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Lord of the Geeks
An anonymous reader sent in links to two LOTR pieces in the Village Voice - a short bit about the LOTR excerpt shown at the Cannes film festival, and a longer piece about Tolkien and geekdom written by the guy who wrote A Rape in Cyberspace. I don't think I really agree with him, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.
No first posters awake? Did you mom make you go to bed early?
In direct opposition to what the article said, I'd like to posit that stories of dragons and rings and wizards and monsters and other fantasy archetypes were already part of literature long before Tolkien brought us his trilogy.
There is no doubt that he influenced many writers, but the stories that he wrote about the battle between good and evil were just original spins on rehashed ideas.
Tolkien is not a god, and his book is nothing special.
The world that JRR Tolkien envisioned was truly stunning, the most detailed fantasy or myth created in the English language and one of the most detailed of any language or culture, and I think it's a pity that you can't appreciate it. Tolkien's stated goal (paraphrasing - it's been a while) was to create "a mythology for England." He thought it a pity that England didn't have such a grand tradition of myth and magic like many other countries. So he took what was there ("little people" and an odd giant or two, some dragons) and did just that. He sketched out the world in The Silmarillion, and went into most detail in LOTR and some of the epic poems.
Furthermore, his son Christopher has spent most of his life editing his father's "Lost Tales." JRR Tolkien was famous for starting things but not finishing them, so there were innumerable fragments of writing left after his death.
Aside from being a fantastic imagination, Tolkien was a brilliant man and a scholar in his own right. He was one of the most respected people ever to have lectured at Oxford, and an authority on the English language, and linguistics generally. He was once, in a radio appearance, asked to "speak in elfish." Tolkien responded immediately with a flourish of unearthly-sounding poetry, then stopped, embarassed, and apologized for a grammatical error.
Tolkien was astoundingly deep. The Hobbit and LOTR are his lightest-weight work. Most people don't make it through The Silmarillion, never mind the rest of it. Give him another try from a different perspective.
Well, he was definitely a very staunch Catholic, and very conservative. Strait-laced...hmmm, maybe not.
Perhaps his greatest friend was C.S. Lewis, a fellow lecturer. Lewis, when he came to know Tolkien, had distanced himself from Christianity. Over the course of many light-night discussions about theology and the like (involving many cigars and a few beers, so not *that* strait-laced), Lewis found his beliefs being challenged and ended up, after a struggle with his intellectualism, reclaiming his Christian roots.
Unfortunately for Tolkien, Lewis became an Anglican (Church of England, or Episcopal Church in America); Tolkien viewed Anglicans as very wishy-washy Christians whose sole redeeming virtue was their beautiful cathedrals (which had, of course, been perverted from the rightful Catholic use).
For a fascinating insight into his life, read Humprey Carpenter's biography. Trivia of the day: Tolkien was born in Blomfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, moving to England upon the death of his father when he was four and his brother Hilary was two.
The long article is interesting, but several things bugged me a lot:
"he was a straitlaced, archconservative Catholic himself"
Bullshit - compared to who ? Tolkein was an Oxford don:
"How many Oxford dons does it take to change a lightbulb ?"
"CHANGE ?? !!"
Calling him a straightlaced conservative is disingenuous at best. My grandmother knew Tolkein, he was a regular visitor to her antiques shop in central Oxford (where I actually met him a couple of times, but can't pretend to remember the experience since I was being babysat at the time). My grandmother mentioned him as being charming, with a mischeivous air.
As for the critical disclaim from the likes of a young Germain Greer (she was a militant feminist back then, and most likely rankled by Tolkein's chivalrous attitude) or some pompous, self-satisfied Private Eye hack, it doesn't deserve repetition without ridicule.
But, the central point about Tolkein's significance to geeks is valid, and I've never heard computer games referred to as culture before, let alone as "culture's center of gravity". Hmmmm...
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I thought that had some depth and originality, particularly when Sparrowhawk had to deal with the shadow of himself that his own vanity had created.
--
-Rich (OS/2 Warp 4 and Linux user in Eden Prairie MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Not only is it a good story about one man and his fight against an oppressive establishment, but the writing style is awesome. Very formal, but seeming at times to make fun of itself in ways that make the whole thing quite enjoyable.
There are times when I think Lord of Light might well be my favorite book of *any* genre...
--
-Rich (OS/2 Warp 4 and Linux user in Eden Prairie MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
even considering that she's a world class poseur herself.
I mean.. Tolkein couldn't write his way out of a paper bag! Any work that requires maps and notetaking to get around in is way overwrought and overblown!
His buddy, C.S. Lewis, I think, was just being kind in complimenting his work. Lewis was by *far* the superior writer. Reading his stuff was a luxurious experience.
Tolkein, on the other hand, doesn't even qualify as the Mickey Spillane of fantasy. His prose is coarse. His sentiments callow and obvious...
BLECCCH!
And no, this is NOT a troll...
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
heh, "beware". as if you could study anything written in the West without getting into some theological implications (yeah yeah, "for all X..." is beyond what I mean here). look at the theology as an intriguing use of mythology. You don't have to be a believer to enjoy a mythology...
-l
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I would definitely refrain from calling LOTR "postmodern." At best, you could try hard to sandwich it into a Rorty-esque philosophy of literature, but that's only marginally less doomed to failure than to read Tolkien as Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, or some other pretentious fop.
My preferred view of the corpus is to enjoy the story for its own sake. If you don't like the way it's told... move on to something else. It's apolitical, which eliminates any european post[modern/structuralist] interpretation; it's an engrossing world meant to be for and about that world in a very human way... this is why it unfortunately lends itself to be [falsely] interpreted as allegory via authorial fiat, but also explains why it means so much to people; the reader can supply her own personal allegory.
By That is its not actually about anything. which is pretty true., I gather that you think that venerated books should be about something "real." While I am partly sympathetic to that position, I have a certain affinity for the premodern blending of the real and the imaginary without the need for any cheesy allegorical baggage. This is why I like Tolkien better than Animal Farm, and so far, better than Joyce, though I admit I am in the middle of the second part of Ulysses, which appears to me more an embodiment of the everyday psychological babble into a coherent literary form.
$0.02,
-l
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Genius is indicative of vast proficiency in a particular skillset. If a geek possessed the excellence in programming that Tolkien exhibits in wordsmithy, world construction, and storytelling, that geek would be a genius.
Look for excellence in a particular art. Don't go around expecting Animal Farm, for example, as the indication of literary genius when an author in question is operating under vastly different motives toward a wholly other purpose.
$0.02,
-l
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See, that's where I think we differ. I believe Tolkien's attention to detail aided the continuity of his storytelling even as detail after mind-numbing detail aided The Iliad in its telling. It is this combined ability of linguistics, world-creation, and storytelling all-together that solidifies Tolkien as a genius of his craft in my mind. What makes LOTR better than The Iliad is that LOTR was not design-by-committee.
The whole LOTR saga is woven with elegance in design, not unlike a carefully designed program. No, it's not perfect, even as design 1.0 is rarely perfect, but it's damn fine art which I would say is indicative of his genius.
<RANT>Some critics complain of his so-called "lack of characterization," but that's a complaint about a qualitative difference in the type of character Tolkien uses, not a substantial inconsistency. All of his characters have a place in the world, a purpose. None are out of joint with the world, like in a modern tale of alienation (e.g., Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead). They each have their relatively predictable role, but the predictability of a role in no way implies that it is base.
cheers,
-l
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Narnia is hard to slog through because it was written, quite condescendingly, for children.
You could say that as well about The Hobbit, written to children, and somewhat condescending as well, but I'm reading it aloud to the family even now. Mutatis mutandibus, Lewis is just plain harder to read aloud.
I don't have to imagine it. I read that aloud also. More fun than anything on the toob, you betcha.
C.S.Lewis was a linguist as well; in fact he and Tolkien associated frequently in such ventures as the Kolbitar club, which studied ancient Icelandic poetry. And Lewis is about as famous a writer as Tolkien. But when I tried to read the Narnia Chronicles aloud, it was like slogging through waist-high jello in comparison. (I couldn't finish.)
One thing that makes Tolkien's prose so refreshing is that he used his familiarity with Germanic languages cognate to English such as Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Icelandic to minimize the influence of late Latin on it. To native English speakers, Latin-derived words often sound distant and antiseptic, while Germanic ones sound earthy and vivid. I'm sure that Tolkien was aware of it; it's no accident that the language of the Rohirrim (rendered in the story as Anglo-Saxon) seemed to Meriadoc to be a richer, fuller version of his own Westron tongue (rendered as English).
I've tried to read it several times, a book that is recommended to you by many of your friends can't be all bad, right?
I found it just a childrens story, full of elves and dwarves and other twee little fantasy creatures, and it bored my socks off.
So maybe it had some hidden meaning? Dwarves represent the heroic oppressed masses, and the ring evil corporate power? Naa.. it's just elves and dwarves.... page after page of twee little creatures on an adventure of sorts, written in a language and style that would have been considered old and dusty in the 19th century.
I couldn't bare to turn another page of that tome, so I have no idea how the story ends... not do I care.
