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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Tolkien?

11:52 / 15.11.01

Why is that every fantasy novel I have ever read are compared to his works? Sure they were the fist fantasy novels written, but were they really all that good? I think that his works are unjustly placed upon a pedestal.
Am I in the minority in thinking that Tolkien's books are not the greatest things since sliced bread?

12:00 / 15.11.01

Tolkien could write, which is a great deal more than can be said for David Eddings.

I think there are a great many problems with his books, as I think I've said before, but I do think that they are very successful fantasy adventure quest books, and as the first major books in that genre (and the books which have set the parameters for those that have followed) they have not yet been surpassed. I also think Tolkien is successful in creating a valid world.

But he is certainly not as good as Diana Wynne Jones.

And as C S Lewis so rightly said, 'not another fucking elf...'

12:13 / 15.11.01

Not necessarily the bestest, but firstest with the mostest: that's how you get to set the standard, and Tolkien was that.

He was also a linguist and an athropologist, so he had a better understanding of how cultures work than most other writers of what used to be called "weird fiction": he essentially invented the idea of "world-building," and his work is exhaustively (even exhaustingly) thorough and self-consistent.

I can't fucking stand his stuff, myself, but for what it is and what it tries to be, it's well-executed.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:18 / 15.11.01

I think another problem is the writers that the genre seems to encourage. Much of it is almost bad Tolkien fan fic. Although in Fantasy there are a number of very good writers the genre seems to be laden down with unoriginal hacks who in homage to the great god Tolkien have to write very long novels that have to be trilogies.

It's a shame for such a speculative genre.

12:35 / 15.11.01

Still, there are many well-made fantasy novels worth reading--if not for the art, then for the craft. George Martin's A Game of Thrones and its sequels are terrifically told tales, with as many surprise twists each chapter as your average O. Henry.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:54 / 15.11.01

My favorite fantasy novels.

14:13 / 15.11.01

Has anyone read The Worm Oroborous by ER Eddison. I started it earlier this year, it's an early 20th Century High Fantasy Novel complete with his own mythic setting and everything - a bit archaic in parts - and it's on Venus.... the tale begins dreamlike.... floating on up to Venus....

I'll get back to reading it when I've whittled down my current reading, but it was kind of fun and pre-dates Tolkien.

As to Eddings - feel good high fantasy I loved the Belgariad, I still have a soft spot for those books. The books that follow are just re-writes and the Redemption of Althalus still sits on my shelf half read....

I can't comment on any recent Diane Wynne Jones books, I've been told they are excellent.

Raymond E. Feist showed promise but he seems to be dragging his Rift War books out far longer than he should have done.....

Janny Wurts however has written some classic and very disturbing fantasy stories.... (The Cylce of Fire, The War of Light and Shadow -great stuff!)

14:21 / 15.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Opalfruit:
As to Eddings - feel good high fantasy I loved the Belgariad, I still have a soft spot for those books. The books that follow are just re-writes and the Redemption of Althalus still sits on my shelf half read....
.

Ah, the dreaded fantasy writer potboiler syndrome, as exemplified by (I blush to mention the name) Anne McCaffrey and her host of co-(ghost)writers. But that's the problem with genre fiction (the same thing happens with Georgette Heyer's regency romances, except for the co-authors part)

I think Tolkien would have been well served if his son had not brought out every single scrap of writing that related to Middle Earth.

As for recent DWJ, try The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

14:33 / 15.11.01

From my fairly scant reading of his stuff years ago (Hobbit, and a bit of LOTR - always get to the Council of Elrond and lose interest; happened several times), I'd venture the following :

I think JRRT may have overegged the pudding when it came to worldbuilding, to the extent that he fell in love with his own creation, really; every character that strolls onto the scene seems to have a lovingly crafted backstory, and maybe even a song or two, accompanying them. After a while this becomes like some kind of baggage slowing things up, stopping the plot from moving forward.

That sort of worldconsistency obviously appeals to a lot of people, though, so I guess it's just not my thing. Then again, I don't really care much for elves and goblins and all that either, so that's another factor. A fairly sizey one, really.

DBC

15:19 / 15.11.01

Tolkein defined a genre (unwitting and unwilling).

And yes, the books are pretty good. They're not snappy, and there's not a whole lot of humour in there. So they ain't fashionable. But they're good. They're just not what we expect these days from the genre - hardly a surprise.

He could have stood having a few chapters cut heavily, sure. But hey - they are what they are.

16:32 / 15.11.01

Something I've noticed about Tolkien: he gets better every time I read him.

And I think there *is* humor in there, too - just rather gentle, character-based stuff.

