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.'"

Comments

LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[tcopeland]

...in 1997 had more lively responses:

In January 1997, reporter Susan Jeffreys of the (London) Sunday Times informed a colleague that J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy "The Lord of the Rings" had been voted the greatest book of the 20th century in a readers' poll conducted by Britain's Channel 4 and the Waterstone's bookstore chain. Her colleague responded: "Oh hell! Has it? Oh my God. Dear oh dear. Dear oh dear oh dear."

More on that here.

Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[1arkhaine]

James Joyce's Ulysses springs almost instantly to mind. When it was released, it was banned in many countries, declared an abomination by many respected authors (Including, famously, Virginia Woolf), and considered a mass of loose fragments.

Now, of course, it is considered a masterpiece, and has a huge reputation - almost too huge, as any Irish author would attest.

Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[ackthpt]

In January 1997, reporter Susan Jeffreys of the (London) Sunday Times informed a colleague that J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy "The Lord of the Rings" had been voted the greatest book of the 20th century in a readers' poll...

There have been some truly great works of literature and fiction over the 20th century. I've found myself going back to some and reading them over several times, including Watership Down, which was my first true introduction to fantasy with depth. From my perspective, the Harry Potter series doesn't come close, but is an entertaining yarn, which stunned me when I saw 12 year olds reading 800+ page books. It's promising that people continue to read in an age of diverse video entertainment.

Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[pamri]

The New York Times has reviews of the books published way back when they were released. Of the three, the first and the second are by W.H.Auden, who was one of the staunchest fan of Tolkien and it's quite interesting to read what he thinks about fantasy.

Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[Doomdark]

JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye)?

Same here, it's mostly known in the US.

Actually, this is not true -- as far as authors go, he and his work are reasonably well-known, and I read the catcher in high school (in a nothern european country, late 80s) as one of about 20 choices (which, incidentally, also had mr. Huxley's Brave New World and 1984) from which I had to choose, for a literacy presentation.

Blurred Lines

[Apreche]

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?

Re:Blurred Lines

[jandrese]

Yeah! We need to bring back all of those books that are no fun to read and serve mostly to browbeat you into the authors way of thinking! If we keep up this trend, what are schoolteachers going to assign their students to crush their joy of reading?

IMHO, authors should not hide their ideas behind obtuse syntax and plodding plotlines. Unless a book is technical in nature (like a textbook or perhaps a Philosophical tome), the author should not mask his ideas behind excessive jargon or overly convoluted construction.

I know this will be a major problem to people who like to read difficult works to impress their friends. "Wow, you finished Gravitys Rainbow? I never got past chapter 2!" I also don't think you need to make your book excessivly hard to read to discuss weighty issues, especially since most of these issues are not particularly difficult to describe once you boil off the excess jargon and technical terms in my experience. The solution may be difficult to arrive at (in fact many dilemmas have no "good" solution), but the problem should not be difficult to understand, especially at a basic level.

Re:Blurred Lines

[Sgt York]

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?

This brings up an interesting point. There is certainly a perception among many people that people are less intelligent today than in the past. Perhaps what we really see is an increase in ignorance, not a drop in intelligence. And they are not the same thing. In fact, the increase in ignorance may merely be an artifact.

Today, there is much more known to humanity as a whole than there was 5 decades ago. This means that individuals have a lot more to be ignorant about. It's kind of a side effect of the information age. We can only learn so much, so fast, and we tend to focus on what is useful to us. For instance, I know a lot about molecular biology, because it is what I do for a living. As a result, the majority of people on /. are ignorant of molecular biology compared to me. However, I am ignorant of programming when compared to the majority of people on /. (Keep in mind that this says precisely squat about anyone's intelligence). Fifty years ago, you would be hard pressed to find people that knew what those two fields were. Today the average guy on the street can at least tell you something about them, at some level. Anyone that's been to college can probably carry on a conversation about the topics for a while (except, perhaps, for english majors*)

I have always considered intelligence to be a measure of how fast you can learn. If that holds true, and people today are as intelligent as the people of 50 years ago, there are going to be areas in which they were well-versed in which we are not (comparing people of the same age). We have had to sacrifice certain areas to learn new ones.

*Feel free to slam my grammar/punctuation/spelling now ;)

The movie version

[kcornia]

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).

I know this is going to get flamed, bue...

[djkitsch]

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?

Re:I know this is going to get flamed, bue...

