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Tolkien Vs. The Critics In 1954
meganthom writes "The BBC is running a story about how the critics viewed The Fellowship of the Ring, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its publication... One critic's view: 'To have created so enthralling an epic-romance, with its own mythology, with such diversity of scene and character, such imaginative largess in invention and description, and such supernatural meaning underlying the wealth of incident is a most remarkable feat.' One of the most insightful of all the comments at the time was provided by the Spectator's Mr. Hughes, who said, 'I think we should be well advised to remember that what we have before us now is the first volume of a larger work... and be willing to suspend judgement... until we have seen the whole... The pleasure to be derived from this first volume is a pleasure not to be missed.'"
The Army reading list
use tolkiens method! "Tolkien created 37 new languages for 34 books".
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Many years ago it was. It was an incredeble experence. One that I repeat every few years. Don't just read the book, check out the appendices too.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once," said the anonymous reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement, while American critic Edmund Wilson, dismissed the entire trilogy in 1956 as "juvenile trash".
I understand that it may be difficult for us NOW to understand what the critics were saying in 1954 but you have to remember that writings were influenced by the conservative nature of the times.
There have been few books I have read more than once and LOTR is one of them, in fact, I found it completely uninteresting and only made it 3/4 of the way through. It's just not my type of book.
I wouldn't exactly say that he "triumphed" over anything. Times and tastes have changed and so have the reviews on his book.
just a reminder of a great article about how close these two great writers were:
tolkien and lewis
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
quoth the article
These days, of course, the dividing line between children and adult audiences has blurred.
A major factor to this phenomena is literature that so generically entertaining that anyone can read it. LOTR is the chief example.
But the other factor is obviously the lower level of intelligence of adults in our society. As people get dumber the more difficult books sell fewer copies. If LOTR was released today, for the first time, with no movies, fame or promotion how well would it do? How much of that has to do with the average adult reading level?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Beowulf and the Critics, an insightful look at some of Tolkein's work.
Around the time of the release of ROTK, an interesting news story popped up about researchers finding a manuscript for a fourth book in the trillogy under garden shed of his former home. I'm not sure, though, the text looks very similar to something one might see on fanfiction.net.
Destined to be movie of the century.
I mean, how can any other movie compete with LOTR's 1200 minutes of greatness (I'm talking about the EXTENDED EXTENDED Extended Super Bonus Box Set Release, scheduled for November '06).
Q: Is LoTR really based on Christian Mythology?
A: Yes. Tolkien wanted to demonstrate that even the mentally and physically challenged were capable of success and that therefore we should love everyone, regardless of their defects.
Q: So who represents the mentally and physically challenged?
A: Well obviously the hobbits are the physically challenged ones here, but the central mentally challenged figure is Gandalf, responsible for the most horrible attack plan in literature.
Q: What's so horrible about a poorly armed team of two hobbits infiltrating Mordor?
A: Well, basically it ignores the fundamental strengths of the forces of light. Anyone who's played C&C or Warcraft knows that if you have an advantage in air units, you have to use it. Remember that elves can ride eagles, and that elven archers are incredibly potent - early on, Gimli dismounts a Nazgul with a single shot! With about a thousand eagles (given elven archers on each one), the forces of good would have matched up pretty well in the air against Mordor's air units: all nine of them. While the leader of the Nazgul cannot be killed by any living man, this does not prevent a team of twenty eagles from tearing him to little shreds, especially if Gandalf rode along for help. So basically an air battle would have been brief unmitigated slaughter of the Nazgul as about a thousand eagle-mounted elves blew them out of the sky in a hail of arrows.
Q: But I thought that there was some other book that said that the eagles wouldn't help?
A: We're not talking about some other stupid book here, we're talking about the Lord of the Rings. And in this book, the eagles most definitely help out, first by flying Gandalf off the tower and secondly by pitching into the Final Battle in full force, attacking ground units (stupid!) at great risk to themselves. So obviously they would have been content to take part in a brief airborne slaughter of the Nazgul.
Q: Ok so you defeat all Mordor's air units... then what?
A: Well with air superiority, you command the skies. Which means that you can fly right over Mount Doom and drop anything you want right in there... like a ring. Mordor only had nine airborne units, and with them out of the way Mordor has absolutely no way to prevent anyone from flying anywhere.
Q: But the ring would corrupt the eagles trying to drop the ring in, silly.
A: Actually, the ring can only corrupt those who touch it or those in the nearby area. This is a trivial mechanism to defeat. The first step is permanently bind the ring to a weak and helpless creature, like a rat. Second step is of course to put the rat on a long rope, so that the creature holding the rope is out of the sway of the ring. Then the eagle carrying the rope, having total air superiority, flies over Mount Doom and drops the rat in the volcano. An utterly trivial victory.
Q: Ok, so why the elaborately stupid attack plan? Why send the physical rejects as the only hope of mankind?
A: The lesson is that, though they succeed at great cost and great risk, they are still capable of success. This, of course, was the lesson of the Holocaust - that we should never feel so superior to the weak or inferior that we decide they have no place. Even idiot tacticians like Gandalf and weak, pathetic creatures like Hobbits can add some value here & there.
Q: Wait a minute. I just saw the movie, and there's this scene where they're like "this is the last stand of the Men of the West", and all the men of the west are white, and they face off in total war against Indians on Elephants and "black orcs" (er... maybe we just call them "blacks" for short) and the white Men of the West achieve a total genocidal victory. Doesn't that invalidate what you just said?
