JRR Tolkien Denied Nobel Due To Low Quality Prose

Morty writes "In 1961, C.S. Lewis nominated JRR Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tolkien did not receive the prize. 50 years later, the archives for that year have been made available, so now we know why. Tolkien's prose was viewed as low quality."

Comments

Tolkien's prose

[bonch]

I can understand that criticism, actually. As the story progresses beyond the hobbit-focused beginning and begins to link with the Silmarillion, the style of writing and characterization becomes more archaic, in the vein of the kind of ancient heroic epics that Tolkien studied, like Beowulf. There's also an enormous focus on the description of landscapes, which can become repetitive, and the constant unexplained references in foreign languages can feel wearisome and arbitrary if you're not already familiar with any of it.

The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England, starting with the fall of Númenor, analogous to the myth of Atlantis, and growing from there as Tolkien kept adding to it. The Hobbit, however, was an unrelated story that was later linked to the existing mythology, and if I had to decide, I'd say I'm a bigger fan of the Hobbit because of its lighter tone and sense of adventure. It feels more fun and relatable to me. Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[hedwards]

Part of the problem is that JRR Tolkien used probably the least efficient method of writing ever devised. He would start writing until he hit a brick wall and then he would start over from scratch. It's not necessarily wrong to do it like that, but it does take a lot longer than doing it the more standard way.

That being said, he did write more than just the LOTR trilogy and in recent times we've had much stronger writers being passed over for what will almost certainly be even more trivial crimes against literature.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[TheRealGrogan]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[DrEldarion]

Agreed.

Tolkien's strengths were never in the quality of his writing. (though it's still tons better than a lot of authors)

His strengths were always in his ability to build a world - to make a place and its inhabitants so memorable that they'd be remembered for ages. He succeeded greatly in that, and has likely influenced the fantasy genre more than everybody else combined.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[msobkow]

I agree. While Tolkien's stories are detailed and entertaining, it's not "great literature" in the critical sense.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

I highly recommend it. As a teenager, I managed to get through "The Fellowship of The Ring" and about a third of "The Two Towers" before I gave up. Starting from scratch in my mid-thirties, I was able to wade through the dense prose and finished all three books. It was a trek, but (IMHO) well worth it.>/p>

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hobbit reads like a "normal" book. I read it as a kid and loved it.

The Lord of the Rings reads like a history textbook. I plodded through the first book, and maybe the second (can't remember for sure). I lost interest and didn't finish the trilogy.

His other works read like The Bible, and I couldn't get beyond a few pages here and there.

If you love the stories, and enjoy immersing yourself in the universe he created, you'll look past all that. Obsessive compulsive nerd types are prone to enjoy that sort of thing. But Tolkien is certainly not for anyone who just wants to sit down and read a book.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[hedwards]

Honestly, that was my impression as well.
There was a lot going on and the plot wasn't as well constructed as some other series were. In many ways it probably would have worked better if it had been split into more books with less going on at any given time. Granted it was a different audience, but I found the Chronicles of Narnia to be significantly easier to follow due in large part the planning that went into writing them and not trying to do too much in any one book

Personally, I loved the Hobbit, but there was a lot less lore and a lot less going on at any given time and it was structured in a way that was much easier to follow.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Fluffeh]

Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.

Actually, I found that it is an amazing read. I read it first when my father gave me a copy, when I was around ten or twelve. I do however think that it will likely more appeal to quick readers, or readers who are really able to immerse themselves in a book. If I am reading, I find that I get totally inside a book. I can sit down and start, then look up and a few hours have gone by.

If you find that you are not enjoying it as there is too much description of landscapes and it bores you, I can only suggest trying to let your mind wander into these things. Don't focus on the reading, focus on what you are reading.

I once had to sit and write pages from a book during detention at school, and I found myself copying text from a story that I was reading at the time. What was amazing, was that in that hour and a half, I probably only got through a small number of pages, but the feeling was amazing. As I was bored, I utterly immersed myself in what I was copying and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of "reading" that I ever had. If I had the time, I would happily get through a copy of LoTR or the like and write it out word for word, letting it wash over me and being utterly inside the story as it unfolds. Sometimes, slower is better, it frees up more of your mind to dream out the content rather than racing ahead and trying to get to the "next interesting bit"...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[SlippyToad]

Guys, I read the whole trilogy at age 9. Then again at 10. 11. 12. I read it once a year for a decade, more or less.

It's really a good book. I've read thousands. Very few works of literature compare to it at all. Depth, intensity . . . it's some gerat stuff.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[DanDD]

I find it disturbing that you critique LOTR the way you have, yet admit you've not read them. My 10 year old children have read and loved both the Hobbit and LOTR.

Tolkien's prose does assume a higher level of reading comprehension than is common today, this is very clear. Compare any Tolkien to JK Rowling. She tells nice stories, but with such stark simplicity that I find them painfully droll.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Baloroth]

I've found after reading a lot of ancient Greek and Roman authors that his prose style starts to make a lot more sense. As the OP said, he really wrote more in the style of the ancient epic writers, which makes it a bit... dry, I suppose, at times. The Silmarillion shows this quite strongly, as it basically was a Greek-style mythic tale, while on the other side the Hobbit was basically a kids book. I wouldn't call Tolkien's writing "low quality", exactly, it just doesn't have the kind of flow you expect from a novel.

C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, has amazingly easy to read prose, but none of his works have nearly the epicness of Tolkien's. A trade-off, I suppose.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[vlm]

The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England

Have you ever stopped to think how weird it would be if Tolkien had tried to pull a L Ron Hubbard Scientology move and turn the LOTR into a "real religion"?

I stopped to think about it, and it was weird, let me tell you.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[should_be_linear]

And there is zero sense of humor in the whole thing. Like if it was written by an accountant.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Threni]

I thought it was really boring. Then I saw the films. They were boring too. I can't separate them in my mind now - it just seemed like 10 hours of walking through fields..hills...ooh, there's a bad guy - run away/fight...go into the woods..speak to fairies...walk for a few more days...another fights..more woods...more fairies....another fight. Read bullshit good vs evil crap too, a little light star wars.

Not awarding the author one of the most prestigious awards in literature seems pretty justified to me.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[sycodon]

Melville's Moby-Dick was like that too...the last I remember of that book was the detail in which he described the Tavern in the first several pages. The book didn't even sell out the first printing.

Now, that book is "hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature"

But then, he didn't get a Nobel Prize either.

Crap! Does that mean Lady Gaga will be considered a musical genius in a few hundred years?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[bonch]

I find it disturbing that you critique LOTR the way you have, yet admit you've not read them.

I have read them. What I meant is that I always plan to read it again but never get through it, mostly due to time. I don't think it's there's really that much of a comprehension requirement in the writing--it's just dense, often stoic, and filled with terrain descriptions that can make it relatively unapproachable when it comes to casual reading.

Actor Christopher Lee apparently reads it every year. Jesus.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

The one time Tolkien tried to be light hearted during LOTR gave us Tom Bombadil. I'm quite glad he only tried it the once (and frankly, he should have self-edited Tom out at the start).

Re:Tolkien's prose

[F.Ultra]

And you found the other Nobel Price winners much more readable ;-) ?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[avgjoe62]

And yet strangely enough, the post you reply to is at 5, Insightful

That, despite mostly being a discussion of writing that was not available for the Nobel Committee to consider in 1961 since The Silmarillion was not published until 1977, well after Tolkien's death in 1973. And despite the poster admitting that he had not read the books that were published and available for the committee to judge at the time JRR was nominated for the Nobel.

So, I would say instead that when a commentator that has not read the relevant books and talks instead about material that was not yet published is modded as insightful, then you know that slashdot is dead.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[CCarrot]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

Thank you for that...I thought I was all alone!

Maybe we should start a support group: "Middle-aged nerds who have never read LOTR"?

I'm told it gets better about halfway through the Two Towers, but I have never been able to make myself get that far. I really don't know why, I am a rather voracious consumer of sci-fi and fantasy from many, many other authors...and I simply adored The Hobbit, first read it in fourth grade and I re-read it about every five years or so. It's odd, and I always feel a little bit ashamed when it comes up in conversation. It's feels a bit like admitting you're a sci-fi fan who has never seen Star Trek...the original, of course.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Other way round for me. I read them when I was about 15... read all three in a row and loved them.

I read them again about 10 years later and was less impressed. I still enjoyed the epic nature of it and the mythology - but it all seemed much less interesting. The characters in it didn't display the depth that I'd learned from real life in the previous 10 years (with one exception - see below). I read it again about 7 years after that - and it was the same progression. Still enjoyed the story and the adventure... but the people seemed even flatter and colourless.

The exception is Gollum. In each subsequent read as I got older, he got more and more poignant and tragic.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[digitig]

Yes, it makes sense. The derogatory term "Wardour Street English" might almost have been invented for Tolkien (Wardour Street in London used to be mainly shops selling fake antiques, and so the term "Wardour Street English" is used -- or used to be used -- to describe the fake-archaic style that Tolkien and countless Tolkien wannabies affect).

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jdjennings]

I thought the only person crazy enough to read it once a year was me. Good to know I'm not alone.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[chispito]

I agree with you, although I would say that much of what you describe suggests a failure of editing than of good prose. The editor should have tossed out entire passages for sure.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Fallingcow]

I get a kick out of all kinds of writers and works that others consider dry or painful to read--Faulkner, Forster, Hemingway, James, Butler, and various non-fiction that many might consider painfully dull (the ancient historians like Herodotus--though that may be better classed as fiction--,a whole bunch of books by and/or about philosophers, E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, etc). I do enjoy fantasy, though. The point being:

I was unable to finish Fellowship. I got to somewhere under 100 pages from the end, realized that I'd only enjoyed maybe 50 pages of what I'd already read, and quit. I'd class it as among the most awful reading experiences I've had. Given its popularity I must just be missing something, but despite my toleration (and even taste) for some pretty damn dry stuff, I couldn't stand it.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down: "The truth hurts!"

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Goaway]

I think I found them easier to read when I was younger. Maybe I was more easily entertained then.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Improv]

Kind of like H.P. Lovecraft, really. Imaginative world, writing is meh.

It's amusing that Tolkien was nominated by CS Lewis, another person whose religious commitments made his work far more shallow and one-dimensional than it could've been.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dougisfunny]

It actually is turned into a religion in the Emberverse novels.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Synerg1y]

Yep this what exactly they mean when they call a work "timeless" .

Now, perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I remember hearing somewhere that LOTR didn't pick up popularity until much later, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Reception . As in it was mostly discarded at first and then was rediscovered and remains popular to date.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Dunbal]

Neither is the Nobel committee a "great committee". I mean, if it were up to them you would only read one book per year, and your library would have 104 books.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Black Parrot]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

I re-read LoTR ~10 years after the first reading, and found it *incredibly* boring.

Ditto with The Mote in God's Eye, which kept me on the edge of my seat the first time through.

I suspect that the reason is that on first reading I was focused on where the story was going, to the near exclusion of everything else. But if you know where the story's going, there has to be good prose, atmosphere, characterization, dialogue... something to keep your interest up.

I can read Jack Vance's whimsical stories again and again and again, because the plot line isn't the whole of it.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Sperbels]

and has likely influenced the fantasy genre more than everybody else combined

He invented the genre, didn't he?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap! Does that mean Lady Gaga will be considered a musical genius in a few hundred years?

No, just a marketing genius.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Taty'sEyes]

Um... it is split into more than three books. There are books within the "books".

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Good God yes, it's a wonder I ever got through that book at all, and it took 6-7 attempts over 10 years.

Something like the first 1/4 of the book is filled with the stuff he did before signing on with the Pequod. Interesting for maybe 10 pages. The next 2/3 is basically a manual about whales (with strange 19th ideas about them), how to hunt them, and why America is so much more awesomer at hunting them then anyone else dammit. Almost 0 plot development. Moby Dick is met causes hell in the span of 10 pages. The end.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[David_W]

Were you this guy?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[hedwards]

I guess he lost me before that point. I honestly did try to read it, but I got so bored with the plot that wasn't going anywhere that I gave up.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Black Parrot]

The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England

Have you ever stopped to think how weird it would be if Tolkien had tried to pull a L Ron Hubbard Scientology move and turn the LOTR into a "real religion"?

And call it Fantasology?

FWIW, I *really* like the Silmarillion's creation myth. And it does a superb job of working in memes such as Atlantis, The Seven Dwarves, etc.

OTOH, it gets a bit confusing because he re-uses some of the basic ideas repeatedly.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[MrHanky]

The difference is, Melville's influence on other great literature is, well, great, whereas Tolkien just created a vast industry of crappy fantasy literature.

Also, there was no Nobel prize until some time after Melville's death.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[BlueStraggler]

If you're talking about the Hobbit, you must be the biggest sourpuss who ever lived, so you must be talking about The Lord of the Rings. And it's entire first chapter is nothing but hobbit humour. Granted, they are just a bunch of half-drunk, weed-smoking, cabbage farmers whose sense of humour might not be up to your sophisticated standards, but they seem to be having a pretty good time without you.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rui del-Negro]

The films are boring. And nonsensical, because they mangled several sub-plots (they should either have kept them or removed them completely; as it is, several scenes in the films make no sense at all to people who haven't read the books). Also not very well directed or acted, as often happens when the special effects become more important than the storytelling.

I think part of the problem people have with LotR is that they didn't read The Hobbit, which is really the first chapter of the story.

Regarding TFA, Tolkien is indeed not Nobel prize material; he didn't really change the literary or social landscape of his day (which is what the Nobel committee usually looks for), although he somewhat "crystallised" fantasy writing and was able to transmit a sense of scale that few authors manage.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[idontgno]

Right idea, but wrong mythos.

Anglo-Saxon literature and its Scandanavian cousins, plus the ancient lore of his own childhood neighborhood are the roots of Tolkien's legendarium. Undoubtedly, the epics of the various Mediterranean cultures were there too, since they were completely unavoidable to anyone studying Oxford "Greats". But the epic-ness of the Silmarillion and the Ring are pretty much Saxon and Brythonic in character.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Mista2]

Nah, just watch the movies, you'll only loose 10 hrs or your life that way.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Volante3192]

he didn't really change the literary or social landscape of his day (which is what the Nobel committee usually looks for)

That's what they SAY they look for...but, really, who gets more critical aplomb today?
J.R.R. Tolkien or Ivo Andric?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Volante3192]

Ahh, yes, Moby-Dick.

Damned if I can remember *anything* about the plot of that story, but if I somehow get thrown in a time warp back to the 1800s on a whaler, by God I'll be able to strip a whale and bubble the fat off like a BOSS.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[BasilBrush]

I've tried to read LOTR about 3 times, because so many people give the impression it's a must read. Every time it's felt more of a bore. I certainly won't try again. It's not as if there's any shortage of books that are an enjoyable read.

I found the films to be boring too. It's a tedious story that goes on for far too long.

Yes the Hobbit is far better. A similar story told in a much more snappy and adventurous way.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[wisty]

Is it real "fake archaic" language? It was meant to be set in another world, so the style wasn't fake old English, but synthetic Middle-Earth. And Tolkien really was a good enough linguist to pull off a synthetic dialogue. "Wardour Street English" is what you get if you try to imitate Shakespeare or The King James Bible.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

It always annoys the @#$% out of me when someone writes a review and attempts to discuss books they haven't even read.

"Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to"

Really? Then please, by all means, go on to enlighten all of us who have actually read the books as to their content.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's what makes you better than everyone else.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[LearnToSpell]

Add me too please. I read the Hobbit a couple of times, and quite enjoyed it. Last time I attempted LOTR, I was living with a girl who loved them, so I figured I'd give it another shot. Got a little bit in, and exclaimed how much I liked this Tom Bombadil fellow. She said "oh, yeah... that's it. You don't hear from him again until the end." Bah! I quit right then.

Some time later, I discovered he had an entire book of his own! Alas, it was out of print or something, and the cheapest copy I could find was something ludicrous like $550. One day...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[obarel]

I'm always annoyed when I watch a film, find it boring / stupid, and then get told by fans that the film doesn't make sense unless I read the book first. If I wanted to read the book, I would have read the book, but I actually wanted to watch a film. If the director can't do his job, that's not my problem (even though I get to pay for the ticket, the popcorn, and the time).

But then I realise that most of the films-from-books I've watched, having read the books first, were over-simplified, shortened, shallow versions of the book, and would probably be boring / stupid / full of obscure references that wouldn't make sense to anyone who hasn't read the book first.

The fact is, it's a huge challenge to convert thought provoking prose which takes you days or weeks to read into 2 hours of action. Even films that are based on short, simple stories have serious issues in most cases. That is, unless the books themselves are nothing but action and read like a script...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[BasilBrush]

Sounds more like an admission of obsessive compulsive behaviour than anything.

I mean can understand wanting to read a favourite book again when the details are fading from memory. But to do it over and over again according to a calendar schedule. I can't understand that.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Droll? Do you mean dull?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[ks*nut]

I'm about half way through my third "trip" in the LOTR. I first read the set when I was 17, again when I was about 35 and now, when I am, well, almost 60. The books may be the same but the change in perspective that comes with age and experience is surprising. I'm kind of looking forward to finishing the books, but I wonder if I'll get the chance to read them all the way through again. As for the Nobel prize; who cares? The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are just plain fun to read.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so this is hobbits you're talking about, or butch lesbians? :D

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Bacon Bits]

Sort of. He, along with C.S. Lewis, established the sub-genre of "high fantasy," but fantasy isn't exactly new. Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) died in 1936, which was before LotR was even begun. He's generally considered the modern father of sword and sorcery fantasy, which is not much different than high fantasy.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

you know that slashdot is dead

Ah, but has netcraft confirmed it?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[LordLucless]

No. Pulp fantasy pre-dated Tolkien, and fairy tales and epics stretch back to the beginning of recorded history. He popularized modern heroic fantasy, but that's different from "inventing the fantasy genre".

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Your.Master]

Frankly, I thought the movies were far better than the books, which I agree drag on and have serious difficulties with pacing and affected prose.

The one exception being the end of the last movie, which as we all know was far too long and skipped over events from the books, which may or may not have been the right decision but it would have certainly broken up that ending.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[LearnToSpell]

The only part I liked. À chacun son goût.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[MBGMorden]

I have to agree. I trudged through the Hobbit and part of Fellowship, but they were dreadful things to read. The STORY is great. It's just not a good telling of that story. He was just way too wrapped up in completely unimportant details for my tastes.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[NeverWorker1]

What? Drawing the inference that because they only award one person a medal each year, you should only read one book is beyond flawed. According to you, the Fields Medal committee only believes one-to-four papers in mathematics should be read every four years.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[metlin]

Do not confuse popularity with quality. After all, Twilight probably gets read more than Solzhenitsyn's works.

To quote Taleb:

"Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet."

Now, that is not to say that Tolkien's work was not good. But from a literary perspective, it was (and is) indeed quite mediocre.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Phrogman]

Yeah. I find it hard to believe all of these posters are claiming the books are hard to read and/or boring. I read them the first time at about age 12. I have read them many times since. Loved them every time, both for the style of the stories and the majestic way they are related. Certainly they are not at all hard to read for me in any regard. They are definitely not dull.
The movies are terrific. Sure, some things got mangled a bit but I approve of the changes (Tom Bombadil was no loss for me at all. Least favourite parts of the entire storyline for me).
I have to assume that its just a matter of how good a reader you are. I don't want to sound offensive or like I am trying to be superior - although I am sure some will take it that way - but you need to be a good reader to absorb a long and complex book. You need to be able to read at about the same speed you can think. Perhaps thats a lost art these days.
God knows what most folks here would think of my favourite author Patrick O'Brian, with his 22+ volume series of the Aubrey-Maturin books set in the Napoleonic Wars. All written more or less in the prose of the time as well.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[b4dc0d3r]

Kind of like H.P. Lovecraft, really. Imaginative world, writing is meh.

First thing I thought of. I've been reading Lovecraft straight through, and it's boilerplate stories which overlap and reference each other. You can make a general outline of every story ever, including the ones he ghost-wrote for someone else.

But when you close your eyes and imagine the story, and the richness of the mythology, it's magnificently organized.and impressive.

If I had better writing skills, I would love to be the one to re-write all of the stories. Same plot, same characters, no real changes, just better writing. According to many sources, since they were in a magazine and not renewed, they should be public domain, allowing this sort of thing to happen. Kinda like the modernization of the Bronte sisters with vampires and such, I've seen those in the bookstore.

I'd live a Tolkien re-write as well, but I understand we'll have to wait a few years for that.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[brentrad]

I completely agree with what you've said in your post. Could the difference in what styles of prose one likes to read have something to do with the type of leisure activities you enjoy?

I personally very much enjoy getting out in nature just to enjoy...well, nature. The stillness, the beauty, the beautiful found in a group of tiny flowers growing in a field. My wife and I get out in our canoe to commune with nature, and have recently taken up hiking. I believe if you go out into nature, you should leave your internal combustion engines behind and soak in the quiet. Once a year I take a "pilgrimmage" to my uncle's land about 5 miles inland of the Oregon Coast, deep in old growth forest at the edge of Tenmile Creek. It's IMO the most beautiful place on earth - I take a lunch and my camera, and spend all day just hanging out with nature.

When I recently re-read The Hobbit followed by the LOTR trilogy, I was aware of how many people complained about the lengthy description of the flowers and the trees they were passing through. In contrast, I loved this kind of detail - it made the whole world more real to me. I think the beauty of Tolkien's world is not necessarily the amount of plot, but the depth of the story, detail, etc.

The thing is, LOTR is not a plot-heavy action story. The events in the books take place VERY slowly over time, which really befits a land where speed is measured in how fast a horseback-rider can ride in a day, but the most common way to get around is to walk. When you're moving 5 miles per hour, what do you see a whole lot of? Scenery, plants, the world around you. LOTR would be very boring (and jumpy) if Tolkien were to leave out all the beautifully detailed descriptions of the land his characters were traveling through.

