Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[Inderjit Sanghe]

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Original is what sense? Have you read his primary texts? in terms of originality it is best to contrast him with someone who drew from the same sources, the great Opera composer and librettist, Richard Wagner. Wagner's version is primarily about the conflict between the characters. He had borrowed more aspects of the plot from other sources than Tolkien had, but had created genuine characters, and believable conflict within his fantasy world. Wagner's Ring is character driven. Each character is a representation of his society, and the plot creates a commentary. Wagner's Wotan, compared to Gandalf is cruel, selfish, flawed, brutal, lecherous, violent, yet at the same time, shares the wisdom in common. He is far more believable than his Tolkienian equal in the sense that he has negative qualities, and personal flaws.

As Tolkien said in relation to Wagner, a somewhat tenous link, the similarities start and end with the rotundity of the rings.

When you talk about 'genuine' and 'believable', I do not understand what you mean, such abstractions are merely parochial laws to reflect arbitrary definitions of character "believability"-taking to extremes, or even moderately, it leads to mediocre Maupaussant naturalism, realism and other such gash. So, according to your logic, so long as a character exhibits negative characteristics then he becomes what you would call "realistic"-a ridiculous, Dostoevskiaan form of characterisation.

To say that Gandalf does not have what you would call "personal flaws" also denotes a clumsy reading of the text. He is, or can be, grumpy and sharp-tongued-yes he does not commit mass rapes like every literary character seemingly should do, but he not without his flaws of judgement (in relation to Saruman) and of action. He is, by the way, the wisest character in the Lord of the Rings, so that would go someway in explaining why he is so "good" morally. He is no less believable than say, Charles Bovary or Leopold Bloom, sexual idiosyncrasies aside

The contention that Wagner is able to create a character which "represents society" is equally banal-how can an abstractive work of art, create characters who, magically, represent a whole group of people? Art is art and life is life, classifying people or races via art is a ridiculous way of looking at things.
Works which rely on 'great ideas', the cant of Kant etc. are often tendentious and platitudinous in the extreme.

Tolkien on the other hand relied primarily on plot.

So?

His characters too are primarily borrowed, but his plot is more original (though in no way original).

Even when Tolkien is original he is not original? Fantastic!

His prose is mimicking the texts he drew on as well, being both archaic and boring.

Archaic-yes, boring-thay is your own opinion. As for mimicking texts-does Joyce not do that for a large part of Ulysses? Flaubert, Ibsen, sports journalism, romance novels etc. Joyce's pastiches are parodic but that does not take away from the fact that many of the greatest writers write in a similar way to predecessors and contemporaneous writers, Katherine Mansfield mimics Chekov but that doesn't make her short stories any less brilliant.

They have no personalities, and often stop at the most bazaar times to do the most predictable things.

Thank your for informing me about the proliferation of Turkish markets in Middle-Earth a fact which I was hitherto unaware of.


They do have personalities actually, multi-faceted ones, they are there is you read them close enough. Frodo fails in his quest, Boromir tries to steal the ring, Sam and all other hobbits are by and large ignorant and narrow-minded, though essentially charming, Saruman falls, the two main heroic 'races' in Tolkien's myth, the Numenoreans and the Noldor, were both arrogant. (their greatest strength and weakness)

The men in Middle-Earth are no more or less realistic or true-to-life than any characters in other novels, or, as Tolkien said, they do not represent anything which men cannot and do not aspire to in the "real world". It is no more or less realistic than say the perpetual eruditity of Stephen Dedalaus.

Tolkien is a very good writer, a very good describer, especially of nature; some of his passages are magnificently beautiful, LoTR is interspersed with passages of aesthetic beauty.

Did he advance the genre of fantasy beyond where it had been before? many would answer yes, but since if you read his primary sources, you can see that he really created nothing that had not been done before, sometimes way before, we can only answer one way, No

He pretty much created the modern fantasy lit. movement, yes he was influenced by "older legends" but he was able to rework them to his own ends-just as Joyce was able to rework Dujardin's concepts in Ulysses-to say that he created nothing original is to reduce novels to the bunkum of great ideas, in which case what did Joyce create, being uninterested in them?