It's been a while since I've bothered, but I seem to recall that there are also various sorts of tricks they use to try to prevent you from being able to get at the actual file, making it so you can only stream the movie, not save it. Hence the four-line-long URL. It's still a silly goal, of course, since it can be defeated more or less easily. Even if they could make it really work, it's just a bad goal, for so many reasons... For one, having nothing to do with rights management and copying, the quality level you want to see does not necessarily correlate to your bandwidth -- streaming is a neat technology for letting you avoid needing to download the whole file first by compromising quality, but what if you want to see the highest available quality and prefer to wait for the download if that's what it takes? Why would they eliminate that option? Also, do they actually prefer to waste the bandwidth sending it to you ever and over again if you want to watch it more than once? (which of course also means you can only watch it when you're online) Plus, especially when the content in question is movie trailers, which they want to have seen by as many people as possible, what's the point of making it so difficult? If we download the files, show them to our friends, mirror them, etc., they get more exposure for less bandwidth -- since in this case, the content itself is the advertisement, they should pay us!
Anyway, the point of someone posting the URL here is to save others who want the file instead of the stream the trouble of having to hunt it down (which I guess requires hunting through page sources or something -- I seem to recall that, after some changes they made, even that didn't work, or maybe I just did something wrong that time and didn't want it badly enough to bother figuring it out). Defeating their distribution-balancing system (it that's true, which another reply denies) is more of an unfortunate side effect (and another reason they should just link to the saveable files -- we'll get them anyway; why not build that into the system and save their servers the slashdotting?).
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I haven't been keeping track of the LOTR-movie news until reading the article here, but I have to say although I admire Ian McKellen as an actor, Gandalf is an odd character for him to play. I loved his 1995 movie portrayal of "Richard III", and would have thought Saruman would have been more his line of work -- all that cackling and scorn, you know.
I believe strongly that if Tolkien had never lived, the main difference in fantasy literature would be no mentions of Tolkien in the reviews. There would still be stories about fireball-hurling wizards, sneaking goblins, vicious trolls, haughty elves, talking trees, and tough dwarves.
Well, for starters "elfs" (Tolkien coined the plural "elves", btw) before Tolkien were the cute tots that made toys for Santa. The whole modern fantasy idea of elves as tall pointy eared forest people started with Tolkien. Germanic myth at least had dwarves (snow white, Siegfried legend, etc), but they too were not those of modern fantasy. Wizards, goblins and trolls I agree are pretty generic.
In English 'faerie tales', the faeries themselves generally aren't nice either, stealing babies and so forth. Tolkien certainly knew norse mythology -- the names of the dwarves in _The Hobbit_ -- Thorin, etc. are taken from the Eddas. But my point is what most people think of as an "elf" these days comes from LOTR -- good, lives in forests, doesn't get along with dwarves, etc.
There are no such things as "Celtic elves" -- the word and concept of "elf" are Germanic in orgin and not at all Celtic. Perhaps some modern authors use the word "elf" to describe a type of creature from Celtic mythology, but that is analogous to calling those flying Chinese serpents "dragons"
You'll also note (if you've heard any recordings of Tolkein speaking) that McKellen adopts an accent and cadence rather like that of the Professor. This was apparently deliberate.
It seems strangely fitting somehow, to watch and hear him speak. It does seem very "Gandalf".
Ian McKellen would not have been my choice for Gandalf at all (I last saw him in X-Men, of all things), but he is a remarkable actor. Nearly everyone I've showed the trailer to (and who has also read the book) has remarked that Gandalf was just like they'd imagined.
DNA just wants to be free...
That's elfs, not elves. Tolkien was very keen on this point. His editor for the Hobbit apparently hacked up his original submission, changing, among other things, elfen|elfs to elven|elves. He used the old English spelling of these words for a reason: modern interpretations of elves are different than the old English interpretation of elfs. For example, elves are often portrayed as slender but short. The old English interpretation of elfs are tall and slender.
;-)
He was very deliberate about this, and a great many other linguistic items throughout the book. Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but Tolkien would have wanted it that way
--Be human.
Umm, could you give a reference for that? Because I can't believe it, since Tolkien explicitly wrote in the foreword of LOTR that it is not to be read as an allegory.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Thanks
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Naturally, this guy's critique is crap. And if LOTR were adjusted to make this guy happy, it would be crap as well. Fortunately, that won't be a problem.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
But, yes, his elves were always meant to be tall and mighty characters. The notion of Legolas portrayed as a short feminine guy in green tights really pissed him off.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
"But maybe you could indulge me and imagine, just for a moment, that the fact that we live in a world increasingly made by geeks actually makes their collective imagination worth understanding."
Ha ha ha...
This guy reminds me of the high school sports stars that are still living in my home town flipping burgers, saying "Those damn nerds are taking over the world. What a bunch of losers!"
Look who the losers are now, guys...
D
Of course there were stories of dragons and rings etc. before Tolkien wrote -- he was certainly more familiar with them than you and I.
But if you doubt that Tolkien set the shape of modern 'Fantasy' literature, just try to find a writer today who doesn't end up rehashing Tolkien, badly. Even those who aren't writing Middle-Earth lookalikes almost seem to have to work at not being Tolkienesque.
Half right. Tolkien is just a man, who "just" happened to write a profoundly influential novel.
Actually, the novel is a single narrative divided into six "books" as markers for major transitions in the narrative - it is not six separate novels under three covers. The "book" divisions are more like "meta-chapters". Pick up any long novel, and you're likely to find similar divisions. The reason it is published in three volumes is because Britain was suffering from a paper shortage following WWII, and it was cheaper for the publisher to release it in three separate volumes over a period of several years.
LoTR was originally begun as a requested sequel to the Hobbit, which his publishers felt there was a significant market for. As he progressed, he read/shared completed chapters with his son Christopher and several friends, including CS Lewis. It wasn't until WWII and Christopher ended up in the RAF, stationed in South Africa, that he sent chapters to him by mail.
To address the issue of allegory and other literary terms: If the novel can be "used for so many different allegories", that actually proves that it *isn't* an allegory, and that there are a lot of people who really don't know what an allegory is. An allegory would have a stricter, one-to-one correspondence between all of the objects and actions of the novel and the things that it was an allegory of (e.g., Pilgrim's Progress is intended *only* to be read as an allegory of Christian conversion). Each metaphor and symbol, and every movement of the plot, would point primarily to the *one* overriding allegorical correspondence. Just because metaphor and symbolism are tools used in constructing an allegory does not mean that every work in which they are used is an allegory. Likewise, themes (power corrupts, elevation of the weak above the strong, death, etc.) do not make a narrative an allegory. Allegories are narrow in their symbolism and thematic application and depend almost entirely on authorial intention (Roland Barthes be damned). If you want an allegorical story by Tolkien, read "Leaf by Niggle" - it's the closest he comes to the form.
What you find in LoTR that is "readable in a modern context" is a group of thematic elements that many people can recognize as resonating with concerns in their own lives.
The first "big book" I read as a boy was The Hobbit. It was passed down to me by my father when I was 6. From there I formed my own opinions of the book and read and re-read the other books in the series. This was way before I ever heard of the internet or used computers on a daily basis.
I am sure many other "geeks" can relate to this. The internet did not create the phenomenon that is Tolkien it is simply fueling new generations of readers while allowing old fans to spew the influence Tolkien has had on their lives.
I'm not hoity-toity enough for my opinions to matter to the Villiage Voice. I live on the border between the red states and the blue states;) But if you want to beat your head against the wall, send email to editor@villiagevoice.com or fill out the area at: http://www.villagevoice.com/aboutus/letters.shtml
Remember to be careful when feeding the trolls.
Here is my letter:
It seems that Mr. Dibbell has some sort of chip on his shoulder. Did some geek wipe out his bank account? Run off with his girl? Beat him in a game of StreetFighter?
I'm not certain what his article regarding Lord of the Rings is supposed to prove. An animus towards 'geeks' is the only common thread through his various ramblings. That and apparant jealousy that Mr. Tolkien (and Lucas) have achieved far more success than he ever will.
While many have referred to LOTR as literature, a great artistic work, and so forth, that is mostly in jest. Most people I know (and granted, the people with whom I have discussed LOTR are ensconsed neither in academia nor in the entertainment industry, thus invalidating their existence with respect to such as Mr. Dibbell) who have read the work accept it for what it is: an incredibly long series of children's stories set in a wholly imagined world.
So perhaps it is not high art. So what? Much of what we regard today as literature (Shakespeare, Chaucer, the greek tragedies, and so forth) are 'merely' entertainment. Or at least that is what they were originally.
The 'feature' fails in the most important respect: justifying its' own existence. It certainly adds nothing new to the discussion of the literary value (or lack thereof) of the LOTR series. It fails to properly cite any of the numerous references made to the original and intelligent criticisms made by others. There is a half-hearted attempt to denigrate modern society, the United States, and the internet. Even this fails, as the two points upon which these criticisms are based lack foundation. First that 'mere entertainment' is a bad thing. Second that there is anything other than anecdotal evidence to support the notion that a high percentage of those in technology, for instance, have read LOTR, view it as 'serious literature', and that this somehow indicates a flaw or at least a system to their thinking.
The lack of quality and direction of and in this feature leave me wanting to say much more. Unfortunately, there is so little of substance with which to argue.
There is a website called slashdot (from where I learned of this article) that contains areas for article discussion. When one writes commentary whose sole purpose is to incite argument, it is referred to as a 'troll'. In my estimation, Julian Dibbell has proven himself to be a troll. And one with much less to say than those who grace the pages of JRR Tolkien's works.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Part One
Part Two
Definitely worth reading, but set aside some time.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Out of interest would you car to name any of these "polished gems to Tolkien's crude chippings" ?
