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Felagund
Rohan
May 15 2022, 1:00am
Post #26 of 67
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Thank you for this post, noWizardme! You've once again opened my eyes to fascinating takes on Tolkien’s writing (including your own!). I’ve been a fan of Michael Moorcock’s fiction for decades but had never spotted that 1978 essay, and I had no idea he felt that way. Thinking about it, I don’t think I’m surprised but I am taken slightly aback by how visceral his deconstruction was. Given the date, I wonder whether he’d read The Silmarillion by the time he wrote the essay. It doesn’t come across that way and I have to wonder whether his ‘all’s well that ends well’ criticism of LotR would have quite worked with The Silmarillion in the mix. All sort of ends well there, sort of… at the cost of the lives of pretty much every major character and via destruction on a cataclysmic scale.
I can appreciate the Moorcock thesis but for him to get where he’s going with it strikes me as focusing overly on The Shire and hobbits (who he clearly dislikes!). If I’d read the LotR that Moorcock depicts, I suspect I wouldn’t have enjoyed it anywhere near as much. It’s not that I don’t like hobbits, it’s just that I doubt I would have hung in there if the first 10 chapters were comprised solely of hobbits discussing the habits and real estate of their well-to-do neighbours! Fortunately, there’s a whole lot more going on.
Part of that ‘whole lot more’ for me, from a fairly young age, are the parts of LotR that aren’t comforting and aren’t meant to be comforting. I dwell on this concept of ‘comfort’, as it strikes me as important to Moorcock’s critique. As a reader of LotR, scenes like Gandalf’s reading of the brief life and brutal death of Balin’s colony in Moria are, to me, just chilling. It’s a venture that ends in utter, ghastly failure, in the dark, without hope of salvation. And this is early in the book, exposing a new band of adventurers to the grim reality and mortality of adventuring: all does not always end well. And yet, I find this one of the most powerful sequences in the book and one I re-read regularly. I realise that Moorcock is reaching for something a bit different when he writes of his distaste of the ‘comfort’ element of LotR, as he sees it.
Another, more thematic, element of LotR that I don’t regard as providing me comfort but nonetheless leaves me moved and rarely more engaged with what I’m reading when it comes to Tolkien, is irrevocable loss. The Elder Days are gone and even its remnants are fading out. Victory for the Free Peoples during the War of the Ring, even at the highest level of success, won’t change any of that. Moorcock’s dislike of much of the epic fantasy genre is slightly odd in this context, in that many of the components of ‘epic fantasy’ in LotR are in decline: the Elves are dwindling; the Rings of Power are in their last hurrah phase; most people have forgotten or don’t see as relevant what someone called Gil-galad did 3,000 years ago and so on. Elessar’s crowning does re-establish elements of a glorious ancien regime but, arguably, it’s no full-blown return to the past, because there’s just no going back. This actually reminds me of Moorcock’s own fantasy series, The Chronicles of Corum, where the eponymous hero is definitively part of a remnant population who, amongst other things, is struggling, physically and emotionally, with the death of the previous era. I’m not sure it’s what Moorcock was necessarily going for but of all the books of his I’ve read, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of nostalgia and sentimentalism, as poor old Corum mournfully wanders his world (and several others). He is a character definitely in need of comfort, even if the author himself doesn’t appear to be a fan of it!
Anyway, I’ve taken several sweeping liberties in the above, with not one but two authors! Before signing off, I want to give a shout out to the shout outs that Moorcock provided for in ‘Epic Pooh’. Specifically, to Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series) and Ursula K. Le Guin (The Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, amongst many other things). I have vry little experience of Le Guin’s essays but her fantasy and sci-fi is excellent, and Cooper’s series is one of the best Celtic / mythology transpositions you’ll read – in my view :)
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 1:54am
Post #27 of 67
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I think you've articulated, and really pin-pointed, a central, if not *the* central reason for so much of the disagreements on TORn throughout it's history. I think some of the differences in regard to the movies are between those who feel the "atmosphere" and the overall sweep and meaning of the story comes through clearly--even if all the "facts" aren't there--and those who need most or all of those "facts" to be there for it to be Middle Earth at all. And of course there are all sorts of gradations in between. But you've explained to me how easy it is for so many here to believe we have the Truth. And it helps me to understand some baffling points of view I haven't been able to grasp before.