And I totally agree with what you say about letting yourself get immersed in the prose - if you're reading a novel, and you find yourself really seeing the words and aware that you're reading, you're not really immersed in the story. If you completely forget you're reading, and suddenly you find 2 hours have gone by - that's the mark of a good writer IMO.

Thoughts?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS. That comment is what all the whiners above miss. And yes, to read them you need more attention span than a gold fish with ADD.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[sehryan]

I am inclined to view you as turning a blind eye to something that is pretty obvious.

I read (and reread) Tolkien several times in middle school, slowly reading them less in high school, and then not again since. The last time started them, I realized just how...wordy these books are. I wouldn't assume that it requires some high level of reading comprehension. In fact, I think it takes a high level of reading tenacity. The last few times I found myself skipping over pages of text which didn't really drive the overall narrative.

I would have to agree with someone above me who said that what Tolkien did best was build worlds. And to do that, you need a lot of words that aren't necessarily directly related to the ongoing plot. For those folks who enjoy rich and deep worlds, then you probably love Tolkien. But for those of us who prefer to focus more on what is happening than where, Tolkien can get pretty old, pretty quick.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[alcourt]

The Icelandic sagas are a few hundred years older and contain all the elements of a fantasy I would expect to see. Many of them were written after the Christianization of Iceland.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been here since 1997. I agree.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Sulphur]

Melville's Moby-Dick was like that too.

Someone found "Bible Code" sequences in Moby Dick. Has anyone looked in LotR?

--

His final expression was one of extreme annoyance. BotR

Re:Tolkien's prose

[gmhowell]

The GP was modded down 'overrated' when the AC wrote his comment. This could have been due to Tolkien fanboys or people who loathe bonch, for whatever reason.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Wordsworth wrote about the early-19th Century's reading audience and its need for "gross violent stimuli" - or its inability to appreciate subtlety, depth of thought and meditation on experience. I always think about this when I hear people's complaints about Tolkien's plot "not going anywhere." It comes back to me again here, reading about the Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit as "easier to follow" (GP post). What those two share, but Lord of the Rings doesn't, is not "planning" - but the fact that they are kids' books. They were written for the 6-year-old set. Nothing wrong with kids' books, mind, but I think comments about them being significantly easier to follow is a statement more about the mindset of the critic than about the quality of the writing.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jazzmans]

I'm in exactly the same boat, from 11 on, I read TLOTR once a year on average. Now it's the Silmarillion, and the Histories of Middle Earth I enjoy more.

Also, Tolkien introduced me to Finnish Literature, and re-ignited my love of old english poems and prose. I just finished re-reading Beowulf.
  When I was younger, I'd usually skip over Tolkiens poems, but now, I linger over them, he was a most excellent writer.

Like the Parent, I have read thousands of books, and Tolkiens mythology always draws me back to his works.

Off-topic, the films weren't 'bad' but they were massively abridged, with a few stupidisms thrown in (Aragorn & the Wargs.)

However, leaving out the scouring of the shire was just criminal.

jaz

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like H.P. Lovecraft, really. Imaginative world, writing is meh.

But, you have to admire how Lovecraft managed to kill off the main character in his stories while at the same time writing them in first person. That was what impressed me.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Threni]

Here's a 'story' about it - funny stuff:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/tolkien-denied-nobel-prize-'because-he-wrote-about-hobbits'-201201094741/

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

the Hobbitt was published in 1937, Tolkein being at least 10 years older than Robert E Howard.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[gknoy]

Okay; outside of academic circles, which one had a bigger impact on cultural works? Consider that Tolkein's vision of dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs, humans, and their relations have had immense impact on our cultural view of what they're supposed to be like. A huge swath of nerd-dom has been heavily influenced by it (D&D nerds, gaming nerds) and the things derived from it. (Would Starcraft exist if Blizzard had not first made Warcraft, based on Warhammer?)

It's possible that that isn't the basis or purpose of the Nobel Price; but I would argue that people nearly a century later considering your work valuable is a pretty good measure of someone's work being good. In contrast, I have never heard the names of several others on the list, and likely would not unless I were specifically in a course studying literature.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Donwulff]

“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.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The matter of "quality of prose" is, I believe, very much a question if preference. It is also important to understand and reflect on the context of said Nobel judgement. A kind of realistic modernism was about only form of literature the then influential literary critics considered "true art". Fantasy, in particular, had no place in the hallowed halls of great literature. It's thus somewhat likely that when members of the Nobel committee wrote "second rate prose", they were not as much making a judgement on the quality of the writing and storytelling, as simply affirming their regard of the genre as "juvenile trash".

Another important point for many vocal net-critics to realize is that as the parent poster implies, Tolkien was intentionally choosing an archaic and at places longwinded style; indeed the astute and careful reader will notice him switching from one prosaic style to another as the situation and intent of his storytelling calls for. He was, also, not intentionally setting out to create a fast and light action-paced thriller in a franchise, as is the formula for so much modern fantasy series, but imitating many classics and epics. Indeed the fantasy genre as we know it was created by Tolkien, but his was more an artistic exploration.

One thing that's never ceased to amaze me is the eagerness at which people will, at any online discussion of Tolkien's works, declare that they were not able to even read them - sounding quite proud of it, as if it makes them eligible for some grand elite club or something. How many here would declare "I tried to read Donald Knuth, but I fell asleep before the end of the first chapter", or perhaps "I picked up the Bible, but had to put it down after the first page" right after a dozen other rewordings of the statement? Well, what were you expecting! It might also be revealing and likely more useful if people who make such blanket declarations provided a list of books they have actually enjoyed.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[syousef]

And yet strangely enough, the post you reply to is at 5, Insightful

That, despite mostly being a discussion of writing that was not available for the Nobel Committee to consider in 1961 since The Silmarillion was not published until 1977, well after Tolkien's death in 1973. And despite the poster admitting that he had not read the books that were published and available for the committee to judge at the time JRR was nominated for the Nobel.

So, I would say instead that when a commentator that has not read the relevant books and talks instead about material that was not yet published is modded as insightful, then you know that slashdot is dead.

What are you talking about? Opinionated misinformation is the lifeblood of slashdot!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[gknoy]

The pacing and major common elements (powerful magi/gods, warring races, monsters) are something that might be due to being based on an oral tradition, which is something that much of the mythology (both Norse and Greek) shared.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[gknoy]

What makes the writing good or bad, though? I don't even know how I'd begin to quantify such a thing.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Zekor]

Whoops, posting to undo moderation, sorry ^_^;;

Re:Tolkien's prose

[syousef]

Mod parent down: "The truth hurts!"

Mod the article down: "Half a century too late!". NEWs not OLDs, my preeecccicoous.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[NeverWorker1]

That is not what droll means. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiirony!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Darinbob]

If "easy to read" is a criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature, then they've been doing it wrong for a very long time.

The prize in literature is a lot like the peace and economics prizes; not really scientific and dominated by politics and social issues. They really shouldn't have had the "Nobel" name attached to them.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[brantondaveperson]

Plus the songs, don't forget how annoying the songs are.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Darinbob]

But it did change the literary landscape. Maybe not the high literary landscape of academia but it changed the world of fantasy literature (maybe not by the time it was nominated though). Unlike Twilight it wasn't just fluff either, no matter how many imitators Twilight inspires it will never be a deep novel.

Overall literary academia just avoids fantasy and science fiction like the plague; I've even seen reviewers and critics apologizing for Margaret Atwood's books or claiming that they're not really science fiction.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for getting in the anti-religious angle. Just wouldn't be /. otherwise.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Morty]

The decisions behind the Nobel Prize are kept secret for 50 years. The justifications were only just released. This is described in TFA, and mentioned in TFS.

- Morty

Re:Tolkien's prose

[SteveFoerster]

You just described most Americans -- and the annual book is bought at the supermarket.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[brantondaveperson]

Of course it's a huge challenge, which is why the people who (claim) to do it well get paid millions of dollars.

I frankly think that the films were utter garbage, and arguing that the reason they were rubbish is because translating large works of literary fiction into film is 'hard' is just making excuses for poor work. These people are supposed to be good, and of course it's hard. We deserve, as the movie-ticket-buying public, much better than what we (generally) get.

I always turn back to 'Trainspotting' as a good example. The book isn't long, but it contains far more than finally turned up in the film. The job that the writers did is, I think, a model of how a book should be turned into a movie. Just leave most of it out, and concentrate on making a coherent narrative from what remains.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jackbird]

Nah, you wanna do that, you need to read Two Years Before the Mast.

If I hadn't read the book for a college class with a fantastic professor, I probably would have thought the same thing.

As I learned, though, Moby Dick isn't about the story of the Pequod - it's about the inadequacy of language to convey the awe and terror that [the whale|nature|god|death] embody. Melville tries to examine the whale from every angle - biological descriptions, literary narrative, discussion of the economic system whaling sits within, etc. and they all fall short. The only glimmer of hope he holds forth is in the human companionship and camaraderie seen in the chapter "The Squeeze of the Hand," and more narrowly, in Queequeg's cheerful [defiance of death|acceptance of fate] in the business with the floating coffin at the end.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[brantondaveperson]

Not to mention Beowulf, which is so old that we don't even know how old it is.

It's completely fantastic, and the new translation by Seamus Heaney should be read by everyone. And I do mean everyone.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[digitig]

Elvish you can excuse on those grounds. Dwarvish ditto. But the English was English, and the world was supposed to be this one before the current age before the English language developed, so it was presumably supposed to be in translation. Yes, it was fake archaic English. Tolkein was a good enough linguist to analyse synthetic dialogue, but that's not the same skill as being to write it for sustained passages. And Wardour Street English is also what you get if you try to imitate less well-regarded forms of archaic writing.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jackbird]

Yes, Rowling is a bit of a hack.

But the language of the Harry Potter books is targeted at young readers - in fact each book in the series is written at one higher grade level of comprehension, so that a second or third grader who read the first book at publication would find each new installment written at their current reading level.

Comparing that to Tolkien is ridiculous, except for the part where he also wrote The Hobbit to a younger reading level, while he wrote whatever way he wanted for Lord of the Rings

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Do not confuse popularity with quality.

And don't confuse critical or academic acclaim with quality, either. The two are often inversely proportional to one another--although not nearly so inversely proportional as quality of writing and being an academically successful literary critic, insofar as my admittedly anecdotal experiences reading big-name literary critics suggests.

I have always wanted to read more litcrit, just to further confirm and better-defend the position that it tends to be horrific.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jackbird]

No sex, either. Like, not even alluded to offstage.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[VAElynx]

Starcraft itself is based on Warhammer 40k, apparently.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[VAElynx]

Fellowship of the ring does get boring at times - I set it away once ,and returned to it later, finishing off the series.
By then, I was like, 10-12 years old, too.
Funnily enough , I prefer both Silmarillion and Hobbit to the Trilogy - Hobbit is kinda more amusing, while Silmarillion is rather.. action packed - basically it's a chronicle which doesn't dwell much on any individual event, and as such is rather quick paced. I was also older when i read it, which may have helped..

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Sique]

No. Writing complex mythological stories happening in invented worlds was one of the main themes in the early 19th century. There was the re-discovery of the local oral history, and then the fascination with the "national epic", and then the invention of "alternate national epics".

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Opyros]

I assume you mean The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other poems? Only the first two poems are actually about the title character. But the only reason the original anthology is out of print is that it's been incorporated into larger compilations; the current one is Tales from the Perilous Realm.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[bonch]

That, despite mostly being a discussion of writing that was not available for the Nobel Committee to consider in 1961 since The Silmarillion was not published until 1977, well after Tolkien's death in 1973.

I was discussing Lord of the Rings, not The Silmarillion, which was brought up because LOTR is intended as a continuation of that legendarium.

And despite the poster admitting that he had not read the books that were published and available for the committee to judge at the time JRR was nominated for the Nobel.

I have read the books. I read them years ago, and I own almost all of Tolkien's published works, from the Silmarillion to the Children of Hurin. What I was saying is that I every year I mean to re-read them, and I never get around to it because they're so long and dense.

So, I would say instead that when a commentator that has not read the relevant books and talks instead about material that was not yet published is modded as insightful, then you know that slashdot is dead.

Since I have read the books, and the material I was talking about was obviously LOTR and not the Silmarillion, I honestly have no idea what you're complaining about nor why you are the one who now has the +5, while the OP is getting downmods.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Opyros]

It's as the old couplet says:

"SF's no good!" they bellow till we're deaf
"But this is good!" "Well, then, it's not SF!"

Re:Tolkien's prose

[VAElynx]

Makes me wonder, why should we even care what's "great literature" in the critical sense.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[igb]

Tolkein was writing for adults. Rowling was writing for children. To attempt to make a "standards are falling, you know" point out of that is a category error.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Chicken_Kickers]

See here. The problem with people who dislike Tolkien's LoTR is that they read it like a novel. In reality, it is not a true novel. I'm sure you know by now that Tolkien wrote the book so that he can have a fictional place and history for his fictional languages. Read it like you would read a Wikipedia article. You are supposed to cross-reference and look up the footnotes and appendices and other Tolkien books. You are supposed to lose yourself in his fictional world. I'm a nerd and geek and I find this entirely to my tastes. I love details within details within details. If you are not a nerd or geek, it might just get tiresome.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dbIII]

A lot of Lovecraft's stories were intended for magazines and a short shelf life. Some of his better short stories later were reused as the seed for novels and some of his worst were rewritten with improvements. Taken in small doses as intended when published a lot of them stand up well. Reading decades worth of work in one hit they look repetitive, lose their impact and even begin to look substandard and formulaic since you've read a lot of it before. It doesn't help that there's a lot of stuff later written by others in the style of Lovecraft.
It's not really a "formula", more along the lines of evolving stories based on their discarded predecessors. It was also a time when there were unexplored places Lovecraft could use for his settings which is hard to do now.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Fluffeh]

Could the difference in what styles of prose one likes to read have something to do with the type of leisure activities you enjoy?

Well, to be honest, while I like nature, I don't really want to get out into it much - having said that, I live in Australia and I don't overly like the bush that we have here, and I like the heat even less. If I lived in northern Europe or Canada, I think that I would be outside a lot more.

if you're reading a novel, and you find yourself really seeing the words and aware that you're reading, you're not really immersed in the story. If you completely forget you're reading, and suddenly you find 2 hours have gone by - that's the mark of a good writer IMO.

Indeed, I find that if you are pjhysically aware that you are reading, you are just reading. A good novel isn't about reading, it is about experiencing it. While being able to immerse yourself into a book is a sign of a good writer, I think it also has a lot to do with the reading ability of the person. I think a lot of it simply comes with practise. I know that when I was younger and just starting to read fluently, there was no way that I was able to immerse properly into what I was reading as the reading itself was too much effort.

I also do find that it is exactly the same as speaking a different language. When you are first learning it, it is a real effort to say what you want to, but over time, you actually forget that you are speaking another language and just communicate.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dwye]

If I had better writing skills, I would love to be the one to re-write all of the stories.

skipping ...

Kinda like the modernization of the Bronte sisters with vampires and such, I've seen those in the bookstore.

I cannot wait to see the great works of high art that you would produce. .sarc off

Anyway, the fun of Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith is in the language, then the richness of the background. The plots and characterization were about what one would expect from a hack writer working for the pulps, which oddly enough is exactly what HPL would have called himself.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[avgjoe62]

When you say things like

As the story progresses beyond the hobbit-focused beginning and begins to link with the Silmarillion...

and

The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England

I tend to think that we are discussing The Silmarillion and not The Lord of The Rings. In 193 words, you mention The Hobbit twice, The Silmarillion twice and The Lord of The Rings once. What are we supposed to think you are discussing?

And when you say:

Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to...

how in the world are we supposed to know that you have indeed read The Lord of The Rings, but are instead talking about re-reading it?

And just to say something about the meat of the article, do not forget that Tolkien's works were written in reverse order from the way they were published. Thus, The Hobbit, which you find most accessible, was written last and the material that became The Silmarillion and The Lord of The Rings was written well before publication of There and Back Again. I wonder of the accessibility of The Hobbit is a reflection of a writer's skill increasing with time or more a function of the audience the material was aiming for?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[demonlapin]

Yes, but I always wondered why they left out the scene that explains the entire name of the book/movie.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[DoubleUP]

The Hobbit, however, was an unrelated story that was later linked to the existing mythology

The Hobbit was written before Lord of the Rings, which was written as a sequel to it.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[metlin]

Some (not all, of course) are indeed quite readable. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude comes to mind.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[demonlapin]

I have reread Tolkien once or twice. I recommend a policy of skipping all songs and poems out of hand. Every time you get bored, read only a few lines from each page until you realize that you've hit the meat of the action or you've switched to a new scene.

Not only does it take a lot less time, it's actually a reasonably entertaining story.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[JWSmythe]

    Come on.. This is Slashdot. You know 90% of the users don't look at TFS nor the TFA. You're lucky if they even read the title line before they start spewing nonsensical garbage.

    [checking Morty's UID] Damn, you *really* should know by now. They've been like that since I started lurking here, a few years before I got my UID.

    How were those years under the rock? :)

Re:Tolkien's prose

[catmistake]

And you found the other Nobel Price winners much more readable ;-) ?

Ever read Camus? Even in the worst possible translations from the French I find his works to be filled with incredibly beautiful prose. Every one of the man's sentences is a masterpiece. And Camus was a little upset at winning the Nobel, as he saw it as a lifetime achievement award, and he was still young when he received it (ok, well... middleyoungish, 44, and was killed 2 years later in a car crash).

Tolkien's work of course is quite wonderful from the big picture vantage point. He created an entire world (though borrowed much from Finnish mythology), and a world of allegory and metaphor that has such depth to its texture, the interpretations are manifold, unlike Camus who was a very focused and disciplined writer. However, at the molecular level, so to speak, Tolkien is sort of clumbsy with his prose. A few of his poems do stand out as folky perfection, such as the One Ring poem, and the Silmarillion is quite lovely, but, again, its in the broad strokes and metaphorical interpretation of major themes where Tolkien really excelled. You kind of have to live a life or two before you can fully appreciate Tolkien's genius... but even considering this, I'd have to agree with the assessment of low quality prose. Regradless, Tolkien is God.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read the fucking book before offering your opinion on it.

The Silmarillion was made to flesh out the back story of his epic tale. It has nothing to do with England.

LOTR is one of the greatest literary achievements of mankind. Tolkien invented languages and cultures, then evolved them, then killed them, then mutated the resulting languages and cultures some more, all to write a poem in ancient dwarvish.

LOTR is a masterpiece. If ANYTHING, EVER deserved the Nobel, it is the Lord of the Rings. The shear amount of reality he imbued it with, by the very act of developing languages and cultures in order to evolve the mythology, has never been achieved by anyone else ever. He was a professor of philology, the LOTR was his crowning achievement in academics as well as literature.

So go read it. Sheesh.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[LearnToSpell]

Oho! That's much more affordable... Far easier to find this stuff than it was 20 years ago. (Or just post on /., and have somebody point you in the right direction.) Thanks!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[catmistake]

The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England

Have you ever stopped to think how weird it would be if Tolkien had tried to pull a L Ron Hubbard Scientology move and turn the LOTR into a "real religion"?

I stopped to think about it, and it was weird, let me tell you.

Not sure I agree with the GP's claim, however, if you are not aware that Tolkien was devoutly Catholic, you should be. In its simplest, most basic metaphorical interpretation, LotR has always clearly been Christian allegory. Ain't THAT a kick in the pants? LotR is a real religion: Christianity! And further than this, researchers know Tolkien borrowed and adapted a lot of Finnish mythology (like Gandalf). And we know mythology is really just old religion. So, bang... you were right twice and thought you were just weird.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Dr. Joe]

Perhaps you're reading it the wrong way.

I read the Hobbit and LOTR to my children when they were young (a total of 3 times) and both they and I found it to be the most engaging work of fiction I ever read to them. C. S. Lewis' Narnia books paled in comparison.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I also read them at 10, and I will admit to falling asleep at some of the boring parts, but for some reason, it was a lot easier reading them then, than it is today. I enjoy descriptive writing, but if the plot slows to a crawl because of it, then I've lost interest. Tad Williams, for instance, did a remarkable job of curing my insomnia. I enjoyed the story in "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn," but I most likely will never read them again. His "Otherland" series was interesting, but I got to them point where I had to skip the entire 3rd book (and most of the 4th,) before reading the end, and it didn't feel like I'd missed hardly anything plot-wise.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. WarCraft 1 was basically a Warhammer game that got rejected with new plot thrown over it to have an excuse to still sell it. Warcraft 2 is when you start seeing Warcraft actually become Warcraft and a "lore" in its own right.

War40k was originally Fantasy with Space Ships. StarCraft has a few of the similar one. They are more parallel evolution. Both the Tyranids and Zerg are like the Macintosh OS and Windows, both stolen from the true source of Xenomorphs (Xerox's prototype). Starcraft was so blatant in their demo version that the Zerg were still even called Xenomorphs. The carrier and SCVs also "borrow" from the Alien series.

The Eldar are effectively Elves/Dark Elves in space. Protoss have inklings of this but more original. The Tau (added after Starcraft's release) are effectively Protoss as they would be in the Warhammer 40k universe.

Both game series' human "space marine" style is cribbed from originally from Starship Troopers, but that was a book. Considering the visual similarities, I won't deny that W40K likely influenced Blizzard here.

Realistically, they are both Pop-SciFi series influenced by the Pop-SciFi mentality/mythos, but have die hard fan boys on both sides that are trigger happy.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Paladeen]

Painfully "droll"?

Droll \Droll\, n.
          1. One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a
                jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew. --Prior.
                [1913 Webster]

          2. Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet,
                a farce, and the like

I think you may have meant "painfully dull."

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument proves that it requires a lower level of reading comprehension to enjoy. Hence the reason your 10 year old children have been able to enjoy the Tolkien's children's books.

You may be too ignorant, as evidenced by your self-proclaimed grandeur, that you may not even notice that the quality of LOTR is independent of whether or not you read it.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Tolkien also had a tendency to Ramble On.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dwye]

Bob Newhart was an accountant. Do not discount their humor (unless they are auditing your taxes at the time).