He created a new way of writing and describing worlds of inventing races and characters and languages. Tolkien was brilliant linguist and fictional creator-his oeuvre contained a variety of new languages, of races, states and history. Tolkien created an entire world in that mediocre brain of his.

no, many readers, even fans, agree his prose is dreadful

Oh please. I never knew fans enjoy reading terribly written books. Tolkien was a philologist and had a fine prose style.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Either way, Tolstoi and Joyce were influential, but they were not central figures of a national literary movement. Joyce, though always writing about Ireland, was more away from there than there. Tolstoi had less of an affect than Pushkin

Of course Pushkin was more influential than Tolstoi-he was at the forefront of the Russian literary movement. Pushkin is a brilliant poet, he was famous more for his verses than his prose, and he was enormously influential to both contempary writers and poets (Lermentov and Gogol) and great Russian poets and writers further down the line-Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Nabokov, Block, Mandelstam and the rest, but I still think Tolstoi is the superior artist, as well as being more "Russian" than Pushkin who was influence by non-Russian writers such as Scott and Byron. Tolstoi's ability to create a 'Russian novel', so to speak, owed much to Pushkin's influence and creation of Russian literature. (He was far more 'Russian' than say Turgenev or Dostoevskii, howevermuch the latter derided European influences.)

People like Hemingway and sometimes Faulkner took English prose to new levels in practical, reproducible ways, which Joyce's prose doesn't. Da Vinci might have envisioned the helicopter but it was the Wright brothers who actually got us off of the ground. Joyce is a pie in the sky intellectual who's more concerned with how he thinks prose should work than with how it actually does. To this day there are a lot more Hemingway and Faulkner followers than there are Joyces. They are the ones with living legacies.

Hemingway, though a great short story writer, was not much of a novelist. To compare him, or Faulkner, to Joyce is like creating a tennis amauter to a Grand Slam champion-Joyce's prose is inventive, brilliant and outstanding, more so than Hemingway or Faulkner.

His stream-of-consciousness and interior monologue techniques, although borrowed, revolutionzed literature and how characters were supposed to think and speak. In terms of novelistic influence it would be difficult to look beyond Tolstoi, Flaubert and Proust in terms of more influential novelists.

India's philosophy seems to have taken the west at many angles, even leading to the rise of free love during the 1960s. You are ignorant in the sense that you only look at novelists, and ignore poetry writers, and non-fiction writers.

Associating 'free love' with a sexually conservative country like Indian is tenous. Yes Indian philosophy influenced Western European thought (i.e. Schopenhaeur) and the kama sutra, but neither of those trains of thought are actually relevant in modern India, and besides anything else labelling such things as "Indian" is a misnomer since 'India' as a nation-state is a modern creation-there was no India when they were written, like there was an England when Shakespeare or Chaucer wrote. India preached a lot of wisdom, though it rarely practices it-it is a Western myth to believe that it does-Pankaj Mishra's "The Romantics" hilariously satircizes Western misconceptions of India.

Yes I am only dealing with fiction as this is a discussion on literature.

[JBI]

Look. Each character in Lord of the Rings is no different than in the beginning of the novel. The whole plot is a quest to become nothing. It is circular, ending where it began, with the only thing that happens is that some characters die. Comparing Joyce's Leopold Bloom to Gandalf is ridiculous. Gandalf always shows up when you expect him to be the least expected (he shows up when he is least expected so often, that he creates a loop of expectation). 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.

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. I would love for you to give me an example of exactly why Tolkien should a) be read, when more people find him boring than not, and his fan base is solidly built on the rare exception of people, who only read within one genre. 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. He stated there are no lessons in his books, and no form of allegorical connection with our world. His characters are flat by any standards (perhaps Wagner's are also flat, but a) they have more emotions, and b) they grow) and his plot was borrowed. What does he have to offer? Why does he deserve to be read? What does anyone get from reading Tolkien besides a) bordom, or b) escape from reality, which is not the purpose of literature.

and off the record, yes, more people desire to read Maupassant's characters than Tolkien's. The reason why is because they are characters, and not cut-outs. You betray your lack of knowledge of him by naming him a naturalist, when he clearly wasn't even consistently realist. (many of his works rely on fantastical and spiritual elements).

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.

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.

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. Anyone who has read the books, and other books by his contemporaries, can clearly see his prose is rubbish. Archaic borrowing cannot be justified by the fact that others borrow styles. The book is archaic, because Tolkien had some fantasy in his head of being one of his dead authors, and writing in their language. It adds nothing but boredom, and it serves no purpose other than to try and make an unauthentic book seem authentic. If we compare it to, lets say, Eco's language in The Name of the Rose, that he mixes with Latin, and other Vernacular, we can see who clearly knows the use of language. Tolkien's language is boring, his poetry terrible, and his detail over-done. He provides family trees where names will do, and insists on describing every detail of something before moving on. Why should he be read? You tell me.