Thank you!
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 2:51am
Post #28 of 67
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So glad you've posted this, and that all these people are replying!
Anyway, I have two pet peeves about the "escapism" label, which is what it seems Moorcock may at least partly mean by "comfort." It is, at least, a sister concept, I think.
The first peeve is the same as yours: What's so bad about it? Do these critics of escapism and comfort never sleep at night, never take a mental break, never go on a hike or to the beach, never have lunch with a friend where they simply discuss pleasant topics and avoid discussing the news, or the latest illness? Without some escape here and there, we'd all go bonkers. And I maintain that these are not merely escapes, but an integral part of "real life." It disturbs me when it appears for that for some (many?) fantasy critics, only serious, gritty, and difficult things are what life is, and the rest is inconsequential fluff, or at least an unfortunate interruption of what is actually important. To me it's warp and weft. The joy, the beauty, the sunsets, Beethoven, babies, and cirrus clouds are just as real and important as wars and relief efforts, politics and business, scholarship and science and all the way down to housework, car repairs, dishes. If I sing Schubert while I'm washing the dishes, they still get done.
The second pet peeve about escapism is that I disagree that fantasy is largely just that (escapist). Instead, I think--like LeGuin--that one encounters Truth everywhere you go in the best fantasy. Also, I don't think that in Tolkien things are particularity comforting. Even when at the end of LOTR objectives are achieved, they were only achieved by losing a whole bunch--permanently--of the world they knew. To keep any of it, they had to lose a lot of it. And I'm not sure I agree that the effort and courage were always appreciated as much as could be wished--and sometimes not really at all. I think there is a tremendous amount of realism in Tolkien, and a whole lot to teach us of how we ought to behave in the "real world." There is realism in the relationships of the characters--loyalty, betrayal, faithfulness, faithlessness, misunderstands, etc.--and realism, for another example, in the fact that confusing and impossible conundrums are faced in real life as well as in fiction. Just because there are no Shelobs doesn't mean that there are no situations where a "Sam" in real life has to face an impossible choice.
But best of all, I think it can give us a kind of transcendent hope, or at least inspiration along the lines that people matter, goodness matters, etc., and can also give us a sense of what it means to have an aim in life--that faithfulness, fellowship, a deep appreciation of beauty, perseverance in the most hopeless and self-sacrificing of efforts matters, and is not only worth doing, but essential. I think many Tolkien readers have found inspiration, encouragement, and maybe even a reason to go on in whatever difficulty they're facing in their actual life from what they find in the books he wrote. What could be more realistic? I've never felt that LOTR was particularly escapist, really, in the sense that the critics often seem to give it, although it certainly provides an incomparable experience of being able to feel one really is in another world. But not because it's all that comforting.
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on May 15 2022, 2:55am)
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uncle Iorlas
Rohan
May 15 2022, 2:58am
Post #29 of 67
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what of all the Valar and the other Gods? Having many gods, a chief god and gods of different powers doesn't sound christian or catholic to me! Sounds a bit more pagan, druid or animism as I'm sure that I read that christians believe only in the one god!
So they say! But there's something awfully suspicious about those hundreds and hundreds of miracle-working saints to whom one is permitted to pray directly, I must say. And that's leaving the Old Testament material out of it: https://biblia.com/books/nrsv/Ps82.4
Tolkien's rationale that it was okay to write a book with an obvious pantheon of gods as long as somewhere in the notes it's clarified that these are just really big angels and the singular godhead is still in place somewhere up out of sight is a similar sort of have-and-also-eat approach. Lewis does something very similar in his space trilogy.
ps I love Felagund's point about the hovering sense of loss, the drumbeat of disappearing, dying, diminishing, sailing away and leaving us, that runs through the whole thing. I don't know, though, whether that would mollify Moorcock (who after all seems pretty committed to his position). Would he just find a way to interpret that very theme as redounding to the comfort of the self-satisfied hobbits?