And there certainly WAS humor (at least at the start of LoTR, it tends to disappear after Rivendell, then reappears briefly at the Battle of Helm's Deep when Legolas and Gimli are competing to see who can kill the most orcs), just written so dryly that it tends to be missed. Reading it aloud might help, since it got started as tales that he told his children, not as a written work.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Tolkien has tons of funny bits. It's not Pratchett, but the characters crack jokes perfect for them, and plenty of humorous things happen. Not as many as in The Hobbit, of course, but plenty to keep me amused.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Oligonicella]

Please elaborate. What "great" influences did Melville wield?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

"My 10 year old children have read and loved both the Hobbit and LOTR."

They probably don't know any better... and probably love all sorts of other junk.

"Compare any Tolkien to JK Rowling. She tells nice stories, but with such stark simplicity that I find them painfully droll."

Do you even know what the word "droll" means? I'll give you a hint, it doesn't mean boring.

That said, JK Rowling's books are also utter garbage, but I wouldn't rate Tolkien any higher. His books are trash, and not worth wasting any time on.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Morty]

I have no illusions about people here reading TFA and TFS. However, since it was my submission, I felt compelled to defend it.

Specifically, no, it's not news that Tolkien was denied the Nobel 50 years ago. We have indeed known that for 50 years. The news is in why Tolkien was denied the Nobel. That information was only just released.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[modmans2ndcoming]

I hate war hammer.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean can understand wanting to read a favourite book again when the details are fading from memory. But to do it over and over again according to a calendar schedule. I can't understand that.

You invented the bit about a calendar schedule. He didn't say it was a box he ticked off once a year, he just said he read it about once a year for a decade, starting from age 9.

Kids who are enthusiastic about books often do that with books they really like. It's not a big deal.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[atamido]

he didn't really change the literary or social landscape of his day (which is what the Nobel committee usually looks for), although he somewhat "crystallised" fantasy writing

Seriously? What is with the lack of recognition? Say what you will about his writing style (I never could make it through The Silmarillion), but the man basically defined characteristics and styles of fantasy species for every book afterwards. He based his work on preexisting mythos, but he consolidated a lot of opposing mythos and people have been using what he defined ever since.

Tolkien probably had a bigger impact on fantasy writing than any else, before or after.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tompaulco]

I'm surprised to hear that you got through the Silmarillion but could not finish the Lord of the Rings. I have read the Lord of the Rings probably four or five times, the first when I was probably in 5th or 6th grade, but I have yet to get through more than about 3 chapters of the Silmarillion.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[hedwards]

No, the problem is that because he didn't plan you have way too much material happening all at once without any particular rhyme or reason. On top of that you have the excessively flowery language which further obscures the plot.

Now, if you're not writing for people to read then there's no reason to worry about the audience, but if you're writing for an audience then it's really your responsibility to ensure that every word in the book needs to be there that every page and every sentence is moving things along towards the conclusion. The difference between a series like The Chronicles of Narnia and the LOTR shouldn't be that the plot is completely obscured, Steinbeck did just fine writing for adults using very simple language. Hemingway would rewrite a passage dozens of times if he didn't get the words write. Books for children tend to use simpler language and simpler themes, they don't necessarily dumb down the plot that much.

In terms of the LOTR, he failed largely because he didn't spend the time to learn his craft, sure the books are considered classics, but one can only imagine what could have been had he spent a similar amount of effort on the craft of writing and plot development that he did on the lore. One of the quickest ways to kill a book is to use too many words to get where you're going. The story he was trying to tell deserved better than to be strangled by ill considered prose and a lack of evidence of progress.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rui del-Negro]

I think you're confusing the creation of a consistent and detailed fantasy universe with the introduction of new literary styles or social ideologies. Dr. Frankenstein wanting to create life is a social and philosophical issue (even more so when you consider that Frankenstein was a man and the book was written by a woman). Dracula having pointy canines (instead of Nosferatu's pointy incisors) is not. Tolkien's influence in fantasy writing was of the latter kind. He took a lot of different concepts of elves, orcs, and so on, and created such a consistent world that most writers coming after him simply accepted his definitions. But none of his books raises particularly deep issues, nor are they written in a particularly distinctive or innovative style.

Tolkien's real achievement is not The Lord of the Rings, it's Middle Earth.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Mitreya]

I'm quite glad he only tried it the once (and frankly, he should have self-edited Tom out at the start).

Why? I find it amusing to read the debates regarding who the hell Tom is and how he fits into the power structure hierarchy of various beings defined in the Tolkien universe. Certainly, that should not be overdone, but one exception makes things more interesting!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[DanDD]

Tolkein's granddaughter read The Hobbit and gave it a nice review. I believe she was 13 at the time.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I find Mote in God's Eye much more rereadable if you imagine that the Moties are all wearing sombreros and talking like the Frito Bandito. I bet that's how they look way down in Jerry Pournelle's id. :D

Re:Tolkien's prose

[im_thatoneguy]

I agree. And the Sillmarillion is almost unreadable the first time. You have to read it about 3-4 times before it makes sense let alone start to make all of the connections of plot and their significance and how they work into each other. I suppose in his defense it was edited after his death so I'm sure he wanted to polish it a bit more but I'm not sure you can polish such a dense work.

I'm always very critical of work which is *excessively* complicated and impenetrable... but Tolkien's work isn't impenetrable because it's deliberately obtuse... it's impenetrable because there is just so much there.

As I'm fond of telling people who haven't read it "To put things into perspective, the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit are about 4-5 pages and it's 200 pages long."

I would agree that in the LOTR much of his prose isn't anything *special* but certainly to dismiss such a masterpiece on one aspect of the writing is like dismissing the works of Picasso because his shading and rendering of light isn't as dramatic as Rembrandt's.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the LOTR trilogy (and the Hobbit) for the first time when I was about ten years old. I'm now twenty-eight and have read it several times hence. When I watched the movies for the first time I was amazed -- plot changes aside, the things I saw on the screen were *exactly* what I had pictured in my mind all those years. That has never happened for me with any other book-turned-movie (see Harry Potter, for example). Kudos to the crew that produced the LOTR movies, but much credit must be given to Tolkien's detailed writing -- the lengthy "description of the flowers and the trees" and such that you refer to.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[metlin]

Impact on cultural works today is not something the Nobel committee could have predicted half a decade ago. At that time, justifiably so, Tolkien's work was just mediocre writing.

If you only measure fiction by its cultural impact, then Isaac Asimov and Clarke should be up there, simply because of the quality and impact of their creations. However, it is a *Nobel* prize, and one for good literature -- while Asimov and Clarke were great (and prolific) writers, the quality of their writing in and of itself was nothing spectacular. In fact, this analogy could be extended to other domains, as well. The Nobel in physical sciences or the Fields medal are not given to what has the most impact, but rather what was the hardest nut to crack, and how well someone cracked it. In literature, while there isn't necessarily a problem to solve, the quality of writing and one's style go a long way in determining your qualification.

It's possible that that isn't the basis or purpose of the Nobel Price; but I would argue that people nearly a century later considering your work valuable is a pretty good measure of someone's work being good.

A work being popular for long periods of time is a very poor measure. By that standard, Tintin, Asterix, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or even Archie's have been around for over half a century.

In contrast, I have never heard the names of several others on the list, and likely would not unless I were specifically in a course studying literature.

I have not studied literature, at least not in an academic setting. However, I do enjoy reading, and I've read several of the pulp fiction authors and the ivory tower ones. And for the most part, I have to say that the quality of writing and the styles of the good authors are significantly better than the not-so-good ones, across the board. There's a certain degree of expertise and style there that's missing in the other authors. The difference is between Katy Perry and Joshua Bell. Now, is Katy Perry a bad artist because her music isn't "high end"? Of course not. However, her music lacks the rigor and technical depth that Bell's music has. And while both she and her band and Bell leading St. Martin in the Fields are musicians, they are nowhere near the same caliber.

Now, arguably, putting Tolkien into that category is a disservice to the man, but I am sad to say that he chose to emulate past epics in his writing, and did a poor job of it. He was great at creating worlds, he was an outstanding linguist, and he did a fantastic job of tying everything together. However, his writing itself left a lot to be desired. And that is what you're evaluated on, for a Nobel.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[iamnobody2]

if you want to read literary criticism to confirm your position, then stay away from updike's criticism, cause he's great

Re:Tolkien's prose

[iamnobody2]

Tolkien gave a lot of hacks plenty to rip off, that's for sure. any discussion at all of LOTR simply must include Micheal Moorcock's essay Epic Pooh, which has a lot to say on the matter of Tolkien and all the hacks that continuously rehash the jolly old england theme. http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

Re:Tolkien's prose

[metlin]

One need not be exclusive of the other. There are several good authors who have both going for them. Off the cuff, Bertrand Russell, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, John Steinback, G.B. Shaw, Orhan Pamuk and Gabriel Garcia Marquez come to mind. And if you're in the mood for more serious writing, Sartre, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Neruda, and Naipaul come to mind.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[syousef]

I have no illusions about people here reading TFA and TFS. However, since it was my submission, I felt compelled to defend it.

Specifically, no, it's not news that Tolkien was denied the Nobel 50 years ago. We have indeed known that for 50 years. The news is in why Tolkien was denied the Nobel. That information was only just released.

Holy crap on a cracker!

It was a joke, and a cheap joke at that. Instead of laughing you've twisted it in your mind into some kind of troll and then defended it??? If I was trolling would I have added "NEWs not OLDs, my preeecccicoous"???

Not only has this site become full of uninteresting garbage stories with the odd tidbit here and there, users here have lost their sense of humour.

And FYI I read the summary, but not the article. I often read the articles, but I'm just not that interested in LOTR. I find even the movies to be drawn out, despite the creation of new language and tedious description that I concede required some skill. Is it worthy of a Nobel? Nup. But neither are the Nobel winners.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Walt Dismal]

Agreed that the newer gen readers do indeed seem to lack much of a sense of humor, or that too much humor passes right over them. No wonder Cmdr T left. Truly it is not the same as old.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[brentrad]

I had pretty much the same thoughts, although I think Jackson visualized it much better than I could have. I could never conjure up what Helm's Deep looked like when I re ad the books as a teenager, but when I saw the second movie...aha, now I get it!

It doesn't seem to be fashionable to say it on Slashdot, but I thought all the LOTR movies were SUPERB, some of the best movies ever made. Movies aren't supposed to be literal translations of the book, they're a different medium, you have to make allowances for the different conventions used in books and film. The movies, most of all, captured the SPIRIT of the books, and captured the beauty and majesty of the scenery by filming in such beautiful locations in NZ.

Eagerly awaiting The Hobbit. :)

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Nivag064]

I have read the 3 volumes of the "Lord of the Rings" 7 times. When reading, your mind is also aware of the overall tapestry of the tale.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Boronx]

That's funny, I always found Tom the most serious part of the book.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Boronx]

Frodo's parents are mentioned, though Tolkien manages to knock them off before page 1. Lord knows what frodo and sam got up to in the emen muil or whatever emens they spent a whole book wandering in, and Legolas and Gimli in the crystal cave? Forget about it!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[xero314]

Kind of like H.P. Lovecraft, really. Imaginative world, writing is meh.

Lovercraft had a style that was vastly different than other writers of his period. He was one of the first horror writers to write in a way that gave the user a sense of belief. His ability to create a plausible scenario while leaving the read with a sense of doubt is what makes his writing stand out from nearly all other writers. Sure the Herbert-West Stories and even Call of Cathulu where not the best writetn stories, but Pickman's Model and the Music of Erich Zann are unsurpassed surreal macabre, a genre that Lovecraft perfect if not invented, and has yet to be handled well sense.

...CS Lewis, another person whose religious commitments made his work far more shallow and one-dimensional than it could've been.

Yet his best story, arguably was one that hid no pretense in it's religious content.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[arcite]

That Tolkien found most of his fame AFTER he died is indicative that what he wrote was not ready for his time, but the future.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jawtheshark]

Another "Middle-aged nerds who have never read LOTR" here... The Hobbit, I managed, but I found it rather... bland. LOTR. Started several times, never finished. Glad I'm not alone.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the reverse to be true. The Hobbit seems childish with short sentences and simplistic language. I find it irritating to read but more fun to read aloud.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[xSander]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

I've completed all four books. Yeah, The Hobbit was short and more adventurous. Lord of the Rings was harder to read because of the seemingly endless descriptions of every rock, grass plain or whatnot. I don't know how I did get through it. And it was just in time for the movies too, which I enjoyed, by the way.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Geeky]

I read them at around that age, after we'd read the Hobbit at school and I wanted to read more. It sparked my brief teenage flirtation with D&D and all things fantasy.

However, recently re-reading them I was disappointed. It's not great literature. The significance is in practically launching a genre.

Apples and oranges, but give me a Dickens any day...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[CarbonShell]

Perhaps one idea on why so much detail was put into the landscape is that the story kind of reflects what he went through.
When you are young you have no eye for the beauty of nature and seek only action and adventure. Yet when you are in the midst of battle and are soaking yourself in anticipation and fright, seeing your comrades and enemies getting torn to shreds, what do you really seek? Perhaps your mind will float back to that stream at the foot of the snow covered mountains and you can still smell the flowers and hear the birds.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[MrHanky]

Faulkner. Pynchon's V (and the V2 of Gravity's Rainbow) is obviously another white whale. Same can be said for the Samizdat of DFW's Infinite Jest (though I imagine Pynchon was more important for him than Melville). Rushdie, of course. Cormack McCarthy. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[mooingyak]

Somewhat similarly, The Godfather was Mario Puzo's third book. He wrote it expressly to be popular and to make money, after having written two critically acclaimed books that barely sold.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Geeky]

Compare any Tolkien to JK Rowling. She tells nice stories, but with such stark simplicity that I find them painfully droll.

The difference for me, though, is that JK Rowling creates characters you can care about and can tap into human emotion better, in my opinion, than Tolkein. I've read a lot - Tolkein, Dickens, plenty of classics as well as a lot of pulp, and initially I was sceptical about adults reading kids books when the whole Harry Potter thing took off.

Then I read them. Sure, the early ones are written for a young audience and they're full of plot holes and cliches. However, I rarely get a lump in my throat when reading, and there are scenes in the Potter novels that do just that.

I appreciate that this isn't an argument likely to be popular on a geek site, where people will probably be more concerned with her poor handling of time travel paradoxes in Azkaban, but there's a warmth to the Potter books that I find lacking in LotR.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jeremyp]

But it did change the literary landscape. Maybe not the high literary landscape of academia but it changed the world of fantasy literature (maybe not by the time it was nominated though).

One genre of literature then. That's not really Earth shattering.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dunkelfalke]

ORLY? I read Lord of the Rings when I was 10, and I never thought that the books were hard to read. I loved the books. Silmarillion is hard to read, the works of Stephen Baxter are hard to read, but not Lord of the Rings.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I think creating an entire GENRE of literature is a pretty hefty accomplishment. And yes, much of the fantasy literature is crizzap, but that's true of literature in general as well.

There are great fantasy novels out there, many better than anything Tolkien ever wrote, but you've always got to bow down to the master because he was FIRST!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jvin248]

The Nobel Prize, like literary awards, usually avoid popular cultural products of 'the masses'. Like your tag line about hipsters, it's the same type of group, but on a more sophisticated level. As an author, I can appreciate the scale and scope of the Ring trilogy and there are some great scenes, but the Hobbit was the better story.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[TheLink]

Speaking of Tolkien and the future, if Tolkien was alive today, perhaps he shouldn't be writing books, but creating a LoTR wiki - he can then create and add all the mythology he wants, all the stories, background, poems etc. I might actually pay to read that :).

I found his books very slow. But I wouldn't say they were written in low quality prose.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[almitchell]

Melville's Moby-Dick was like that too...the last I remember of that book was the detail in which he described the Tavern in the first several pages. The book didn't even sell out the first printing.

Now, that book is "hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature"

Chapter 23: We're still on land.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[catmistake]

And the Sillmarillion is almost unreadable the first time.

The first chapter is insane... the music of creation... a cool idea, movements, countermovements, melody, harmony, cacophany... and I think it is probably Tolkien's best prose. Beyond that, the wheels sort of come off the beauty of the prose of the first chapter in exchange for the story he is retelling.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[radtea]

Kinda like the modernization of the Bronte sisters with vampires and such, I've seen those in the bookstore.

Wouldn't the correct equivalent be "Modern Lovecraft WITHOUT Cthulhu?" Now that would be something!

I've also seen a suggestion that the logical conclusion of the whole "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" trend would be "Frankenstein and Monsters".

OT: Tolkien's prose limps. People have talked about it being easy/hard to read, but that's not the point. Great art can be more or less accessible, and there is no particular virtue in either. The problem isn't Tolkien's accessibility or otherwise. It's that he was a pedestrian writer whose phrasing is generally unevocative and dull even while he's describing an incredibly rich world peopled with interesting characters. There's about three paragraphs of really beautiful prose in his description of the Battle of Helm's Deep, and it stands out like a diamond on a coal heap.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[waives]

Presumably Howard wrote a number of his works prior to his last year of life.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a note - The Silmarillion was not written by J.R.R Tolkien. It was written by a relative (I believe it was his son) from his notes after he died. This is why it's style is so different from the LOTR. In my opinion, Tolkien's prose and writing style was Usually top rate and interesting. The exceptions where he lost me was when he would go into some of the poems and songs. But one has to ask if someone else could do better when trying to describe this totally foreign world with such peculiar realities and where making up poems and songs "on the fly" was so much more common.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, his style does make more sense when you've already gotten your feet wet in some mythological stories. Especially if you read something like his translation of the Sigmund legend. However, even those required explanations in parts. Honestly though, I always felt that the Silmarillion read more like the Bible than anything else which, given that he was a devout Catholic, isn't exactly earth-shattering.

But yeah, it's hard to be the first person to write in a certain genre. Besides, who got the last laugh? How many Nobel prize-winning authors can you name?

Btw, for anyone you liked the more child-story-like aspect of The Hobbit, I highly recommend "Roverandom" and "Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham" which are pretty similar in style. Amusing and full of the magic and dragons that Tolkien was so very fond of. And they're not just for kids, I'm almost 25 and I quite enjoyed reading them. Course, I'm also a huge Tolkien fan so I'm a bit biased.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[waives]

" Tolkien agreed with one of the other members of the group, C.S. Lewis, that if there were no adequate myths for England then they would have to write their own" Dipshit.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[oh_my_080980980]

Considering the Hobbit or There and Back Again, was a children's fantasy novel, it's no surprise.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[elrous0]

Ditto for me. The Hobbit was the only book in which Tolkien exhibited efficient prose. On the LOTR trilogy, it's quite clear that he is a very undisciplined writer (one who has obviously never heard the phrase Brevity is a virtue"). As a result, I find the LOTR trilogy to be tedious, long-winded, and boring as shit. Every time I see that scene in Clerks 2 where Randall launches into his "Just a lot of walking" criticism of LOTR, I laugh and think of the time I tried to read the LOTR trilogy as a kid (and feel asleep not even midway through the first book).

Re:Tolkien's prose

[oh_my_080980980]

Gygax denied D&D was based on Tolkien.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[geminidomino]

I find it hard to believe all of these posters are claiming the books are hard to read and/or boring.

Why is it so hard to believe? Not everyone who reads does so for the joy of pages of lyrical prose describing the local flora, and it has nothing to do with how "good of a reader you are." It has to do with what you enjoy in a book. When people say the books are slow, it's not because they don't read quickly, it's because there's lot's of meaningless "filler" between the actual interesting bits. "The Fellowship of the Ring" is one such case (I can't speak for the other two, as I never bothered to read them).

"Tolkien's Trees" are like the inversion of "Checkov's Gun."

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Except that the trilogy really is excretable. After wondering what all the hype was, I picked up the series in the bargain bin. After forcing myself to read the first 50 pages, my initial impression from the first few pages, that it is poorly written crap, continued to be confirmed.

I'm not in favor of burning books, but in this case, I'd be willing to make an exception. It would be better employed starting a campfire for a marshmallow roast. Or to hang up in the outhouse for when someone forgot to pack the toilet paper.

You're free to disagree - but in this case the Nobel committee got it right. Then again, CS Lewis wasn't much of a writer either, being a formulaic hack (and after reading his biography, it becomes obvious why he wrote the way he did - trying to justify his own actions in taking part in forcing other students in same-sex rapes at school as "not counting").

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty shallow characterization of Lewis. Lewis should have had an award (though I'm not sure which) for his role in opening the eyes of the academic world - most importantly his friend Tolkien - to the qualities of science fiction. He managed to see past the pulpy cover illustrations and dubious writing to the vibrant imagination and storytelling skill beneath, realizing there was something there that his own time's literature sorely lacked.

It's what made Narnia so great. It's not masterfully crafted as literature, he wrote them in a hurry (as he admitted himself) but the vivid pictures and raw storytelling skill makes it very enjoyable.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[dskzero]

I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)

The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.

That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.

I did finish LOTR, but I actually thought The Hobbit was simply a better book. It was more enjoyable and fun. LOTR was so damn dense I was compelled to throw it out of the window.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[LoyalOpposition]

Except that the trilogy really is excretable.

I'm not...really certain what you're trying to say here. By any chance did you mean execrable?

~Loyal

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Mark Twain

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Courageous]

Well, I would argue that Tolkien's contribution to "literature" was to put the epic-scale world-creation fantasy genre onto the map.

I would also argue that he contributed nothing more than that. I, personally, hated his writing style. As others have said--dry, and poor story telling.