[JBI]

Faulkner, in terms of readability, is definitely the best of those all. Most of Hemingway's works are already period pieces, or on the road to become them. Joyce simply didn't write enough to outdo Faulkner though, but he is still quite important, and an excellent writer. People just don't seem to get that just because they don't like a book, doesn't mean it is a bad book. I personally don't like many novels which I rate highly. My personal aesthetic has nothing to do with the quality of the work, but rather it has to do with what I read.

[Niamh]

If I had to name the most overrated writer ever, I would name James Joyce. Say what you want about Tolkien, at least his books are readable. People around here have as inflated an opinion about Joyce's Ulysses as the average person on the street has about Tolkien's Ring trilogy. They are both misguided in their judgements.

Don't get me wrong. Many years ago, when I read The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, I thought they were poorly written and boring; but then the movies came out and I found that I actually enjoyed them quite a bit. I had to figure that there was something in the novels that I had missed the first time around and I raised my opinion accordingly.

I still had some misgivings about the plot and the conflict; so I mentioned them to a friend who was an enthusiast of the series and she put me straight. Sauron is not the antagonist. The ring is. Once I realized that the conflict was all internal, and that the books were about temptation, personal integrity, and that the the exterior conflicts were all manifestations of an inward turmoil, I had to give credit were credit was do. Tolkien had done some pretty fancy adaptations of a universal monomyth.

Now, I'm not saying that The Lord of the Rings is as good as it gets. Obviously, it does not deserve the same consideration as a Hamlet or a Divine Comedy, but I will acknowledge that it does deserve some minor place in the canon. I'd argue for including The Rings and removing Ulysses from academia at least. As smart as Joyce was, his stuff is all intellectual masturbation and inaccessible to a wide cross section of readers. That really has to be taken into consideration when deciding what is and is not a classic. Does the work have merit, and can it even be read without too much difficulty? Those are possibly the two most important questions when determining artistic worth. However much scholars and writers push to have his work enshrined, the common readers will have none of him and that will be that. When a book ceases to be read by the public at large, it loses it's vitality, and ceases to be a true classic. It becomes an eccentricity of a peculiar sect, a cultish icon that has no bearing on the society at large. Some of Ulysses is good but difficult. Most is simply difficult. It's a shame that a man with so much talent should throw it all away writing such indecipherable drivel. You look at Dubliners and it's perfectly comprehensible. But I'd place Yeats or Wilde above Joyce in a second if I had to choose the greatest Irish writer.

Well said.

[Kafka's Crow]

Literature is both objective and subjective. Of course some writers are better than others. However, I think Joyce, Hemingway, and Faulkner can all be placed on the same level. Personally, I don't like Hemingway, but he's still a great writer. I do like Faulkner and Joyce, and I really don't see that Joyce's prose is any more inventive or original than Faulkner's. Or even Hemingway's, for that matter. Sure, I don't like him, but that's the subjective part. Objectively, he was a superlative writer.

Blasphemy pure and simple. You can not name any novelist in the same breath as Joyce, objectively, that is. Subjectivity is your personal affair and doesn't mean much in the outside world. There is only one Joyce, there was Proust before him and Beckett after, nothing else is!

[Kafka's Crow]

What I like in Joyce is his command of language. It melts in his hands, he is a wordsmith, so is Beckett. They can make simple words do wonders and be creative and inventive if simple language fails. This is taking language beyond itself, putting it under so much creative pressure that it transforms. These writers are for listening to, get a good audio book version, something from Nestor Audio Books. BBC serialised an excellent reading of Ulysses as well. I have these gems in my huge collection:

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/30912.htm

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/729212.htm

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/25312.htm

A good reader brings out the quality of language. These books are for reading aloud and listening to. I think Cyril Cusack is the best audiobook Hamlet ever and he is the best Stephen Daedalus as well:
http://www.amazon.com/James-Joyce-Au.../dp/1559946091

For BBC Ulysses:
http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-BBC-Ra.../dp/0553471635

[JBI]

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.

[JCamilo]

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.

[JBI]

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.

[Kafka's Crow]

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.

[JBI]

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.

[_Shannon_]

By Britain do you mean England? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.

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What about RL Stevenson or Sir Walter Scott? Or Dylan Thomas or Robert Burns?

[Kafka's Crow]

CS Lewis was from Northern Ireland.

[JBI]

CS Lewis was from Northern Ireland.

He wasn't a good author though. Pseudo-Christian allegory with somewhat privative morals, and misogynist themes.