To be honest I would be disappointed if LOTR was the best fantasy novel ever written, to say that in the 40 years since it was written nobody had managed to do better would be bad. Tolkein invented the fantasy novel, surely the genre cant have gone downhill ever since!
bil
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
Didn't Tolkien fight in the big one(WW 1)?
I think it shows in his battle scenes -- not the Vietnam nightmare of ambush and sniping, but the WW1 tableau of great streams of individual men poured into a cauldron of slaughter.
You can't account for the book without looking at WW1, in my opinion. Tolkien was discharged from the army as a shell shock case -- what we would now call post traumatic stress syndrome. This was the great common experience of his generation -- being transformed by the unremitting terror of trench warfare and coming back changed. Dividing your life into before and after. Victory earned at the cost of a generation of men killed, maimed or psychically damaged.
People read too much into Tolkien's famed aversion to allegory. They conflate allegory with meaning. In particular, the silly attempts to map elements of the book onto current figures or issues must to have been odious to him, a medievalist, to whom excessive focus on the contemporary was just a form of parochialism.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As when he wrote about LambdaMOO, Dibbell has no idea whatsoever what he's talking about. Here are some examples.
Lots of people, even among Tolkien's most devoted fans, would dispute the claim that Tolkien invented the genre. World-building fantasy has existed as a continuous tradition for millenia, from some of the earliest known writings to contemporaries of Tolkien such as Fritz Lieber and Lloyd Alexander. Tolkien's work brought this genre back into the mainstream from a relative backwater, but nobody in their right mind would claim he invented it.
It's true that many of Tolkien's main characters are pretty "flat" and that even accounts for much of their appeal to younger readers. However, a closer reading will reveal more complexity than Dibbell gives credit for. Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf are not entirely unconflicted. The ambivalence of many elves and half-elves - Glorfindel, Elrond, Celeborn - is worthy of some thought. The corruption or degeneration of several characters - Theoden, Denethor, Saruman - is complex and interesting. Perhaps the most interesting character is Gollum; I used to spend many evenings wondering what must have been going on inside that slimy little head. If you go beyond LoTR and read the Silmarillion you find even more complex, conflicted characters. There's plenty of psychological complexity to Tolkien's work, if you're willing to read instead of skimming.
How absurd. You can't strip away the other elements, because it is those elements that make Middle Earth special. The peoples, the language, the history - all of those things considered rightly or wrongly to be the subject of allegory - are what makes Middle Earth more compelling and memorable than so many other laughable attempts at fantasy world-building.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
and i dont think that the people who run slashdot are "journalists". more like newgroup moderators. they dont write the stories, they dont find the news, and they make no pretense of being objective. the simply bring order to the mass chaos that is slashdot. nothing more, nothing less.
if you dont like slashdot, dont read it, but dont wast server space bitching about it. we dont really care
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
hey mod this response up!
Personally I think Aragorn was a crank myself.
A friend's friend read LOTR while on a road-trip and read Aragorn's lines out loud from the back seat of the car. Try it some time.
If you want to drive your friend's batty.
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
An article like that is just a response from someone who doesn't "get it" and feels obligated to defend himself for not being in the with-it crowd. Fine, he doesn't like the book, tastes differ. But it's funny to see the vitriol he pours on it's supposed geeky fans.
Sure, some of us are incredibly geeky, there's the whole D&D connection, etc. But you're just as likely to find tweedy academics or -- gosh -- just average plain John/Jane Doe folks who love the books as pale computer professionals.
Frankly I think he's just trying to get a rise out of the fandom. His ad hominem attacks don't even do a good job of masquerading as literary criticism.
Yawn.
Well, Frank Herbert's Dune novels come to mind. He is nearly as creative in terms of the history, language, cultures, etc. as Tolkien was.
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
Just because Tolkien dispenses with allegory, does not mean he disavows metaphor. LOTR has strong, undeniable themes, which if they match real life, do so by accident. In fact, all great art is like this: themes are important for the most basic reasons, abstracting the metaphysics of man and his creations, having nothing to do with concretes directly. Tokien skillfully (and artfully) creates his own universe, but one we can relate to, then is off to the races as a storyteller.
The author, Julian Dibbell, must take a naturalistic view of art, where the world recreated must be a "slice of life" rather than an original creation. How stultifying, and sad. Tolkien eschews this arrested development to embrace fantasy Romanticism, and did an amazing job of it.
This is not to say, of course, that I like everything about Tolkien. His prose doesn't flow like and F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ralph Ellison, but that's but a quibble.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
...i said..."meh"
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think anyone who hasn't read a copy of Tolkien's Letters should be banned from commenting on this whole article. What a load of... anyhow.
Exactly. He himself wrote that people tend to confuse allegory with applicability. The second is the reader's freedom to interpret the story, while the first "lies in the purposed dominion of the author."
If Tolkien writes a story that seems to you to be applicable to a certain situation, hey, that's great. That doesn't mean that Tolkien set out to write a story for your situation.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
First off, it's not a trilogy! Tolkien himself pointed out this error many times. It's a single story, consisting of six books, originally published in three volumes for financial reasons.
Anyhow, yes, you are correct; much of his works were designed to be read aloud, in the sense of a bard telling a tale to villagers. People tend to not like the Silmarillion because we're so addicted to dialogue, so they sneer at a narrative style. Imagine the Sil stories being read aloud and you really get pulled into it.
Oh, absolutely. He mentions this a few times in his letters. Welsh and Gaelic played significant roles in the evolution of the Elvish languages (by their sounds, at least, not spellings).
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
In quite a few of his letters to friends, family, and random fans, Tolkien told of (in his opinion) the scene which always brought a tear to his eye.
Gollum/Smeagol is having one of those arguments with himself. He almost, almost convinces himself to repent -- and then Sam walks up and says something condescending and insulting. Gollum never considers repenting again.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
A quick easy way to protect against most of them would be to add a line to your hosts file like so:
127.0.0.1 goatse.cx
Your mileage may vary.
--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I've read LOTR more times than I'd care to remember. The first time was a sublime rush. Eventually though, as I matured (and my voice broke) I began to see the LOTR's incipient racism (a sad by-product of mid-20th century Eurocentrism and perhaps the Bloemfontein influence) as unfortunate and childish.
Of course the movie will erase the racial stereotypes from the invading hordes -- it'd be commercial suicide to do otherwise. But it remains in the books, a terribly bad note in an otherwise fine story for children and young adults.
There is of course the latent paedophilia inherent in the use of "Halflings" as romantic and heroic protagonists. I'm down with Michael Moorcock with this one. Tolkien was probably even more unconscious of this, perhaps even moreso than Lewis Carroll.
All great books have flaws, recognizing them honestly and coming to terms with them is a sign of maturity. But wait, this is Slashdot. Flame those hoity-toity Village Voice liberals!
Da Blog
Have a look here -
e ywords=Lord+of+the+Rings&nav_src=more_on
http://www.mckellen.com/epost/l010605.htm
- it's Sir Ian McKellen's homepage. (He plays Gandalf in the film). You can also see some stories on the film here (like how the opening was re-shot) -
http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/index.html?k
Huh? What about Spenser? Mallory? For that matter, what about Tolkien's contemporary, C.S. Lewis? And lets not forget E.H. Howard. Whatevery you may think of his strong-thewed barbarians, they owe very little to Tolkien, and remain a major thread in the weave of the fantasy fiction genre.
...and what sets it apart from most heroic and fantasy fiction and legend, is that it is told with its focus not upon the many heroic characters, or upon the rulers of Tolkien's world, but rather from the perspective of a hobbit--essentially, a peasant. Despite the heroic scope of the novel and its mythic qualities, this single factor makes it a very modern work of fiction.
And as influential as Tolkien has been, this particular characteristic is the least frequently emulated/imitated.
I was going to comment in more detail, but why bother? Julian Dibbell quite adroily summarized most of the anti-Tolkien vitriol spewed out over the decades by an outraged community of self-absorbed literary masturbators. He even did his best to sound as if some of the "thoughts" he expressed were his own. But all this has been dealt with (or, rather, sponged off) at length elsewhere, by better writers than me, and anyone who's interested has probably read it already.
And the brethren went away edified.
Elric of Melnibone - Tim Burton could do quite a number with that...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Then I could go back and fix my obvious errors. Of course Sam killed him! Oops! And the pony killed the Balrog, right?
toeslikefingers.com - because
The author of the longer article goes through the article seemingly heaping praise on Tolkien (obviously in some attempt to get us 'geeks' on side for when he demolishes it (and us) later. Of course he does this so well, you're inclined to listen to his arguments. But he bring up several absoutely blind points, like "the bad guys are evil, the good guys are not". This is patently untrue, as anyone who's even read the book once knows. What kind of a fool spends all this time researching the author and his critics and none of his time checking that his main line of argument (the book!) isn't actually right? Boromir is corrupted by the ring, Frodo goes from a nice chap to someone who can kill giant spiders in very nasty ways (and that scene was very dark, with the shadow of murder hanging over it totally). Merry and Pippin are tainted by the journey, Saruman is the good brought low, Strider (sic) is the mighty king basically reduced to a ruthless killer. Gollum was nothing but a mischevious child until the ring corrupted him. What does he see in these 'oh so pure' characters BUT evil? The evil of the ring corrupts all who come near it, and the quest to destroy evil leads people to questionable deeds. Ok, nothing like killing families in Vietnamese villages, but they still change utterly through the story. The end leaves you with an utter sense of loss, and none of the characters are ever the same. Even Hobbiton has been corrupted and scarred.
