I still maintain that someone who was a better writer could have created works based on Middle Earth that would have told the same stories, with the same level of detail, but in a way that was more literary, and less encyclopedic.
Well, since LOTR hundreds of writers have tried to tell very similar stories using Tolkein's created worlds as a de facto starting point. I havent read anything that comes close for me.
I readily admit that I am not scholar of literature and I couldn't begin to intelligently compare Tolkein with Nabakov or Melville or the other consensus greats. Further, I will agree that Tolkien is not for everyone.
However, I do think that it is a mistake to define great writing too narrowly. One of the complaints peppering this board is that the plot was simplistic or episodic. Well, I say that he must have been a fantastic writer, then, to keep us gripping the books white-knuckled until we finished considering this plot deficiency.
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical. And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing. Editing out all the "extranious" back stories and unattached allusions, picking up the pacing, and adding some plot twists would not improve these books.
What is great writing, anyway? Is it elegant prose? Well Hemingway is out.
Is it character arc and plot? "One Day In The Live Of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn is out.
Is it clarity and an easy read? Shakespeare is out.
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
Well, since LOTR hundreds of writers have tried to tell very similar stories using Tolkein's created worlds as a de facto starting point. I havent read anything that comes close for me.
Kickaha said someone who was a better writer, not ANY other writer. Fanfiction/slash authors don't quite qualify.
Quote:
However, I do think that it is a mistake to define great writing too narrowly. One of the complaints peppering this board is that the plot was simplistic or episodic. Well, I say that he must have been a fantastic writer, then, to keep us gripping the books white-knuckled until we finished considering this plot deficiency.
I actually really had to trudge through them. The books are plain boring in parts. When they're good, they're good, but when they're bad, they're BAD, and there's really no impetus to go forward. It takes forever for me to get through one of his books.
Quote:
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical. And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing. Editing out all the "extranious" back stories and unattached allusions, picking up the pacing, and adding some plot twists would not improve these books.
Actually, making all those changes made the story loads better.
It's called Peter Jackson's version.
Quote:
What is great writing, anyway? Is it elegant prose? Well Hemingway is out.
Is it character arc and plot? "One Day In The Live Of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn is out.
Is it clarity and an easy read? Shakespeare is out.
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
I agree with you 100% here, like I said, I'm still a fan of Tolkien's work, deficiencies and all.
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical.
Agreed.
Quote:
And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing.
And that's where we diverge. I say they're magical *despite* his writing. It wasn't his writing, it was this insanely detailed world he crafted out of love and passion... his writing is just a pale reflection of it, and we'll never be privy to the wonder that he must have had in his own head.
Maybe that's always true, but in this case, where the realm he was attempting to put down to page was so *rich*... it suffers more in the translation than lesser creations have.
Quote:
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
Actually, making all those changes made the story loads better.
It's called Peter Jackson's version.
Well I agree with you 100%
In the case of the movies, Jakson's triumph was editing the story to keep the feel of the books without making a movie that people had to trudge through.
But I only agree in the case of the movies. To me, what works in a movie and what works in a book are very different, and it takes talented adapters and directors to make a great movie from a great book.
Tolkein was able to create this increadibly rich world that so many people love with only his words. Granted, some may find that his descriptions drag, and his references to only partially understood past events and characters bog them down. But for many, they all combine to create the magic of the reality that is Middle Earth. In a movie you can accomplish much of the same things with set decoration, costumes, effects, musical score, interesting cuts and the like. Tolkein only used words. And a map or two.
Again, I understand that the LOTR is not for everyone's tastes or reading styles. But if it was edited to make the *story* better I would like the books less. They would be a read once and throw away. Hey I love books like that, I've read hundreds. The LOTR is the only trilogy that I hunger for, that I miss deeply when it is gone and that I re-read every few years.
I don't understand how people can say the writing is lousy, period, considering how many thousands of others are affected that way.
Edit:
Did I really say "the reality that is Middle Earth?" Well, I guess that is how it seems after I get immersed...
Sure lots of people like Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien is not considered one of the great writers. Lots of people like Titanic, but James Cameron isn't considered one of the most artistic film directors in history.
Agreed. Tolkien is absolutely dwarfed by his contemporaries—Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, Stein, Pound, Kafka, Woolf, Hemingway, Forster, Waugh, O'Connor, Nabokov.
Is he popular? Sure. Has he been consistently popular? Sure. But art's "greatness" and its popularity are not parallel conditions (I would even include Dickens in this category...he was wildly popular, but I don't think he was a great a writer as is often assumed).
The notion that Tolkien is great for "world creation" (whatever that means) is a new one on me, especially considering that every time a novelist puts pen to paper, he's world creating. If it's a particular defense of sfi-fi/fantasy, it's a weak defense, I think, since the world T creates is no more vibrant than the one Joyce does in Ulysses or Forster does in A Passage to India.