But world building? Outstanding.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Gilmoure]

In the grim future of Hello Kitty there is only war.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[arbarbonif]

My only problem with the movies is that he changed who the main character is. It went from the hobbits' story to Aragorn's story. Which meant he had to cut out the scouring of the shire which is my favorite chapter in the whole series. I think in a lot of ways, making it the story about the king instead of the story of the little people does kinda lose the spirit of the books.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Good catch, but ... when I referred to it as crap, I meant in the 100% literal sense - the stuff that we also refer to as #2, poop, etc. It really is s***. I was serious about it being fit only to be used as bum-wipe further on - certainly it's not worthy of being classed as reading material in "the library". Maybe a 6-year-old would like it ... but 6-year-olds also like sticking toads down girls tops, and grossing people out by eating boogers.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Nobel Prize in economics.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a couple pages out of the Index at the end of LOTR yesterday, and the language getting more archaic as the story progresses was actually intentional (if you were thinking about the "thou"-type words). Basically, as they move on past Rivendell into Gondor and such places, the language changed. There's a disconnect between the Common Speech as it was spoken in the Shire compared to east of the mountains. The dialect in the east had some extra tenses or something, which the dialect in the Shire had lost, and made the speech over there sound very archaic to the hobbits. That is the reason why Tolkien wrote the dialog from people of Gondor and surrounding areas to sound like something out of the King James Bible.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Lovecraft. As much as I loved the mythos he sets up, I get tired of all of his "indescribable" events/creatures. I understand that his schtick is the "horror man was not meant to know," but when you read so many of his stories and you finally get to the reveal, it's disappointing to get a "I don't know how to tell you what I'm looking at" again and again. Also, most of his narrators were the same person: smarter and more perceptive that the people around them, yet paranoid and crazy from what they witnessed.

I read a book of his short stories, and while I enjoyed them, they same things came up again and again. The Mountains of Madness, on the other hand, felt much better about details, even when he wasn't giving them. I suppose that is the advantage of a full-fledged book.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

The economics and peace prizes aren't real Nobel prices and aren't awrded by the Nobel commitee. They've just stolen the name.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you actually read and understood those 104 books, not only would you have an awesome library at home - you'd actually be more enlightened about litterature than by reading your J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer books you have in yours.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Chowderbags]

Yeah, there should be a Nobel Film prize. It'd be won by Michael Bay every year.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I read LOTR when I was 13. The Silmarillion is head and shoulders over LOTR as far as level of reading (and frankly, it's practically KJV Biblical... which doesn't make for light reading).

Re:Tolkien's prose

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

you can't read the books once.. i've listened to the audio books about 10 times through. (while coding, sure) test me.. go ahead :)

Re:Tolkien's prose

[cyberchondriac]

It had always been on my "to do" list, and after having found a great deal on the books I couldn't refuse, I finally read the LotR trilogy (or whatever it is, technically) this past summer. What I found a bit odd was how in the beginning, in Bag End, and throughout the chapter(s?) with Tom Bombadil, it seemed at times a little silly (I don't at all miss Bombadil in the movies honestly); but once they got to Bree and met Strider, things started to get more serious, into epic. By the time you're reading "Return of the King", it almost seems like a different kind of story from "Fellowship of the Ring".
I'll admit, at times I too found it tedious; I usually skimmed through the singing parts, which personally I found gratuitous, but I realize there are some who love that kind of thing. Overall though, I feel it was a fairly rich reading experience, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

I just bought the Hobbit recently, so now I'm on to that soon, at least before the movie is out. If I've seen the movie first, I can never quite "overwrite" those actors with my own character interpretation. It's kinda weird when you have a mix of characters in a story, some you've seen portrayed in the movies before you read the book, and some you've imagined yourself from reading the book, and still await to see on the screen.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

That Tolkein's writing was boring pap not even worthy of the penny-a-word pulps is news? Hardly.

Tolkein is, at best, the literary equivalent of Powerpoint - both make you stupid.

We've made a lot of advances in how to tell a story in the last 50 years, but even 50 years ago, Tolkein was not great writing. It was not even "good" writing. "Dreadful" would be more like it, unless you think "bore the reader to death in the first 50 pages, and once they're a mindless zombie, they'll read the rest on autopilot" is the makings of good literature.

Anyone who mis-remembers it should go back and read the first few pages, and ask themselves - "Would I read the rest of this based on what I've just read?" If the answer is "yes", you might also want to check out the works of T. S. Geissel.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Consider that Tolkein's vision of dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs, humans, and their relations have had immense impact on our cultural view of what they're supposed to be like.

Please! Get real! Tolkein's "vision" has had almost no impact on our culture. Most people haven't read it, and don't want to read it, because it's frigging BORING! Not just the subject matter, but the writing style.

A huge swath of nerd-dom has been heavily influenced by it

Not really. Trolls, etc., existed outside of Tolkien - it's not like he invented the concept, any more than he invented the leprechaun.

I would argue that people nearly a century later considering your work valuable

Then we can agree that its value is fast approaching zero, because the next generation wants nothing to do with reading it - because it is POORLY WRITTEN. It's why you'll find it in remainder bins for $5 for the three volume set. (I actually picked it up for $2 for the 3, and after wasting my time trying several times to slog through the first volume, consider it way over-priced).

The only practical use for it might be as a screening test for Aspergers.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rakarra]

Agreed that the newer gen readers do indeed seem to lack much of a sense of humor, or that too much humor passes right over them. No wonder Cmdr T left. Truly it is not the same as old.

I don't think the newer gen readers lack a sense of humor. I think they just laugh at fewer things, or at least they don't laugh at things that are not funny. Geeks have traditionally had shitty senses of humor that, when it exists, seems to depend more on repetition than the actual humor value of the joke.

The "joke" that Marty was replying to... it just wasn't funny. I've no problems replying straight to a joke that fell flat. It embarrasses everyone, and that is funny.

Besides, Marty has a 5-digit uid, he's not a new-gen reader. >_>

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Wordsworth wrote about the early-19th Century's reading audience and its need for "gross violent stimuli" - or its inability to appreciate subtlety, depth of thought and meditation on experience. I always think about this when I hear people's complaints about Tolkien's plot "not going anywhere."

Oh, come off it! That's the literary equivalent of saying that we should stick to the way Alfred Hitchcock made his horror movies, which might have been exciting at the time, but are so STIFF and BORING in comparison to even bargain-basement movies like SAW (which would probably have given audiences back then a collective massive coronary). Go watch "The Birds" and try not to laugh at how silly it appears nowadays, and how poor both the actual plot and the directing are.

We know how to tell stories better today - how to quickly immerse people into the character, the setting, and the plot, with subtle cues rather than beating them over the head with every detail, letting the reader (or viewer in the case of movies) be involved and drawn into the story by filling in the blanks themselves.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[CoolHnd30]

Gygax denied D&D was based on Tolkien.

That may be true literally -- that it isn't "based on" Tolkien. However, I don't think there is any denying that there are many things in D&D heavily inspired by Tolkien's universe...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say something along these lines. As a story, I thought Moby Dick was rather dull. What I found fascinating about it though was that you really got a feel of what life was like on one of those old whalers, and what life was like in general back then. Its really almost whaling 101 taught via a weak storyline. I guess as a disclaimer, this is a book I have been reading on my phone casually for almost 3 years now, I am still only 3/4's through it- but I would be shocked if the ending somehow changes my opinion of it as a whole.

The prose certainly has its high points, and is generally good throughout, but to call it a masterpiece... I certainly don't see it as that.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rakarra]

If you only measure fiction by its cultural impact, then Isaac Asimov and Clarke should be up there, simply because of the quality and impact of their creations. However, it is a *Nobel* prize, and one for good literature -- while Asimov and Clarke were great (and prolific) writers, the quality of their writing in and of itself was nothing spectacular. In fact, this analogy could be extended to other domains, as well. The Nobel in physical sciences or the Fields medal are not given to what has the most impact, but rather what was the hardest nut to crack, and how well someone cracked it. In literature, while there isn't necessarily a problem to solve, the quality of writing and one's style go a long way in determining your qualification.

It's quite possible that like several of the other non-physical Nobel prizes (economics, peace, etc), the Nobel Prize for Literature is just not that meaningful.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Kevin Stevens]

One thing I wished the movie did was sing some of those songs or recite some of those poems. Most of those songs and poems, besides being entirely irrelevant to the story, really had no flow to them. Most of the time I sat there scratching my head and thinking of ways to sing them that wasn't awkward. I failed almost every time.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rakarra]

Gygax denied D&D was based on Tolkien.

Gygax had great reason to deny it, but that doesn't mean D&D isn't based on Tolkien.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[oreiasecaman]

Silmarillion was published long after J.R.R. Tolkien was dead and more than a decade after this 1961 Nobel jury. Get your facts before writing nonsense.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Warren416]

I think it makes far more sense to say that "literature" and "fantasy" are two different things, at least as far as a "nobel prize in literature" goes. Fantasy novels, whether they are the very best ones (Tolkien, and a very short list of others, which ones make the list is very much a matter of opinion) are not to everybody's taste, least of all the taste of those who award the Nobel prizes. What I find most interesting is that (a) Tolkien is fascinated by Nordic mythology, (b) few people seem to show it more distaste than latter-day literary men of the same North countries that Tolkien takes his literary inspirations from. Look up the "Kolbitar", or "the coalbiters" group that tolkien belonged to. Warren W

Re:Tolkien's prose

[mcgrew]

On top of that you have the excessively flowery language which further obscures the plot.

The writing itself (perhaps the "flowery language") is one of the things I liked about the books.

Now, if you're not writing for people to read then there's no reason to worry about the audience, but if you're writing for an audience

I didn't really understand what you said there, can you clarify some?

Hemingway would rewrite a passage dozens of times if he didn't get the words write.

Worst pun I've read all day. But IMO Hemmingway did it right. If you don't like the way you've written what you've written, chances are nobody else will either. If you think your crap is crap, it's crap.

...every page and every sentence is moving things along towards the conclusion.

I doubt you'd like my book. Each chapter is a different, yet related story, and the conclusion kind of just kind of happens, like everything else in the book.

One of the quickest ways to kill a book is to use too many words to get where you're going.

Ah, the empty-V generation. The books were written before and during WWII, and I'd bet you wouldn't like movies from that period, either -- too slow paced. OTOH, beautiful flowing prose is a beauty in itself, with or without a plot. A Terry Pratchett phrase which didn't advance the book's plot at all sticks in my head more than any other part of the book, and I grin when I think of it: "He realised that not only was he not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he might even have been a spoon."

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Darinbob]

The genre really didn't exist before it, except as a pulp fiction sort. And Tolkien was not a cheap pulp fiction author and LOTR was not fluff. It was a serious work of literature with serious themes and today there are university classes and seminars still discussing it. True, it is not the sort of literature that the Nobel committee could use to send a message to the world and maybe the prose is not as contrived as it could have been, probably not the best candidate for a Nobel prize. But it was Earth shattering :-)

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

I also see it as a practical history of middle earth. Especially works like the silmarillion. They contain detailed chronological timelines and highlight significant historic events and is told in a way to make it seem as if it was real. As a comparison, I enjoy reading history books that give a practical assessment of events. That is why I had no problem reading the lord of the rings. I didn't get frustrated with the historical minutiae. I did gloss over many of the poems and songs though...

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Warren416]

Tom Bombadil seems to me to be an element of "inexplicable other-ness", and seems a mystical figure, and the most "mythological" of all of his "myth building" exercises. He is not affected by the power of the ring, and yet, he is also not the solution to the problem of how to dispose of it. He is something other than that, entirely. Warren

Re:Tolkien's prose

[ckaminski]

Isn't it ironic then that the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is talking about going to war with Iran?

Yah, I don't give the Nobel Prize Committee any attention anymore after that blatant example of cock-workship.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Asic Eng]

The economics and peace prizes aren't real Nobel prices and aren't awrded by the Nobel commitee. They've just stolen the name.

That's not correct - the Nobel Peace prize is one of the 6 original prizes. The Economics prize was funded later by the central bank of Sweden but is also administered by the Nobel foundation. The Nobel prizes are given out by four organizations: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Economics), the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute (Medicine), the Swedish Academy (Literature), and the Norwegian Nobel Committee (Peace).

That the Nobel Peace prize is intended to be political should be somewhat obvious.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

The failure to appreciate Professor Tolkien's prose is, in this case, with the reader. Not really surprising on /.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

Uh...no, we're stupider and have the attention span of gnats today.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

Failure to appreciate Tom has, for me, always marked a certain failure to 'get' LotR.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

Another important point for many vocal net-critics to realize is that as the parent poster implies, Tolkien was intentionally choosing an archaic and at places longwinded style; indeed the astute and careful reader will notice him switching from one prosaic style to another as the situation and intent of his storytelling calls for.

This. The prose is /very/ carefully arranged to suit any particular point in the story. It's one of my favorite aspects of the book.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

The rumor is that most of them were to lazy to do anything other than read it in the Swedish translation, which is notoriously awful.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jkauzlar]

That's one of the major criticisms I've heard, that it's too episodic. I've also noticed he uses 'ex deus machina' too often: there's the big battle in Two Towers (Minas Tirith?) that goes on forever, but when everything looks hopeless, the Ents storm in and save the day. That happened again in the third book with the spirits that Aragorn (if I remember correctly) summons. You can probably find more examples.

That said, I think they're great books and probably the best feat of world-building in the history of fantasy writing, afaik. They're incredibly rich and detailed in this regard, and that, in my mind, is what makes them fun to read.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[oldmac31310]

Huh? You forgot Zeppelin man!

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Please! Get real! Tolkein's "vision" has had almost no impact on our culture

Led Zeppelin IV? From that LP, everything else derives.

It's why you'll find it in remainder bins for $5 for the three volume set

That's also why I find the Bible or the Illiad at used bookstores for $5. Because they suck!

Trolls, etc., existed outside of Tolkien

You were posting on slashdot before LOTR came out?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Lunzo]

Standards are low (probably always have been). You see plenty of adults reading Harry Potter and Twilight but it's rare you see them reading books written for adults.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[syousef]

it's not the newer gen readers, it's all readers - they've just decided to be combative and don't have a light hearted laugh at anything anymore. And who are you to tell geeks their sense of humour is 'shitty'? You have no right to arbitrarily decide what kind of humour is good and what is bad, nor must everyone on the site conform to your ideas on humour. Replying to a joke that falls flat as if it were an attack and flying off the handle is what's immature.

Also, I am not impressed by how many digits in a user id. Why should I care that someone found this site early on?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

The failure to appreciate Professor Tolkien's prose is, in this case, with the reader. Not really surprising on /.

Really? In that case, I'm in great company, since the Nobel team agrees with me.

However, you'll note that even plenty of people who are Tolkien fans agree that his writing is at times VERY tedious.

to turn your argument on its' head, I'm not surprised to find that there are Tolkien fans on slashdot - you almost HAVE to have Aspergers to slog through all that crap.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

It's not a question of a shorter attention span. People still produce 500-800 page books, and readers still gobble them up. However, what HAS changed is that more people are not just literate, but we also have a much richer set of memes to draw upon, so we don't have to waste nearly as much time setting the stage for our characters to play out on.

Rather, we throw the reader right into the middle, with a good hook and a "sink or swim" attitude. Instead of taking pages to establish that the story is about the life of a woman set in a dystopian future, or a detective investigating a bizarre series of murders, we throw the reader into it with the opening line. No explanations. Just do it. Engage the readers' imagination by letting THEM fill in some of the blanks.

Past writers were simply too timid to try such an approach. Worse, if they had, they would have mostly failed, because the long expositions were a crutch for covering up a lack of pacing. "I'll describe all the minute details of the journey, because that will add verisimilitude" - and yet the journey itself was rather pointless, and would have been excised by any editor today as an attempt to pad the word count. Tolkien was of the "travel guide" school of writing, same as most of his peers. Today it would only rate a much-cut-down graphic novel at best.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Please! Get real! Tolkein's "vision" has had almost no impact on our culture

Led Zeppelin IV? From that LP, everything else derives.

Do you really believe that our entire culture is based on a CD that I picked up for $5? Really?

It's why you'll find it in remainder bins for $5 for the three volume set

That's also why I find the Bible or the Illiad at used bookstores for $5. Because they suck!

The bible really does suck. Having slogged through it over 20 times, cover to cover, so as to be able to refute the brainwashed masses, I can tell you that it needs a really good editor to cut out the boring parts, the redundant parts, and the parts that are just too "deus ex machina" (pun absolutely intended).

Trolls, etc., existed outside of Tolkien

You were posting on slashdot before LOTR came out?

The movie? Of course. But as for trolls, etc, in general, just look at Rumpelstiltskin, written exactly 200 years ago this year, LONG before Tolkien was even a gleam in his parents' eyes.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Rui del-Negro]

So did Ed Wood. Hardly a sign of quality.

Tolkien was a competent writer, but not an exceptional one. His real strength was in creating worlds, not in writing about them.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[mattack2]

Oh, come off it! That's the literary equivalent of saying that we should stick to the way Alfred Hitchcock made his horror movies, which might have been exciting at the time, but are so STIFF and BORING in comparison to even bargain-basement movies like SAW (which would probably have given audiences back then a collective massive coronary). Go watch "The Birds" and try not to laugh at how silly it appears nowadays, and how poor both the actual plot and the directing are.

I really hope you're joking. I'm not even a huge Hitchcock fan, but I can't believe you're trying to compare a simple gore-fest (which I admit I haven't seen, nor do I ever want to see), to actual suspenseful movies like "The Birds".

Re:Tolkien's prose

[khellendros1984]

You....you ate your books? By "in the 100% literal sense", am I take it that you chewed, swallowed, digested and excreted the novels?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[one cup of coffee]

You nailed it.
wish I still had mod points.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

I made the mistake of trying to watch a re-run of "The Birds." It's true - you can never go back. Go watch it and tell me you didn't have to stifle a laugh ... before turning it off because it's boring.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

I truly pity you.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

For what? Recognizing crap when I see it? Not having Aspergers so that I don't feel compelled to finish reading a book when the first 50 pages are utterly devoid of both inspiration and interest? Of having my literary tastes being validated by the Nobel committee?

Or of being a far superior troll than any Tolkien ever came up with?

(hey, it's Troll Tuesday, right, and what better way to troll than by telling the truth - that Tolkien wrote a turd and called it a day. :-)

Re:Tolkien's prose

[JWSmythe]

    I'm no Tolkein fan, but based on popularity and dedication to his works I'd say that there's something right going for it.

    As an English professor told me once, Stephen King's work is utter crap, and is an embarrassment to the English language. On the other hand, he's sold a bazillion copies, and had quite a few made into movies. I'm not a fan of King's either. When "The Stand" hit DVD, I was constantly refusing to hang out with people and watch it in one "40 hour The Stand marathon". Sorry, they can't afford enough booze for me to want to stay for the whole thing. People stopped giving me his books as gifts, when I'd always ask if they'd mind if I exchanged it for a good book.

    No offense to King fans. To each his own.

   

Re:Tolkien's prose

[DudemanX]

Actually the literary influence for Starcraft is Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up already u diabetes ridden fat cunt. Do us a favor n' die.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying 2 play critic u fat sow w/ diabetes? STFU. /.'s sick of u cunt.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU u diabetes disease ridden fat CUNT. /.'s sick of ur shit troll.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[VAElynx]

Then why are the Protoss essentially ersatz Eldar?

Re:Tolkien's prose

[catmistake]

Well, I would argue that Tolkien's contribution to "literature" was to put the epic-scale world-creation fantasy genre onto the map.

I like a good argument. I would argue Homer did that already, and whomever wrote Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

I would also argue that he contributed nothing more than that. I, personally, hated his writing style. As others have said--dry, and poor story telling.

Except that he did contribute a bit more. The world he created isn't in a vacuum, but is allegorical in several ways, (WWII, Christianity, others). Also, I think, even if his sentences were rambling, the story is built within our imaginations. If you think Tolkien is a poor story teller, I think its possible you may have an imaginiation deficit.

(Terrible analogy time). The LotR is like a coconut. You have to labor through the tough outer husk to get to the meat and milk inside, which only becomes wonderful once consumed.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

You're remarks about Alfred Hitchcock and the fact that you even /mentioned/ Saw in the same paragraph says it all.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

You're (sic) remarks ... says it all.

Considering the topic is literature, your spelling says it all.

And the original SAW! is much more of a thriller than anything from Hitchcock. But go show "The Birds" to some kids and see if they don't end up laughing at it - if they don't fall asleep from boredom.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat another donut diseased fatass. Wonder y u've got diabetes? Don't donut girl.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ur opinion fat fuck. Go eat donuts n' die u diabetes ridden sow.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[hawk]

In fact, when asked about Gandalf's "Servant of the Secret Fire," Tolkien confirmed that that was indeed the Holy Spirit.

His mother was turned out by her Church of England family when she converted to Catholicism.

hawk

Re:Tolkien's prose

[jahudabudy]

Interestingly, it was Tolkien who brought CS Lewis back around to his faith after Lewis had abandoned it as a teenager.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[Courageous]

I would argue Homer did that already,...

Homer died before the Greeks had writing. "When did Homer write the Illiad"? This is a trick question when studying the classics.

The epics you reference did not do detailed world creation of epic scale, no. Epic-scale writing perhaps, but a rich alternate universe

If you think Tolkien is a poor story teller, I think its possible you may have an imaginiation deficit.

This particular type of argument always reveals more about the arguer than the person being targeted by the remark. Should we ignore the irony that the remark about the mental faculties of another contains a misspelling?

C//

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

Yes, fine idea. Show a movie intended for adults to kids use that to judge it. I'm sure you would show them Saw as well. As for spelling, flames, well, we all know about them.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Have you even LOOKED at "The Birds" lately? My guess is no, because it is SO cheesy that even kids will laugh at it. Saw, on the other hand, I wouldn't show them because, unlike "The Birds", it doesn't bore you to death.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

By your standards, I expect Transformers 3 was /way/ better than Citizen Kane.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

Keep dodging the point. All it does is make you look silly. The fact is that "The Birds" is no longer considered even moderately frightening. Go and watch at and see how cheesy it is. We've come a long way in the last generation wrt the art of story-telling, and plodding, boring figures like Hitchcock and Tolkien would not have survived in the modern market.