And at the risk of being a karma whore, for Christ's sake, he just took one of the world's most obviously intelligent groups, and said we'e all "children" for liking Tolkien! Perhaps we could point at those of such a literal mindset and say their lack of imagination renders them "childish" in their expectation that the world around them is the only one worth thinking about. Reporters don't discover quantum fluctuation, or super string theory, geeks do! I fail to see how broadly saying we're all emotional runts fails to take into account the overwhelming burden of evidence which is our contribution to the world, and his life.
Fuck the media and fuck this guy. Learn to read the book you're writing about, and learn that not everything is about politics or fucking lawyers. It's easy to read about doctors, because everyone's afraid of dying. Lack of imagination doesn't make you a better person.
toeslikefingers.com - because
Right on. I'm even having trouble with Sauron == Satan, because he is embodified and conquerable while Satan is not really someone you can just meet in town. Satan is more like a symbol of all evil, or embodified in another plane of reality. It'd be more accurate to say Sauron turned very, very bad ;-)
;-P
IMHO, people that absolutely have to try to analyze what the author really meant, are just trying to limit the work into their own interpretation. Which can be bad because more often than not, the author didn't really mean that. Just because you can draw parallells, doesn't necessarily make them true. These analysts are really analysing our society and the human psyche, not the work itself. But they're too afraid to admit that openly (where would they get their grants from then?)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I agree with the 2nd half of your statement. Drizzt could be a great piece of film. . .as long as it doesn't come out as a miserable piece of shit ala D&D.
-Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
The Wheel of Time should be forgotten about. RJ gave up on any semblance of quality or effort a long time ago...
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Silence is consent.
I think your letting your prejudices show through somewhat on the Guardian though as it and it's predecessor, the Manchester Guardian, was on 'our' side for WWII and whilst being pro-detente was always highly critical of the soviets.
If you want a really traterous paper the prime example is The Daily Mail which was a slavish admirer of Hitler until about 1937. There's more than one Daily Mail editorial advocating virtual incorperation of Britain into the 3rd Reich!
You should read some history sometime - I think you'll find that British social attitudes towards Hitler and Fascism in the 1930s - particularly among the ruling classes, somewhat suprising.
For a slightly less ambitious solution, resize your browser window so you can only see a little of the link, click it, and check the title or slowly drag the window open so you don't see anything you didn't want to.
Also useful at work when you're unsure the content of a link you are visiting might "disturb" your boss. You can get a mini-preview beforehand to avoid disaster.
-Erik
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"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
The article was aiming at its audience and identifying their common view of Tolkien, but was also disputing that view. The author identified one of the common views of geeks (that they/we are nothing but antisocial losers stuck in childhood), but then noted that even if you hold that view you had to admit that there was something to geekiness. He was trying to show the people who think geeks and J.R.R. Tolkien are just silly that his work really *does* have significance even if you aren't a geek. Also, as far as him talking about Tolkien appealing to people's (is that a word?) inner childishness... well of course it does!! Do you REALLY want to act completely "grown up"? I think most of the fun we manage to derive from our dreary jobs (well some of us) and boring lives (okay, well maybe just me ;-)) comes from moments of pure childishness. There is nothing wrong with being childish, indeed, if you take Tolkien's philosphy there is much to be said about preserving something precious that is fading from our lives
Now damn you all for stopping me from moderating up some really good posts just so I could post this silly reply to ungrounded rants.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
What a strange man.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Whether he realizes it or not, Dibbell is right to point out that Tokien, along with Lucas and a host of others who worked their way into the popular culture, has specified the architecture for the imagination-space of our culture
And if they don't allow us the benefit of generous fair use (including transformative use), then that means Tolkien's estate or Lucasfilm could pull the entire structure out from under us at any second. Just look at what Paramount has been doing to Trek fan pages with all the damage the monopolists have been doing to the concepts of "fair use" (DMCA) and "public domain" (copyright extensions that keep even "Happy Birthday" under AOL Time Warner's exclusive control).
Will I retire or break 10K?
No, it's one book. In the foreword to the edition I have, he refers to LotR several times as "the book", not "the series". Now, like a lot of other works, it's divided into multiple "Books", but I've never heard it suggested that the six Books were ever intended to be published seperately.
Lord of the Trailers
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Posting links to content with an Akamai URL completely defeats that purpose. Perhaps posting a link to the web page from which you got the link to Akamai would be more useful in the future.
Then again, I dislike Akamai. To quote Aleister Crowley, "Do as you will."
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"Or something even geekier, arguably: ur-geeks. Keepers of the geek flame. For if The Lord of the Rings is not the sine qua non of geek culture, it's hard to think what is."
The folks who spend their weekends dressed as Klingons will be mighty unimpressed with this.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be . . . an easy way to factor large prime numbers"
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be . . . an easy way to factor large prime numbers"
Bill Gates, 1995
"Rape in Cyberspace" bothered me. It dealt with an incredibly serious issue, but not seriously, or, really, feasibly. I've been on ample muds before as both coder and player. Never have I seen a situation you can't get out of. In the very worst case - where they've placed a no-quit object on you or placed you in a no-quit room - you can always just linkdie. There is nothing that forces you to watch more than a single line. If something is going wrong, most people use one of many chat lines to warn others. And, sorry, but you men always say degrading things about us in public forums like the net, and think its funny. At least, in a mud, you can get away from other just by logging off, reporting them to an admin, and waiting for them to be wiped. It just doesn't make sense that people would stay online, sit through this, watch this, while it is mentally disturbing them. That's like someone saying "I'm going to rape you.", and then moving like a tortoise towards you and you just stand there for no reason. I also have some issues with the coders of that mud, but anyways...
Seriously, if people would just sit online and let this happen, when the 4-letter word "quit" or the little 'x' in the corner of their window could get them out of this, then a virtual castration for the perpetrator could indeed be possible. You quickly code an item which prevents them from using certain commands (if you're in LPC, that takes no efford... LPC is one of the most beautiful programming languages I have ever been graced to use... MudOS being the best driver I've used), as a temporary fix to stop them from doing this while you prepare the public ceremony's code. A noquit object could be placed on the player. A setting could be prepared in the center of town. An elaborate script where the person is picked apart, bit by bit, could be done. The person's gender changed to neuter. Their stats slowly falling, with messages of the blood and pain. Eventually, a killing blow delt to them artfully, and the character is destroyed, their IP perminanently banned. If revenge is what was wanted.
In reality, though, if there were victims, that probably isn't what they'd want. They'd probably just want that person to be gone.
- Rei
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
The Lord of the Rings is the most influential novel of the 20th century -- Germaine Greer even admits it. And best of all, she's royally pissed about it. On a more serious note, the author says that Tolkien is premodern in his sensibility and values. But so, really, are geeks, who tend to value rationality, loyalty to one's friends, and the notion that there's actually a difference between good and evil that can't be argued away by flip, pseudo-profound philosophizing. Which is probably why Greer, et al., hate LOTR so much.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Tolkien (LOTR)
Donaldson (the Unbeliever)
Jordan (Wheel of Time)
Adams (Watership Down)
Zelazny (Amber)
Pratchett(Discworld)
C.S. Lewis belongs in my list too, but I have not been able to re-read those books since I was 12.
As a general rule I dislike fantasy. Some of the "D&D" stuff like Dragonlance and Death's Gate are not as awful as most, but I almost never bother to re-read such stuff after reading it the first time. Terry Brooks, Eddings, etc. make me ill - a regurgitation of Tolkien without the scale or ability.
Give me SF any day - mostly crap as well, but much more good stuff to be found.
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You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
Why is this obvious? LOTR is filled with power that does not corrupt - the Elven Rings that were never touched by Sauron, Tom Bombadil, the Ents, Gandalf, and so on.
Some of my favorite scenes are characters coming into power of some sort - Gandalf's transformation to White, Aragorn's crowning, Samwise vs. Shelob, Merry vs. the captain of the Nazgul, the liberation of the Shire.
Frodo himself is given a task that is too much for anyone and he falls in the end, but his earlier good (vs. expedient) decision to let Smeagol live is rewarded with the destruction of the Ring.
About the only valid allegory I get out of LOTR is Sauron as Satan. Also, "Expediency is bad", but that is more an object lesson.
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You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
... Lord of the rings(LOTR) is a series of 5 books bound into 3 covers. GO on, look in the contents of the books, I'll wait.
When LOTR was published, publisher believed that the books did not have enough pages, and would not sell. So they bound the 5 books into 3 covers so the buyrer could get a fair deal.
Unlike today, where certain authors *coughKingcough* try to bilk the cunsumor by charging for 75-100 page piece of a story.
Now to the topic at hand:
Yes Tolkien said many times that the stories arn't allegories for anything. I believe that he had none in mind when he wrote the book, but that doesn't mean we wont find some.
Example, If I through a dozen coins on the ground, thats a reasonably random event. When you look at it your mind will look for, and find, a pattern.