[jamesoutlaw]

(forgot to log in the first time I posted this)

You are not alone. I enjoyed the films when I saw them in the theater and I catch a repeat on cable from time to time... they are good, but better films have been made. I've never been able to read any of the books... they always bored me to tears. I tried when I was a kid (and I was an avid reader) but got bored with them pretty quickly. I tried a year or so before the first film was released and they still bored me to tears. I just don't care for his style of writing. The length of the book does not matter to me, nor does the intricate detail (I've read nearly all of James Mitchner's books and they are huge)... it's just Tolkien's style that bothers me. I avoid other authors for similar reasons. For example, I've never been able to read any of Anne Rice's books without falling asleep after a couple of pages. To each his/her own.

Re:I know this is going to get flamed, bue...

[jamesmrankinjr]

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.

Some things are meant to be unhurried. Those of us who liked the books enjoy hanging out in Middle Earth and were in no rush to leave.

The movies are uneven, but I find Fellowship to be, by far, the best done and most important of the 3. What's important is that you see what the hobbits are giving up and exactly what it is they want to protect. They are most reluctant to enter this war, but know they have no choice.

Also, the allure, seductiveness and power of evil is illustrated quite vividly, also establishing what is at stake and how difficult the task before them will be.

Without first establishing these things, there wouldn't be much point to the other films.

Peace be with you,
-jimbo

Re:I know this is going to get flamed, bue...

[astrashe]

I think that the books can be hard for some people to connect with because they're essentially Medieval. Tolkein was a Medievalist, and he wanted to write Medieval books. That's what he did.

I had a lot of trouble with the books at first because the characters seemed so flat. If you compare them to characters if good modern novels -- people in Tolstoy or Proust, or whatever -- Tolkein's characters are pretty cartoony.

Harold Bloom says that Shakespeare "invented the Human" -- that his plays were the first time characters with rich inner lives, complicated motivations, conflicts, and everything else that we think of as "Human" showed up in literature.

But Shakespeare comes after the Medieval period -- if you're writing Medieval books, those are innovations you don't use.

In between the time I first read LOTR and its recent revival, I ended up grappling with Milton, and as part of that effort I read a book by CS Lewis called "The Discarded Image". The discarded image is the old Medieval world view that's been put aside in favor of our more modern views. Lewis felt that if you wanted to understand literature that was written in the Medieval period, you had to have some sense of their outlook, the sorts of things people believed back then. His book is an attempt to help people get up to speed.

I'm by no means an expert on any of this, but it seems to me that LOTR has a lot to offer if you take it on those terms. It doesn't have rich complex characters from a psychological point of view, but it does flesh out that old world view pretty convincingly.

There are a lot of ideas in those books that appeal to me. Sam the gardner is better than a king who makes foolish choices. In the old days, the slot you occupied in society was more or less an accident of birth, and your value was determined when you stood before your maker after your death. A gardner who was honest and true would be better than a king. We don't really feel that way now. Today, a lawyer is almost always better than a garbageman, no matter how the lawyer conducts his business.

There was an old picture of the way society was organized -- people were tied to their lords through bonds of "love and fealty". And in these books, you see a lot of oaths, and loyalty is the highest virtue. That system of values is often contrasted to capitalism, in which everyone is out for themselves, and we all believe that society works itself out pretty well as a result. That seemed coarse to a lot of people at first, though.

I've read some letters that Tolkein wrote to his son Christopher during the war -- he was pretty horrified by the technology and the killing. He seemed to see the direction the world had taken as pretty evil. The winged Nazgul were modeled on military aircraft, I believe.

I once had a teacher who had spent a lot of time studying Medieval thought, and he felt the same way, that we had a fair amount to learn from the old values, that they were superior to our own in many ways. I don't know if I buy that, but there are people who do.

And even though the books aren't explicitly Christian, I think they're very much so implicitly. But it's an older view of Christianity. The corrosive and corrupting nature of sin is a big theme in the books. Just carrying the ring eats away at you. Frodo's problem is an essential human problem -- he's obliged to engage the world pretty directly by carrying that ring, but doing so corrupts him. You have to be willing to engage the world, but those same social connections -- based on bonds of love and fealty -- form your safety net.

I don't know what to make of the massive popularity of the films and the books today. I think their greatness lies primarily in the way they flesh out that old discarded image in a narrative story. As far as I know, there isn't a real Medieval story, dating back from those times, that does it nearly as well. Instead, you have lots of smaller stories that you can sort of cobble together to create a p

It took me nealy 30 years to get thru it...

[Zaranne]

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.

Oscars

[johnhennessy]

'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 ?

I take my hat off to Tolkien

[carlmenezes]

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.

LOTR:1954 MMORPG:2004

[Tackhead]

A LOTR reviewer in 1954 wrote: > 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...

*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.

Re:Pirate Trilogies

[stratjakt]

Read some of the Horatio Hornblower stuff, great series of books if you want to read about adventures on the high seas.