Today, you're expected to involve the reader or viewer, not treat them like they're so brain-dead that they need every step of the journey explained to them.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

Saw does such a fine job of respecting the intellect of the viewer. Go back to Transformers 3.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

It certainly doesn't do any worse than Tolkien. Really, you want to try to make an argument about "inspecting the intellect" over a fairy tale? Come on. And quit dodging the earlier point - that "The Birds" is also crap by current story-telling standards. Boring, cheesy, even laughable. Go try to watch it without laughing, it is SO bad!

I never said SAW was worthy of a Nobel. What I *did* say was that LoTR is crap story-telling by modern standards. And even by the standards of 50 years ago, it was tedious pap.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[rochrist]

sigh. No, The Birds is not 'crap' by current story-telling standards. Witness that every single film school studies Hitchcock in detail. Because you're too stupid and/or riddle with ADHD is not the fault of Hitchcock. And no, LotR is not crap by modern story telling standards. Anymore than Shakespeare is. People will still be reading it in 100 years. As I said, go back to Transformers 3. It appears to be just about at the right level for you.

Re:Tolkien's prose

[tomhudson]

"Witness that every single film school studies Hitchcock in detail."

[citation needed] - and there are a LOT of film schools, so I doubt you'll be able to back that statement up by showing that every (or even the majority) do. They might want to include it as an example of outdated, stale work, much as the Titanic is included in ship navigation as an example of what NOT to do.

And Shakespeare? Do you really want to compare Tolkien (and Hitchcock) with Shakespeare?

You just lost any credibility you might have had with anyone else following this thread.

I can believe that

[0123456]

As someone who's never managed to get more than a few chapters into the Lord of the Rings books, I can see why they wouldn't want to give him a prize. It's a good story, but there are only so many thirty-page digressions on Elvish folk dancing that I can stand before my brain turns to mush.

Re:I can believe that

[cidersylph]

Tolkien had a lot of beautiful imagery and ideas, and that invited the reader to make up their own fascinating thoughts of what the world looked like, simply because the prose was really difficult to read. As a trilogy that forces the reader to envision Middle Earth in their mind, it succeeds brilliantly beyond the bad prose.

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

in LOTR Whenever someone broke out in dance, i just parsed through text until i saw dialogue without interpretive dance.

I liked the story a lot, but it was just painful to read the books , i hated his writing style.

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

that invited the reader to make up their own fascinating thoughts of what the world looked like, simply because the prose was really difficult to read

I'm not quite sure I get that. It's like suggesting that a movie encouraged the viewer to make up their own fascinating thoughts of what the world looked like because the camera work was really out of focus and difficult to see.

I get the idea of leaving gaps to let the viewer imagine the world as they want it with only the storyline dictated by the book, but that wasn't really LoTR's problem. Like 0123456 said, it was the massive digressions into things which really didn't need to be described in that sort of excruciating detail.

All credit to him for creating a world with such exquisite and in-depth detail, it must have taken a massive effort to keep all of that consistent and related, but I was looking for a story, not a fictional encyclopaedia in narrative form.

Re:I can believe that

[stms]

After the first movie my parents got me the books for Christmas. I was 12 at the time and I'm actually pretty proud of the fact that I made it just past Tom Bombadil.

Re:I can believe that

[bonch]

I actually thought that part was kind of cool, the way the forest subtly steered the hobbits toward Old Man Willow. Bombadil was easier to swallow when I viewed him as some sort of divine enigma or weird forest spirit. Where I start to run out of steam is in the Two Towers, when humans begin to dominate the story.

Re:I can believe that

[ISoldat53]

Perhaps the mush was already there.

Re:I can believe that

[PsychoSlashDot]

Tolkien had a lot of beautiful imagery and ideas, and that invited the reader to make up their own fascinating thoughts of what the world looked like, simply because the prose was really difficult to read. As a trilogy that forces the reader to envision Middle Earth in their mind, it succeeds brilliantly beyond the bad prose.

Huh? Sorry, but after the third exquisite description of a cloud, his beautiful imagery made me learn how to scan paragraphs to skip to extraneous bits. Kind of like porn in a way. The first thrust is arousing to watch. The second through tenth are titillating. The eleventh through ninetieth are increasingly routine. Eventually you may find yourself desperately bored, hoping the actors change position or fall in a vat of boiling lead, or something interesting.

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean. I am... so delighted to find I'm not the only person who felt this way about his prose. It's like coming out of the closet all over again.

Re:I can believe that

[Rufus Firefly]

The key to reading Lord of the Rings, precious, is that everytime one of those God damned hobbits breaks into song or verse, is to skip it. (And also skip the part where they hang out with the creep in the Forest)

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe i'm in the minority, but i don't really watch porn, it just provides a cue for things that happen in my head.

Re:I can believe that

[roc97007]

Enh, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I get what you're saying (to my knowledge the elves never danced in the stories; didn't do much of anything except brood, look wistful, and shoot arrows really fast) but there is a compelling story in the books if you have a little patience. I read LOTR the first time in the seventies, and probably have read it a dozen times since, including the appendicies. (There are stories in there also, including a story fragment that's a run-up to the events in The Hobbit.) But I admit to just skimming the songs and I'm glad they weren't included in the movies.

I don't consider myself a Tolkien fanatic. Test by: I didn't hate the movies, and I don't think Peter Jackson strangles kittens for fun. But the novels are a good read if you stick with it.

However, I will opine that just because a work of fiction is long, obtuse, and includes a whole crapload of intricate backstory details, doesn't in and of itself make it Nobel-worthy.

Contrary to what others have written, I personally didn't like the childishness of The Hobbit, and am deeply disappointed that Tolkien never completed the more serious rewrite he had begun, to better fit the tone and story elements of LOTR.

If you want to see how fast your brain will turn to mush, try reading The Silmarillion. I keep a copy handy for when I can't get to sleep.

I suspect there are writers who create more impenetrable prose than Tolkien who did get the prize.

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien was a cunning linguist, so there's your connection.

Re:I can believe that

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you finished anything? Have you read any novel, book, or at the bare minimum a short story? Some of the great classics are "hard to read" - Count of Monte Cristo to Madame Bovary are filled with "Elvish fold dancing" in the guise of description or emotional nuance.

bah, I never respond to this level of idiocy, but if a "I can't read" comment gets 4 insightful, then the world has gone to hell....

Re:I can believe that

[rochrist]

Um...there pretty much /isn't/ any dancing.

Re:I can believe that

[almechist]

Huh? Sorry, but after the third exquisite description of a cloud, his beautiful imagery made me learn how to scan paragraphs to skip to extraneous bits. Kind of like porn in a way. The first thrust is arousing to watch. The second through tenth are titillating. The eleventh through ninetieth are increasingly routine. Eventually you may find yourself desperately bored, hoping the actors change position or fall in a vat of boiling lead, or something interesting.

I call BS, there are no descriptions of clouds, exquisite or otherwise, anywhere in the TLOTR, except near the end when the black clouds come out of Mordor, a phenomenon that needs describing as it is a major thematic element. You sound like you haven't really attempted to read the book. To give you credit, you clearly know your porn, though.

Re:I can believe that

[msevior]

How would you know it's a good story without reading more than a few chapters?

I think it's a good story because I've read it more than a dozen times.
It is by far my most read book. I don't think I've managed to read another book more than twice.

Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

...because his storylines fit in with the sort of thing nerds stereotypically like. And he really did write compelling stories.

But his prose, as the archives note, is not that great. He doesn't display a technical mastery of the language.

I see no problem with this judgment.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

DIDNT DISPLAY TECHNICAL MASTERY?????

The man was not just a writer but the Don of English at Oxford, in other words he was THE authority on how the language worked, its history and how words are used. And in LOTR, it showed, not just in English but in the other languages he invented. The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[J. T. MacLeod]

There is a saying, "You have to know the rules to break them."

It was always clear to me that Tolkein did both.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[digitig]

DIDNT DISPLAY TECHNICAL MASTERY?????

The man was not just a writer but the Don of English at Oxford, in other words he was THE authority on how the language worked, its history and how words are used. And in LOTR, it showed, not just in English but in the other languages he invented. The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision

There's a huge difference between being able to do detailed analysis as a theorist and produce academic monographs and being able to write good prose fiction. In fact, they tend to be mutually exclusive.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[bonch]

He was a historical linguist. That doesn't necessarily make him good at accessible writing, just like someone who studies music theory doesn't necessarily write popular music.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between a linguist and an author. Tolkien was a linguist, he was a master of language itself, its origins, and how languages are built. He was not a master storyteller or a master of how to use words efficiently.

Tolkien's strength was the complexity and originality of the world he made. Even member's of Tolkien's own literary club criticized him harshly for his diversions into irrelevant (to the story) cultural descriptions, song, dance, landscape, etc.. Nevermind that the story itself is structured poorly from a storytelling perspective in numerous places.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[MrHanky]

He was a linguist, not a stylist. His prose is utter shit.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Rufus Firefly]

He has a great ability with the language, but he was terrible at implementing the story. The whole good vs. evil story was great, but he really needed a good editor. Plus there are hundreds of "Chekhov's Guns" everywhere that are never, ever fired.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you have said does not in any invalidate the point that Tolkein was the technical master of English and then some. Wether or not he was a decent author, well that is another debate - however the real point here was the claim Tolkein did not display technical mastery. He did and that is why for many people LOTR is such a fucking hard slog, it is English at it's most pure use as written by the actual person who defined what English was. As was said by others, you did not dare to edit or refute Tolkein on the structure or placement of words.

An accessible story has in this case nothing to do with technical mastery of the language. Tolkein's purpose of LOTR was not an accessible story like Harry Potter, which many commenting miss. I am sure if he wanted to he could have written another The Hobbit, this he did not do but instead created a mythology in a style of language many do find intimidating and difficult to read, deliberatly.

It is an aside that LOTR also happens to be regarded as one of, if not the, greatest work of fiction in the 20th century.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[frank_adrian314159]

THE authority on how the language worked

Just because some guy is "THE authority" on how engines work doesn't mean I want him to design the car. Just as the engine is only one part of a car, the language used is only one part of a story. Frankly the guy writes as awfully as any pedantic English teacher could. Just because you have some sort of elf fetish doesn't mean the guy deserves a Nobel.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

DIDNT DISPLAY TECHNICAL MASTERY?????

The man was not just a writer but the Don of English at Oxford, in other words he was THE authority on how the language worked, its history and how words are used. And in LOTR, it showed, not just in English but in the other languages he invented. The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision

I think the original statement that Tolkien "didn't display technical mastery" isn't correct. However, just because he had as much knowledge of the functioning and (especially) history of the English language as anyone on the planet doesn't mean that he was going to be a technically proficient writer. My partner is getting a PhD studying English Renaissance literature and I spend almost all of my time hanging out with literature students and professors. These people know an incredible amount about language, far more than I ever will, and some of them couldn't write their way out of a paper bag (and some of them are brilliant stylists). The writing is always "technically masterful" in the minimal sense that it has proper grammar and so on, but demonstrating an ability to write correctly is much different from true technical mastery. True technical mastery is the ability to deploy the elements of language in ways that are incisive and surprising and exactly correct for whatever purpose the writer has in mind. This requires knowledge, but it also requires talent.

So, in this case, you can't merely appeal to Tolkien as literary authority, you have to give examples in his writing. Fortunately, this is trivial to do. He wasn't a constantly great stylist, but he has moments of real greatness. A simple one is the bit of Rhyme of Lore that Gandalf recites to Pippin:

Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing Sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.

(The 2nd, 4th, and 6th lines should be indented, but I can't figure out how to do that.)

This is a very simple little poemlet, and yet it does a good job of evoking the Old and Middle English remnants in our language and literature that Tolkien is always interested in bringing up. It has two fine alliterative lines ("Three times three" and "Seven stars and seven stones"), reminding us of Old and some Middle English poetry. We read the indented line breaks almost like a caesura, making this more of a three line poem with a break in the middle of each long line, the second half of each long line modifying the first half, just like Old and some Middle English verse.

The second and sixth lines are very short and staccato. If we again look at the poem as three double lines, we have pretty staccato first and last lines -- in my reading, 7 of the 8 syllables in the first double line are accented, and 7 of the 11 in the last double line are. There are precious few places for the tongue to rest, to easily tumble into the next syllable. In the middle is a wonderfully flowing double line. "What brought they from the foundered land" is straight iambic tetrameter, a verse form that just hurtles off of the English tongue. "Over the flowing Sea?" is an iambic trimeter (with a trochaic inversion at the beginning). Put the two lines together and you have a line of ballad verse, a "fourteener", which was the great English verse line before they took up the iambic pentameter in the 16th century. The contrast of this flowing central part with the first and last double lines is startling and works to emphasize especially the last double line

Also, and most importantly, the little poem just sounds good.

This is how you argue that Tolkien was a technical master. This is just a tiny little poem, six lines only, but it evokes the whole of English poetry before it fell completely under Frenc

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're metaphor is inadequate. D-minus!

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[igb]

No, he really wasn't. Firstly, a "Don" is used of any Oxbridge lecturer; there is no such thing as "the Don ". Secondly, he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon (ie, not English) for many years, and then latterly a professor of English more generally but whose research, teaching and other interests were entirely based around Anglo-Saxon. He was most certain not an expert on how "the language" worked, etc, if by "the language" you mean anything written subsequent to Chaucer (if not earlier). Tolkein may have been an expert on Anglo-Saxon (although, as recounted by Larkin and Amis, a very boring one), but as he was writing in English, that hardly matters.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[catmistake]

The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision

Probably true. But English wasn't Tolkien's favorite language. He preferred Finnish. Perhaps he should have written LotR in Finnish rather than English, and the beauty of the language itself would have given him the edge to win the Nobel.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[catmistake]

He was a historical linguist. That doesn't necessarily make him good at accessible writing, just like someone who studies music theory doesn't necessarily write popular music.

Right, but what Tolkien's mastery of philology allowed him to do that you nearly never ever see in any other author's work is not only create entire new alphabets and languages that never existed before, but play on the meanings of words and names, allowing for a massive amount of interpretability. His work truly boggles the mind once you begin to see that he must have intended it... and considering the density of it, I can forgive the sometimes boxy clumsiness of his rambling descriptions.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can argue that this little verse is evocative of the whole of English poetry, but you could argue the same for nearly anything. Any six lines of free verse might be argued to contain the various rhythmic and metrical contortions that you are here ascribing to Tolkien's genius. The only portions of the poem that seem convincingly deliberate to me are the line of iambs and the alliterative fifth line that you already pointed out.

I think you are reading far, far too much into six half-lines of verse.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[catmistake]

He was most certain not an expert on how "the language" worked

I'd have to strongly disagree with you there, and stand with the academic experts on the subject. Tolkien most certainly was not only an expert on how "the language" worked, he is arguably the greatest expert on how all languages work. Forget his day job, the man was really a philologist.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just a Linguist. A very cunning one at that!

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can argue that this little verse is evocative of the whole of English poetry, but you could argue the same for nearly anything.

No you can't. That's fucking ridiculous. No matter how nice "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I am" sounds, it does not resurrect the forms and tones of Old English poetry before the influence of French and Italian poets shouldered those older methods aside. As someone with a passing interest in Old and Middle English, and especially its poetry, I think you're one of those fucktards who think being contrary makes you sophisticated. GP's analysis is spot-on; Tolkien is using ideas he dragged up from the depths of English history, and using them well.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[scrimmer]

True technical mastery is the ability to deploy the elements of language in ways that are incisive and surprising and exactly correct for whatever purpose the writer has in mind. This requires knowledge, but it also requires talent.

you have to give examples in his writing. Fortunately, this is trivial to do. He wasn't a constantly great stylist, but he has moments of real greatness. (And yes, I know I should really be writing about Tolkien's prose here, but poetry is so much easier to go into depth about.)

Nice explication, and to help out, I'll supply the prose:

And far away, as Frodo put on the RIng and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-Dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.

From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.

The Return of the King, second edition, 1955, p. 223

Though many here malign his style, Tolkien's prose here is purposeful and effective. Note that Sauron's recognition and ensuing panic are reflected rhetorically in the cadence of the sentences, aided by polysendeton, parallelism, and a combination of varying sentence lengths--telegraphic, medium, and long. Syntactically purposeful, the prose also includes a smattering of lyricism reminiscent of the epics he attempts to emulate.

Form married to function is a touchstone of quality prose.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[laejoh]

That explains the perl syntax!

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[CRCulver]

By using rhyme, Tolkien is far away from the Old English tradition. And the fact that his verse employs such facile rhymes might also explain why the Nobel committee didn't find his work to have merit.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try finding latin-derived words in LOTR. There aren't many. Now try writing a page without any. Not so easy.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[cyberchondriac]

Nice example. Anyone who's read Beowulf or other Anglo Saxon works can see the influence they had on Tolkien's writing, and if you're a fan of that kind of thing, you'll appreciate him more. If not, I can understand that too.
That said, I have to admit I got tired of his constant use of "hither" and especially "thither". That was a little too archaic for even my tastes.

As perhaps an interesting side note, after I finished reading LotR, I started on the Sword of Truth series. In contrast, that was almost like reading a comic book, but it was refreshing. For a while.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[rochrist]

I call bullshit. Cite, please.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[rochrist]

He wrote the definitive translation of Gawain and the Green Knight

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[digitig]

How about the fact that I have a first class honours degree in English Language and write crap fictional prose?

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[rochrist]

And? You represent exactly /one/ data point.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[CRCulver]

Tolkien most certainly was not only an expert on how "the language" worked, he is arguably the greatest expert on how all languages work. Forget his day job, the man was really a philologist.

Philologists are not concerned with "how all languages work", but rather with working with texts in a small group of languages they specialize in. It is linguists who are concerned with language in general. And even when Tolkien was creating his own languages, one can see that they do not vary typologically to any great extent. Judging from his writings, Tolkien was unaware of "how all languages work"

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[catmistake]

And even when Tolkien was creating his own languages, one can see that they do not vary typologically to any great extent.

Sure they did. There's the simple rune replacement of the Hobbit, leading to the more advanced dwarvish rune language in LotR. His cirth alphabet was pretty easy for me to pick up, but his elvish alphabets though confounding to me, are very beautiful. The Quenya and Feanorian styles he invented are like looking at the art of calligraphy, and I could never quite grasp the vocabulary and grammar that used them. He developed a history for the languages he created, and you can see the evolution of those languages (even though that is fiction our minds create for consistency, Tolkien didn't spell out the languages evolution).

Besides the languages he created, Tolkien was academically knowledgeable about the Old English, Middle English, Ancient Gaelic, the old Norse languages, and some ancient Germanic languages. And he knew modern languages as well: Finnish, Flemish, German, and other Germanic languages. Beyond that, Tolkien, although admitedly gallophobic, could also speak and read French. I am unaware if he had any interest in the other Romantic languages, Italian, Spanish, etc, or Oriental languages, but I'm pretty sure he knew Latin, Greek, Sanscrit and Aramaic... but the point is he certainly was not merely concerned with the only the ancient language of the texts he studied and taught. Tolkien was a true polyglot, and likely could learn a new language unknown to him in a day. He indeed was also a linguist, though not formally. The man knew language. that much is clear.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[CRCulver]

Sure they did. There's the simple rune replacement of the Hobbit, leading to the more advanced dwarvish rune language in LotR...

You are talking about writing systems, not languages.

Tolkien was academically knowledgeable about the Old English, Middle English, Ancient Gaelic, the old Norse languages, and some ancient Germanic languages...

All of the languages you cite are Indo-European, typologically Indo-Europeanized (Finnish) or Semitic. His invented languages simply resemble these language families. As I said, Tolkien, though a great philologist, was seemingly not aware of the typological diversity among the world's languages as linguists are. He made a niche for himself and stayed in it. That's not to discount his accomplishments, which are many, but there's far too much hyperbole about Tolkien's knowledge of languages. I mean, seriously:

[He] likely could learn a new language unknown to him in a day.

And do you have any citation to back up that assertion about Sanskrit?.

Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds...

[CRCulver]

Incidentally, Tolkien himself acknowledged his limitations. See The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, p. 173 (#142):

Slavonic languages are for me almost in the same category [i.e., no aptitude]. I have had a go at many tongues in my time, but [...] the time I once spent on trying to learn Serbian and Russian have left me with no practical results, only a strong impression of the structure and word-aesthetic.

So again, your claim "[He] likely could learn a new language unknown to him in a day" is hyperbole.

I disagree, but

[assertation]

I disagree, but 50 years ago, by the standard of those times, the quality of prose was probably lower.

Re:I disagree, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, but 50 years ago, by the standard of those times, the quality of prose was probably lower.

I would consider the opposite to be true.

Re:I disagree, but

[Dunbal]

Seconded. Judging by some of the comments here a lot of people nowadays would seem to have trouble reading street signs.

Re:I disagree, but

[aquabat]

hmmm... if the quality of the prose was lower then, and Tolkien's prose hasn't changed in 50 years, wouldn't that imply that it's the standards that are lower now than they were then?

Re:I disagree, but

[assertation]

I'm the OP and that is wrote, though it was misunderstood.

Standards on writing, especially for a Nobel Prize, were likely higher 50 years ago, so as much of a work of art as Tolkein's books are, they wouldn't have been considered up to snuff for a Nobel Prize.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

He is the dictionary definition of "purple prose". Pages upon pages of superflouous descriptions of every blade of grass in the Shire.

His poetry is even worse.

The books can be really hard to read in places, though the underlying story is compelling. If you can't see this, you aren't being honest.

A great storyteller, and a great author, aren't always the same thing.

Re:Agreed

[gknoy]

I believe that Bulwer-Lytton is the canonical definition of purple prose. ;) ( http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ )

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

People throw around the term purple prose way too loosely, usually to describe fiction that doesn't conform to "invisible style". Heaven forbid they read anything published before 1920. Dan Brown and the bulk of writers on supermarket paperback shelves don't have purple prose, yet the quality of writing isn't all that good either.