A: Well, um, no. That's all fine & good, but remember that in the Holocaust we were committing genocide against white people
"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The 50th anniversary would be an appropriate time for all those people who liked the movie adapatations to actually read the books.
I read it more than once. It might have been because of my girlie crush on Aragorn, though. He's got to be the hottest fictional character ever. (for some reason it's hard to hear comic book guy saying that).
This is really interesting... Electronic Gaming Monthly is reporting that Peter Jackson has EVEN MORE footage that he wants to add to the trilogy, no doubt issuing the double-extended versions.
As long as he's not adding in a CG Jabba, I'm cool with that...
"It is better than any book that has been written in the past. It is better than any book that will ever be written in the future. And I haven't even read it yet."
Tolkien was actually a linguist, not a professional fiction writer. Some of the things he did broke unwritten "rules," e.g. a large number of characters and switching between multiple subplots that the reader needs to remember. Ultimately, he succeeded, but it's understandable that critics seeing his work for the first time would have been surprised.
American critic Edmund Wilson, dismissed the entire trilogy in 1956 as "juvenile trash".
I read the trilogy several times between the ages of 10 and 14. I tried reading it again ten years later before the first movie came out, but I became bored with it and was side tracked by other novels.
As a child I thought it was the most thrilling read ever. I suppose our imaginations are more suited to fantasy as children. Everyone knows how imaginative children can be.
It's not "juvenile trash", but I understand his sentiment.
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
So when they released extended versions of LOTR they still kept something for further release? This is absurd. They could go on like that forever... adding things between DVD releases.
I'm waiting for 'LOTR Director's Cut'.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Is there anyone who can restrain themselves from verbally masturbating over LOTR for 5 minutes?
I am aware that it's very popular, won Oscars etc, but I myself found the book to be very very long winded and the films to be somewhat self-indulgent on the part of, well, everyone in them.
Don't get me wrong, I found them entertaining and they held my attention far better than the novels - but I feel I'm the only one who doesn't think they're the greatest cinematic feat EVER?
Please don't flame me! It's just an opinion, and I respect everyone else's....but am I really alone in this POV?
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
I read "The Hobbit" as a teenager, and managed to like that one okay, but just couldn't get past the writing style of LOTR. I finally managed to start it over again when the film came out, and loved it. I guess I wasn't appreciating the prose-like style he has. I wanted more explosions and blood.
My daughter, however, at the tender age of 12, read all of Tolkein's stuff, along with the complete works of Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams. I probably should have had her explain it to me back then.
So when is the Hawkeye movie coming out?
Under the "Fiction Facts" sidebar:
In the US in 1965, 100,000 pirate trilogies were sold
Arr, had enough of ye hobbits, can't wait to get me hooks on a proper pirate trilogy!
Actually, to make a full confession of geekdom, the first thought I had when I saw this line was of Alan Moore's alternate universe in the Watchmen series, in which pirate-themed literature had somehow the dominate escapist genre instead of fantasy, sci/fi, or super-heros.
The Appendecies are great. You should also get the books on tape...the performance is amazing. And you'll get Tom Bombadil's song stuck in your head, as the reader sings all the songs.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Throughout history, there have been divergences between that which is popular and that which is good. The Lord of the Rings is one of those truly rare works that has bridged that gap. Historically it has had many critics. Most of those seem to be people that respond to it as part of a genre they don't understand or believe in, as opposed to legitimate literary criticism. It also gets criticism to the effect of "I can't get through it." I still remember my AP English teacher, years ago, telling the class he couldn't get through the Hobbit. Ouch. It's a shame, really, that such a world is not truly accessible to all. There are the movies, of course, but they're not the same thing. There's an inherent beauty to the language that Tolkien understood and crafted. It's the kind of thing that makes the NEA report on decreasing reading for pleasure among Americans such a concern. There are whole worlds that begin to dissappear.
You read it for the first time every few years? Unforseen advantages of Alzheimers disease ...
'I think we should be well advised to remember that what we have before us now is the first volume of a larger work... and be willing to suspend judgement... until we have seen the whole... The pleasure to be derived from this first volume is a pleasure not to be missed.'
Is that why Return Of The King was the only film of the three to get an Oscar for best film ?
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
It takes imagination, creativity and research to write believable fiction and/or fantasy. Tolkien not only did this, but he built up the finer details to such an extent that the level of submersion in his books is something that has to be experienced to be believed.
Usually, when you read a fantasy novel, you are transported into another world and the story takes off. With Tolkien, he builds that world around you so that you are intimately aware of it's finer details and not just the storyline. This means, it's not so much a story any more to you - it's more like an alternate reality.
There are no boundaries to the imagination and Tolkien proved it through his works. I salute him. There is simply no other way to put it.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
If they're not one word reviews, they're not worth reading... who has time anymore for such language... just tell me if I should read it or not.
*blink* - I was reading this and somehow the LOTR part of my brain shorted out against the "RPG" part of my brain, and I thought about yesterday's thread on designing games for people who work full time (and the inevitable MMORPG discussion spawned therefrom).
50 years later, we have MMORPG developers saying "Don't blame us if the game sucks! We're not done yet! Just keep paying those monthly fees! We'll implement the fun Real Soon Now! Oh, and here's another 10000 orcs for you to mindlessly slay. That oughta be enough 'content' to keep you busy for the time being."
