created out of culture, politics, and tradition - they have a resonance with the people.
That is not right and you know this. Tolkien do belong to his time. His linguistic game is not so fantastic, other writers were doing liguistic games at that and the study of modern idioms, the idea of that a idiom is itself a form of literature is from that time. His politics (pacifism, the commun men, etc) all from that time too.
And the book spawned Dungeons and Dragons settings where people play with those bland races, it is a best seller, a very popular movie, etc. It hooked on people (does not matter if hooked because it is aesthetic merits).
You cannot go and claim otherwise, because that would make Tolkien a genius, living above the world and writting a book which is popular for magic, since nothing conects with the reader, so it must be just the words.
I'm reminded of something far simpler though - the childhood capacity to imagine. R. L. Stephenson evokes it in the beginning of Treasure Island in his poem to the reluctant purchaser. We all have this capacity to imagine ourselves off to our own sorts of Neverlands.
Dungeons and Dragons is not Tolkien, it is something far more basic - it plays on our desire for a world to invent stories. But lets be honest - we can do that in other settings - in truth, the Dungeons and Dragons world seems far more mirroring someone like Lord Dunsany's works, or the world of Disney Fairy Tales.
The sort of quest that dominates such games is not Tolkien's quest - it is something more directed through adventure. Such an adventure, or game is mirrored actually at the beginning of Peter Pan, far before Tolkien, where the boys are playing Pirates and Peter Pan in their room. Such a genre of games has almost always been popular - in fact, it was hardly invented by Tolkien. Tolkien just facilitated the invention of the 50 sided dice or whatever they use to randomize the game.
As for Tolkien's messages, they are flat in the novel. The one best picked up upon is his sort of environmentalism, which, though great in concept, is still not enough to carry the books.
As for connecting to the reader, I think you confuse the language and capacity of the individuals story-telling, with that of the text itself. Of course people like to go out and invent their own imaginary worlds, I gave three great examples of other genres which do the same thing, and have been immensely popular. My point is that though people go and play in their own worlds that may be Tolkien influenced, that does not credit his literature as particularly stimulating.
All fiction creates imaginary worlds.
Yes, Tolkien is an appeal to storytelling and all the Peter Pan, Alice, Wizard of Oz need to adventure in other worlds. Something not off with Conan's, Tarzan, Lovecraft, or Rossetti Goblin Market or even Anne and Emily Bronte sister imaginary world that survives in some of their poems or Dante's or 1001 nights, Once upon a time. But that is exactly putting him within a tradition, right? When you claim he created them out of tradition, you seems to just justify the fanboys that imply tolkien was a genius that created the whole fantasy genre. Not this and his work is after all, a huge children story he kept telling to his kids. There is nothing original about creating a world, eventually every author do it. Tolkien world is even a lot of realistic, nothing so special (of course, the ammount of details he added is unique, but this is not the point).
And yes, the mesage of tolkien is flat out in the surface. Again, it is a children story after all. But this implies he is conected with his time, not some alien thing that poppped out of nowhere.
And you understood wrong, D&D are indeed a form of oral storytelling, nothing to link to Tolkien here. But the rest? Tolkien is the basic reading of rpg players - the basic setting is all about tolkien but it is not that - when you get authors from TSR fantasy, you see tolkien. Margaret Weiss and all the Dragonlance writters were tolkien readers, they try to follow his rule. When people talk about the books, the model is Tolkien not Lord Dunsany, because the elements that come to Dunsany are more like there due to modern writers and Tolkien being use as reference. It is just like, you remember, when people think Harry Potter compared to Alice or Peter Pan, they do not make the reference. It is "Rowling creation". The D&D is basically a reader of Tolkien not Dunsany, just like they probally read Neil Gaiman and not Chesterton and Dracula and not Carmilla (Or even, Anne Rice and not Dracula). The movies even, are all a D&D adaptation of tolkien, Peter Jackson, a rpg player, changed the movie to a rpg game rhytim, battles and personification (moving a bit from tolkien, like the grump and funny dwarf that is more a D&D thing). Heck, i recall the first movie, people in the movies literary screamming "Vorpal" "He rolled a 20", "fumble" etc. The D&D players were all watching just like they do with today with Game of Thrones. It does not say much to the quality of any work - but people conected with Lord of the Rings.
Like I said once, you must look why Lord of the Rings do conect with people -their fanboys are an evidence of it - and why still being read for what is now? The third generation, denying it just help the fanboys to build arguments of how the sole fantasy was made up from thin air by tolkien, etc. I sustain, i think tolkien looks like Stoker - generate a popular work, that is very derivative, but put in modern terms with some captivating idea behind it that overcome the flaw and difficulty of the work. He will probally survive like this.
I still really like the movies and dislike the books. Tolkein had some really threadbare aspects which fans who were better artists have embellished and fleshed out over the years. The visual language of the films is so much beyond what Tolkein could do with language. Several generations of graphic designers have tried their hand at depicting Tolkein's world, among them the illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe, Queen Margrethe II, Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, Jimmy Cauty, and Ted Nasmith. And actors like Ian McKellen gave a depth and nuance to otherwise lifeless characters. People like what the stories have become more than what Tolkien actually wrote. He tapped into a zeitgeist that just got layered on top of his creation. You think anybody likes Bob Kane's Batman? No. But they like what it's become sixty years down the line.