Re:Agreed

[Opyros]

I've found that his prose improves quite a bit when read out loud. A number of people have observed that it seems to be optimized for speaking rather than silent reading. My advice to anyone who can't get through the prose is to try an audiobook; if you still don't like it, then Tolkien is probably not for you.

Re:Agreed

[dwye]

I believe that Bulwer-Lytton is the canonical definition of purple prose. ;) ( http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ )

Obviously not a reader of HPL or Clark Ashton Smith. THAT is purple prose. The famous paragraph that started with "It was a dark and stormy night" was, in contrast, written as if by an Irish Setter with almost human intelligence and no thing about squirrels, stream of consciousness if thought by an ADHD sufferer on crack and LSD.

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

When they go through the deepest, deadliest, most ancient mines after defeating the scariest, meanest, most treacherous beast at the door, then slay the foul, monstrous cave troll, then get jumped by the dark, ancient, evil balrog only for Gandalf to sacrifice himself for the others and fall for 8 years until he reaches the highest, tallest, loneliest mountain peak inside the deepest, darkest cave, it gets a little pathetic, really.

Re:11111

[jbp1]

nice

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found Tolkein's prose to be dry and tedious. I never managed to finish one of his books and I am a voracious reader.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually did finish them, but only by dint of effort. I went form "Oh, boy, Lord of the Rings! This is gonna be great!" to "OK, kinda slow..it'll pick up..." to "This is really draggin' here, c'mon!" to "I'm gonna finish this thing if it kills me."

But yes, I think it's time that we acknowledged that, while he might have been a worldbuilder par excellence and a gifted linguist and so on, he couldn't tell a story to save his life. I've never seen such poor pacing, such extensive attention to matters of no import whatsoever. Such awful pacing. And the dialogue? Let's not even get started on the dialogue.

Now I'll admit that the pace picks up near the end, but boy howdy it's a chore to get that far.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

and an idiot, apparently.

Re:Not surprised

[jazzmans]

The interesting thing to me is, my experiance was totally different. I discovered the books in my mothers closet (where she put books after she read them, she never re-reads a book) and knew nothing whatsoever about them, or tolkien, or hobbits. (mid seventies, deeply religious upbringing) the Art on the cover was what first grabbed me (these were the official del paperpacks, with that amazing picture drawn by tolkien over all four books)

It was only after working into them, I began to go 'oh wow!' I had no preconceptions about the books, which I suspect was a reason why they were so amazing to me.

Also, at that time, I was a voracious reader of andrew langs coloured fairy books, and had already read Beowulf on my own, (confused as hell by it) and Oedipus Rex. I suspect they all 'set the stage' for my entering Tolkiens world mythology.

I can understand that criticism

[bloodhawk]

It was never the quality of his prose that made him so renowned, rather it was the quality, depth and originality of his stories. I remember fighting through those books 20 odd years ago, if it wasn't for such an engaging story line I would have never gotten through even the first one.

Re:I can understand that criticism

[syousef]

It was never the quality of his prose that made him so renowned, rather it was the quality, depth and originality of his stories. I remember fighting through those books 20 odd years ago, if it wasn't for such an engaging story line I would have never gotten through even the first one.

I stopped half way through the second. The only other book I've stopped reading is Homer's Illiad (English translation). In both cases I realised reading them had become a chore rather than a pleasure. I did not care for or relate to the characters and I was bored. Life's too short to put up with that in an activity done for pleasure.

Meh.

[joshamania]

Meh. I think we know who had the last laugh there.

Re:Meh.

[Amorymeltzer]

Peter Jackson?

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly not Tolkien...

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ivo Andri?

Re:Meh.

[houghi]

The copyright holders. Certainly not the public domain.

Re:Meh.

[Black Parrot]

Meh. I think we know who had the last laugh there.

Peter Jackson?

No, Gollum. After he fell into the volcano the Dark Lord made him a spiffy black suit, and he went on to conquer most of the galaxy.

His son was a real dork, though. But his daughter was h-h-hot.

Re:Meh.

[frank_adrian314159]

Peter Jackson?

He's too busy trying to get "Lord of the Rings: The Musical" produced in London. After its successful move to Broadway, he has to finish "Lord of the Rings: On Ice!". But I think he could farm that latter one out to George Lucas.

And before you all say that such an auteur as PJ would not do that... give 'im time.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time that everyone starts coming clean and admit that she was like a 6.5 or 7 in her best years

Re:Meh.

[arbarbonif]

In the real world, that counts as hot. She also gets the benefit of attitude.

I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO Nobel prize in literature is of low quality...

Come on, Dario Fo ? Doris Lessing? Elfriede Jelinek ? Jose Saramango ? and many others...

Nobel Prize in literature is mainly 'crystal tower' thing - no one reads them, no one cares.

On the other hand Tolkien changed imagination of billions - inspired books, movies, games....

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too many names on there that come to mind as providing great reading. Marquez is probably the most accessible, in my opinion. I can't really comment on any of the authors whose works have not been translated to English.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Rui del-Negro]

I wonder if you've even read any of the authors you mention in that post. Or maybe you tried reading one, found it too complex, and went back to Harry Potter and Dan Brown...?

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read Doris Lessing, and loved it. Inasmuch as I care about the prize, I was glad she won it.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[icebraining]

It's Saramago, you ignorant troll. And yes, people read him - in fact, it's obligatory reading for all students in my country.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[kat_skan]

Or maybe you tried reading one, found it too complex, and went back to Harry Potter and Dan Brown...?

You are aware that this sort of comment only supports his argument, right?

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Darinbob]

I found more interesting the fact that they passed over Robert Frost because he was too old! That's just amazing. Did the committee think they were doing an "up and coming new author" prize instead of awarding based on past accomplishments?

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[VAElynx]

My mother was translating a few of his books.
At least two i know anything of sound one unexceptional ( the history of a gift elephant) and one utterly boring (following the life of denizens of a six appartment house over some time period)

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he obligatory reading BECAUSE of the fact he won the Nobel Prize or DESPITE the fact he won the Nobel Prize?

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Rui del-Negro]

He doesn't have an argument. First because he never read those authors. Second because the point of the Nobel prizes is not to distinguish the average or popular; it's to distinguish the exceptional (which is even more important when they are not widely known or easily accessible).

J. K. Rowling's and Dan Brown's "award" is their bank account. Just because their books are profitable (much like McDonalds' "food" is profitable) that doesn't mean they've contributed much (if at all) to the progress of human society, or that we should give them literary awards. Books and literature aren't exactly the same thing.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO Nobel prize in literature is of low quality...

Come on, Dario Fo ? Doris Lessing? Elfriede Jelinek ? Jose Saramango ? and many others...

Nobel Prize in literature is mainly 'crystal tower' thing - no one reads them, no one cares.

On the other hand Tolkien changed imagination of billions - inspired books, movies, games....

The "Gospel Accord to Jesus Christ" by Saramago is brilliant. It retells the Gospel sticking to the basic facts of the originals yet at the same time turning it into an actual good story that is human and manages to surprise. I might reread it. I'm a ridiculously slow reader so that's saying a lot.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[metlin]

Both, I would think.

For instance, Rabindranath Tagore and Pablo Neruda were both obligatory reading in Indian and Chilean schools, much before they won the Nobel. The same goes for Shaw, and a few others.

In a good many cases, the strength of the work in itself stands proof of the author's caliber, and the Nobel only strengthens it. In other cases, the Nobel brings to light what is otherwise a hidden gem.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory reading ? That's really a bad sign. "We suffered through it, so the next generation will too". Will people in other countries read it too? I bet not. GP has a point. While the Nobel Prize doesn't need to cater to the masses, they've overshot.

(Yes, there are a few exceptions to the "obligatory=unreadable" rule . Shakespeare, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Steinbeck or Hemingway. )

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

See, he writes books which are so bad, you have to force poeple to read it.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Saramago, you ignorant troll. And yes, people read him - in fact, it's obligatory reading for all students in my country.

So was Mao's 'Little Red Book' in another country...
Being obligatory does not say much about quality (but more about perceived quality).

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Pecisk]

Well, claiming that Rowling and Dan Brown haven't contributed anything to the progress of human society is very elite view. I could agree that people would gain nothing much of seeing "Saw" or any other exploitative cinema, or from reading pulp fiction with cheap shots of sex, erotica and emotions. However, between them there are gems which inspire us more than any high class literature ever do. Because they can reach us - comparing to former which rarely do. This is what I miss from this kind of POV.

To write truly inspiring high quality adventure and fantasy literature is really hard.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it two countries. It is obligatory reading both in Brazil and Portugal, that means what, >350M people read it at least once in their lives?

And Saramago was _really_ good, too. You don't actually have to suffer through it, you can (after you adopt the proper mindset) actually enjoy Saramago, and it *will* teach you a lot if you've actually got enough brains to. It is not that an easy read, since it is old portuguese, but you really need to have subpar reading skills to not rewire your brain to read it with good flow (transparently) after the first few hundred pages.

Tolkien can be tiresome, and the whole Tom Bombadil passage _really_ belong as the sidestory it was meant to be. But the imagery in LOTR and the Silmarillion is magnificent, and the pace is proper to have you build the entire world of middle-earth in your mind of minds. If you have low imagination, it will be far less useful to you I suppose, and then it could become boring. But that should happen only to the lesser souls that had their mind development stunted by excess TV instead of proper reading and playing outside with other children.

I wouldn't give Tolkien a Nobel over the quality of his prose, either. But I would certainly give him extreme honours for what his stories achieved over time, which others (who could give him these honours) did agree. If you cannot overall enjoy reading LOTR (which doesn't mean you have to like all of it) for what it is, there's something either wrong, or very different (ADHD-like "need for speed" ?) with you. It is that simple.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[strikeleader]

The Nobel Prize in general has lost credibility. After all they gave Obama one.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[jmsp]

True, true, and true. However, he wrote some really bad quality prose - I couldn't finish reading "Memorial do Convento". Abolishing punctuation? Bad idea. Obligatory reading for students? Worse. That's unfortunate they gave him the Nobel. There were better portuguese authors around... IMHO.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because their books are profitable (much like McDonalds' "food" is profitable) that doesn't mean they've contributed much (if at all) to the progress of human society, or that we should give them literary awards. Books and literature aren't exactly the same thing.

No, they aren't always the same; but books that never get read and are quickly forgotten by the masses contribute little or nothing to the progress of society either. The ideas in the book are the important thing, and ideas that remain in obscurity have little or no meaningful impact on humanity; and it is the masses, not the Nobel Committee, who decide whether a book's ideas are worth propagating and preserving. So if the Nobel Committee really wants to factor in whether a book has had/will have an impact on society, one of the first questions they should ask is "how many people are reading this thing?"

In his day, Shakespeare's works were considered bawdy and lowbrow, but the masses loved them for that reason, so they kept getting performed. The critical approval came *much* later. Likewise, a hundred years from now, JK Rowling's Harry Potter series will have more of an impact than whatever book the Nobel Committee picks this year. Why? Because a hundred years from now, the masses themselves will have picked their own literary winners and losers, and the winners (ex. Harry Potter) will still be read by millions, while at the same time, you'll be lucky if you can track down a dusty copy of this year's Nobel winner in a used bookstore.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[kenboldt]

Don't forget about Al "the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees" Gore. He's got one too!

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Rui del-Negro]

On the contrary; Saw arguably pushes some boundaries (though they're pretty easy boundaries to push, which makes the effort rather pointless). Harry Potter does not. It's just cliché linear plots (much like an old video game - run through level after level, with a boss at the end) with a universe that is mainly a ripped-off (and dumbed-down) Unseen University, from Pratchett's Discworld series. It was cleverly marketed, and it's competently written, but it doesn't really explore any new avenues, either in terms of style or theme. The same can be said about the fad that replaced it (teenage emo vampires, as seen in the "Twilight" series and its derivatives). And the same can preemptively be said about whatever literary fast food the publishers decide to put their marketing weight behind after the teenage model vampires have been milked.

Dan Brown is simply one of the worst writers ever to get published, and certainly the worst ever to receive that amount of advertising. This is just a small sample of his "skills". He does, arguably, come up with "interesting" plots, but those plots only work if the reader is a) able to ignore the atrocious writing and b) as ignorant about history, science and geography as Dan Brown himself, since he can't even place rivers in the correct continents (let alone establish credible connections to real historical facts, as he pretends to).

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Rui del-Negro]

Shakespeare was one of the most respected actors, playwrights and poets of his time (although he also wrote a lot of crap; a bard has to pay the bills). Harry Potter is simplistic and highly derivative fantasy for young children. I doubt anyone will be talking about it in ten years (unless the publishers totally run out of ideas and need to revive it), let alone one hundred. The same goes for "Twilight" and other recent fads. They contain no "ideas", obscure or otherwise, nor do they need to; they're entertainment.

Your idea that Nobel prizes should be awarded based on "how many people read this author" is like suggesting that the physics Nobel should be based on "how many people are familiar with this theory" or that culinary prizes should be awarded based on "how many people eat this dish" (I guess Plain Rice would win every year, possibly followed by the Big Mac). I can't tell if that was just a really bad argument of if you completely missed the point of what Nobel prizes (and merit awards in general) are.

Your last sentence is just weird. First, because nearly every book is available instantly via the internet now (and will continue to be forever). Surely you are aware of that, no...? And second because Nobel prizes aren't awarded to books, they're awarded to authors (for the sum of their work), so the only place where you might be able to find "a dusty copy of this year's Nobel winner" is in some sort of human clone bank.

Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Neverending Story is about a boy reading a book. 2001 is about a computer with a software conflict. Animal Farm is about some pigs.

Nearly every great book in history can have its plot summed up in a boring-sounding sentence, especially by people who completely missed their subtext (or, more likely, never read a single paragraph). Since you couldn't even mention the titles of those two books, I guess you belong to the latter.

Why the age discrimination?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the other posters here. His prose is not his strength, and the judgement seems reasonable.

From the article they mention a couple of people who were denied the award due to their advanced age. That seems less than appropriate for an award that looks at a writers whole body of work. I do not understand why the person's age merits any consideration for the Nobel.

Re:Why the age discrimination?

[ISoldat53]

The myth is that an author passed early middle age never produces a good book.

Re:Why the age discrimination?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand why the person's age merits any consideration for the Nobel.

It's not just recognition, but an actual prize. They want to pick someone who's work might be advanced by giving them $1 million.

Re:Why the age discrimination?

[SexyHamster]

From what I understand the Nobel cash prize is supposed to encourage future works and thus they try to avoid awarding it to older people and why they almost never award it after death (unless the decision was made before the person died).

Re:Why the age discrimination?

[Anonymous Coward]

The myth is that an author passed early middle age never produces a good book.

Tolkien didn't write this during the middle age - get your facts straight man!

Low quality plot too

[vlm]

Tolkien's prose was viewed as low quality.

Low quality plot too. Remember the eagles? Have them grab the ring and drop it into the volcano. Ta Da all done. Shrinks the trilogy down to about three pages.

I liked the series, but as a ultra loquacious fantasy version of Herodotus Histories or The Odyssey its not really all that great. The originals were better.

Re:Low quality plot too

[F.Ultra]

And you always loose at Risk or Chess? Have you ever thought what a winged beast would do to your precious eagles, or what Sauron himself would do? There's a reason Tolken let a Hobbit sneak the ring into Mordor.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, within the context of the world itself, trying to fly the ring in on an eagle would have been a stupid risk. People who bring that up as a criticism haven't thought it through, in my opinion. Sauron would have seen them coming miles away and been able to focus all of his attention in one area.

As for the prose, it has strengths and weaknesses. In some places, the archaic speech and flowery writing works; in other places the speech makes the characters a bit wooden.

Re:Low quality plot too

[LostOne]

Presumably, the eagles would be as susceptible to the ring's corrupting influence as the races of men. There was a fairly big deal made of its corrupting influence, after all. Consider that even Frodo failed to destroy the ring in the end. It was only destroyed due to the happenstance of Gollum being there. Besides, what's to think that the eagles would have stood any better chance getting past Mordor's defenses. That is one thing that we don't get a 50 page digression to describe in excruciating detail - we only learn about the defenses that are relevant to Sam, Frodo, and the attacking army.

That's not to say that the plot doesn't have holes, but that is not necessarily one of them.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Fned]

Low quality plot too. Remember the eagles? Have them grab the ring and drop it into the volcano. Ta Da all done.

If by "all done" you mean "eagle's little bird mind is corrupted by the influence of the ring and it brings it directly to Sauron" then yeah, that'd be a pretty short tale.

After all, it's only the most desirable thing in the universe...

Re:Low quality plot too

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a Galdalf Firework that'd launch the ring into the sun. Meh...wasn't that good of a rocket maker was he.

Re:Low quality plot too

[dak664]

Gandalf was afraid to take the ring because the promise of such power was too alluring. In the right hands (i.e. my hands) it could be used to right all the wrongs of the world. Would the Eagle chief be less susceptible? Would *you* trust him to destroy the ring?

Hobbits were resistant to the allure of power because of their live-and-let live ethics, even Gollum showing strength against the ring. The redolent Bombadil episode probably was left in solely to make the pont that the ring had no use for him, nor he for it. It would have been fascinating had Tolkien developed the potential of the ring to other groups like the treelike Ents. But maybe he thought the story was getting overlong.

Not at all a low quality plot!

Re:Low quality plot too

[idontgno]

WTF? Did you just "TL;DR" some of the best fantasy writing ever written?

Leave aside issues of prose style if you're ignorant of them. The stylistic forebears of Tolkien's work are Germanic and Nordic. Not Greco-Roman.

His writing was influenced by mythos in which you can't name anyone; you use a kenning to identify them. They're styled to resemble the song of a skald, and frankly, you need to loosen up--maybe get some mead into you--and try to enjoy them for something other than what you ignorantly mis-identify them as.

Re:Low quality plot too

[gilgoomesh]

The Eagles couldn't fly while the Nazgul controlled the sky. When the head of the Nazgul was killed by Eowyn, then the Eagles could fly to pick up Frodo and Sam.

Re:Low quality plot too

[atamido]

Hobbits were resistant to the allure of power because of their live-and-let live ethics, even Gollum showing strength against the ring. The redolent Bombadil episode probably was left in solely to make the point that the ring had no use for him, nor he for it.

Wow, I sorta feel like an idiot for missing that. I hadn't given it a lot of thought, but I'd just sort of assumed that the hobbits possessed some natural magical resistance to the ring. Now that I see you point it out, it's so obvious that it hurts. It also clears up why Bombadil is in there, which is otherwise a very odd and short subplot.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Anonymous Coward]

Low quality plot too. Remember the eagles? Have them grab the ring and drop it into the volcano. Ta Da all done.

If by "all done" you mean "eagle's little bird mind is corrupted by the influence of the ring and it brings it directly to Sauron" then yeah, that'd be a pretty short tale.

After all, it's only the most desirable thing in the universe...

You can't say that there's a ring that's so powerful it will corrupt high elves and trained birds alike, and then go and hand it to a fucking retarded hobbit and just hope all goes well. That's even if you accept that fact that the ring was hidden long enough and well enough by a fucking hobbit to not have any trouble with the Dark Lord Oogey Boogey so far.
And fuck, even if you think that it's such a fucking concern and it's a task only for a hobbit, why not just let the fucking Hobbit toss it into the ocean? Why not encase it in mythril so no one can wear the damned thing? The whole concept of the ring is absolute rubbish. It's the fuckign MacGuffin of Macguffins. It's so absurd that you can't even call it out as such without internet nerds rushing to defend it in some misguided "you just don't get it" horse shit.

Tolkien was a commiehippie, and the hobbits were his favorite little demographic of the poor, stupid, olden time people. He didn't like technology so he wrote about how only the pure little hobbits can face temptation and be pure.

God damn what schlocking drivel.

Re:Low quality plot too

[JonJ]

WTF? Did you just "TL;DR" some of the best fantasy writing ever written?

No, he didn't. He did do it to some mediocre fantasy shitfest though.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Scarletdown]

Yeah, within the context of the world itself, trying to fly the ring in on an eagle would have been a stupid risk. People who bring that up as a criticism haven't thought it through, in my opinion. Sauron would have seen them coming miles away and been able to focus all of his attention in one area.

That is why you send some blokes to distract Sauron first...

How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Boronx]

Indeed. It's the author's prerogative to have the stupidest possible plan magically work out. Any sensible Elrond would have had Gandalf held for treason for even making the suggestion.

Re:Low quality plot too

[Sedated2000]

In the council held in Rivendell they actually discussed giving Tom Bombadil the ring to safeguard, but they discounted that idea since Tom would have seen it as just a trinket and would likely lose it (as mentioned before he would have no use for such a ring, having a unique power all his own to begin with).

It was going to be a long epic

[Jay Maynard]

The Harvard Lampoon said everything that needs saying about the Ring trilogy in _Bored of the Rings_...

My review of LOTR

[BlackCreek]

The story is vast as an ocean, and deep as a plate.

Tom Bombadil

[Russ1642]

Only someone doped up on some serious drugs could come up with Tom Bombadil - the Jar Jar Binks of literature.

Re:Tom Bombadil

[BlackCreek]

Man, I read the whole 3 books and the only that I would save from them is Tom Bombadil.

Not all bad in prose and war

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who was determined to get through his LOTR Trilogy (and subsequently The Hobbit and The Silmarillion), I can say that the assessment then was fair. His body of works is not easy to get through unless you are a fantasy geek. Which is fine, I wasn't but I can understand the geekdom obsession. He seemed to go to such lengths to pull in every fiber of the universe it isn't a wonder so many people have been inspired by his work...

But it is boring. Not boring if you're someone who's into long winded descriptions. Unfortunately, you'll have felt like you've walked every knoll between the Prancing Pony and Gladden Fields. The books generally come with at least a dictionary/translation guide/maps. So, I can understand the opinion. OTOH, knowing how to pronounce and know the meaning of ash nazg gimbatul is always worth some geek cred.