Density of content appears to be key here, too. LOTR's a huge world/universe with a huge backstory. And although you can tell the story of the One Ring in about half the time it takes to read it, Tolkien made the books work by ensuring that the reader learned something new about that universe in every chapter -- even when it didn't necessarily have anything to do with the plot. (Hence the popularity of both the "movie" and the "mega-extended-remix" DVD set.)
If 2004's MMORPG is the modern answer to 1954's "really long fantasy story", then perhaps the message to aspiring game developers is that as long as you keep the player learning, the story you tell is immaterial.
"The Hobbit" stands on its own, even though from the perspective of LOTR, it's just a paragraph of backstory. But I think we can all remember our joy as first-time readers (regardless of which [quest|book] we [did|read] first) when you put the pieces together. That's good writing, and it makes for great RPG gameplay.
It just struck me as strange that in 50 years, we haven't come full circle when it comes to storytelling in fantasy worlds, we've actually gone backwards.
I remember reading that the original Star Wars reviews were themselves pretty scathing. Anyone have links to the originals?
An interesting look at the deeper (political) meanings in the Fellowship Of The Ring, purported to be from chomsky and zinn...
m l
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.ht
Has a good LOTR Comic Book or graphic novel ever been released?
I remember reading the SW:ANH comic book adapation that Marvel put out back in 70's and it was very good.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
I didn't like LOTR. I didn't like the style of writing, I didn't like chapters upon chapters of purple prose, descriptions of crap I didn't care about, histories of people inconsequential to the story.
In short, I wanted to read a good story, and instead got a narritive-styled encyclopedia that sought to teach me every piece of minutia about Tolkeins made-up fantasy land. No I don't care what the elvish word for donut is, nor do I care about Fogobors ancient heritage.
I found the books without a sense of humour, which of course made it funny to me, since all my friends were taking all the Tolkein stuff so seriously, buying elvish dictionaries and whatnot.
Nope, didn't care for it. Gave up about 3/4 through Fellowship. I did like the movies.
I'll tell you something else. I don't like Harry Potter. I read the first one, and no matter what anyone tells me, these are childrens books. Stuff I would have read in 3rd grade.
And, furthermore, I'll tell you this. I read the first 3 chapters of the Da Vinci code, and tossed it aside. I'm not one for hype, I found it to just plain suck. Perhaps the hype ruined it, so many people telling me what a piece of genious it is. Maybe I just didn't stick with it until the genious part. Forget it, I'll wait for the movie.
Not everyone is ready to canonize Tolkeins work.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm not saying it isn't quality literature, just that it just isn't to my taste, any more than Pilgrim's Progress or Moby Dick.
The Narnia Chronicles, now there's my vote for best literature of the 20th century.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I love the stories encompassed by The Lord of the Rings, but for some reason I have a real problem remembering the names of the characters. For example, the names "Sauron" and "Saruman" are so similar that I easily forget which character is which.
I also have difficulties with quite a few of the other character names as well, but perhaps this doesn't point to a problem with the work, but rather my own attention deficits.
Jeez, the reviews all sound like James Lipton on In The Actors' Studio!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
LOTR is rather heavy reading and honestly not for everyone. I think the movies did a good job of presenting the ideas and plot of the books, limited as the movie format is to begin with.
I just wish someone would do a decent billion-dollar series of 3 hour movies based on the Dune books. The original Dune movie was OK but short and a bit hokey, and the SciFi series were absolutely terrible. But Dune is not considered "hip" like LOTR, I suppose.
A Trip to a Far Galaxy That's Fun and Funny... sniff, before the dark days, before the Midi-chlorians.
Set about 100 years or so into the Fourth Age, with some unrest in Gondor and things creeping around Mordor. He got bored with it quickly and gave up.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
A few reports I had read many years ago indicated that the Fellowship was critically not well received. Critics also despised TTT, but by ROTK they had warmed up to the trilogy, possibly due to readers and fanbase.
It's nice to see a different side of the coin now.
do() || do_not();
Appendices, indeed. Check out the "mythology" too! The entire trilogy chronicles only the very ending of the Third Age. _The Silmarillion_ sets the stage with the creation of the world and a rich history of the First Age (mainly the Elves), explaining where a lot of this stuff comes from. (Not much is known about the Second Age, but that's in _The Silmarillion_ too -- mainly the history of Aragorn's people before they came to Middle Earth.)
If you get really interested, there's lots more.
_The Book of Lost Tales_
_Unfinished Tales_
Christopher Tolkien's _History of Middle Earth_ series which unearths early ideas either reshaped or abandoned during the crafting of all this stuff.
You are not alone in your idea about this 'greatest cinematic feat ever', imho, far better movies have been made, probably with much less resources.
But bear in mind that it could have been a lot worse! It is a great responsability to make a movie about one of 'the best books ever', and you could easily screw up. For example 'The league of extraordinary gentlemen', which I was inadvertedly exposed to, crams together 8 or so of the best fictional characters of the turn of the 1900th century, and is the worst I ever saw.
At least Peter Jackson made a decent trilogy, be it excellent or just good enough.
Z
Anyone else see that internet petition about renaming the two towers for "sensitivity" purposes?? I cracked up when some guy said "It's obvious this guy named it that to get under our skin..." - but, as this article says, it was written in 1954 ya shmuck!
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
I Can't believe I submitted several days ago that the Boston museum of sceince http://www.mos.org/is having a LOTR Exhibit next week and it doesn't get posted! LOTR FOTR TTT & ROTK fans won't want to miss this!