When I saw The Hobbit recently, I really enjoyed the experience, even though at the back of my mind I was like "Every time these dwarves get in trouble Gandalf bails them out deus ex machina style. Then whenever he gets in over his head he just calls one of those giant eagles. It happens over and over again." The less the film leans on Tolkien's contributions the stronger it becomes.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I dislike the movies. Yes, they have great visual, but it is getting outdated every year. It is not a problem, overall movies advance faster on visual technique than anything else. But the movie is a Dungeon & Dragon take on Tolkien. Tolkien himself is not very dynamic as the movies, there is not much powerful show off (Gandalf is deux ex michina run by windows in the book, he often mumbles than solve anything. The books are amazingly poor in magic.). In the movies you jump from scene to scene, it is new roll of D20.
I keep think what are the merits of the books (i prefer Simarillion, as unfinished as it is) that sustain so much readings. And I think of Dracula. There is a handful of good chapters in the book, mostly the begining. Then the london part is a mess. Of course, Dracula got enriched too (as you suggests with Batman), Stoker prose is not good, he is copying from many sources. So, I guess Tolkien has momments on the book, mixed in the geography, which works as Dracula. Maybe Boromir betrayal, maybe the role one ring to rule them all appeal, maybe gollum... But tolkien is all in a tradition and has conected with people (he does not need to conect only with his books after all).
Bumping old threads? Is that like... mentioning Shakespeare n Blake n stuff?
I’ll grant that Achilles is an interesting character, even in the terms of literary fiction. The same cannot be said about all other epic heroes, however. Roland is so “flat” a figure, that he has to go mad (I believe his “wits” were kept in a jar on the Moon until returned to him by Astolpho, who rode Pegasus to the moon and back to get them, or something like that) in order to add a little “character” to the proceedings.
Personally, I love Lord of the Rings. I read it first when I was ten or 12 years old, and doubtless it has particular appeal to youthful tastes. However, the notion that a novel should appeal ONLY to mature tastes is faulty, I think. In “On Art” Tolstoy argues that universal appeal is a sign of the best art. That art which appeals only to those with a specialized education is, in Tolstoy’s opinion, consigned to the category of second-rate.
I wouldn’t go as far as Tolstoy. Nonetheless, I don’t think novels that appeal to children are automatically lesser than more sophisticated novels. When I was a kid, I liked spaghetti, and hated most other dinners. I have since trained my palette to enjoy rotten cheese, wine, curry, and any number of other foods. None of this, however, diminishes the excellence of spaghetti. I think my youthful taste in literature was excellent: I still love “The Treasure Seekers”, “The Narniad”, “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped”, “The Jungle Books”, and, yes, “Lord of the Rings” (also the Charlemagne cycle that included the madness of Roland).
Indeed, I wouldn’t trust the sophisticate who renounced his teenage literary favorites any more than I would trust the man who was no longer in love with his high school girlfriend. No literary love is stronger than one’s first literary love – just as no Eros is more powerful than one’s first sexual love.
As far as JBI’s specific criticisms of LOTR, the debate has gone on for decades. Some “literary” critics side with JBI; some side with me. Obviously, Tolkien fans don’t find his prose style “just boring to read”, but if JBI does, I’d suggest he refrain from reading it. However, the notion that the fault is with the novel instead of the reader is a bit self-serving, considering how many people of undoubted good taste have loved the book. I’ve read a great many canonical novels, and agree with the general praise most of them have garnered. I’ve tried to read “The Brothers Karamazov” twice, getting more than halfway both times, and have never been able to finish it. Nonetheless, I believe my inability to appreciate the book is my failure, not Dostoevsky’s.
In addition, one principle of literary criticism is that it is unfair to criticize a book for failing to be a different book. Criticizing LOTR for failing to be literary fiction violates this principle. (I agree with JBI, however, about the Gimli vs. Legolas orc-slaying contest. It's out of character with the rest of the novel.)
I agree, Camilo. The LOTR movies were better than "The Hobbit" (which is horrible), but they suffered from the following:
1) Too many endless battle scenes. It's as if the filmmakers couldn't resist playing with their new, digital toys. It's not that the battle scenes were bad; they weren't. But every one of them should have been half the length.
2) The Frodo sections in the last two movies were butchered. First of all, they changed the plot of the Faramir plot, nd the Frodo - Sam relationship. Second, as Frodo came under the Ring's power, he looked like a ridiculous zombie, with his eyes rolled up in his head. It was so overplayed as to be assinine. It was as if the directors were unwilling to let the audience figure out what was going on, and decided to beat their viewers over the head with it all.
3) Just as the Ring's power was overdone, so were the silly "wizard fights" between Gandalf and Saruman. Part of the intrigue of the books is that the magical "powers" of characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Sauron, and even Aragorn are powers of character, wisdom and psychic influence, as when Aragorn commands the Dead. They do not involve using staffs as ray-guns.
4) ON the positive side, the sets were great and the scenery was excellent.
I didn`t like both ( LOTH and Hobbit". I think that Tolkien deserves better dramatisation.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