But T takes a huge hit in terms of "greatness" simply because he's writing fantasy. No one took it seriously then, and very few people take it seriously now.
Quote:
Well that's a pretty idiosyncratic criticism. Sure, if you're impatient and just want the basic plot, you're not going to enjoy reading 1000 pages of Lord of the Rings. But many people love fiction just for the atmosphere and details rather than simply the plot. And there are a lot of solid criticisms of Tolkien's writing style.
I'd like to hear midwinter's opinions on the matter.
One thing to consider about T is that he was not a novelist. He was a linguist and a scholar of Old English. His impulses, when he does write fiction, are torn between stock epic structures (totally Campbellian, in other words) and encyclopedia (the Silmarillion) and minutiae (all those songs, all that stuff about history and side-plots and whatnot) all that Elvish, which was, of course, the reason he created all of this in the first place—so he said.
But T takes a huge hit in terms of "greatness" simply because he's writing fantasy. No one took it seriously then, and very few people take it seriously now.
Because the entire history of the novel is largely realist in thrust, which means that fantasy as a genre is at odds with the form it uses. Sure, there are exceptions to this (in the c18, something like Tristram Shandy or in the c19, HG Wells, but that's another discussion), but the entire history of the novel has been, among other things, bound up in an attempt to represent reality.
I really don't know where fantasy novels, as a genre, come from. My guess is that they're a little bit sci-fi a la Wells and a little bit Romance (a literary form that predates novels) and a little bit Gothic (which, as a genre, was originally interested in representing how people might realistically respond to fantastic events).
But these days, with the possible exception of le Guin, who is the only sci-fi writer I've ever been asked to read in an English class—at any level (this was an MA class)—very few academics take fantasy seriously as a genre. Sure, there are conferences devoted to it and journals and whatnot, but my sense is that those are largely side-projects (in much the same way that I present papers on Buffy and, in Feb, Lost).
The final reason, I imagine, is that fantasy novels tend to be just plain bad. I read dozens and dozens of those Del Ray books when I was a kid; I read all those Terry Brooks novels; I read all the Stephen R Donaldson books...and once you get the stock Campbellian structure in place—young hero reluctantly/is forced to leave home; has minor adventure shortly thereafter; encounters a wise man who advises him; gets quest; encounters trickster figure; overcomes adversity and trickster to achieve quest; returns home—and add in a few stock moves from fantasy—establish the group, send them on quest; divide group; move back and forth between the two groups—you've got the same story being told over and over with a different background.
Edit: I could give you a longer response dealing with the historical reception of different genres of novels, but suffice it to say that for a variety of reasons, some genres of novel have historically not been taken as seriously as others, and that that prejudice still exists.
Maybe so, but when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and LoTR he was writing it for himself not to please literary critics. As it turned out the public loved this simple yet authentic linear adventure where you could lose yourself in another world. There was a distinct lack of this kind of novel at the time and just look at what it spawned, fantasy novels are as popular as any other type of fiction so I guess you could say he was a pioneer. Ultimately, who cares what critics think, doesn't it matter what YOU think?
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat
The problem is that Tolkien's plots are far simpler than even the dumbest Hollywood drivel.
As an aside, Tolkien isn't really even comparable to Nabokov or Huxley.
Maybe so, but when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and LoTR he was writing it for himself not to please literary critics.
Tolkien was a literary critic insofar as he was a professor of English literature. I don't know whether he reviewed or taught any literature of his period, though. I doubt it. He was an Old English scholar.
Quote:
As it turned out the public loved this simple yet authentic linear adventure where you could lose yourself in another world.
The public has always loved those kinds of novels.
Quote:
There was a distinct lack of this kind of novel at the time and just look at what it spawned, fantasy novels are as popular as any other type of fiction so I guess you could say he was a pioneer.
There was not a distinct lack of that kind of novel. Novels of quests and knights and lost kings and chivalry and magic and fanciful creatures had been around, and had been incredibly popular, since before the things we call "novels" existed. Novels about magic and ghosts and strange creatures and evil spirits had been popular from the 1750s. Novels about magical worlds had been popular since at least HG Wells. Or Beowulf. Or Gawain and the Green Knight. All of which, of course, Tolkien would have known like the back of his hand?especially since he translated Gawain.
Maybe so, but when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and LoTR he was writing it for himself not to please literary critics. As it turned out the public loved this simple yet authentic linear adventure where you could lose yourself in another world. There was a distinct lack of this kind of novel at the time and just look at what it spawned, fantasy novels are as popular as any other type of fiction so I guess you could say he was a pioneer. Ultimately, who cares what critics think, doesn't it matter what YOU think?
Yes. As stated, I think Tolkien has dumb plots. I read him for other reasons.
