Originally Posted by
JBI
Silm as you call it clearly isn't polished. Tolkien himself didn't even finish it, and his son barely managed to string it together. You want to talk about interesting characters? I doubt the name Tolkien has ever been associated with character; clearly he is a setting driven writer. That being said, his story is reliant on a fictional world, where unbelievable (meaning it in the sense that one cannot believe them) things occur, and trees get three page poems to ramble on about growing. That being said, what you call boring to some may be very interesting, yet I find it very difficult to see how you can criticize another author for having weak characterization, yet fail to realize Tolkien's is clearly crummy.
Personally I think most of the "I love the Lord of the Rings" talk is more of an Emperor's New Clothes desicion. What I mean by this is that people are really afraid to go out and say they hate the book, and in fact many people will claim to like the stuff even if they have not read it, and have just seen the movies. The books perhaps have some aesthetic merit, but to go as far as to say Silm. as being the greatest book of all time is a bit much.
To dismiss Dante as boring, yet accept a Tolkien book with no real structure as interesting I find a bit annoying. Like I pointed out before, many readers have displayed such distaste for the long boring story Tolkien has crafted in his tale, and have dismissed LOTR as boring. How can you so easilly dismiss Dante as boring? Have you even read it? Whereas Tolkien goes into boring detail about family trees and things (more than even the Russian writers) Dante leaves a lot to the imagination. Not to mention the fact that the Comedia is a self reflection piece, written in a more difficult style, reflecting real characters (I include Beatrice, Virgil, and Dante as the characters) (who by the way aren't as cut-out looking as Tolkien's) in a very unique way.
Your subjective argument is clearly lacking any real foundation, considering that I have yet to see a major study showing this to be the greatest book of all time, or even top 20.
So please, rephrase your post since clearly this post is idiotic, subjective, and has no purpose other than to make you appear like an idiot. You will just sit here turning down every single name every user posts on this thread and saying another "this author is boring" "this author has weak characters" "this author has weak plots" when really everyone can easilly say that about Silm, and in fact many do.
And of course there is your argument against Proust and against Milton. having not read Proust, I will just comment saying that to dismiss Milton as boring just from the name is perhaps the weakest argument you could make, and instead of making you seem funny, or intelligent, just adds to the stupidity of the post.
~JBI
P.S. Tolkien's fiction in my opinion is some of the driest, most boring, poorly stupidly plotted, work, that to me is void of any aesthetic merit. Until perhaps you are the only one left in this world who can and has read a book, I doubt this will be the greatest book of all time (well maybe that is slightly hyperbolic, there are perhaps a few people like you who favor this book over all others, though by its influence I doubt you could even go as far as to calling it a "great" book.)
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