Hilarious excerpt! Makes me want to find the actual fic...
Tolkien stated clearly that his goal was to create cosmology, mythology, language and history and needed something to fill it. The LoTR was an after-thought of sorts -- the filler. People who sit down to read it and be entertained -- with no knowledge of the incredible work that went before it and which it rests upon -- mostly won't get it. They'll still be entertained -- about as much as the unenlightened posts we see here....
Personally, my favorite of his works is the Silmarillion for purposes I mention at the beginning of this post. He wrote it first even though it was published last (by Christopher) and it best embodies his true intentions....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I dunno, I think that would ruin it for me. I have a distinct tune for Tom's songs already in my head, and I doubt that the reader's would be different. This already happened with the characters. In the movie, Gandalf was pretty danged close to my mind's eye, as was Gimli, but Frodo was waaaaayyy off.
It wasn't as bad as it was for some other books. I loved Jurassic Park when I read it, and Malcolm was my favorite character. But I can't freakin' stand Jeff Goldblum. For some reason, he just annoys me. That, among other things, actually ruined Jurassic Park for me. I can still re-read LOTR though. And someday, I'll read Similarrion (something like that...never can recall exactly...)
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
It was called the "New Shadow," and was an attempt to write about the Fourth Age. Tolkien realized the story was going nowhere and abandoned it. Most fans know about this and have read it (Christopher did release it).
Or something like that.
Yes: reading The Silmarillion is the best advice you can give to a LOTRs fan. It's adds so much more depth to the story.
The first couple of times I read the LOTR I skipped over the songs, and many of the tales seemed superfluous. After The Silmarillion though, I had in my mind the whole stories and their context as I read the references to them throughout the LOTR. This gives the LOTR many more layers of depth and adds to the character of the story.
why not have Frodo ride on an eagle to Mount Doom and throw the ring in the fires? would have saved a lot of time and lives. Of course Gandalf might still be grey then.
Obviously this would kill the book, but I'm just asking, is there any explanation for why this wasn't done? If Frodo can handle the ring for months on end, then surely he could do so for however long the flight to Mt Doom would be. I'm perfectly happy putting this thought out of my head and just enjoying the story, but I still wonder.
here in czech republic, the LOTR was criticized for being an allegory of war of Evil Capitallist Imperialistic West (Gondor, Elves etc...) against a working class of Good communist Mordor (but because it was a bad book from the west it was trying to depict good as evil and vice versa). I am not kidding. I have somewhere an article from Rude Pravo (Red Justice, leading newspapers of communist Czechoslovakia) where is detailed list of what nation and character from LOTR corresponds with what character and nation in the Real World.
SHE does throw dice.
I think the BBC article does the reviewers of the time a great deal of injustice by not including WH Auden's review. Auden was and still is regarded as one of the great reviewers, and he cast FoTR as one of the best.
In fact my wife (living in South America as a teenager at the time) ordered a copy from Unwin and Allen after reading the Auden review. As a result we have a First Edition in our library (as well as a 3rd Edition of Unwin and Allen of the Hobbit). The two are worth thousands now.
Well, for my part, I remember reading about how every Led Zeppelin album when it was released got uniformly miserable reviews, especially from Rolling Stone.
:-(
Compared to what passes for 'music' in the 21st Century so far, Led Zeppelin looks like art in musical form nowadays.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Or in the fires of Mount Doom =P
I like you're air power theory, its kind of funny. I always imagined that Sauron has some sort of anti-flying magic defences! Tolkein might have had some familiarity with air power from WWI, and may have been less than impressed! Since WWII, airpower is now considered an integral part of military strategy, and its hard to imagine a military campaign without it
...by Lewis Caroll convinced me long ago that kids who could read 100 years ago were of greater literary ability than kids today. I'm an accomplish 32 year old fantasy reader, and the darn book is difficult even for me to get through!
So, looking at the Lord of The Rings trilogy, I can sorta see the validity of criticizing it a children's book.
Of course, yesteryear's children's books are easily great classics among the present days much more easily digested fare.
We get these EVERY SINGLE LOTR article. Some yahoo thinks he's being funny by making up a fictional title with a lot of adjectives. "EXTENDED EXTENDED Super Mega Bonus Edition 2007! Mod me up!"
Ever since 2001, the plan has always been clear--normal edition released first, an extended edition with extra footage released later. It's been those SINGLE TWO releases for every movie so far. Peter Jackson has stated there won't be new versions. It's always been and always will be standard and extended.
Why do people think it's still funny to pretend it's more chaotic than that? It's not. It's very simple, and they've been open about it since the very beginning. This isn't Lucas we're talking about here. Stop with these moronic "jokes."
The other characters, though superficially more interesting also have arrested character development. Aragorn is perhaps the best, starting as a dishevelled drifter who is revealed to be a king. But once this is revealed at the end of FOTR, anything interesting about Aragorn pretty much stops. Gandalf is interesting, but again once he comes back as the White its over for him too. Don't even the mention the sentimental relationship between Sam and Frodo that became almost laughable in the movies.
Tolkein's "significance" might be as the first to create a self-contained mythical world on a grand scale, though there were others before him going back through Edgar Rick Burroughs, Jonathon Swift to Sir Thomas Moore. This is hardly can be considered a grand literary achievement, however, and is more in keeping with his dayjob as an academic.
Why do people think this is funny? It's always been clear, right from the start, before the release of the first movie on DVD, that there would be a normal release, and then an extended footage release for the fans.