I'm not sure he was the first fantasy novelist, but he certainly was the first to write beyond the pulpy, brute adventure style and into something filled with a kind of wonder and, I dunno, professorial fun.
I mean, you can smell the tweed and pipe-tobacco on the pages pretty easily, but I kind of like that tone.
And the stories just satisfy me. The way they unfold. Nice.

16:39 / 15.11.01

Oh, and it's kind of necessary to know that that whole limp-wristed fey "elfy-elves" thing came *after* he was writing. The elves in Tolkien have the seeds of that in them, but they're also drawn out of that much more majestic, creepy "elder race" idea you see in, say, Irish folktales about the Tuatha de Daanan. Kind of unearthly and unconcerned with human affairs except when it amuses them.

19:03 / 15.11.01

quote:Originally posted by DaveBCooper:

I think JRRT may have overegged the pudding when it came to worldbuilding, to the extent that he fell in love with his own creation, really; every character that strolls onto the scene seems to have a lovingly crafted backstory, and maybe even a song or two, accompanying them. After a while this becomes like some kind of baggage slowing things up, stopping the plot from moving forward.

DBC

That sums up exactly why I don't like LOTR. The story's great but, for my tastes, it's a bit overwritten with too much baggage. So much of that info seemed parenthetical and worked against the rhythm of the story.

I also really hate little people underdog protagonists. I know that Tolkien did it first (before it became the cliche) but I still just don't like hobbits.

Damn things have fur on their feet anyway.

01:46 / 16.11.01

So do I, but I'm six-four...

Whether that makes it less horrifying or moreso, I'm not sure.

14:14 / 20.12.01

Friend just emailed this to me. It's from the New York Review of Books, 1973.

excerpts:
quote:When The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-Fifties, many readers took it as a parable of the awful power of the hydrogen bomb, which, like the Ring, corrupts its owners; one of Saruman's devilries is "a huge umbrella of cloud." Today, with Gimli's concern for the rocks, and the Ents' for the trees*the Dark Lord cuts down trees and does not care for growing things*one could as plausibly read it as a parable of the environment. Or*with Théoden's words to Saruman, "Were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit"*as a parable of anti-imperialism.

That it can offer such different interpretations is one of the strengths of the saga. Tolkien's Sauron and Saruman and Gollum embody perennial forces of greed, cruelty, and aggression; readers will tend to pick out the manifestations of these forces which are most in their own minds.

The moral world is not black and white. The questers can be tempted and fall, the evil Gollum can at the climax be an instrument for good.

the guy agrees with Lothar, though:
quote:Behind that world is epic and saga, legend and fairy tale; behind the Shire is a sort of Chestertonian myth of Merrie England, a much thinner affair. With their tobacco and their ale, their platters and leather jerkins, their wholesome tastes and deep fruity laughs, their pipe-smoking male cosiness and jolly-good-fellowship, hobbits can be as phony as a Christmas card with stagecoaches and lighted inns.

and, kind of interestingly,

quote:Tolkien invents, brilliantly, "good" language* A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel*.
and "bad"*"Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul." (The prevalence of k and l in the "bad" language made me wonder if these are always evil combinations*such as Ku Klux Klan*but then I thought of Tolkien, and ceased speculating.)

03:30 / 21.12.01

It must also be remembered that one of his inspirations were the Icelandic Sagas. Half the dwarves names come from them, as well as Gandalf's. He was trying to write an English Saga, which had not been done before (why do I have the feeling that some one's going to call me on that last statement?) and he succeeded.

07:31 / 21.12.01

In an article in this week's Higher Education Supplement in The Australian, Luke Slattery mentions that Margaret Clunies-Ross, director of Sydney University's Medieval Studies Centre, has provided a guide to the connections of JRRT's names to 'the fiercely clannish world of Beowulf, Norse mythology, or the Icelandic sagas'. He gives the following examples, which I found interesting and pass on here:

'>Gandalf breaks into two elements, gand and alf. The second element is cognate with Modern English elf and is common in Anglo-Saxon personal names, the best known of which is Alfred. This combined Old English aelf or elf (small supernatural being) with raed[/I, meaning counsel, advice, to produce:[I]he who is advised by the elves.

Turning to the first element of Gandalf, this is Norse, gandr, meaning a magical staff, or stave, imbued with supernatural power. The name Gandalfr occurs in a list of dwarves' names in the Old Icelandic poem, Voluspa. A compound, Jormungandir, refers to the World Serpent that was thought to ring the earth. So the name Gandalf would siggest a supernatural being imbued with magical powers, especially a dwarf or an elf.

>Sauron. Seeing that Sauron ... is an enemy and tempter figure, the immediate connection is with Old Norse saurr, which means mud, or dirt.

