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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Yikes, I now have several replies!:
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Aug 10 2020, 9:58am
Views: 3465
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Yikes, I now have several replies!
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Before I rush off excitedly in new directions, I must remember to say - yes, I agree. Tolkien's letter was not offering his 'defence' of 'the eagle problem', he was explaining something else, just as you say squire. (If someone did try to use this as a counter to the eagle problem then I feel it fails, for the reason that I've already given -- but quite likely there's no need to repeat that.)
The Lord of the Rings is written as a heroic quest in the tradition of olden-days adventurers walking, riding, or sailing past obstacles to reach a goal. Flying by magical bird changes the quest to something out of the Arabian Nights or other fantastic traditions in which giant magical birds are perfectly acceptable devices. I agree about the 'heroic quest in the tradition of....' bit. My first reply is an aside about Mountains. I've recently been reading and greatly enjoying Robert Macfarlane's 'Mountains Of The Mind'. Macfarlane discusses the origins of mountaineering (as opposed to traveling or working as in mountainous areas if necessary). It happens at the time of the Industrial Revolution, the colonialist era and Romantic Movement. Mountain exploration served all those - scientific discovery; exploration for military intelligence and scouting natural resources; the opportunity to be the first white person there (and perhaps to name something on the map after yourself or as you pleased). Lastly mountains and other wild places were now seen as offering an experience that was at once athletic, heroic, aesthetic and contemplative (think of that painting Wanderer Above A Sea Of Fog). But the Nineteenth Century was also aware that it was extinguishing the unknown and mysterious at a frightening rate - how could we be Romantic in a world where everything was known? (This raises another version of that conflict between wonder and knowledge that we've been encountering here, discussing unknowns in the fiction of Middle-earth.) The Everest expeditions 1921 - 1953 were seen by some contemporaries as the conquest of a 'Third Pole' - the last mysterious place, and one which would be conquered soon, with both pride and regret. (And, in that nationalist period, it had better be conquered by British - or at least Commonwealth - effort, the British having been beaten to the other two poles!).
Next, the Arabian Nights - a really good contrast to bring up! Do people 'plothole' and nit-pick those stories, I wonder? I wonder why they do (or why they do not)? I'm glad the Sultan didn't take that approach at least, since it would have ended badly for Scheherazade! If people respond to Arabian Nights differently, is there something special about Middle-earth that encourages a different, more critical treatment? It was CuriousG rather than me who has been pointing out that we have to accept some of a fantasy authors premise if we're to have any fun at all. I also think he's right to suggest that Tolkien sets out some of it so carefully that it looks like he's inviting the game of analysing Middle-earth and wanting to know many facts about it. Indeed, didn't he actively play it with his readers, by adding the LOTR Appendices, and in all those letters he wrote to answer reader queries?
So that brings me to a thought about Tolkien as a writer. Thanks to the work of Christopher Tolkien (Tolkien Jr.? or Tolkien II, perhaps?) anyone who can buy or borrow copies of HOME can find out a lot about Tolkien's writing practices. What I think I see is Tolkien working in two modes. First there's what we might call 'Grasshopper Tolkien' - seeming to get somewhere new and astonishing in a single bound. Things seem to spring from his subconscious (or wherever these things come from) sometimes catching him by surprise. Quite suddenly we have Black Riders, or Palantirs, or Treebeard who is now an Ent, not a giant as originally expected. Toiling behind the grasshopper comes 'Inchworm Tolkien' carefully and laboriously working out what this all means, how it would work, how to square that with the timeline, and so on. I think that we get the two in balance in LOTR, each contributing to the effect of the finished work. Occasionally perhaps the grasshopper lands badly, or goes somewhere that the Inchworm does not consolidate. But I much prefer works of this period to later, when the grasshopper seems rarely to come out, and all the toil of the poor Inchworm alone cannot finish what the team had begun (The Silmarillion, for example).
Next, I'm beginning to think of 'plotholing' as a pastime - the discovering (or inventing) and then solving of Middle-earth puzzles as a creative activity. Or perhaps I should say 'an imaginative activity' since it can feel destructive rather than creative! Perhaps 'plot-holing' is not the right word and I'm being lured by the appeal of the pun with 'pot-holing'. I do see that 'plot-hole' is emotive - it sounds alarming, as if Middle-earth has been found wanting or is somehow falling apart and needs shoring up. And I suspect that is the effect some folks enjoy when they spend time looking for 'plot-holes', and why other people put a lot of effort - anxiety even - into explaining them away. But whatever we call it, Middle-earth seems to prompt the behaviour, just as it prompts people to write fan fiction, or make artworks and costumes. There's overlap of course - someone who wants to make a balrog picture or costume will have to decide what to do about wings: yes, no, or manage ambiguity somehow? Nonetheless, enough of us seem to enjoy jut thinking about and discussing these things, without going on to make some tangible creation of our own. As I understand it, Middle-earth is no longer the only imaginary world that prompts such responses (I think people behave similarly in respect to Marvel Superheroes, or Star Wars, for example). I don't know whether Middle-earth was the imaginary world that started all this, it then spilling over into other imaginary worlds. Or maybe people were doing that with other fictions long before? Or, as another option, maybe here was some cultural change that made people interested in this sort of thing, and they applied it to whatever fictions seemed appropriate to it. So all that is to say - I wonder whether the current levels of interest in continuity and 'canon' are new?
If I remember, the Jackson LOTR films came much at the same time as the rise of the Internet as a popular way to write AND read. I do think it's likely that both developments increased the number of people wanting to have complicated analytical discussions about Middle-earth. And the Internet certainly made it much easier to get involved. If this sort of thing was going on before that, then I suppose it must have been by the circulation of magazines -- a much slower way for information to spread because a new recruit would have to find out the magazine existed, afford a subscription, and take part by letter-writing and posting. So it would be easy enough for this sort of thing to have been going on a long time before any of us knew about it.
In the end, what does it matter? Like you, squire, 'the eagle problem' didn't occur to me until I encountered it online. Evidently I'm willing to be drawn into discussing it. I feel that ideally Tolkien would have done something to pre-empt it as a concern, and that it might be interesting to think about why he didn't (or whether h should have). But (harking back to my OP) personally I'm content for there to be mysteries and it doesn't' bother me much. Perhaps I'm trying to have my lembas and eat them?
~~~~~~
"You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed as they were too busy being attacked by an octopus."
-from How To Tell If You Are In A J.R.R. Tolkien Book, by Austin Gilkeson, in 'The Toast', 2016 https://the-toast.net/...-a-jrr-tolkien-book/
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Aug 10 2020, 10:00am)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by noWizardme
(Gondolin) on Aug 10 2020, 10:00am
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