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Tolkien Vs. The Critics In 1954

Posted by michael on from the ents-go-to-war dept.

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.'"

44 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by tcopeland · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...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.
    --
    The Army reading list
    1. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by 1arkhaine · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

    2. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by StalinsNotDead · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is hardly a surprise - how many other works of art were reviled in their time, only to be acclaimed by future generations?

      So your saying that Star Wars Episode I & the Matrix Sequels may be lauded by future generations? They ceratinly seem reviled today.

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    3. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

      --

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    4. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by pamri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by mblase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by Idarubicin · · Score: 3, Insightful
      ... it was the most influential book of the century...

      ...in the field of fantasy. Not to be too hard on JRR, but there are a number of authors of both fiction and nonfiction that I would hate to describe as less influential. I mean, even an unabashed fanboy on TheOneRing.net contents himself with describing Tolkien as only one of the most influential authors of the last century.

      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
    7. Re:LOTR winning "Book of the Century"... by wrecked · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It depends on what you mean by "influential". Some of the authors you list above, especially Hitler and Orwell, have obviously had enormous influence in the spheres of political history and discourse.

      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.

  2. Historical perspective. by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

    1. Re:Historical perspective. by pubjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "juvenile trash"

      The implication here being that juvenile == trash.

      Whenever I hear someone make that kind of argument I think they must be a real snob. Like people who don't like things that are too popular. The kind of people who think they are clever and sophisticated. Wankers.

    2. Re:Historical perspective. by tgibbs · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

  3. cs lewis and jrr tolkien by frankmu · · Score: 5, Informative

    just a reminder of a great article about how close these two great writers were:

    tolkien and lewis

    --
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  4. Blurred Lines by Apreche · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Blurred Lines by jandrese · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --

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    2. Re:Blurred Lines by gowen · · Score: 5, Informative
      the other factor is obviously the lower level of intelligence of adults in our society
      Nice troll. In the UK, even in 1954, people regularly left school at 13 or 14, with few or no qualifications and barely incapable of basic literacy. These days, literacy rates are massively higher.
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    3. Re:Blurred Lines by gamgee5273 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Normally, I would be prefacing this comment with something like: "I'm not an English graduate, nor do I play one on TV, but..."

      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?

    4. Re:Blurred Lines by Sgt+York · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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 ;)

      --

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    5. Re:Blurred Lines by TiggertheMad · · Score: 3, Funny

      Would they be correct in saying that, since I cannot code,

      Hey, this guy is a NORMAL! Who let him in here? Don't we have a rule about people like this? Next thing you know, the non-coders are going to be wanting to sit at the front of the bus and marry our geekettes! HARUMPH!

      (This message was sarcasim, for the humor-challenged out there. See, he's going on about elitist attitudes, and I, well- oh, forget it.)

      --

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    6. Re:Blurred Lines by geeber · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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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    7. Re:Blurred Lines by RealAlaskan · · Score: 4, Informative
      Those stats you're quoting paint a far different picture than you think.

      Look here for the sources of what follows.

      White literacy was high, well above 80%, in 1870. That was after some years of immigration of illiterates from Europe, and the government schooling which was developed in response to the wave of Catholic immegration (yes, public schooling has some racist roots). Black literacy in 1870 was about 20%. That's about 5 years after the Civil War. It is probable that the pre-Civil War black literacy rate was quite close to that. In many of the slave states, it was illegal to teach blacks to read, so that suggests that even in the South, literacy was very widespread, and bright people could ``just catch it'', like a cold, with little aid.

      Given that functional literacy might have required a slightly lower level of reading ability than is needed today, those figures are simply astounding. In a time when an illiterate man could make a decent living, more than 80% of the whites (probably more than 90% of the native born whites; remember those illiterate Catholic immigrants) could read. In other words, most people probably had a higher level of literacy than they needed to function. Today, many people would function better if they could read better, with more understanding.

      A century before that, in the 1790s, John Adams wrote that illiterate men were scarce. He was speaking of Protestant New England, of course, where everyone was expected to learn to read, so that he could read the King James Bible. Many people who are considered ``literate'' today find the KJV impenetrable, so perhaps the standards of literacy were higher back then, rather than lower?

      Between the Revolution and the Civil War, Cooper's ``Last of the Mohicans'' sold about as many copies per capita as the Harry Potter series has. But contrast Cooper's writing style with Rowling's! I suspect that most of the people who are willing to wade through a Harry Potter story would find one of Cooper's books mighty tough going. Also, the price was over a day's wages for most workers. How many Harry Potter books do you think would sell if they cost a day's wages each? Again, I think it shows that real literacy was wide spread in the 18th and 19th centuries, and perhaps at a higher level than today.

      --
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  5. Actually Tolkien was a Genius, read on... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    Here's a brief explanation for beginners of Tolkien's mythology and worldscape:

    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

  6. I liked his reply to negative reviews... by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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."

    --
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  7. Girl perspective. by underpar · · Score: 5, Funny

    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).

    1. Re:Girl perspective. by unitron · · Score: 3, Funny
      "Will saying I'm a girl get my posts moderated up?"

      Perhaps not, but with this crowd it'll no doubt get something "up".

      Actually, there are so many frustrated horndogs around here that it's surprising a female can even visit this site without getting "knocked up".

      :-)

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  8. Tolkien was a linguist by wayward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. I know this is going to get flamed, bue... by djkitsch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:I know this is going to get flamed, bue... by astrashe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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

  10. Re:Fifth LOTR Book Found, Reburied? by sphealey · · Score: 5, Funny

    If such a manuscript existed, Christopher Tolkien would have already released 347 editions, including one with solid gold covers.

    So I think we can conclude it doesn't exist ;-)

    sPh

  11. Re:I still remember reading LOTR for the first tim by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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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  12. Re:I still remember reading LOTR for the first tim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You read it for the first time every few years? Unforseen advantages of Alzheimers disease ...

  13. Re:don't want to get caught by bad grammar? by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Informative
    use tolkiens method! "Tolkien created 37 new languages for 34 books".

    I wonder how they translate to Klingon...

    oops, damn, wrong alternate reality!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  14. LOTR:1954 MMORPG:2004 by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

  15. Association of Geeks Who Don't Care For Tolkien by SnappingTurtle · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

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  16. "Scrumtrulescent!" by Shoten · · Score: 3, Funny

    Jeez, the reviews all sound like James Lipton on In The Actors' Studio!

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  17. Nothing new by The+Bungi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

    1. Re:Nothing new by Mitleid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?
  18. Re:I still remember reading LOTR for the first tim by mwood · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  19. Re:I still remember reading LOTR for the first tim by Malc · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  20. communist critiscism of LOTR by kyknos.org · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    SHE does throw dice.
  21. Led Zeppelin got consistently miserable reviews by bee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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. :-(

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    At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
  22. Re:I'll say it by CommieOverlord · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  23. Don't get this one... by boatboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

  24. there is more by labyrinth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  25. Even Tolkien Was Apprehensive by Dracos · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.