A normal release, then a later release with extra footage and in-depth documentaries. Why is this such a chaotic issue for Slashdotters? In every LOTR article, there is someone who makes a "super mega extended remix bonus edition" joke--seemingly, the more adjectives they put it in, the funnier they think they're being.
It's not confusing, it's not Lucas-like, and it's been known since the very beginning. Normal edition, extended edition. Christ, people.
Slashdot is a technology site, but LOTR (the book) is not a technology topic. Quite the opposite in fact - what put me off the books when I tried them years ago was the obvious Luddism. Saruman and his factories were the "dark satanic mills" of England, and Treebeard and the ents were the forces of a more natural order. I didn't believe in that anti-technology religion then and I don't now.
The movies, OTOH, are clearly a technology topic. They are masterpieces of CGI, and they have raised the bar for all future CGI movies.
The irony of an extreme Luddite text being brought to a wider audience by the highest of high-tech seems to have been lost on the Tolkien fans.
Reading the Silmarillion is the worst advice you can give to a LOTR fan, they are bound not to be a fan after it. It is as dull as dishwater, and not as useful for cleaning dishes with.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, and am hiding behind the shield of anonymity for the same reason.
The "Fellowship" movie lost me almost from the beginning. I felt sorry for the actors; if I was an actor like, say, Cate Blanchett, and I was told that instead of using my talent to convey the impression of size and light and power, my performance would be rotoscoped and animated out of existence, I would be pretty angry. If I was an actor like Ian Holm, and I was told that instead of using my talent to portray the shadow of evil crossing Bilbo's face, we'd be using a computer-generated demon face, I would be pretty angry. Peter Jackson used CGI trickery rather than allowing his actors to act.
I found the books to be generally dull as well. I always have to stop about midway through The Two Towers because it's just so godawfully boring. It was interesting, therefore, to see that at least one reviewer mentioned in that article wished that Tolkien had had "imagination equal to his invention, and...style equal to both." Because that's exactly what I think. The creation of all the languages and history and stuff is intensely neat, but the execution of the story is dull, dull, dull.
And then:
I was hoping someone would have an informed explanation, and not just a "just because" answer.
Thanks.
Well speaking for myself, I was referring to a post on theonering.net yesterday that stated there was footage that was "held back" from the extended versions of each, and at least hinted at a future release that could contain said footage.
It would not surprise me if we see a box set of extended editions that happens to have some extra footage that wasn't even in the original extended versions. Maybe Peter said he wouldn't, and if he did, I'm sure we'll never see a reversal of what someone said. In Hollywood? BALDERDASH I SAY!
I was not the one who pissed in your wheaties, please move along.
Mr Tolkien describes a tremendous conflict between good and evil... but his good people are consistently good, his evil figures immovably evil," wrote the Observer's Mr Muir.
I can understand (yet disagree with) most of the criticisms, but if someone pulled out this one today, I'd accuse them of not reading the books. A major - if not THE major - theme is the internal good vs evil conflicts of the characters. The whole point of the ring is that it corrupts even good people. It's something Frodo and even Gandolf struggle with. The reason it's given to a hobbit is because they have the greatest chance of getting rid of it before it corrupts them completely. Then you have Golumn who is completely corrupt, struggling to become good and can't quite do it.
The criticisms were just about the first book, though, so maybe I'd let the old chap Muir off...
I can recommend two that I've read:
Daniel Grotta-Kurska's biography Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth. A fascinating and sympathetic biography, that closes with the perfect anecdote.
Lin Carter's book on LOTR, whose title I don't remember, but which delves into the mythology from which Tolkien drew. I own a copy of the paperback of this, and have a small hope that it will be worth something someday because of a typo on the back cover: said cover lists the chapter titles, and one, "The Trilogy: Satire or Allegory?" is misprinted as "The Trilogy: Satire or Allergy?" Perhaps this is an early example of spellchecking at work.
I don't really understand why LOTR should be the ulimate book for geeks.
I read it and immensely enjoyed it a long time ago; but I read a lot of other things that spoke more to my geeky side. I enjoy shifting perpectives, playing with structure, recursion etc. When I was younger and mainly read SF, I found that kind of stuff in writers like Philip Dick, who I still like to read; I don't feel the urge to go back to Tolkien. Now, many years later, I'm still reading a lot, and I find those things in writers like Borges, Italo Calvino, Flann O'Brien, Georges Perec...
Anyway, art is not a contest, and any good book should feel like the best book in the world while you're reading it.
I thought the movies were OK for what they are, but they don't seem to have much to do with what I remember enjoying in the books.
Having just read Humphrey Carpenter's Biography of Tolkien, and in the middle of Tom Shippey's The Road To Middle-Earth, some relevant points are fresh in my mind.
When Stanley Unwin asked for a sequel to the unexpectedly popular Hobbit, Tolkien quite didn't know where to start, other than that the request was for "more about hobbits". There he began, but struggled to find the story for a couple years. He originally expected to produce a work of similar length.
Tolkien begins the Forward to FOTR with "This tale grew in the telling", and by telling he meant "writing". The Ring's purpose was not conceived until the writing of "The Shadow of the Past", where Gandalf explains its history to Frodo. Several characters were originally very different from their final forms; the most striking to me is that Strider was originally a Hobbit named Trotter, who kept the name long after becoming a Man (though tolkien noted several times that this name was wrong).