Read it many times

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the hobbit in second class - and Couldnt quite finish the lord of the Rings until 5th class despite several attempts. By the Time I left high school I had read it over 50 times (I stopped counting at 50)
  I wrote my school notes in scripts devised by Tolkien - and still struggle through them occasionally - and think even now - there are no works that compare.

For those that find it hard going - they are right - like an umberto eco book - Tolkien didnt write for the lowest common denominator - and you often have to think hard to see the subtlety of the story or the point of the complexity. However - and this was my saving grace - unlike Umberto Eco where you need to know a lot of background knowledge to understand subplots etc and without that knowledge you may even miss entire layers in his books entirely (and it was by chance I discovered this in Eco books because I grew up in an odd religious community and knew stuff most people wouldnt know and recogonised that in the first book of his I read - focaults pendulum) - in tolkien - it just takes time.... and patience - to get through the layers.

However it is for those that want to think when they read. If you want something that requires no thought - Read E.E. Doc Smith or something. Great reading but ....

Re:Overrated garbage

[guybrush3pwood]

Ironically enough, it has its share of trolls, such as your coward self.

He didn't win - so what?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Looking at all the writers who never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd say Tolkien is in very good company.

Re:He didn't win - so what?

[westlake]

Looking at all the writers who never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd say Tolkien is in very good company.

Simply look at the writers who lost out in 1961:

Swedish reporter Andreas Ekstrom delved into 1961's previously classified documents on their release this week, to find the jury passed over names including Lawrence Durrell, Robert Frost, Graham Greene, EM Forster and Tolkien to come up with their eventual winner, Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andric.

Greene, who never won the Nobel, was 1961's runner-up, with Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, coming in third.

Re:He didn't win - so what?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Greene, who never won the Nobel, was 1961's runner-up, with Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, coming in third.

But to come to the defense of the Nobel committee - in 1961, they had no idea Blixen's book would eventually become a movie starring Meryl Streep.

Seems right

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much enjoy Tolkien's work, including LOTR, The Hobbit and many of his short stories. He's a very inventive and interesting story teller. That being said, I do find his style of writing ... well, dry. And often either overly complex or overly simplified, depending on the story. So I can see why, if the judges were looking at the style of his work vs the over-all concepts presented then they might not be impressed.

No doubt Tolkien was a master of languages, and wove amazing tales, but that doesn't always translate into smooth reading material.

Yeah, so?

[heptapod]

It's elves, dwarves and fucking wizards from a bedtime story for children.

Who is expecting Faulkner let alone G.K. Chesterton? Popularity and longevity is award enough for Tolkein.

reason for low quality prose

[Anonymous Coward]

He clearly spelt elf wrong.

The secret to reading LOTR...

[Radical Moderate]

...is to skip over all the songs. Read that once on a blog somewhere, and I'd say it's good advice. I've read the series two or three times, and just pretending the damn songs weren't even there would have enhanced the experience.

Re:The secret to reading LOTR...

[Pontiac]

I've read the series 5 or 6 times.. One time through I chose to only read the chapters with Hobbits in them.. It's a bit more entertaining that way but it leaves vast holes in the story line.. Much like the movies. I only bothered to read the songs one time.. That was enough for me..

Try reading The Similarion.. It makes the rings series seem like light reading..

Re:The secret to reading LOTR...

[darkcatalyst]

This reminds me of one of the (unintentionally) funny scenes in the books, which is more noticeable in the audio book because you can't really skip it. Essentially Boromir has just been killed, and Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn are like "Crap, there are a whole bunch of raiding parties coming, we have to get the hell out of here NOW." Which is followed by:

And so Aragorn sang:
[insert long poem here]
And then Logolas sang:
[similarly lengthy poem]
And then Aragorn sang again:
[additional lengthy poem]

It probably isn't more than two pages, the sense of urgency is lost to hilarious effect.

Re:The secret to reading LOTR...

[shutdown -p now]

The secret to enjoying the songs in LotR and thereabouts is to listen to them separately, preferably arranged by someone like Summoning (e.g. "Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame" mostly consists of dwarven songs).

Re:The secret to reading LOTR...

[Cito]

You can hear one of the songs from the book in the new trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0k3kHtyoqc they sing one of the dwarf songs in that trailer

I dont really disagree

[kelarius]

I completed the books when I was 10 and have read them probably 6 times since then, most recently when the movies came out. I'll be the first to tell you that when I was younger I would skip over vast swathes of the books just because they were incredibly dull, I had no desire to read about singing elves in Lothlorien or the triumphant march of the King through Ithilien for an entire chapter. While I enjoyed them if someone watches the movies and comes up to me and asks "Should I read the books", generally I ask them if they could stomach reading the entire Bible, if they say yes then I tell them to go ahead, otherwise I tell them not to bother and sorta fill in the blanks that the movies didn't cover.

Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[voss]

List of writers rejected by nobel committee
Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie,
and last but not least Karel Capek.

Who is Karel Capek?

The author that coined the term Robot(Rossum Universal Robots) , his 1936 work "The war with the newts" was rejected for being too offensive to the German (nazi) government.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[CrimsonAvenger]

And let us never forget that sterling writer who snatched the Prize from Tolkien's grasp - Ivo Andric.

Yes, that Ivo Andric, that basically noone has ever heard of, 50 years after the fact....

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[metlin]

That's a very anglo-centric comment.

Ivo Andric was, and continues to be, quite popular. In fact, his work influenced both Serbian nationalism to a great extent (and unfortunately, even played a role in the Bosnian conflict and in heightening anti-muslim sentiments in the region).

I'd strongly recommend that you read his The Bridge on the Drina. Amazing masterpiece.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[CrimsonAvenger]

That's a very anglo-centric comment.

Yep, surely is. But then, I like Kipling too, another English author whose prose wasn't necessarily the most polished in the world....

In fact, his work influenced both Serbian nationalism to a great extent (and unfortunately, even played a role in the Bosnian conflict and in heightening anti-muslim sentiments in the region).

I don't actually think the purpose of great literature is to influence nationalism, Serbian or otherwise. Nor do I consider heightening anti-muslim sentiments in Yugoslvia something to be proud of.

I'd strongly recommend that you read his The Bridge on the Drina. Amazing masterpiece.

If I could read it in the original language, I'd be tempted. Alas, I can't. And my experience is that the quality of prose suffers every time it's translated....

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet Ivo was considerate enough to bother looking up "alot" and "noone" at some point in his life.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[Darinbob]

I didn't win the Nobel Prize either!

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[GammaKitsune]

Many of the authors you listed there, such as Tolstoy and Twain, certainly deserve high praise for their literary accomplishments. But Capek's R.U.R. was absolute dreck, to be quite frank. It was nothing but overacting, gaping plot-holes and general absurdity. The characters seemed like bizarre inhuman caricatures who engage in nonsensical behavior.

Readers are introduced to "Helena" at the beginning of the play, who all the male characters immediately fall in love with at first sight. In Capek's surreal vision of the world, this is not even a source of any drama, and all the men are perfectly happy to let her pass them over in favor of Domin, who she marries. From there, the play jumps immediately into a robot uprising several years later, most of which occurs off-stage, and ends with the off-stage eradication of humanity. The robots discover that they cannot reproduce without the aid of their human creators, but this dilemma is solved when two robots fall in love with one another. A ham-fisted reference to Adam and Eve glosses over the unsolved reproductive issue, and all the robots presumably live happily ever after.

I cannot speak for the rest of Capek's work, or whether these issues were merely a result of a poor translation, but I cannot call R.U.R. a great piece of literature from my own personal experience.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[jackbird]

That's as may be, but One Hundred Years of Solitude, by another Nobel winner, is a hell of a ride even in translation.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[Paladeen]

Give it a chance. I read it in English translation and it was a truly great book.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[metlin]

That's a good recommendation. In fact, most of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writings are quite awesome, even if translated (from Spanish).

I'd also include My Name is Red and Snow by Orhan Pamuk, another Nobel winner, whose works were translated (from Turkish).

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Bait and switch. Your original argument against him winning the prize was "nobody has ever heard of him", which now miraculously transformed to "I don't read foreign litterature, and influencing nationalism should not be a Nobel Prize winning move". Not only is you personal choice of languages highly irrelevant to the Swedish Academy (as it should be), but it his nationalistic tendencies is not the reason he won the prize. He won "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country".

On top of this, Tolkien never had the prize in his grasp. He was nominated, yes, by someone outside the Academy. It appears they never really seriously considered giving the prize to him.

Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could read it in the original language, I'd be tempted. Alas, I can't. And my experience is that the quality of prose suffers every time it's translated....

Yeah, that's certainly a convenient excuse ...

WHAT!!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, TomBom? Jar Jar? Jar could barely speak English, but Tom spouts forth such sweet lyrics:

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.
Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o,
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!
Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Tom's in a hurry now. Evening will follow day.
Tom's going home home again water-lilies bringing.
Hey! come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?

Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!
Tom's going on ahead candles for to kindle.
Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping.
When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open,
Out of the window-panes light will twinkle yellow.
Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow!
Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you.
Hey now! merry dol! We'll be waiting for you!

Hey! Come derry dol! Hop along, my hearties!
Hobbits! Ponies all! We are fond of parties.
Now let the fun begin! Let us sing together!

Pure, undiluted awesome. Hey, pass the lighter, mine's gone out.

Re:WHAT!!??

[Black Parrot]

Only someone doped up on some serious drugs could come up with Tom Bombadil - the Jar Jar Binks of literature.

Come on, TomBom? Jar Jar? Jar could barely speak English, but Tom spouts forth such sweet lyrics:

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

OK, so it Bombadil, not Tolkien, who was on the dope.

Tolkien Transports

[codgur]

Without movie special effects, Tolkien used the best special effects machine ever produced. The Human mind. I have read these books numerous times during my pre-teen, teen years and into adulthood. The detail never ceased to amaze me as well as the images conjured in my head. He was a master!

Re:Nobel

[Dr. Hellno]

Well, for one thing, you're missing that the peace prize and the literature prize are awarded by entirely different bodies. The 18 members of the Swedish Academy award the literature prize, after nominations are made by a smaller committee. The separate Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose 5 members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, both nominates for and awards the peace prize.

Beowulf?

[k2p]

Tolkien did more than just write the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. He was a professor who emphasized the study of the epic. In fact it is due to a lecture he gave in I believe 1936 that brought Beowulf to the forefront of literary studies, which has had a lasting impact. He is also responsible for creating an entire fictional language (elvish) that is loosely based on Gaelic and Welsh, which he started working on when he was a child. The world building was only actually done to have a place for elvish to exist. That said, I do find LOTR a very difficult read due to the archaic forms he used, and I don't think its Noble Prize material, even if it did start the fantasy genre. Several of the characters are rather flat, with only Bilbo, Frodo, and Aragorn really being round characters.

Re:Beowulf?

[bfandreas]

He also translated Pearl and The Green Knight.

I'm not even sure he started the fantasy genre. But he made it popular.

I remember I first heard LOTR and the Hobbit on audio books. You know, the supposedly inferior Mind's Eye ones. Came as a bazillion cassettes in a wooden box. Before I had those I was terribly confused by the bit with the Balrog. Or was it the audiobooks that confused me and I read the book? Can't remember which.

It was a tedious read and you'd have to know it so you could skip the tedious bits. As an epic it was just that. And as an epic it translates beautifully into other media. The story matters, the form does not.

C.S. Lewis

[jdkramar]

Why on earth does C.S. Lewis link to the Chronicles of Narnia article on Wikipedia instead of say, I don't know, the C.S. Lewis article? Which easily enough is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S_Lewis

TL / DR

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a beautiful boxed set of the Trilogy, and tried several times to read it. And I really tried, spending dozens of hours over a few weeks, really trying to sit down and enjoy some literature. I got through maybe a dozen chapters, and thought, "OK, so when does the action start?" And I don't mean adrenaline-fueld short-attention-span action, I mean in the sense of a story arc: Introduction of characters, Motivation of action, Initial Conflict, Rising action, Climax, Falling action, More conflict, etc. I read and I read and I'm waiting for something to engage my interest, and they're walking, and meeting others, and travelling further, and more stuff happens, and I'm still not engaged. It doesn't help that it reads like a dream sequence of unrelated events. I've read and enjoyed many classics, and many ponderous tomes, but really, the Trilogy reads like the Yellow Pages.

Wide as the ocean, deep as a saucer.

not so simple

[Chirs]

As I recall Frodo was supposed to have some defenses against the ring due to the innocence of the hobbits and such. Presumably the ring may have been able to twist the minds of the eagles into just delivering it unharmed.

Also, it seems likely that without the added distractions from the various other bits of the storyline anyone trying to sneak into Mordor would have been discovered in short order.

Richard Feynman was right

[DalDei]

The Nobel "prize" isn't worth the money its printed on. Its a popularity contest, not an honor.

Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Doc Ruby]

The 1961 Nobel literature laureate was Ivo Andri of Yugoslavia, who wrote his works in Serbo-Croatian during WWII, publishing them all in 1945. He was awarded "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country".

A short essay translated by Lazar Pascanovic is Paths :

At the beginning of all roads and paths, at the basis of the very thought of them, lies sharply and indelibly carved the path on which I made my first free steps.

It was in Visegrad, on those hard, irregular, like gnawed away roads, where all is dry and grievous, without beauty, without joy, without the hope of joy, without the right to hope, where a bitter morsel, which has never been eaten, quivers in the throat with every step, where heat and wind and snow and rain eat the ground and the seed in it, and everything that still sprouts and is born, gets stigmatized and bent and bowed so much that, only if it was possible, its other end would be stuck back into the ground, only to push it back into the shapelesness and darkness from which it broke away and sprouted.

Those are the endless paths that, like threads and ribbons, streak the hills and slopes around the town, flowing into the white road or disappearing near the water in the green willow groves. Human and animal urge sketched out those paths, and the necessity has beaten them. There, it's hard for one to leave, to go, to return. One sits there on a stone hiding under a tree, in a dry place or in scarce shade, resting, praying or counting the peasant's earnings. On those paths, that are swept by wind and soiled and cleansed by rain, where one meets only tormented cattle and silent, grim faced people, that is where I conceived my idea of the richness and beauty of the world. That is where I, ignorant and weak and empty-handed, discovered the fragrant, swooning happiness, happy for everything that wasn't there, cannot be there and never will be.

And on all the roads and ways that I passed later in my life, I lived only on that poor happiness, on my Visegrad idea of the richness and beauty of the created world. Because, under all the worldly roads, there has always flowed, visible and palpable only to me, the sharp Visegrad path, from the day I left it, up to this day. Actually, I've used it to measure my step and adjust my walk. And all my life it has never left me.

In the moments when I felt tired and poisoned by the world in which, by a bad coincidence, I lived and only miraculously stayed alive, when the sight grew dim and the direction turned uncertain, I would spread before me, like a prayer mat, the hard, poor, divine Visegrad path which cures every pain and nullifies every suffering, because it contains them all and surpasses them all. That way, a couple of times a day, using every calm in the life around me, every pause in a conversation, I would travel a part of that road which should never have been left in the first place. And that is how I will, till the end of my days, invisibly and secretly, still manage to walk the destined length of the Visegrad path. And then, with the end of my life, it will also end. And it will get lost where all the paths are lost, where all the roads and wastelands disappear, where there is no more walk nor effort, where all the earthly roads are tied into a meaningless knot and burned away, like a sparkle of salvation in our eyes that are fading out themselves, because they have lead us to the end and to the truth.

That seems to me the work of a Nobel literature laureate. Though I like Tolkien's writing better, and his stories better than the subject. I expect the Cold War in 1961 gave the Nobel committee the extra reason to nominate a writer in non-Soviet Communist Yugoslavia, who

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Volante3192]

Because the proof of a good writer is the socio-political environment they lived through? Not the actual content of their prose?

Then again, given the most recent Laureate (a Swedish poet who, due to his being Swedish, had been a front runner for years, with reporters camping outside his house the day of the announcement (which is just embarrassing for everyone involved, I think)), you're probably more accurate on how to predict the Committee.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't know if this is the case, but my guess is that the Nobel prize for Literature is supposed to award more than just good writing... It probably *is* supposed to take into account the socio-political environment in which the story (and perhaps its publication) took place.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's just me, but that excerpt seems relentlessly melodramatic.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here in Sweden, we put great weight to the socio-political environment - and more importantly - leanings of the author.

Preferably the selected author should only have been published by a semi-anonymous witch doctor in a straw-hut in Bumfuckistan - and never translated into anything but a rare Khoisan dialect.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Doc Ruby]

The artistic birth of a great artist, told by them in reflection on a potent career, will probably read with great drama. If you don't appreciate it, it reads with melodrama.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[cyberchondriac]

I'm sorry but I have never seen such gratuitous overuse of commas in my life. It's like driving a car while hitting the brakes every few feet; start, stop, start, stop, start..

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Doc Ruby]

It evokes the steps along a path that turns through many critical turning points. Which is the literal and thematic subject.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, consistency among subject, theme and technique is more objective, and you missed it.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[cyberchondriac]

Nope, I don't miss it at all. It would be better expressed as poetry then, rather than prose. Using a comma every dozen words is just bad writing.

Re:Ivo Andri Beat Tolkien in 1961

[Doc Ruby]

Your dogmatic insistence that writing be either poetry or prose exclusively further disqualifies you from judging the quality of Nobel laureates' work.

You're free not to like it, but there are more considered criteria for judging literature than your conventional tastes.

Tom

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom is a strange character indeed. In a way, he's the closest thing to a god in Tolkien's universe. I wonder if Tolkien is hinting at the idea that, if there really was a god, he would just make a nice place for himself to live and not bother interfering with anyone else's life.

Re:Tolkien's prose / What about Frank Herbert?

[Aguazul]

Strange, I read the whole LOTR as a child without noticing this problem. But I also enjoyed the Frank Herbert Dune series where you'd spend pages and pages on the detailed internal thought processes of the participants of a delicate negotiation or a crucial battle. It definitely improved my reading speed, as I wanted to know what was going to happen!

Descriptions.

[unity100]

Endless descriptions. You will find that this did not only plague Tolkien's work, but also a good many of literature pieces back in those decades and earlier. If you go back to victorian times, youll find even more descriptions.

Peer Criticism

[Leuf]

It's funny when you pull back the veil to see these guys being petty snobs. Oh, Robert Frost is an old fart, no award for him.

Recently I've seen George RR Martin ("The American Tolkien") completely dismiss all the critical reader reviews on Amazon of his last 2 books as being from trolls, saying he only cares about the opinion of his peers. There's nothing like the internet for giving you the non-sugarcoated truth of what people think, because they'll say things they would never say to your face.

He was good at making perfect squares

[Rui del-Negro]

Being a neurologist doesn't mean you'll have a lot of creative ideas. Being a linguist doesn't make you a stylish writer.

I read LotR three times (first time when I was 9 or 10) and I loved the epic story and the consistent universe, but the language is rather bland. Tolkien was certainly very meticulous, but anyone who praises him for writing style probably hasn't read anything else. Terry Pratchett or Will Self (to name only two) can often get more out of a sentence than Tolkien managed to get out of a whole chapter.

Re:He was good at making perfect squares

[jackbird]

Can you suggest a good book by Will Self? I read Great Apes on the advice of my friend and was completely put off. It felt like a giant, depressing shaggy-dog story with very little payoff. I'd be willing to try him again if there's something better, though.

Re:He was good at making perfect squares

[roc97007]

True regarding Pratchett. Night Watch and Thud, for example, were dangerously close to Literature. And "The Fifth Elephant" is the best werewolf story I've read to date. Pratchett's Discworld pokes fun at Tolkien repeatedly, but has managed to build up its own lore, rich backstory, and languages. (T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't.) But he doesn't beat you over the head with it, and even when he's writing a serious story, still writes with a sense of humor.

I would add Roger Zelazny.

Re:He was good at making perfect squares

[Rui del-Negro]

I found Night Watch (and most Vimes books written since) a bit too preachy, too full of clichés, and a bit low on jokes and metaphors (still very well written, unlike his latest ones, but a bit too black-and-white for my taste). IMO Pratchett's peak was Small Gods (which is very much Literature, with a capital L, probably in goldish).

Re:He was good at making perfect squares

[roc97007]

Preachy, dunno. They had a point, not just reading for fun. In Men at Arms you could appreciate his point even if you disagreed with it (as I did). And Night Watch was so Libertarian in philosophy that I continue to be amazed that it was written by an Englishman.

Yes, Small Gods was excellent. The power of belief is an underlying concept in the series, and it really got a workout in that book. Nice cameo of Sweeper from Thief of Time, probably my all time favorite Discworld novel.

Re:He was good at making perfect squares

[Rui del-Negro]

"The Butt" is quite fun (in a sort of Kafka-meets-Jonathan-Swift way), although it loses some momentum after the middle (when the main character needs to cross the desert, the story also gets kind of dry - which might be deliberate), and the ending is a bit predictable and cartoonish. The book is probably more enjoyable if you've travelled a bit across Australia or northern Africa.

"Walking to Hollywood" is also pretty good, especially if you can get the references to films and the film industry, and enjoy books written by an "unreliable narrator" (think Wodehouse).

Don't expect very deep plots (although there's always plenty of subtext); Self is all about language tricks (that sometimes expose why we think about things the way we do) and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.

Re:Tolkien's prose / What about Frank Herbert?

[Pontiac]

Dune.. If you survive the first 150 pages you just might find an entertaining book..

Re:Only The Hobbit was designed

[Billly Gates]

The reason for this awkward writing style is that LOTR did not start out as a planned novel like The Hobbit. Tolkien had requests from friends and associates to write a Middle Earth book describing The Hobbit's history, and artifacts. Notice the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring talks about dedicated this book about Hobbits as one example? In his companion book he kept writing more and more about Bilbo's ring until it morphed into LOTR story.

He then rewrote the material into the LOTR. That is why you see things play out normally, then all of the sudden the narration goes a little off topic in sloppy form about some point in history or piece of geography. The other fluff was from the original work that he just cut and pasted in (or typed in considering it was in the days of the typewriter) so it appears erratic. I mean the hobbits colonizing land after Weathertop Mountain 2000 years earlier is relevant how?

