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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."
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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.
Meh. I think we know who had the last laugh there.
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....
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.
Looking at all the writers who never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd say Tolkien is in very good company.
#DeleteChrome
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....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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!
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.
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.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
. . . 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.