The vast majority of the "corrections" came as Tolkien dug deeper into the extant Silmarillion manuscripts, tying the unfolding story into his created mythology.
In several letters to Stanley Unwin while writing LOTR (a process which took 16 years), Tolkien repeatedly reported that the tale was "getting out of hand", and that he was not sure who its audience would be. Upon completion, Unwin was prepared to take the risk, even after upsetting the Professor to the point where Tolkien almost inked a deal for the book to be published by Harper Collins. Post-war paper availability and the well known discussion of splitting the book up and what the three volumes' titles would be contributed to this.
In the end, Tolkien was glad that anyone appreciated his work, with its many layers and facets. It could be said, however, that he was at times annoyed by his fame (he admittedly did not understand it), especially the all-hours phone calls and unexpected fans at his door.
The entire body of work set in Middle-Earth had two ultimate purposes: To create a place where Tolkien's created languages could live, and to attempt to replace England's lost mythology.
Philology was not just his work, it was his life. He loved words and studying how they eveolved, how they migrated and changed from people to people and century to century. From childhood, he either created or helped to create upwards of 20 languages, and spoke or read no less than nine "real" languages of varying ages.
Having studied almost every language of northern Europe, he could see how England's history had soiled its language, as far back as the Romans, then Saxons, Danes, Normans, and French (the last two also forcing Latin back into the mix). Tolkien held that the Normans did the most damage, and drew most heavily from pre-Hastings texts.
Tolkien knew that these reasons, one personal and one patriotic, did not give LOTR very much mass market appeal, having sprung from the mind of an old fashioned English gentleman, a scholar, who had very firm views of the modern world and staunch Catholic beliefs.
Oh, yes. LoTR was the most influential book of the century. A whole industry of neon acrylic puff paint fantasy art would have never grown up without it.
Christ. I love LoTR as much as the next guy, but how does it really compare to A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I mean that book highlighted the abuses of the Soviet system so that 1984 didn't resemble the world portrayed in some other apparently less important book.
That being said, huzzah for the Entsez!
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
My problem with the Silmarillion is that it's not actually a novel. It's a history textbook - and it's about as interesting.
If Tolkien had written another STORY set in those times, I'd have loved to have read it. But to read a history text of those times is dull, dull, dull. I've tried to read the Silmarilion but I never get past a few pages before I bore myself to tears.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I was just the opposite. I read the LOTR at 14 or so. I found the 1st book incredibly dull and hard to read. I remember really struggling to get through it. The other two were better but I was not a huge fan.
About 10 years later, I reread the LOTR. I found I enjoyed the 1st book far more than the other two. The subtle stuff in the 1st books (songs, long speeches, etc) was completely boring to me at 14 but I appreciated at 25.
It was much like Shakespeare which I detested in high school when forced to read Romeo and Juliet. It wasn't until college when I was in a creative writing class and had to write a page of iambic pentameter. I struggled mightily to write that poem. When the teacher told me that Shakespeare wrote volumes of it, my appreciation of his work increased 100 fold.
And the parent being modded offtopic is exactly why I posted AC. It's absolutely on topic. There are other posts on this story that are doing nothing but raving about how good LOTR is, and they're all +5 insightful. It's not Shakespeare, people. It's just a hacky series of fantasy books and movies. Get over it.
Aren't copyrights limited to 50 years in the UK?
The requested URL
Jesus man, go get high or laid or something. Might want to consider removing that stick from your ass also. :P
Joseph?
LOL. Of course, like any book some people love it, some people hate it.
There have been few books I have read more than once and LOTR is one of them, in fact, I found it completely uninteresting and only made it 3/4 of the way through. It's just not my type of book.
:)
Ok, so.... there are only a few books you have read more than once. LOTR is one of the books you have read more than once. But you found it completely uninteresting and only made it 3/4 of the way through because it's not your type of book.
Come again?
Joseph?
Interesting...the first time I read the LOTR was around 12 (perhaps a bit younger, I can't remember exactly), and I found the first two books to be interesting, but was bored by the endless descriptions of battles in the third book, and never got to the end.
Eventually, I re-read the entire series at about 25, enjoying them all, a few years before the movies came out.
In high school, I actually liked Romeo & Juliet (although I considered the obvious derivative - West Side Story - silly), so maybe I'm just strange...
I enjoyed the books, and I enjoyed the movies. But the trilogy as a whole, in no way shape or form do I think it's close to the best book or movie ever made.
I *loved* Fellowship of the ring, both in book and in movie form. But I feel very differently about the two towers and the return of the king. The problem with these is that SO MUCH TIME is taken up by the huge ass wars. Now, I understand it wouldn't make much sense to be like "There was this huge war with hundreds of thousands of people and lots of them died. Ok, moving on...." but I was just bored to tears. At least in the movie the war was pretty to look at but my dear Lord, these wars took hundreds of pages in the books and are possibly some of the most boring passages I have ever laid eyes on.
There are lots of great parts about the second and third installments but overall were just OK to me.
Joseph?
AAAAAAAHAHAHAH! Thanks for the laugh.
HAND.
Amazing. I have no problem seeing stories there. Although "quenta" can be read as "history", "tale" is closer. Both senses actually occur in that volume: "Valaquenta" should probably be "history of the Valar", while "Quenta Silmarillion" is definitely a "Tale" although it does cover the full history of the Silmarils.