Original Star Wars reviews...

[BTWR]

I remember reading that the original Star Wars reviews were themselves pretty scathing. Anyone have links to the originals?

I'll say it

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:I'll say it

[CommieOverlord]

Well duh, who said Harry Potter wasn't a story for kids?

That being that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable for adults. For children's books they're extremely well-crafted. They're not high-literature, but they're fun and well-done.

I'm an adult and an avid SF/Fan/Other reader. I'll read Plato, Machiavelli, Hemmingway, Tolstoy for fun. I've acted as a book reviewer for a magazine.

But that didn't preclude me from picking up the Potter books and having fun.

Association of Geeks Who Don't Care For Tolkien

[SnappingTurtle]

Is there anybody else out there? I just don't care for Tolkien's writing. Every time I try to read The Hobbit I just can't stand it: so slow moving, so ponderous. The only thing that makes me try again from time to time is the quantity and zealousness of my friends who love Tolkien's writings.

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.

Nothing new

[The Bungi]

I believe Frank Herbert was also initially panned by the critics. Actually I think this mentioned on Bill O'Reilly's Herbert essay (which is very good, in case you've never read it and are a fan of the Dune series or FH's other work, like the Pandora trilogy).

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.

Re:Nothing new

[The Bungi]

Both were quite lacking.

Here's what most people (and I include myself there) think: the Lynch movie captured the "look and feel" of the first book but took too many liberties with the story (nee "weirding modules"). The SciFi series on the other hand had a better chance of doing it well because of the format and alloted time and thuse were closer to the story, but pooched the look and feel - the atmosphere if you will. The wardrobe was ridiculous, the sets were anemic and the actors sucked for the most part. For example, Stilgar as a wheezing old man just didn't cut it for most folks.

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

I agree to a certain extent with you here, but at the same time I think that Dune could have been synthesized well enough to do a good three movies (certainly not just one). To truly understand the ideas behind Dune you need to read out to at least God Emperor; this is where (IMO) the story deviates into the whole concept of the "Golden Path": saving humanity in spite of itself. The next three books deal with the consecuences of that course of action.

So theoretically you could have written three screenplays that capture the essence of the first four books well enough. I don't doubt it can be done, it's just that nobody has until now. I don't think LOTR was that simple to get into a screenplay, really. LOTR is really five complicated books =)

I realized I hated Paul Atriedes

My interpretation of this Dune character has always been the classic "good guy trapped by circumstances beyond his control". There are many examples of this in real history but the unique thing about Dune is the so-called "butterfly effect" that radiates from this single desperate man. Eventually all of humanity is affected by his choices and actions.

Have you read all the first four books? Specifically Dune Messiah does a better job at explaining him. But again, if you really want to understand you need to read through at least God Emperor.

Re:Juvenile trash?

[sneakers563]

Prepare the flamethowers:
My biggest problem with Tolkien's writing is the utter lack of any inner life or motivation for any of the characters. You have good guys and you have bad guys. The good guys do good things (all the time), the bad guys do bad things (all the time). Rather than being ahead of its time, as some of the posters here have suggested, I think LOTR is more accurately a throwback to a pre-Shakespearean style of writing.
The movies are quite faithful to the books in this regard as well. One of the funniest things about the story is how the Riders of Rohan question the motives of the hobbits when all the "good characters" are universally attractive and well dressed, all the "evil" characters wear black or tattered clothing and are deformed in some way. OK, perhaps Saruman, but even he is openly building an army of orcs, digging a really nasty open pit mine complete with evil-looking tower, and not returning anyone's calls - hardly subtle. Grima Wormtongue? Let's see: he's pale with bad skin, has black, stingy, unwashed hair, wears black and his name is Grima Wormtongue. I can't imagine why anyone would suspect him of something nefarious.

communist critiscism of LOTR

[kyknos.org]

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.

Could be a thesis! Maybe Air Force training

[xtermin8]

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

Re:Historical perspective.

[tgibbs]

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.

I think the modern literary establishment is just as conservative, and has just as much difficulty recognizing brilliant work that does not fit into a standard literary mold. Consider some of the expressions of outrage when Stephen King won the National Book Foundation Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Tolkien's work was a fantasy for adults, written in a serious mode normally reserved for traditional mythology. Hardly surprising that many critics didn't know how to deal with it. Yet even in Tolkien's time, some people, such as WH Auden and CS Lewis recognized the work's value.

there is more

[labyrinth]

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.

Re:I still remember reading LOTR for the first tim

[mwood]

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.

The biggest flaw in the book

[Zip In The Wire]

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.

Tired of Tolkien

[LPetrazickis]

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.