Same thing with LOTR(or any book). The fact that in can be used for so many different allagories provews its strength. These stories made a fantasy world seem so possible, and were readable in a modern context.
Not bad considering it all started as a story tole in a series of letters to his son..
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Here's a link to the classic critical review of Tolkien's work by Edmund Wilson (April 14, 1956).
Tolkien himself didn't approve of such a comparison. As he said, "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ended."
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
a simple language issue.. I think JRRT wondered why we say -fs for certain words, when we use -ves for others (like shelf). And as a linguist (actually a philologist) he was probably in a position to recognize a linguistic white elephant.
Well, actually, simply in terms of good vs evil, LOTR isn't much of a challenge. Creatures and actions are never portrayed as being possibly both; no one has to make hard moral decisions in the book, IIRC, obviously someone will correct me if necessary. Boromir's falling to temptation is something for which the plot mechanism immediately and ruthlessly punishes him, though on the way he is allowed to redeem himself by attempting to save Merry and Pippin. Saruman is corrupted, but his corruption is not morally grey; he just lusts after the Ring. The main source of moral challenge in the story, the Ring, is never portrayed as something even some good can come of. Only those with moral flaws such as greed or pride allow themselves to be even momentarily swayed by it. None of the wise touch it.
But you are pointing out something important, though I would put it differently: Tolkien deeply *humanizes* the story. While characters don't appear to make many difficult moral decisions, their decisions on a personal level are frequently devastating. In a certain way, they are more devastating because they are not morally challenging, that is, because they are good and not evil decisions. Frodo decides to bear the Ring to Mordor. Galadriel decides to let the Ring go. What Tolkien is pointing out is that noble decisions can lead to great suffering, and this is the great depth of the story. Frodo sacrifices the most, and is scarred forever. Everything changes. The Shire changes, the Elves pass away. It's about the pathos of Time, at the end.
All these outraged reactions to Julian Dibbel crack me up. The guy is pretentious, too sure of himself, capable of overwriting anything. But just from the couple of samples of his writing that I've seen, he's also unarguably a Geek himself. He celebrates the culture via critique, because he's a full-fledged member of it himself. Dibbel is a geek.
Let's not forget that after Dibbel wrote the Rape in Cyberspace article, he spent a large amount of time on LambdaMOO, eventually writing My Tiny Life... Anyone who thinks Dibbel is anti-geek should read that book. You'd realize that if he were anti-geek, he'd be self-destructive.
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series comes to mind, though the invention of numerous, believable languages by Tolkien is amazing and unequalled in modern fiction.
In fact, the use of language in Lord of the Rings is one of the true joys I get when reading the books.
Sheesh.
All these outraged reactions to Julian Dibbel crack me up. The guy is pretentious, too sure of himself, capable of overwriting anything. But just from the couple of samples of his writing that I've seen, he's also unarguably a Geek himself. He celebrates the culture via critique, because he's a full-fledged member of it himself. Dibbel is a geek.
Think of him in the same light that you all think of Jon Katz and you might have a better idea of what's going on. If you read Dibbel's work for comprehension, rather than skimming it in order to formulate quick Slashdot comments, you would see that he's probably using these terms the same way Slashdot does in its masthead. Stop being such defensive, um... nerds.
Does anyone know if the british literary critic referred to in the second article (the one who slagged off JRR), Phillip Toynbee, is related to the current resident fool at The Guardian, Polly Toynbee?
The thought of successive generations of Toynbee's being utterly WRONG on every issue they address as they write for the intellectual left of Britain is priceless.
Of course if anyone took the Guardian seriously Britain would have been on the losing side of both WWII and the cold war...
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
I had the great opportunity to study Old English language and Anglo-Saxon literature in college and it was certainly eye opening to consider Tolkien's work in the context of the historical material for which he was so well versed.
For example, it is interesting to note the the name "Alfred" means "Elf Friend." The Tolkien concept of an elf (and the insistance of the plural "elves") is derived from medieval sensibilities. But perhaps Mr. Dribble prefers Peter Pan? Tolkiens style, his use of meter, reflects the writing of medieval authors. Consider this excert from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
As you see the similarities in Tolkien's writing with medival histories and stories, not to mention his invention of languages which appear to be shaped by his own mythos, you begin to see the depth and richness of his creativity.
Certainly he is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, its unfortuate that some critics can't see that his style of writing is in complete keeping with the works that inspired it.
I deem it a mistake to consider literature purely by the deductive value it bears. Therefore, it is a mistake to deprecate Tolkien's book because they lack a deductive sense.
The main attribute of the books, as I see them, is their internal esthetics. It can be found in just about any page of the book - in the sentences of Tolkien's immensly elegant and sophisticated English, in the development of the plot (which certainly looks like it has been really worked upon for all of the 15 years of the writing of the book), and in the tongues Tolkien used (for me, the very words "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" sound beautiful).
Besides the undeniable esthetic aspect, the very existence of Tolkien's mythology seems fascinating to me. The story of Beren and Luthien is as fascinating as any Greek myth (and certainly, their deductive values are almost identical). Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece, whether you like it or not.
I agree that LOTR does have a good story, but it is not a great story. If it wasn't for the world he created, they would be OK books that wouldn't have captured so much attention.
Tolkein does not though.
I remember thinking about some anyways, whether or not the author meant so. But my statement was more a general one and was just me regressing into a general discussion of literature and books.
I think he was right on the mark on what led to LOTR's success. It was creating a new world. I found the books did get quite boring at parts, but I read at all through because the world it created was very interesting.
In my opinion, literature is overrated. In my English classes they are always asking about the "Symbolism" that really seems to be stretching it. I'm right with Tolkien that allegories are stupid.
I'm glad that the critics have mostly decided that Tolkien isn't literature; to me it is almost a stamp of poor writing. Not saying that all literature is bad writing, but symbolism-crap seems to be used to cover it up.
I subscribe to The Nation, but don't read the literary reviews in the back since they are always so bourgeois and full of that kind of crap.
However, obvious ones like Frodo's struggle with the ring meaning "power is corrupting" I'm OK with.
In fact, I like it when the Author makes me think about moral issues and such, but I don't like having to ask "what deep meaning did the author have in writing this."
I would recommend re-reading the books before seeing the movie. I read The Fellowship last summer for the same reason. My wife, who never has shown the slightest tinge of geekness, decided to give the book a try and read all three in two weeks. Now she's the one planning to camp out for movie tickets.
As for Tolkien, he was also an expert in medieval literature, which, although I do not claim to be an expert, I have studied. Tolkien borrowed heavily from the likes of Marie de France and Chretien de Troyes. His glory lies (IMHO), not in the originality of the ideas themselves, but in his ability to join these seemingly disjointed sources into one coherant, and fluid text.
His works also remind me of the Popul Vuh, where Quiche converts to Catholicism had to chose between retelling their folktales in "the light of Christiandom", or seeing their heritage lost forever. Tolkien did the same thing. He preserved the rich European folklore by repackaging it for the day in which he lived.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Germaine Greer, who arrived at Cambridge as a student in 1964, wrote "it has been my nightmare that Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream has materialized." Nor does the official stance seem to have softened any since.
which sort of sums up the official attitude towards Tolkien. The Literatti are appalled that something with so much mass appeal would become so meaningful to so many people.
that said, while Tolkien may not have been the most profound or the most skilled of the twentieth century writers, the canvas that he wrote own, the size of his unified work and its' integrity has ensured it a place in the history of the 20th century. people tend tyo romanticize it a bit. seaking symbolisms thatmight not be true to the author. As is said of one review:
It fails to take Tolkien's literary project as seriously as he took it himself. "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations," he famously wrote in one foreword to the trilogy, warning readers against the temptation of finding in it "any inner meaning or 'message.' " Nearly every thoughtful piece of Tolkien criticism makes some kind of nod to the letter of that admonition, but very few can resist violating its spirit.
So simply it is its own creation, intended to be separate from the traditions that are part of our culture. In a sense, it is intended to be a true history of a different world. even so:
Because of its extra-cinematic life [online, etc], it can't escape being a monument to its own built-in cult, which is roughly the size of humanity.
sounds about right to me.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think the reason why Lord of the Rings will be considered the best work of fiction of the 20th Century is the very fact Tolkien was very careful and extremely comprehensive in detailing the background of Middle-Earth.
:-)
I mean, is there any other novel that has Appendices with a rich and astonishing amount of detail of histories, calendars, aristocratic lineage, race descriptions, and even languages? It is these little details that make Lord of the Rings so amazingly believable.
It also helped that Tolkien spent eleven years writing the manuscript (1938-1949).
I personally think most literary critics that dislike Tolkien do it out of envy more than anything else.
I think Dibbell has a good take on what Tolkien's works actually are. His books are to literature what Lucas' trilogy is to film - not the height of twentieth century culture nor the epitome of style and technique, but certainly a formative part of the narrative landscape. Whether he realizes it or not, Dibbell is right to point out that Tokien, along with Lucas and a host of others who worked their way into the popular culture, has specified the architecture for the imagination-space of our culture, especially those who create and support technology. And it is exactly that, if we look back to the earliest works we consider "great," which western literature was born to do.