Wait, I think I see what you mean. There's not a single thread sweeping the reader from a definite beginning to a definite ending. (The beginning is *definitely* there in "Ainulindale" but there is no end since at the close we still have two Ages to go.) In the middle there's sort of a swamp of smaller tales which bear on each other here and there, and it's easy to lose the broader flow. But I *like* a bit of complexity, a bit of world-building.
I think a lot of people also get put off by the author's indulgence of his interest in language. I happen to like tasty written expression, but that sort of style is definitely not for everyone. A lot of 20th century writers tried to breathe life into their language by making it new in various ways, but I much prefer the work of those who made their words young by drawing me back to a time when older modes of expression *were* young. Tolkien's use of English wields a kind of power that SFX can never command.
Unless, of course, they like it. How the hell can you tell what someone else is going to like or dislike? At best, you can say that you found it dull.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Ah, so the 1954 critics weren't aware that this was just a Beowulf warm-over ?
Wonder what they had to say about the Niebelungen Lied.
Toon Moene.
Is that the ENTIRE thing was completely unnecessary.
The EAGLES (you remember them don't you. They always conveniently appear when someone needs to be whisked out of danger) could have simply carried Frodo above Mount Crumpet, er, I mean Mount Doom, to drop the ring from 10,000 feet up.
The entire 'venture would have take 2 hours tops, with time for lunch.
Silly story, silly broken characters like a wizard who can't even fight another wizard, but can combat an ancient demon 100 times his mass and win.
It reminds me of when they use the transporters to solve problems in Star Trek. Sure, you could use them to solve everything, but then the show would be boring.
"For me, I saw Paul grow from an uncertain, compassionate and intelligent young man to a completely self-righteous, arrogant and egotistical leader who exploited the religious beliefs of the Fremen in order to futher his own quest for power. "
You certain its Paul Atriedes and not George W Bush your talking about?
I think you mean "... and barely capable of basic literacy."
"barely incapable" implies they leave school almost literate, but not quite.
Despite all this, for some reason I still feel Jackson did a pretty good job.
My opinion was reenforced greatly yesterday when I had opportunity to The Bourne Identity for the first time. I had heard all sorts of good things about this movie (considering its genre); a lot of people seemed to like it. I had been intensely curious to see how the filmmaker might have distilled down the essence of the book, which is immensely detailed and full of characters, with a multi-pronged plot. Ludlum's pacing, as usual, is practically flawless once the story starts picking up... if one gets caught up in it, it takes your breath away, it sets your nerves on edge for days.
So I saw the movie. I was stunned. Pretty much the only real similarities to the novel were the name Bourne, the name Treadstone, and the fact that he had amnesia. The entire assassin vs assassin angle was removed (though of course hints that it will return in Supremecy). The major theme and purpose for the woman character was missed. The physical an emotional trauma of the main character throughout the book. The woman (whom in the novel he kidnaps, and treats somewhat badly in his desperation for a long time, her thinking she is about to be killed by a maniac) has stripped away her central role in holding Bourne together psychologically when he can not believe in himself.
In short, next to the novel, the movie was utterly shallow, and quite tediously boring. Yes, reading for 13 hours worth of pages was much more exciting and engaging.
Anyhow, it gave me another reason to respect what Jackson did with LoTR. LoTR is an even more emense and complex work than Ludlum's novel. True, Jackson had 3 movies to draw it out. But while the Bourne movie had some slight interest due to it's style of rendering, for the most part the screen writer's solution was to remove so much that the essense was barely recognizable. The essense of LoTR, the novel, perhaps is stronger in it's imagry. But still, it's amazing how, over all, faithful Jackson was able to remain to the text even with his silly romantic tinkerings.
This post is slightly off topic i guess, as it doesn't have anything to do with FoTR reviews 50 years ago.
"Oh yeah, one more thing... Aragorn SHOOTS FIRST!"
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Johnny Really Reeks?
Junior Racing Rally?
Jack Robs Robert?
Jinxed Romantic Recreation?
Because it's All about Sam
Agree wholeheartedly! Its a really intimidating read at first -- so many characters, and has a very biblical tone for the first bit. But the story progresses into a very homeric-like epic/legend, which ends with an almost complete doom save intervention by divine powers. You really can't understand the flight of the Elves to the West in LOTR unless you've read The Silmarillion.
I like to compare The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings the way The Lord of the Rings compares to The Hobbit. A progression in theme, complexity, while at the same time remaining completely harmonious with the former.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
but notice how JK Rowling won instant critical acclaim and mainstream popularity. Gossip about the off-screen exploits of the post-teenage former child actor that portrayed Potter in the movies will long outlive the books, while the Lord of the Rings will make new actors and directors famous for generations to come.
but those who have read serious literature, Tolkiens "work" is considered to be pretentious, overrated garbage, very much akin to "Harry Potter", except that the former was, at least, original at the time it was written. Its thinly veiled allusions and prudish moralising simplicity only serve to reinforce its position as a pretentious children's story, though written in such a manner that most children today - with their truly pathetic reading skills - could hardly understand it, and yet it has rather sinister imperialist and racist overtones. It is, however, hardly surprising that it is so popular, given that the same audience prefers "Star Wars" to the true cinematic masterpieces such as The Third Man or Citizen Kane. Nobody takes Tolkien seriously outside of his body of rabid and yet immature and childish fanatics, the same kind of sad individuals that probably spent most of the 1970s playing Dungeons and Dragons. And if Tolkien's work is mediocre, then surely Peter Jackson's adaptation thereof must be one of the most absurdly overrated and poorly concieved orgies of special effects in film history, devoid as it is of any form of coherent storyline, and there it has met some stiff competition indeed, considering how much garbage that Hollywood has churned out in the last fourty years.