Re:Instritution diminished

[Volante3192]

The best part of your post is that it ISN'T the same committee, you blithering idiot of a troll.

Re:Nobel

[Rui del-Negro]

I'd say that, at the very least, you are missing the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature are different things. You are also missing a user name.

But seriously...

[hey!]

Apart from the award money, being nominated by C.S. Lewis would mean a hell of a lot more to me than the opinion of Anders Österlin. I'm sure Anders Österlin was a fine painter and a man of literate tastes, but Lewis was a gifted essayist, critic, and a particularly fine English prose stylist. Reading Lewis' critiques made me a better reader, because he doesn't divide the literary world into perfection and swill. He is open both to the virtues of books he disliked, and to the faults of works he loved -- including Tolkien's.

I'll give my own opinion here. I think Tolkien's skill grew as he wrote LotR. The early parts of "Fellowship of the Ring" are cluttered and uneven, and if a self-consciously "literary" critic gave up at Tom Bombadil, I would not particularly blame him. But if he missed how wonderfully written the scene where Frodo departs from Bag End was, then I'd call that critic a blockhead.

Ash nazg durbatulûk!!!!!!!

[Slutticus]

I wish he had expanded more on the black speech.

Re:Not a Communist

[Anonymous Coward]

Ayn Rand is that you?

Hah! I Knew It!

[Greyfox]

Take that, 8th grade English teacher Mrs Wright! For the record I would like to reiterate my assertion that Herman Melville was a pratt who only wrote that book because he liked to hear himself talk, and that the writings of George Orwell, CSS Lewis and JK Rowling are sufficient evidence that the British consider consumption of literature to be a masochistic enterprise! And don't even get me started on the insufferable writings of Charles Dickens! I eagerly await the day when age-related dementia erases from the annals of my memory all those books you worked to put there! If there is a bright side to having to wear adult diapers and not knowing who you are, that would be it!

Re:Hah! I Knew It!

[slothman32]

You aren't from Rochester are you?
I had a teacher with that name in 8th grad as well.
Maybe 7th.

Re:Hah! I Knew It!

[Greyfox]

I've actually had three teachers (that I recall, it's been a while) with that name. Rowling actually came years after I got out of school but for some reason the tone of her books very much reminded me of Orwell. I much preferred the Asimov, McCaffery and Zelazny I was reading on my own at the time, but my English teachers kept dropping these literary turds on me, like some sort of German scheiziefest porn of literature. It's not even good for dropping Orwell references into the tinfoil-hat blahgs for extra points, because most of the guys ranting about the Orwellian Society that's just around the corner haven't actually read his books.

Just skip the boring parts.

[gknoy]

Like with Les Miserables, the key is to learn when you can skim. If you're after the plot, skim or skip the pages of description of Tom Bombadil's stomping grounds, or the sewers of Paris (in Victor Hugo's case). The next time you read it, you already know the plot, so you're not really looking at "what happens!?" and more at the setting, what's happening, and how things might inter-relate in subtle ways.

If you find you skipped too far, it's easy to turn back and re-read a few pages, or a chapter... but for example you can skip almost the entire chapter of Les Miserables about Waterloo. "Waterloo happened ... ", and then read the last page of the chapter to see how it relates at all to the rest of the story. You miss a very vivid description of the battle, but lose nothing plot-wise by skipping it. I found it helpful at times to suspend my burning thirst for plot development, and instead (sometimes) read as if I were listening to someone tell a series of fireside stories, which always start out disjointed, and then end up weaving into a larger narrative in ways I can't always predict.

Well. I understand that.

[drolli]

I mean, the books written by literature nobel prize winners i read are usually outstanding in nearly all aspects. Using an excellent, rich, language is a necessary condition for the literature nobel price. Tolkien was imaginative, he was good in gluing pieces together to a complete picture. But the writing quality was average at best. I found it quite monotonous at times.

Re:Not a Communist

[Anonymous Coward]

Of the three Russian authors to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature:
One (Boris Pasternak) had his crowning work (Doctor Zhivago) banned in the USSR for being anti-communist and anti-Stalinist, and was prevented from accepting the award by threats of imprisonment or death made by the KGB
One (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) was imprisoned in a gulag for his writing being anti-Soviet
One (Mikhail Sholokhov) was actually a communist -- but was awarded the prize for a novel which focused almost entirely on the personal impact of the Russian civil war

So, the one who was a communist did not write pro-communist literature, and the two who weren't were so outspokenly anti-communist in their writing that they faced imprisonment or execution. And you think the body that awarded them -- particularly Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn -- is pro-communist to such an extent that that was their sole reason for snubbing Tolkien?

Re:Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

Nominations closed something like 8 days after obama became president.

I HAVE read the books

[bonch]

Sigh...I have read the books. I even read the Silmarillion, which is practically biblical in its density. What I was saying is that I keep planning to re-read them each year but never get it done.

I obviously should have been much clearer since several people are assuming I haven't read the books, and apparently I'm now getting downmodded for it.

The Silmarillion Blows

[CuteSteveJobs]

Tolkien wove a wonderful world, and that was where it's value lay. This prose could be quite beautiful, but in other parts (the Battle of Helm's Deep) it reads like Cliffs notes.

> If you want to see how fast your brain will turn to mush, try reading The Silmarillion. I keep a copy handy for when I can't get to sleep.

After reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and falling in love with Middle Earth, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the Silmarillion. Getting it for Xmas I eagerly started reading it. Even as a young, naive child I read the first page and thought "What a load of crap!"

But you can't blame Tolkien for that, because the Silmarillion were just notes Tolkien never intended for publication. Blame his son and his son's bank manager.

Re:Tolkien's prose / What about Frank Herbert?

[aquabat]

Agreed. I read it Dune for the first time when I was 14, and I don't think I've ever used a dictionary so much, before or since. I think I would call Dune the my watershed point between juvenile and adult science fiction. The whole series is definitely what I would call epic, much more than Tolkien IMHO.

Attention moderators, I HAVE read the books

[bonch]

Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.

Apparently, moderators and Tolkien fans alike are upset that I'm apparently criticizing the book without having read it completely. I have read the books, and what I was saying is that I keep meaning to read it again but never get around to it. I should have been clearer. That said, I'm not sure why that would even matter, because if someone started reading something and didn't like it enough to finish it completely, that doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

This is quite insightful. Once you get into the Dune series (there are actually several books in the series) they are quite captivating..

However, much like the Battle Axe trilogy, getting through the first 100 to 150 pages is a real slog... but worth doing.

Tolkien fundamentally different

[samwhite_y]

I am imagining a prize committee trying to decide whether to give an award to postscript or HTML as the best page description language when HTML first came out. The criteria which seems to be used to choose "good literature" would pick postscript every time. Postscript is far more sophisticated, allows far more options, has a much richer vocabulary for describing positioning, graphing, fonts, scaling, and so on. By any judgement of functionality, postscript would seem to destroy HTML.

Tolkien beats out a lot of other supposedly excellent authors in the way HTML beats postscript (or any other complicated SGML that you might propose). There is something different about what it is that fundamentally makes it different and better. HTML appears trivial when compared to postscript but that is its strength, not its weakness. Tolkien is, in many ways, the same.

Re:Tolkien's prose / What about Frank Herbert?

[catmistake]

The whole series is definitely what I would call epic, much more than Tolkien IMHO.

Herbert and Tolkien do seem to draw a lot of comparisons. Personally I think Herbert was better at prose, but the Dune saga doesn't have nearly the same amount of interpretability. Dune is a great adaptation of a messiah story. Tolkien's work is far richer (again, interpretation-wise, not stylistically).

Re: Difficult for who?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The books can be really hard to read in places"

-- this statement is demonstrably not true, since millions upon millions of people -have- read them. Compared to the numbers who've read some of the other Laureates mentioned,

What you're actually saying is that they were hard for YOU to read with the reading protocols you prefer to employ or have been trained to employ... possibly without your even being aware of the clash with your expectations.

Confusing personal preference with technical analysis is a common error, but by that very fact it's one that's easy to avoid.

Tolkien is a superb writer but he's -not a Modernist-. He doesn't use modernist tropes, he doesn't use a modernist approach to character psychology, and he doesn't use that movement's narrative strategies.

(Eg., the books treat irony as it should be -- as a condiment, not a vegetable.)

This is almost certainly what the Nobel committee meant when they said his prose wasn't up to snuff; translated into plain English, what they were saying was that it wasn't the -type- of writing they considered "serious" and "correct" and so forth.

Basically, an ideological/fashion statement.

Post-modernists will have even greater difficulty with Tolkien.

People who just read books, on the other hand, rarely do.

Re:Not a Communist

[lahvak]

Yeah, that's why they awarded the prize to so many prominent anticommunist dissidents.

Mod Parent as Informative.

[dwye]

Mod parent as Informative. I would do it, myself, had I not replied to something above.

This changed everything

[Anonymous Coward]

First, nobel prizes are infected by communism. That said, then I think that nobel organization lost all its credibility with this. They never gave the prize to Jorge Luis Borges, which deserved a big one, but because he was on the right political movements, then nobel denied the prize to this genius. Nobel organization is a complete fault for the humanity.

Nobel awardees' readability

[gwolf]

I... Do think it has a point. No, I'm not that well versed in contemporary literature. But (being a native Spanish speaker), I have truly enjoyed, since my highschool years, reading Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa (by then, not yet a Nobel winner, but he got awarded anyway years later).

I include José Saramago here, although he wrote in Portuguese, it's a close enough language to Spanish to suppose his style is clearly preserved. Saramago is among the hardest to read, as he completely twists grammar – Often, he clusters tens of sentences together, spanning several pages between periods, and –of course– almost never stopping for a paragraph break. However, his prose is amazingly easy and beautiful to read.

I read Tolkien a long time ago (The Hobbit when I was 15, the LoTR trilogy at 18 — I'm 35 now). I read them both in English, and I'm sure my English was by far not as fluent as today, but I remember truly enjoying his prose. Some other person said he takes too much time describing the places — That's one of the things I really *did* like. Grabbing, imagination-inducing – And showed me I have a much deeper English (at least, reading comprehension) than what I thought.

Writing styles had to be "discovered"

[SmallFurryCreature]

It sounds a bit silly when you never think about media but just consume it but all the types of story telling, even story telling itself were at one time inventions made by a person and then carried on. The ancient greeks had theather, had comedy, had musical performance but they would be amazed if they were transported to our time, amazed and probably very confused. Same if you put us back in their time. You would be wondering what the fuck is going on on stage. You can see an example of it with black and white silent movies. The story telling, the acting, the presentation, they are alien to a modern audience. The only reason they survive is because some of the actors made the cross-over to talkies and longer movies and they been parodied enough that we think we get it. Except when the exaggerated acting was done back then, it was not meant to be a parody.

Lord of the Rings Online reads like an old novel, older then it even really is but it has managed to lodge itself so firmly in our modern culture that we are willing to make an exception for it. It reads just like most older novels, one were modern pacing has yet to be invented. It is NOT an action novel. It reads closer to a travelogue. A lot of people that like the general setting have never actually read the book because... well... it ain't all that interesting.

The novel of The Princess Bride is a bit different from the movie as in that the writer tells it as if he is rewriting a novel written by an older person whose description doesn't half match that of Tolkien and how he loved the book when his father read it to him but then finds out later that his father edited the book to only have the good bits as the REAL book has a lot of dry passages where the original author describes the currencies used or court procedures.

Gosh, sound familiar? The fans would scream bloody murder but what if the Tolkien books were reworked by a movie novelist into a more condensed, fun version?

I wonder how many Tolkien fans love the books because they don't quite get it and think it must be better then them. No it isn't. The books aren't hard to read because they are so good, they are hard to read because they were written for a different era. That doesn't make them better anymore then classical music is better then modern music. Yes, there is a lot of crap in modern music but so there was in ancient times. just that only the good bits survived.

Tolkien wrote an intresting bit of lore that caught a lot of peoples imagination indirectly (they read other peoples work based on Tolkiens fantasy) but that doesn't mean the books are anything else but not so good writing that goes on far to long and fails the simplest lesson of writing: Less is More.

Some people complain that the movies ruined their imagination... but Tolkien never left any room either. Pratchett is a far greater writer by leaving gaps for your imagination to fill in. If Tolkien ever wrote a one-liner he would next spend three chapters explaining it.

Re:Writing styles had to be "discovered"

[Anonymous Coward]

I found that with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I had to 'power through' some of it, just to get through those parts. I did, and I enjoyed the series as a whole.

However, in the opposite corner of the arena, I also decided to on a whim see if I could read War and Peace. I don't know why or how, but that book sucked me right in such that I COULDN'T put it down at times. There was never a point (with the exception of the very, very end where the author goes on about semantics and the meanings of words, which had absolutely nothing to do with the story) that I felt I had to 'power through' any of it... not even slightly.

Re:Writing styles had to be "discovered"

[mattack2]

You can see an example of it with black and white silent movies. The story telling, the acting, the presentation, they are alien to a modern audience.

Single data point to the contrary, not necessarily proving a point: Yet "The Artist" is one of the most highly acclaimed movies in a long time, and some people think it's going to at least be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. (Yes, I admit this may be covered in your sentences after the ones I quoted.)

Re:Writing styles had to be "discovered"

[mattack2]

Oops, I should have responded once to everything.

Gosh, sound familiar? The fans would scream bloody murder but what if the Tolkien books were reworked by a movie novelist into a more condensed, fun version?

That's kind of my reaction to Shakespeare. I hate movies being changed after the fact (Han shot first, the police in E.T. have guns, etc.), but I seem to spend most of my time "translating [old] English into English" in my head when watching Shakespeare (or reading it, if I did more of that). A well done "translation" into modern English, keeping the famous lines ("Romeo, Romeo, wherefore..", "Friends, Romans, countrymen..", "A horse, a horse..." etc.) would be interesting to see/read. Though it was a "visual translation", I sort of got that effect in the Leonardo Dicaprio version of "Romeo + Juliet".

Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[gslj]

I'm in shock that so may people here agree that Tolkien's prose is a problem. Far from that being the case, Tolkien is so sensitive to prose rhythm that I use it from time to time to teach how to appreciate rhythm in prose or poetry. Take, for example, the ride of the Rohirrim, at the end of chapter 5 of the Return of the King. It starts off at a walk ("Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering.") picks up a bit to a trot ("But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath
the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great _boom_.") a canter ("With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains."), and then a full-out gallop ("Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first _éored_ roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken.") Then, once the cavalry has bashed through the enemy lines and the fighting's intensity lags, we slow down to a walk again ( And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.") I could also point out the careful word choice for alliteration ("and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder") and assonance ("the host of Rohan"). Reading this page aloud is a joy. If you appreciate the King James Bible, or Old English poetry, you can appreciate this.

But he doesn't always write in this style. There are homely conversations between country folk, and orders in the field, and descriptions of landscapes, and "dropped in" details that suggest thousands of years of history that are simply not explained, but make Middle Earth seem real.

By the way, I would take Ursula Le Guin's opinion on prose quality pretty seriously. She is a fan of Tolkien's writing, too, calling it "a great wind blowing" that could have overwhelmed her own voice if she had read it earlier than she did. (http://greenbooks.theonering.net/tributes/files/ursula_leguin.html)

So, again, I don't get where this opinion that Tolkien writes badly. The man put more care into a sentence than others do in a chapter.

-Gareth

Re:Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is Tolkien's work tedious and long winded, it is overly complicated and convoluted to hide the fact that his rather straightforward plot has more holes then a Swiss cheese. So I do not only think it's bad writing, but also that it's a very mediocre story and bad story telling.
Precisely as it is with the king James bible, which is objectively the most horrendous abject trash in print.

I find that books who are often cited by people who make grand arm gestures whilst citing are devoid of content and quality.

Re:Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[liamoohay]

Absolutely right!

Re:Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you dear sir.

Re:Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[Anonymous Coward]

The latter half of Return of the King has a style that's reminiscent of an epic poem, and if the entire of Lord of the Rings were written in that style, it would be worth a pile of prizes. But it's not: the first two books are as dry as dust, and details are not "dropped in" so much as they are dumped from a truck. There is something positive to be said about the progression of style, in that you do appreciate it where it comes at the climax of the book, but saving the best for last still doesn't do much for the first.

Re:Tolkien a bad writer, if you have tin ears

[rochrist]

WFT????

Mod parent up because

[scrimmer]

This is another superb example of the subtlety and effectiveness of Tolkien's prose.

Tolkien was easy to read

[Tran]

The Hobbit and LOTR was easy to read, and the subject matter moved along just fine, at least when i was 16. I haven't tried since then.
If one want something to attempt to read that embodies drudgery, something I tried to read after LOTR was Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. My friend who got me on to LOTR was ebullient about Gormenghast, but I could only barely make it through the first book. I keep promising myself that one of these days I will try to read it all three. Some of the characters are singularly imaginative.
  Another from that time period in my youth I could not take was the Sword of Shannara (Terry Brooks) series that started about then. There was something I could not even get through the the first 20 pages before I had to give up. Compared to Tolkien I just had read with joy, and Mervyn Peake's prose I just had failed to finish, Terry Brook's writing could not even compare.

Oh well, it all depends on one's outlook and background, I suppose. At 16 I was only in the US for 2 years, having grown up in Germany, learning some of my English by reading Captain America, Daredevil, and the Black Panther.

Nowadays I enjoy the uneven excellence of Michael Swanwick, and Charles Stross. The epicness of George R.R. Martin's Songs of ice and Fire have been an awesome read as well.

It seems as a geek, LOTR should be on the list as a must read. Sort of like a college degree - shows you can completes something, but not necessary to enjoy life.

Re:Tolkien was easy to read

[Gilmoure]

Yes! I devoured Tolkien in 3rd and 4th grade (and Homer (Fitzgerald trans.) in 5th) but Gormenghast stopped me dead. Never made it through first book. Same goes for Great Gatsby. Was only book in high school I couldn't make it through and defaulted to cliff notes. It almost gives me a headache to read. And I like Joyce! Go figure. Faulkner I can read and make it through but I don't enjoy. Has an odd flavor to the stories. GG Marquez, John Nichols and Mark Helprin are some of my fav modern writers. They're all dense and not necessarily action-packed (but they have their moments) but the richness of their world building and how easy it is to sink into the stories are great!

Re:Tolkien was easy to read

[unapersson]

I'd try Gormenghast again, you may just have tried it two quickly after reading another dense work. If you're not flying through them after the first fifty pages you're doing it wrong :-) It is quite satirical, some of the characters deliberate caricatures, but the story and world he creates is a wonderful one. I'd quite happily read the trilogy again, and if it was a choice between that and LOTR then it would win easily.

Too bad the criterion wasn't *quantity* of prose

[mcgoohan]

... or he'd have been up on a Swedish stage singing,
"Helm holm! Stockholm! Alfred Nobel-lo!
Ring a ding! Thanks, King, for the medal-lo!"

And after the 17th verse, the audience would be trying to summon a Balrog.

Tolkein's prose

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the Swede would have read it in the original Klingon, rather than a poor Swedish translation, that would have made all of the difference.

/. knows literature?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do /. readers know about literature?

About as much as they know about sex.

Long Winded, Pah!

[Maxx169]

Seriously - after wading through Robert Jordan's (and now Brandon Sanderson's) The Wheel of Time - am I the _only_ person here that thinks Tolkien's LOTRs is practically punchy?

Re:Instritution diminished

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even the same country.

The Nobel Committee was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien's prose is hackneyed and tedious, but J. K. Rowling's is worse. Let us hope she is never nominated for the Nobel Prize. Peter Jackson's effrontery knows no bounds: three films each of which is over three hours long. And now he is about to inflict The Hobbit on us in two parts. Whatever happened to the 90 minute main feature? Some of us have better things to do with our time than watch this tosh.

Whatever next... computer programmers engaging in literary criticism?

It's almost guaranteed. . .

[JSBiff]

. . . that lots of great writers will never get the Nobel Prize (or Great Scientists, etc). They can only give one per year (in each category), they can't award it to the dead. Which means, that some years (probably most) you'll have a number of nominees who really are "Nobel-material", but who get disqualified in favor of whoever gets chosen. That's the nature of arbitrary, number-limited awards.

Best book evah?

[itsdapead]

I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said:

If, at the age of 14, you don't think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's probably something wrong with you.
If, by the age of 40, you still think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's definitely something wrong with you.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy ghetto

[LihTox]

I suspect the real reason is because Tolkien wrote fantasy, and fantasy wasn't "serious literature".

Re:two words: Barack Obama

[Kidbro]

You do realize that the people awarding the Peace prize have nothing whatsoever to do with the people awarding the Literature prize? The only linking factor is parts of the name of the prize.

Tolkien wasnt

[Anonymous Coward]

All that great of a writer. He was a genius when it came to creating languages and races with rich backstories, but his actual, on the paper writing wasn't that astounding.

Re: Difficult for who?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he found it hard to read then it is demonstrably true that it CAN be found hard to read.

I did try to read the Similarion once....

[Radical Moderate]

and I'm not ashamed to say I didn't get very far. Kind of like reading the old testament, but less entertaining.

They gave 0bama a N0bel though

[wganz]

Considering that the same group gave a Nobel Peace Prize to s0me0ne in H0pe that he might d0 s0mething, it isn't surprising.

Saw the films

[oldmac31310]

I watched the films and enjoyed them, mostly. I never read the books. I couldn't get past the ridiculous names. Do I win a prize?

Damn right you should pity tomhudson

[Anonymous Coward]

She's a fat diabetes ridden diseased miserable out of work cunt.

STFU tomhudson u diabetes diseased fat CUNT

[Anonymous Coward]

You're fat, stupid, and a miserable out of work cunt that's diseased.

My name is tomhudson

[Anonymous Coward]

"Give me donuts!" -> http://dtsdapache.hershey.k12.pa.us/c3e3/eclouser/files/2008/11/cyclops.jpg