I was thinking the Chronicles series would be a good set of books to do a movie on. Out of all the AD&D campaign fields they describe in books the lands of Krynn, are the best in my opinion.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Yes its a flame but seriously,
"I don't think I really agree with him, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. "
what is with all this commentary lately? like it or not you are journalists and its time to start acting like one
i doubt many people on the site care if you agree or not. lately every article has some ad lib by the poster. im worried how much more biased this site is getting. maybe start reading some real journalists' work and see how to separate reporting from op-ed pieces. please.
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
The writer of that article makes me think of a woman analysing a man. He is not someone who likes Tolkein, he is not a geek and as such has completely missed the point.
*watches a blind archer shooting at a non-existent target*
*swish*
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Steps to ensure you don't get goatsexed:
- *Always* check the real link (displayed at the bottom of most browsers). Don't trust the link in the posting.
- Make sure the link is from a credible source. In other words, a site you've been to before.
- Never trust a redirected link (bigfoot, cjb, etc).
- It is possible to use tricks to redirect from a credible source like msn.com. If the link is too long, or contains something in the URL that you don't understand, don't click it.
- If you see goatse in the URL anywhere, definitely don't click it
:)
- Last but not least, use lynx. Generally if I don't trust the link then I don't even bother clicking it. But if it's something that you really need to check into, use lynx on it (or some no-image browser). I've caught quite a few goatse redirects through lynx.
Just a few extra steps go a long way. No person should have to go through the viewing of that image in their lifetime. And for those of us for which it is already too late: multiple viewings..Tolkien didn't write his books as allegory, or to give obsessive people something to obsess over, or any of the usual reasons people write books. Professor Tolkien was a linguist, and liked to invent languages. Being a linguist, he realized that languages are nothing without a cultural context to place them in. Hence, he created a world, based it on some legends he had grown up with, populated it with cultures and races such as Elves and Dwarves, and gave them each unique languages. And he wrote a story about one of the events that happened in that world. Nothing more, nothing less. That's actually one of the reasons I like LOTR so much, it's just a good story, you don't have to work at reading it. You can just spend time reading and re-reading each paragraph, so rich are the descriptions and scenery. Tolkien's work is "fractal"...every person in it has a darned good reason for being there and good motivations for taking the actions they do. From the green hills of Hobbiton to the cracked plains of Gorgoroth, the story just gets better and better as it goes on, and takes on bigger and bigger events. Damn...what a story it is. I have to read it again before the movie release forever changes the way I think about LOTR.
1. Nobody likes me. I feel different.
2. I'm brilliant and underappreciated.
3. Everyone else *must* be stupid and common.
4. Clearly, anything 'everyone else' likes must ergo be stupid and common.
It's the same impetus that allowed our local movie critic to dismiss ET as crap, and then 're-review' it several weeks later as "inspired moviemaking", or 'serious' musicians to dismiss Pachelbel as 'that crap you hear in elevators at Christmastime'.
Sorry, popular doesn't equal bad, as much as that opinion may be self-validating for critics.
-Styopa
Ah well, another thing to have a complex about.
Yeah, so it's OT, what're ya gonna do? Rate it down? Can I get negative ratings?
-Styopa
Hmmm... did I see the words pretensions, ignorant, and pompous?
Man, I don't even need to post. Need I even mention my respect for the Village Voice is at an all time low now that I realize they keep self-assured prigs like this on staff? There is no more sure way for a critic to make an ass of himself than by "wittily" mocking something he doesn't GET.
Yeah, I'm sure all those 9 to 5 laborers, politicians, and nuclear engineers who love Tolkien are just "geeks". What a dumbfuck.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I agree with the 2nd half of your statement. Drizzt could be a great piece of film. . .as long as it doesn't come out as a miserable piece of shit ala D&D.
(cue the Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden"...)
o/~ I'll never be your Drizzt Do'Urden.
The Underdark has got me hurtin'.
All I want is Llolth to lay off of me... o/~
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
You must be an american, since the style these books were written in is older english, they are a bit different to modern english. Actually i liked the old style better than the newer translations to 'new' english. As for originality, Tolkien was the first to create a world/universe consisting of fantasy alone. The problem is offcourse that the real reason behind the story line is WW2.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
This discussion is fairly long already, and I'll confess I didn't read all the postings as attentively as I might have (if I didn't have work to do this morning), but I didn't see anybody replying to the last paragraph or two of the article, which I found redeemed the whole thing. Instead everyone's flaming around, defending or slagging Tolkein and his work --- unless they're doing microanalysis of the proper terms for orcs a.k.a. goblins or digging up JRRT's mythological roots in great detail...
What I (as quasi-geek and LOTR fan since over 25 years now) found fascinating were the twin assertions that:
- JRRT's work is about the world(s) he created, and nothing else --- not about WWII or the nature of evil or the human condition or anything else; and
- That exactly this activity --- the creation of worlds --- is what makes JRRT's work so incredibly relevant, influential, and enduringly interesting. Or, to quote slashdot, "stuff that matters".
I think it's worthwhile to quote the last sentences of the article at length on this point:Now, we could get into a long discussion about whether "literature... doesn't satisfy this urge" or whether "pychedlics [do the trick]", but that's not really the point. The point is that the fascination that Tolkein inspires has to do with the devotion he invested into inventing a world, and that he was, in so doing, a role model for many of us who have --- or who have tried to, or would like to find the time to try to --- do the same. This is the real fascination of Tolkein, and I've never seen it expressed so clearly before.
Ron Obvious
Sigh. As others have said, the author just doesn't get it. (I wasn't impressed by his "Rape in Cyberspace," either.) But I suppose every parlour has its pigs....
-Carter
PS. I thought his style to be a bit pompous, too. Not that I should talk. ;-)
He'd have a tough time deciding it this guy should be a toad or a stone :-)
"...Fear the people who fear your computer"
(\/)atthew
who cares about LOTR? i want a Drizzt movie.
Tolkien, in his works, did not strive to create anything new. His themes, creatures, symbols and narratives mostly derive from the vast mythological artwork of pre- and post-christian europe and mainly their revival in the national movements of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Wagner for one example among many.
Tolkien didn't try to preserve the middle-earth. All through the book the loss of its most cherished symbols - The purity of evil that is Sauron and which will surely be destroyed, The elves as the pure good that will leave lothlorien no matter what - all these are given. As is the loss of the Christian fate in its purest form of heaven and hell is abandoned in his lifetime.
Through the book, which is a lament for a time that never was, but that from now on won't even be wished for, he treats his (fallible, misguided, all-too-human) characters as young adults in need for education. It's a chase to defeat the purity of both sides because they are both possessed to the point of stagnation. But it's also a chase to perserve their heritage so that the mortal races who inherit the middle-earth will have a sense of smell which way leads too good and which to evil.
As such this is wholly a reactive work. Warning against the speed at which our modern-postmodern-pc values have swept over those who nourished us for thousands of years. But not so that we will fear the change and cringe back to the security of false metaphysics - So that we will march ahead, trusting our ability to "smell" the "right thing" and let it lead us, So that we can call the evil empire evil to its face without one solid moral claim to call our own.
I'm sorry if this babbling was too incoherent to follow. But it is very late at night here and I just had to try and articulate what is it about LOTR that captures the mind so intensively.
--- In the battle between the axis of evil and the one of stupidity, choosing intelligence is disloyal.
It's hardly original or daring (as the Voice piece and even the recent NY Times sneer somewhat begrudgingly acknowledge) to note that LOTR lacks a certain pyschological depth. So what? We've been hearing that for nearly half a century. The trilogy's perfectly fine, in fact, without it. What Tolkien created in his Middle Earth's lands and peoples, and what he manages to do with language, exposition and plot, are quite enough, thanks.
Almost more than any complaint against Tolkien himself, the Voice's Julian Dibbell finds it hard to tolerate the thought that geeks -- geeks! -- might have a profound influence upon the culture. Yes, it's probably true, as he suggests, that just about everything from your PC to your evening's "time suck" on Everquest bears some Tolkienesque homage, influence, relationship, or even blatant rip-off. So? Why all the sneering at geeks, then? Isn't this a proof of cultural validity, instead? The piece never bothers to explain why the author is fretting so much (but one guesses: the need to appear clever before the non-geek Voice crowd, and even perhaps a tinge of jealousy that Hobbits are more viable today than left wing lit crit).
With the exception of the odd atom-splitting discovery or acceptance of a job at Microsoft, geeks hardly ever hurt anyone. Let us have our beloved author and our much-obsessed-over film adaption, and don't let it worry you too much, Mr. Dibbell.
For example: he is able to show point of view by word choice. In The Return of the King passages that focus on Merry or Pippen usually are riddled with short Anglo-Saxon words, those that focus on Gandalf have more of an Old-English flavor, and battle scenes often contain many more words with Latin origins.
Tolkien also is incredibly poetic, using such Shakespearian concepts as Iambic Pentameter frequently, as well as varied Alliteration.
Tolkien is underappriciated, not just by the general public, but by literary critics, it seems.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
While we're on the subject, here's an interesting two-part article in salon.com this week. Some interesting biographical info, and a few amusing thoughts on why the "intelligentsia" twist themselves into knots trying not to take LOTR "seriously".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
If Newton had not lived, we would most likely still know about the laws of motion, we would still have classical physics, etc. Does this mean Newton wasn't an incredibly important and influential person? Of course not. Someone else would have come along and discovered the things he did, he just happened to be the one to do it. I'm not saying Tolkien was on the same level as Newton, I'm just pointing out that this argument of yours is ridiculous.