>Frodo Baggins. With Frodo we are back with the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians. The name Froda occurs in the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, as the name of the leader of a tribe called the Heatho-beardan, who were neighbours of the Danes. In Old Norse, the cognate name Frothimeans "wise one", and is applied to the legendary king of the Danes, during whose reign there was universal peace. According to several sources, Frothi's reign coincided with that of Augustus Caesar, under whom Christ was born. And Tolkien's Frodo is a peacemaker.'

12:46 / 21.12.01

I wonder what they'd make of the appendix wherein Tolkien says he was using Anglo-Saxon equivalents for their names, translating them out of their original language into something more familiar to English readers....

Whisky Priestess

14:33 / 21.12.01

When I first read Tolkien I was amazed and astounded by how original and detailed his world was.

Then when I did Anglo-Saxon at Uni I realised how much of it (i.e. pretty much all) had been lifted wholesale from Norse adn Anglo-Saxon mythology and worldview. Even the languages often bear a v close relation to A-S. And the runes . . . need I say more?

Not that it's a bad thing, it's just one that not everybody knows. JRR was also fluent in A-S and used to write letters to his friends in the language.

16:35 / 03.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Ofermod:
He was trying to write an English Saga, which had not been done before (why do I have the feeling that some one's going to call me on that last statement?)

Well, there was some rubbish I recall about a sword and a stone, a pesky wizard, and a queen who had it in for the king's champion... Something about an old cup in there as well?

16:36 / 03.01.02

For pre-Tolkien, the good stuff is filed under "fantastic", rather than "fantasy". Try Lord Dunsany, or early Lovecraft, especially his dreamlands works.

08:52 / 04.01.02

I have just read the 2 first books, so I could follow the movie without getting lost with the all the characters.
What I think is that Tolkien really wasn't much interested in the story he was telling - or let me put this better: he was interested in it, only as he could use it to push forward all the mythology of the Universe he was "creating".

His main focus is always remembering us of how solid and ancient that environment is.
So you have a McGuffin (not a new old, see the Nibelungen Ring), something to make the story move forwards, and from there you get:

-Poor character development (Legolas is described in two lines. Who is he, anyway?), with the memorable exception of Gollum.

-Poor dialogue. There are exceptions, but Tolkien's forte are the mythological narratives, and in those you don't find much dialogue. I haven't read the Silmarillion, but skimmed it, and excerpts of it proved that book is mythology told at its best. Events unfold through aeons and a multitude of characters passes by. But you don't get too much dialogue. The exception in LOTR is, again, Gollum. His dialogue is always inspired.

-Poor action scenes. Again, this is hardly a "fault", since it wasn't the point of the book in the first place. People often credit this to the time LOTR was written, the "gentler" and "innocent" times, but those were times of war, and Tolkien has been to war. He probably saw his share of shit to not let that "Wizard Of Oz" magical feeling intrude in LOTR, yet you get Tom Bombadil singing around and saving the hobbits from ill-tempered trees. I think his lack of interest in action scenes was merely due to his bigger interest in the linguistic and sociological developments of Middle-Earth.
The fight scene in Moria is in a paragraph which has around 12 lines of text. The fight with the balrog is barely described, also.

That said, you probably get that the book didn't do much for me. It's clumsily written at certain points, while the descriptions of the scenarios are exhaustive.

08:52 / 04.01.02

Legolas is the son of Thranduil. Obviously.

08:52 / 04.01.02

and you managed to reduce its description even more.

12:19 / 04.01.02

By saying this, I'm pointing out the biggest flaw in character development, yeah, but Legolas means more as a character after you've read The Hobbit, and you know what his dad did to Bilbo and his friends a few years before the events of the book.

12:44 / 04.01.02

Legolas is pretty much devoid of personality, but he is affected by the quest - he develops a friendship with Gimli (astonishing in the light of Thranduil's imprisonment of Gloin, and the general distrust between the two races - as Grant says above) and is stunned by the glittering caves (= broadened horizons); and he hears seagulls and is never the same again, which is a big deal for an elf.

I think Tolkien is (& Deva has said this elsewhere) less concerned with character than with the effects of the ring and the quests of the members of the fellowship. Also when it comes to elves he seems to get stuck at 'fair and terrible' - none of the elves in the book have anything in the way of personality. They are an idea rather than separate characters. Also, since they cannot be eeveel the possibilities are somewhat limited.

For some reason whenever I come across a reference to Gil-Galad and other elves I get a mental picture of basil fotherington-tomas (hello clouds, hello sky). Can this be healthy?

13:42 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by cusm:
For pre-Tolkien, the good stuff is filed under "fantastic", rather than "fantasy". Try Lord Dunsany, or early Lovecraft, especially his dreamlands works.

YES! Dunsany and Lovecraft in his Dunsany inspired Dreamlands stuff had some really wild stuff in it.

If you're looking for characterization though, people might like it less than Tolkein.