Fellowship of the Ring is definitely the weakest of the "three" LOTR books, but then again it's only the first 1/3 of the story. Tolkien didn't write a trilogy; he wrote a long novel which was broken into three pieces for practical publishing concerns.
;)
Tolkien's work isn't perfect, but it's damn good. Personally I would have liked a bit more politicing with the non-human races and some more strong female roles other than Eowyn and Rosie Cotton. All that minutia you dislike enriches the setting and makes the story more believable.
The first Harry Potter book is definitely a "child's book", but this is understandable; it's a story about children. Graphic violence, gritty realism, ambiguous choices, moralistic shades of grey and sexual situations have no place in the setting. However, this doesn't mean the setting isn't well detailed and consistant (it is) nor that the writing is substandard (it isn't).
However, as the children age, their world view changes and becomes more "adult". Their (Harry and friends) moral choices are more ambiguous, their view points are more cosmopolitan and the world reveals itself as not nice in general. The series gets fairly dark in tone with succeeding volumes, particularly "Goblet of Fire" and the climax of "Order of the Phoenix".
I haven't read Da Vinci code, so I have no input here.
T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair,
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up
And slipped away with her.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It made the whole world be about the flight of the elves to the West, and the fall of Numenor. Neither of those featured much in LOTR. They were there, but they weren't that important to the tale. Knowing the history of Aragorn's family, he's that much more significant a character, but not much is made of that.
I keep thinking I should get hold of the lost / unfinished tales, but I don't like Christopher's style as much in the other works of his that I've seen.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
"Mr Tolkien describes a tremendous conflict between good and evil... but his good people are consistently good, his evil figures immovably evil," wrote the Observer's Mr Muir.
:)
But my theory is that it was gandalf who is the villian of the book.
Quenta can also be plural. Actually, I don't know that, but the Silmarillion is mulitple stories, and fragments of stories. That's why it's not a coherent read.
I couldn't agree more. I am sick of all the bloody Tolkien fans.
Well speaking for myself, I was referring to a post on theonering.net yesterday that stated there was footage that was "held back" from the extended versions of each, and at least hinted at a future release that could contain said footage.
It would not surprise me if we see a box set of extended editions that happens to have some extra footage that wasn't even in the original extended versions. Maybe Peter said he wouldn't, and if he did, I'm sure we'll never see a reversal of what someone said. In Hollywood? BALDERDASH I SAY!
Well... they could pull a Christopher Tolkien, and do a History of Middle Earth, on the movies... say a "History of Peter Jackson's JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings The Movies"
HOPJJRRTTLOTRTM
However, the Tolkien desk calendar (which is based on all the tolkien books) is fantastic. If they repprint it for 2005, I would highly advise buying it.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I'm a wanker, and feel no fairness in being likened to a snob, you insensitive clod.
Personally, I read LotR and the Silmarillion umpteen times as a teenager. At some point, I just became tired of the world and the flaws that I glanced over in my initial readings started glaring.
David Brin does a good job of ripping LotR as far as I am concerned.
Fantasy-wise, I am enamoured with the traditional high fantasy of Steven Erikson (Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, etc.) and the inventive steampunky fantasy of China Mieville (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, etc.). Both Erikson and Mieville have anthropologist backgrounds and it shows.
As a philologist, Tolkien just had an odd retro-way of playing with words, but an anthropologist is much better at fleshing out actual worlds.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Juvenile trash means exactly that, something juvenile that is trash.
There may be things that are juvenile and not trash, the critic is just qualifying a work, you are adding your own preconceived prejudices afterwards.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yeah, or "Atlas Shrugged", which is the greatest book of all time (including "The Bible"). Unfortunately, many people dis the book because they don't like the (admittedly obnoxious) Randian cults that have sprung up as a result of the book and its (also admittedly obnoxious) author. The 150-page radio address by John Galt is particularly enthralling, and anyone whose life isn't profoundly and utterly altered by it is a stupid idiot who should be ignored and forced into poverty until they kill themselves in dispair.
I am not a kook.
Yeah, there are a number of websites about the links between Tolkien and Zeppelin. Like:
http://www.ledtolkien.com/
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
What you said also goes for HHGttG, at least the first three books.
Yes, "Quenta Silmarillion" is a bunch of stories, but at the same time they are also tied together in the single story of the Silmarils: their creation; their theft by Melkor; the Oath of Fëanor and his sons to reclaim them; various wars, disasters, and internal schisms of the Eldar caused by lust for them; and their fate. In this sense it is a single tale with many subplots. You can view it either way.
Likewise all that and the rest as well are really part of a still larger tale: the Song of the Ainur made manifest by Eru, with all of its textures and ramifications.
Of course there was footage held back. The original cut of ROTK was five hours long. That doesn't suddenly mean there's a new edition coming out just because theonering.net "hinted" at it. Movies have lots of footage that's held back. Even Hellboy's getting the Extended Edition treatment later this year.
Peter Jackson has stated emphatically that there won't be any new versions. At most, there would be a re-encode for HD-DVD farther down the road.
LotR is not a children's story. It started that way, but soon Tolkien diverged from this. For instance,
A few chapters later someone commits suicide by lighting himself on fire. Such a nice children's story...