As for whether Tolkien was a good writer, my personal opinion is that he is easily one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He was very influential, and he simply wrote very well (what is this about a lack of psychological conflict in his writing? Just because it isn't directly stated doesn't mean it isn't there). The only thing going against him in this respect is his incredible popularity, as critics who agree with the majority of people aren't too useful. (Have you noticed, critics always pan popular works of any kind? It doesn't really matter whether they are good or not.)
Was to go against the enshrined literary dialectic of the 20th century. Serious literature is small, tedious, and acceptable to aging, serious, and tedious English professors at major universities. Instead he wrote a cracking good story which was, worst of all, increasingly popular with time.
It's not for us to judge whether the Lord of the Rings will be a true classic. The real test is whether or not it will be able to transcend time and culture change to continue speaking to the sensibilties of people many many years from now. The indications look good, though.
The Lord of the Rings has informed and lighted the lives of a great many people for decades now. It's had an undeniable impact on popular culture. That it offends a particular subset of the literary intelligentsia as they drive themselves into irrelevance in unimportant. At the end of the day, the importance of the book will be decided by the ordinary people who do or don't choose to read and reread it.
Did literature professors keep Shakespeare alive? Well, maybe a bit, but his enduring popularity derives from the fact that once you get past the language he's a hell of a screenwriter. He knew how to drive a story, and when to throw in a few fart jokes to keep the peons amused. His "great" qualities are only part of the story. Ditto Melville - Moby Dick is a rowsing adventure novel with a few really striking moments of vision about the nature of fate thrown in. He's still popular because people _enjoy_ his writing.
It probably grates on the Literary Establishment to no end that their ever-so-insighfull little pieces of crap will be forgotten two minutes after they're dead, whereas authors like Tolkien and (like it or not) Stephen King will be enshrined in literary history.
For those of you (all eight of you goatse-obsessed kids) who havn't seen ANYTHING about LOTR yet, or have no interest to, these links might help you get an idea (plaintext links [too late for html :p]).
7 /1 a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02 589f25382f668c9329e0375e81785ea61cd36a40938a41385e 948b71d7cf058bd1c8ef765cc3f/lotr_640_full.mov
e ec /1a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c 02589f25382f668c9329e0375e81785ea61cd36a40938a4138 5e948b71d7cf058bd1c8ef765cc3f/fellowshipofthering_ 480.mov
;)
Teaser Trailer:
http://a912.g.akamai.net/5/912/51/7f33d9e39a6b8
Teaser Trailer 2:
http://a1872.g.akamai.net/5/1872/51/4e446d3cbaf
Fellowship of the Rings trailer:
http://www.film.warka.pl/trailer/lotr3big.mpg
NOW, go and actually read the article for once.
Not so. See "The King of Elfland's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany. The concept of a hard, warrior elf dwelling in the forest may have started here. Even if this was not the first, it predates Tolkien's first book in the genre, and it influenced him heavily.
Tolkien was also influenced heavily by George Macdonald, etc. However, I generally agree that the world wouldn't be the same without Tolkien's works. He fused a lot of existing fairy-tale lore (along with a huge volume of original work) into a tale the likes of which nobody had ever created to that date or since. It's simply disingenuous to say that there was nothing special or different about Tolkien's work and that someone would have filled the gap had he not been there.
I've seen a lot of people claiming that all fantasy since Tolkien is simply an (often poor) rehashing of fundamental elements of LOTR and other Tolkien works. While I think this is quite often the case (see Sword of Shanarra and other Shanarra trash, the Wheel of Time Harlequin romance series, ad nauseum), there are many examples of highly original fantasy that don't pilfer from Tolkien.
Two wonderful examples are the "Nine Princes in Amber" series by Roger Zelazny (especially the first 5 originals, I'm not so keen on the sequels), and the "Black Company" series by Glen Cook (once again, the first 5 are best, but all are very good).
These, along with Tolkien, are by far my favorite books of all times. They are all fantasy, but although they supposedly occupy the same genre classification, they are very different. They are all masterworks of a very different kind, and are the products of genius which you won't find in your run-of-the-mill fantasy author.
On an aside, if you like Zelazny, read "Lord of Light." Yet another totally original SF/fantasy novel that you will never see the likes of which again.
What about Gollum? What about the concept, pervasive in the book, of good to be found in the innermost of even the most evil of creatures? What about the parallel concept of all the "good ones", being corruptable? And about that being true specially of the highest of them, being the lower ones (read the hobbits), less prone to corruption as they are not so worried about power and riches, because they enjoy thouroughly their lives? And about the many paths that corruption may take, masquerading itself at first as "neccesary steps against a bigger evil" (read censorship, martial laws...)?
Has he read the books? Has he understood them?
You do not need to look up the word "literary snob" in the dictionary now, you have been presented with a (presumably) living exemplar. A literary snob, after all is said and done is, sadly, really only a troll. I mean in the geek sense of the term, not the Tolkien sense. He will always seek the new slant about something, not caring if it's remotely consistent or interesting, but only that is provoking. He will never consider they own feelings about something, only how is that going to look from the outside. Nothing popular can be good. If Shakespeare were to prove now too popular, he would say that no book in which characters say things like "Out, you mad-headed ape!" (Henry IV) can be more than a lightweight work. Well, I've ranted enough. I must remember... not to feed the trolls.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Reference: Webster online http://www.webster.com
Free unix account: freeshell.org
And at least 1/3 should be super-deformed.
Nothing else could do it justice, anime is the only video style I've ever seen that could successfully bounce between absurd character-based humor, scenes of supernatural horror, and heroic moments like Robert Jordan's writing. Also, anime handles ridiculously long stories fairly well, in series form. The Hobbit boiled down to a 2-hour cartoon quite nicely, and I expect an anime series could get through maybe 2 books per season.
For a completely different reason, I'd like to see the entire Dune series of books done up the same way. The idea of a super-deformed God Emperor is way too funny to pass up. Not to mention the whole Super-Sexy Mind Control Whores From Space plot arc.
--
Tolkien's elves didn't have pointy ears. Not once does he refer to them as such. Celtic elves, however, had pointy ears, and were similar in stature and temperment to Tolkien's elves (though they fit into a more diverse fairy society).
The "high-elf" concept seems to be a product of the Seelie Court / Tuatha de Danan confusion. The Tuatha de Danan were supposedly either just superior people or the original faeries; they set the tone of the Seelie Court. Trim the Seelie Court down to elves (the most human-like of the bunch), tweaking them a bit to give them enough TdD characteristics to preserve this tone, and you're pretty close to standard fantasy elves.
As for forest dwelling, most of the humanoids hid in the forest, since that was a spooky mysterious place medieval peasants were afraid of. Anyway, while standard fantasy elves admire trees, as they love nature, they are only slightly more likely to be found hidden in forests than living in their own fancy elf-castles.
Tolkien's concept of elves is a fairly typical mishmash of ideas from one story to another, and diverges from what you might call 'standard fantasy elves' significantly. I really don't think he exerted that much influence over them.
As for the spelling, I seriously doubt that Tolkien was the first one to pluralize 'elf' as 'elves', regardless of what the dictionary standard of the day was. 'elves' is much more euphonious, and people love to tweak the spelling of such uncommon words (how many ways have you seen 'magic' spelt?).
--
As for the rest of this, if you're so dismissive of Tolkien why the hell bother to write the commentary in the first place?
/. bitching is the closest I come to being an author.
Did you consider that the obsessive following makes it worthy of analysis whether I like it or not?
I think it's popular because it was the first elf and wizard fantasy novel, feeding a great appetite for such works. Being first, it got a hold on minds of the early readers, who often recommend it as the first fantasy reading to others, who perpetuate this obsession in similar fashion.
Those of us who had read dozens of good fantasy novels, the polished gems to Tolkien's crude chippings, before ever looking to LOTR often don't have the same reverence for it. Nonetheless, members of the Cult of Tolkien will react with shock and disapproval at honest reactions to it, often loudly considering anyone who doesn't think LOTR is the best fantasy fiction ever written (or at least in the top 10) to be ignorant and uncultured.
A suggestion that new readers not even bother with Tolkien is generally considered irresponsible if not cruel.
Don't get me wrong, I may have come off a little harsher than I meant to. I think everybody who likes fantasy should read The Hobbit (which is small enough to work, IMHO), and anyone with an obsessive love for fantasy novels would find LOTR worth reading, but I wouldn't put the latter anywhere near my top 10.
Given the stilted dialog and otherwise awkward writing, I don't think most people would think it was that great without being told a hundred times that it was, or without being told that it was the first of its kind.
You wouldn't happen to be failed author by any chance, would you?
Failed? Only in the minds of mindless Tolkien-drones who can't bear to look at anything worth reading!! My inspiring tritritrilogy (27 books) on the life of an elflord who opposed custom to wed a she-troll is the greatest work of fiction ever created!
Just kidding.
I am a broken bootleg toy.
--
My own opinion on first reading was that Tolkien wrote in a stiff, unnatural style about a world that had many interesting pieces, but didn't really fit together into a believable whole. Many of the people I spoke to agreed with me. I still think The Hobbit was his best work.
