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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.'"
"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.
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.
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.
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However, I am an English graduate (BA and MA, actually) and you, sir, have found yourself in my crosshairs.
You can't assume that the average adult has a lower level of intelligence. That "obvious" fact of yours is merely an opinion unless you have stats to back up such a statement. Is the average adult ignorant of many things? Certainly. However, one cannot equate ignorance for lack of intelligence. Are you telling me that the coding geeks on /. are less intelligent than you because they choose to watch movies as opposed to reading the books said movies may be based on? Would they be correct in saying that, since I cannot code, I would be less intelligent than they are, even though I do read?
A case in point: My best friend (we've know each other for almost 30 years at this point) never read for leisure when we were growing up. I used to joke that he started Stephen King's The Stand in his freshman year of high school and might finish it by time he retires. He hasn't finished his BA (he's 32) and he's not a white-collar "professional." He runs a carpetry company, plays amateur hockey, enjoys going to sports bars with his main circle of friends and is looking to buy a big pickup truck. Your statements lead me to believe that this is the type of "dumber" person you are pointing your finger at. However, because of the LOTR movies he has read LOTR, The Hobbit and Unfinished Tales.
Why is that?
It's not lack of intelligence that cause people not to read. It's lack of engagement on the part of the publishers and on the part of the readers & fans of "difficult" books to expose the general public to them. In particular, it's people like you.
If we all went around with elitist attitudes like yours, of course the "average" person would be turned off. If reading "difficult" books made people into someone like you, why would they want to do that?
I've personally only read Dune, which I loved, and seen the David Lynch movie and the Sci-Fi channel miniseries. Both were quite lacking. But then for some reason, after reading your post, a lightbulb sort of went off in my head. I think that the reason most Dune "movies" have sucked so bad is because the world of Dune is open to SO MUCH interpretation. In the case of LOTR, while the books are extremely complex and do have a lot of subtext, the basic structure and story is pretty straightforward. As in the case of Dune, though, it seems that a lot contained in the books isn't completely spelled out, and while the story and world/planet of Arrakis itself is so interesting, a greater majority of the book deals with political intrigue and character development.
For example, I just read Dune for the second time a few months ago, and upon finishing it I realized I hated Paul Atriedes. I didn't see his character to be so much a hero as I saw it a vehicle for Herbert to elaborate his feelings on how seriously dangerous it is for someone to gain power based on social structures of family and religion. 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.
Again, that is just my personal interpretation of the book, and I'm not really sure if that's how the majority of Dune readers feel. Anyway, I think it is this complexity, and sort of gray area around the characters and events in Herberts' stories that haven't lended itself well to movie adaptations. I mean, don't get me wrong, the world is all there; Fremen, sand worms, harvesting, etc. for a very interesting visual experience, but I just don't think anyone in the movie industry has really been able to pin down the plot and character elements that would really tie it all together.
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Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
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.
Whatever you think about LotR as a work of literature, there's little question it was the most influential book of the century. LotR virtually godfathered the entire fantasy genre as we know it today -- there's hardly a fantasy book or game in English that doesn't draw its influence from Tolkien's work.
Only on Slashdot could somebody arguing for the cliff notes version of literature be called interesting. Dumbing down great works of art for the masses, and legions of bored high school students is not any kind of solution.
This may be difficult for you to understand, but most people read great works of literature because they love them, not to impress the neighbor.
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I'm not saying I agree with the philosophies of all of the following, but some names do come to mind. How about Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)? Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)? Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)? JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye is best known, though IMHO not his best work)? George Orwell (1984)?
~Idarubicin
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...
If, however, "influential" is taken to mean influence on the evolution of literature, I think that writers such as James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and others would rank much higher.
It's fair to say that in terms of economic and marketing influence, Tolkien is probably number one. Lord of the Rings effectively spawned the modern market for heroic fantasy, which was previously a marginal genre. The revenue from the Jackson films alone (over $1 B now?) is amazing.
If it weren't for the Lord of the Rings, there may never have been the mega-audiences for works such as Star Wars and Harry Potter.