Comments
I still maintain that someone who was a better writer could have created works based on Middle Earth that would have told the same stories, with the same level of detail, but in a way that was more literary, and less encyclopedic.
Well, since LOTR hundreds of writers have tried to tell very similar stories using Tolkein's created worlds as a de facto starting point. I havent read anything that comes close for me.
I readily admit that I am not scholar of literature and I couldn't begin to intelligently compare Tolkein with Nabakov or Melville or the other consensus greats. Further, I will agree that Tolkien is not for everyone.
However, I do think that it is a mistake to define great writing too narrowly. One of the complaints peppering this board is that the plot was simplistic or episodic. Well, I say that he must have been a fantastic writer, then, to keep us gripping the books white-knuckled until we finished considering this plot deficiency.
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical. And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing. Editing out all the "extranious" back stories and unattached allusions, picking up the pacing, and adding some plot twists would not improve these books.
What is great writing, anyway? Is it elegant prose? Well Hemingway is out.
Is it character arc and plot? "One Day In The Live Of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn is out.
Is it clarity and an easy read? Shakespeare is out.
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
Well, since LOTR hundreds of writers have tried to tell very similar stories using Tolkein's created worlds as a de facto starting point. I havent read anything that comes close for me.
Kickaha said someone who was a better writer, not ANY other writer. Fanfiction/slash authors don't quite qualify.
However, I do think that it is a mistake to define great writing too narrowly. One of the complaints peppering this board is that the plot was simplistic or episodic. Well, I say that he must have been a fantastic writer, then, to keep us gripping the books white-knuckled until we finished considering this plot deficiency.
I actually really had to trudge through them. The books are plain boring in parts. When they're good, they're good, but when they're bad, they're BAD, and there's really no impetus to go forward. It takes forever for me to get through one of his books.
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical. And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing. Editing out all the "extranious" back stories and unattached allusions, picking up the pacing, and adding some plot twists would not improve these books.
Actually, making all those changes made the story loads better.
It's called Peter Jackson's version.
What is great writing, anyway? Is it elegant prose? Well Hemingway is out.
Is it character arc and plot? "One Day In The Live Of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn is out.
Is it clarity and an easy read? Shakespeare is out.
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
I agree with you 100% here, like I said, I'm still a fan of Tolkien's work, deficiencies and all.
OK, I'm being flippant, but come on--there is something about these books that is magical.
Agreed.
And that magic comes from Tolkein's writing.
And that's where we diverge. I say they're magical *despite* his writing. It wasn't his writing, it was this insanely detailed world he crafted out of love and passion... his writing is just a pale reflection of it, and we'll never be privy to the wonder that he must have had in his own head.
Maybe that's always true, but in this case, where the realm he was attempting to put down to page was so *rich*... it suffers more in the translation than lesser creations have.
Is it the ability to move, motivate, excite, and stimulate readers sustaned over decades and maybe more? Those three are back in and Tolkein is with them.
Agreed again.
"Hills Like White Elephants" is pretty spectacular.
Actually, making all those changes made the story loads better.
It's called Peter Jackson's version.
Well I agree with you 100%
In the case of the movies, Jakson's triumph was editing the story to keep the feel of the books without making a movie that people had to trudge through.
But I only agree in the case of the movies. To me, what works in a movie and what works in a book are very different, and it takes talented adapters and directors to make a great movie from a great book.
Tolkein was able to create this increadibly rich world that so many people love with only his words. Granted, some may find that his descriptions drag, and his references to only partially understood past events and characters bog them down. But for many, they all combine to create the magic of the reality that is Middle Earth. In a movie you can accomplish much of the same things with set decoration, costumes, effects, musical score, interesting cuts and the like. Tolkein only used words. And a map or two.
Again, I understand that the LOTR is not for everyone's tastes or reading styles. But if it was edited to make the *story* better I would like the books less. They would be a read once and throw away. Hey I love books like that, I've read hundreds. The LOTR is the only trilogy that I hunger for, that I miss deeply when it is gone and that I re-read every few years.
I don't understand how people can say the writing is lousy, period, considering how many thousands of others are affected that way.
Edit:
Did I really say "the reality that is Middle Earth?" Well, I guess that is how it seems after I get immersed...
LOL there are very, very VERY few who would call Hemingway a great writer.
In 1954 only very few mattered: the Nobel Prize selection committee.
Sure lots of people like Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien is not considered one of the great writers. Lots of people like Titanic, but James Cameron isn't considered one of the most artistic film directors in history.
Agreed. Tolkien is absolutely dwarfed by his contemporaries—Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, Stein, Pound, Kafka, Woolf, Hemingway, Forster, Waugh, O'Connor, Nabokov.
Is he popular? Sure. Has he been consistently popular? Sure. But art's "greatness" and its popularity are not parallel conditions (I would even include Dickens in this category...he was wildly popular, but I don't think he was a great a writer as is often assumed).