However, I had not been told a hundred times before I read it that it was the Best Thing Ever, as I am reminded several times weekly on the internet. It's hard to develop or maintain an honest individual opinion about something presented as a major part of the basis of your adopted culture. Look at the above post, for example: moderated down as a troll just for wondering what the big deal is!
I wince every time I hear of anything containing wizards or goblins referred to as derived from Tolkien's work. Wizards and goblins were fairy-tale standards long before he came along, and they resonate deeply from the hundreds of years in which they were experimented with and tuned for maximum entertainment value.
I regard his work as merely a primitive early example of the western-european folklore-based fantasy novel, not the root from which all such works grow. The range of source materials used for novels was rapidly growing, and he just happened to be the first (or at least one of the first) to try cobbling together the monsters and heroes of medieval myth into a good long story to be printed up in cheap volumes for mass entertainment. In this way, he is more like the first man to cross the finish line in a race than an explorer who shows people a new place worth going to.
I believe strongly that if Tolkien had never lived, the main difference in fantasy literature would be no mentions of Tolkien in the reviews. There would still be stories about fireball-hurling wizards, sneaking goblins, vicious trolls, haughty elves, talking trees, and tough dwarves. Tales would still revolve around the world-threatening artifact and would still commonly feature the fish-out-of-water everyman-hero.
Why? Because the creatures are common in fairy tales (only recently driven from childhood bed-time reading by the incredible horde of modern authors), and the themes are common in ancient myths.
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Just wondering. It is said that JRR is the father of modern fantasy literature. That I asgree with. He made the first real "hit" book in the genre, and together with CS Lewis' more child-oriented Narnia tales they more or less covered the field, and inspired hoards of authors that tops the NYT's paperback lists of today.
But does this mean that he is the best author ever in the genre? Or do some of his most obvious followers (Eddings, Jordan etcetra into infinity) actually write a better tale? I find that LOTR is a little bit too story-driven, and could had focused more on the characters.
And the opínion commonly spewed that every Fantasy book is nothing but a bleak carbon copy of LOTR is simply laughable. Check out Roger Zelazny's Amber series. Not much Tolkien in there.
...um...like...a sig...
There's a big difference between being called "childish" and being called "child-like". The latter is very often an enormous compliment.
As a mother, I strive to be child-like, to view the world with a fresh and open mind, like my son does.
As a physicist, I must say super-string theory is about the dullest theory I've ever encountered.. It lacks the simple beauty of relativity and I wish I could find a way to discredit it for once and for all and stop the madness.
I found the author's remarks complimentary. Literary elitists may fail to appreciate Tolkein, but geeks, in their child-LIKE fascination, can see the merit in suspending cynicism and indulging their imaginations.
Don't be so sensitive.. not everything is as it seems, not every theory in physics is wonderfully imaginative, but the ones which are, such as relativity, are usually the result of a child-like willingness to cast aside accepted views.
Umm, I am not saying you are wrong, but elves did exist pre-Tolien in other form than just the Santa's Elfs from North Pole (which is something I object to, as everyone knows Santa lives at Rovaniemi in Finland...). Anyway, Tolkien got his elves, if I recall correctly, from norse mythology, where the elves weren't nice. Not very nice at all. There existed the 'faerie tales' before they became children's 'faery tales', that are much grimier. As did the old stories like Little Red Riding Hood. The original stories weren't for children, until they were 'cleaned up' by Brothers Grimm and their contemporaries. Have a nice day!
Those who can write, write.
Those who can't, critique.
'nuff said
My own opinion on first reading was that Tolkien wrote in a stiff, unnatural style about a world that had many interesting pieces, but didn't really fit together into a believable whole. Many of the people I spoke to agreed with me.
Perhaps many people did. Even more did not. Hence the popularity of his works. You seem to be in the minority here.
I still think The Hobbit was his best work. However, I had not been told a hundred times before I read it that it was the Best Thing Ever, as I am reminded several times weekly on the internet.
YMMV. As always. You don't care for it. Many others do. Big deal.
I wince every time I hear of anything containing wizards or goblins referred to as derived from Tolkien's work. Wizards and goblins were fairy-tale standards long before he came along, and they resonate deeply from the hundreds of years in which they were experimented with and tuned for maximum entertainment value.
It's rather simple: most of the fantasy published today *is* a poor rip-off of Tolkien. It has nothing to do with common elements like wizards or dragons or goblins, but the epic motif in which they're employed. Tolkien did it in a very specific way that hadn't been done before, and now every wannabe with a word-processor and a dearth of original thinking schlecks along the same path.
If you want to try out a fantasy author who gets it right using the very same concepts in a very un-Tolkien-esque fashion, check out Tad Williams trilogy. No original ideas there, either, but damn that's a good read - and it ain't another Trilogy ripoff.
I regard his work as merely a primitive early example of the western-european folklore-based fantasy novel, not the root from which all such works grow.
Then you'd be in the minority. It's also clear you haven't been to a bookstore lately. Else you'd see all the fantasy novels which are cheap imitations of Tolkien's work, vastly outnumbering those which aren't. Especially those shitty D&D novels - ye gods but those things suck.
As for the rest of this, if you're so dismissive of Tolkien why the hell bother to write the commentary in the first place? You wouldn't happen to be failed author by any chance, would you?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Given the stilted dialog and otherwise awkward writing, I don't think most people would think it was that great without being told a hundred times that it was, or without being told that it was the first of its kind.
But most people do, hence its popularity. And I'm rather of the opinion that they're just as capable as yourself of independent judgement, regardless of whether or not they've been "told a hundred times" that it's a good read.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I thought the article was pretty much on point. I had always felt that the best facet of the cycle was its immersive backstory, whereas the actual plot always felt a bit dull to me. Maybe i was spoiled during childhood by the pace of things like Star Wars, which is basically Tolkein on cocaine with spaceships. (sung to the tune of Lucy in the sky...) Another thing: of COURSE lotr can be read as metaphor... anything can be -- it just might be a mistake to divine a specific metaphor and start believing the author put it there on purpose. But the idea of the ring as nuke, as industry and tech(versus hippiedom), etc. etc., makes sense if taken as generally as possible. The notion is strong enough to repeat in some vague form in many of lotr's progency (imagine if you somehow combined the death star, the plans to the death star, and the force, and you'd be just about there) Basically it boils down to POWER in some form or another, and the notion that absolute power corrupts absolutely, yadda yadda. The fact that someday Tolkein and the Orwell-Huxley-THX vision of the future would eventually merge is evident in the very dystopian notion of the ring. So bully for tolkein, i guess, although i'd really like to see sci-fi get out of its Tolkein-induced rut, give up on anthropomorphic aliens and FTL travel and start actually imagining our real future in space, outer- and cyber-.
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
I try to be an open minded individual. Can you name your top two or three "good fantasy novels"? I'd like to read them.
Given the stilted dialog and otherwise awkward writing, I don't think most people would think it was that great without being told a hundred times that it was, or without being told that it was the first of its kind.
I decided I liked the work without any such outside influences, if that matters. Granted, I was young at the time, and perhaps overly impressionable. But I certainly had heard nothing about the book before reading it.
Mooney Guy N4074H
Every great culture has their mythos, the Greeks had theirs, the Ancient Egyptians theirs, etc etc, but the modern world had changed, and needed something new to call its own. Tolkien created that.
LOTR plays on archetypes common to all mythology, ones that pull at the heart strings of human kind, and we were given, through the books, something new, yet familiar enough to be within easy grasp of our minds eye. We need classic good vs. evil, but we also need the harsh lessons that go along with the journey to find destiny.
Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Robert Jorden, etc as well but their works don't come close to comparing to LOTR, because they weren't written for the same purposes. Tolkien published his books because HE wanted to, not for fans, not for money, simply to tell his story. Something most modern authors (like the aforementioned RJ) don't. This true love of story telling sets him apart, and infuses the work with some of its quality.
Plus he was a darn good writer!
Ever since reading LOTR and The Hobbit I've thought it would be a great idea to open a pub and call it the Hobbit's Armpit!
This person, Julian Dibbell, needs to check his beliefs on what is fantasy and what is reality. After all, this article proves that he is nothing more than a glorified, overpaid, Troll.
Quick! Where's my cloak of elvin kind?
There's a bitter Troll on the loose!
RUN!
Very true. He also wondered why a sentence should have to read "the great grey horse grimly neighed" rather than "the grey great horse grimly neighed".
Seriously, folks, it's an honor. Those of you who read my article carefully -- and I am gratified to see how many of you did -- know that my sentiments are about as pro-geek as they come, at least in the world of artsy-fartsy leftoid journalism.
As for those who mistook the essay for an anti-geek, anti-Tolkien screed, well, I guess I can't blame you. As somebody astutely pointed out here, I wasn't writing for the /. crowd, but for artsy-fartsy leftoids whose anti-geek prejudices I felt I had to humor in order to get them to entertain the possibility that they just might be entirely full of shit. Also, as somebody else astutely pointed out, I did spend too much time giving the opinions of Tolkien's detractors their due, and less time than I should have explaining why their criticisms ultimately miss the point.
That said, I think that if those of you who've been flaming my azz here would just holster your phasers for a second, take a deep breath, and read the essay slowly one more time, you'll find it more to your liking. Not to say you won't still find it pretentious, overwritten, and riddled with errors of both fact and interpretation. But anti-Tolkien? Nope. Anti-geek? No fucking way.