The notion that Tolkien is great for "world creation" (whatever that means) is a new one on me, especially considering that every time a novelist puts pen to paper, he's world creating. If it's a particular defense of sfi-fi/fantasy, it's a weak defense, I think, since the world T creates is no more vibrant than the one Joyce does in Ulysses or Forster does in A Passage to India.
But T takes a huge hit in terms of "greatness" simply because he's writing fantasy. No one took it seriously then, and very few people take it seriously now.
Well that's a pretty idiosyncratic criticism. Sure, if you're impatient and just want the basic plot, you're not going to enjoy reading 1000 pages of Lord of the Rings. But many people love fiction just for the atmosphere and details rather than simply the plot. And there are a lot of solid criticisms of Tolkien's writing style.
I'd like to hear midwinter's opinions on the matter.
One thing to consider about T is that he was not a novelist. He was a linguist and a scholar of Old English. His impulses, when he does write fiction, are torn between stock epic structures (totally Campbellian, in other words) and encyclopedia (the Silmarillion) and minutiae (all those songs, all that stuff about history and side-plots and whatnot) all that Elvish, which was, of course, the reason he created all of this in the first place—so he said.
LOL there are very, very VERY few who would call Hemingway a great writer.
But T takes a huge hit in terms of "greatness" simply because he's writing fantasy. No one took it seriously then, and very few people take it seriously now.
Why is that?
Why is that?
Because the entire history of the novel is largely realist in thrust, which means that fantasy as a genre is at odds with the form it uses. Sure, there are exceptions to this (in the c18, something like Tristram Shandy or in the c19, HG Wells, but that's another discussion), but the entire history of the novel has been, among other things, bound up in an attempt to represent reality.
I really don't know where fantasy novels, as a genre, come from. My guess is that they're a little bit sci-fi a la Wells and a little bit Romance (a literary form that predates novels) and a little bit Gothic (which, as a genre, was originally interested in representing how people might realistically respond to fantastic events).
But these days, with the possible exception of le Guin, who is the only sci-fi writer I've ever been asked to read in an English class—at any level (this was an MA class)—very few academics take fantasy seriously as a genre. Sure, there are conferences devoted to it and journals and whatnot, but my sense is that those are largely side-projects (in much the same way that I present papers on Buffy and, in Feb, Lost).
The final reason, I imagine, is that fantasy novels tend to be just plain bad. I read dozens and dozens of those Del Ray books when I was a kid; I read all those Terry Brooks novels; I read all the Stephen R Donaldson books...and once you get the stock Campbellian structure in place—young hero reluctantly/is forced to leave home; has minor adventure shortly thereafter; encounters a wise man who advises him; gets quest; encounters trickster figure; overcomes adversity and trickster to achieve quest; returns home—and add in a few stock moves from fantasy—establish the group, send them on quest; divide group; move back and forth between the two groups—you've got the same story being told over and over with a different background.
Edit: I could give you a longer response dealing with the historical reception of different genres of novels, but suffice it to say that for a variety of reasons, some genres of novel have historically not been taken as seriously as others, and that that prejudice still exists.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612
Go, read, laugh, then get back to the serious discussion.
The problem is that Tolkien's plots are far simpler than even the dumbest Hollywood drivel.
As an aside, Tolkien isn't really even comparable to Nabokov or Huxley.
Maybe so, but when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and LoTR he was writing it for himself not to please literary critics.
Tolkien was a literary critic insofar as he was a professor of English literature. I don't know whether he reviewed or taught any literature of his period, though. I doubt it. He was an Old English scholar.
As it turned out the public loved this simple yet authentic linear adventure where you could lose yourself in another world.
The public has always loved those kinds of novels.
There was a distinct lack of this kind of novel at the time and just look at what it spawned, fantasy novels are as popular as any other type of fiction so I guess you could say he was a pioneer.
There was not a distinct lack of that kind of novel. Novels of quests and knights and lost kings and chivalry and magic and fanciful creatures had been around, and had been incredibly popular, since before the things we call "novels" existed. Novels about magic and ghosts and strange creatures and evil spirits had been popular from the 1750s. Novels about magical worlds had been popular since at least HG Wells. Or Beowulf. Or Gawain and the Green Knight. All of which, of course, Tolkien would have known like the back of his hand?especially since he translated Gawain.
Maybe so, but when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and LoTR he was writing it for himself not to please literary critics. As it turned out the public loved this simple yet authentic linear adventure where you could lose yourself in another world. There was a distinct lack of this kind of novel at the time and just look at what it spawned, fantasy novels are as popular as any other type of fiction so I guess you could say he was a pioneer. Ultimately, who cares what critics think, doesn't it matter what YOU think?
Yes. As stated, I think Tolkien has dumb plots. I read him for other reasons.