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 10:11am
Post #30 of 67
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No "burn" intended, but I have an idea to propose.
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I don't know if you meant it as a sick burn, but "a more sophisticated way of explaining or justifying the same way of thinking" is a great way of describing the kind of motivated reasoning I had in mind.
I'd agree that the age at first reading is important, though I'll have to think about this more to have very firm opinions. Certainly, the re-reading experience inevitably shifts, in part due to exposure to new ideas (and additional life experience) in the intervening time since the last reading, but I think the original impression remains important. At least for books to which one has a strong emotional attachment.
No "burn" intended, but I have an idea to propose.
(I was certianly didn't mean that comment as a coded attack on anyone who uses these boards, and I'm not attempting slyly to comment upon or continue some other discussion or argument, should it be a good idea to clarify that at right away. I don't want to be sucked into a set of dreary and counter-productive kind of defensive clarifications*, but I don't want anyone to feel they might be being attacked, either.)
Anyway, after that pehaps overly-anxious paragraph, I wanted to discuss the thing I am excited by: To summarise where I've got to as a result of the conversation so far, I think:- The first reading is important. It either goes well enough to create the wish for further readings, is the only reading, or it results in the work being abandoned, maybe in discust, as "boring, absurd, or contemptible" (or offensive).
- The first reading might be by a literal nine-year-old. Or it might be someone much older. But maybe that inner nine-year-old is still there, whether they are the first and most formative reader, or whether they represent part of an older reader that is open to powerful influences from the story other than the "more sopisticated" reactions adults are supposed to have.
- Proposition: One reason things get heated in Tolkien fandom because it's a debate of inner nine-year-olds, but weaponised with adult levels of sophistication. I think that idea's worth a wry smile.
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* A writer on Twitter recently put this very well and amusingly, I thought, starting "There’s a defensive style of writing where you can tell someone has spent too much time on Twitter. You write a normal sentence, then ask yourself how an [insult we can't have here] could interpret it in bad faith and use it to attack your reputation publicly. Then you add caveats."
What then follows (or followed?, I think it may have been taken down) was an hilarious series of caveats, each more convoluted than the last, and with one caveat then having to be caveated in its turn.
This Twitter writer will have to remain [citation needed] I think, because of the sort of coversation a link would tip folks into. But like the 'Epic Pooh' comment of Moorcock's I did recognise with wry amusement these sort of tangles. In this instance the rabbit-hole would be to start by (1) clarifying/apologising lest somene had thought I was making a sly personal attack. Then I'd clarify (2) that nothing in my first statement should be taken to impy that Eldy had suggested I was making such an attack. Then I'd start expressing (3) a worry that people who had never supposed either (1) or (2) were now offended that I had assumed they were that sort of person.. And so on. It goes on forever, sounds like a hostage statement, and it doesn't work, because it draws attention to and invites people to discuss the very thing you didn't mean and don't want to discuss. It just makes it harder to work out what someone's main point was - the one on which they presumably invite polite discussion. And of course some folks are likely to think that a denial is a sort of confession -- that this is what you mean really
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 11:18am
Post #31 of 67
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And to add another factor, I'm thinking of a friend...
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I think that's a great way of putting it - far clearer than I could manage!
And to add another factor, I'm thinking of a friend who likes rather diferent reading material to me. His problem with seculative fiction is that he needs to know what is going on to a greater extent than is sometimes provided.
For example, we went to see the film Life of Pi together. It concerns a boy, Pi, who, apparently, survives in a lifeboat for some time after a shipwreck, accompanied only by a bengal tiger. This is presented fairly literally for much of the film, and of course makes a pretty dramatic predicament. But the boy's adventures get steadily more surreal (a sinister Island for example). As it got more surreal, my firend got more confused and unhappy. Then, it is revealed that the survival with a tiger might not be what literally happened, and the audience is allowed to interpret wht probably did literally happen. This would have involved some very traumatic things Pi had to witness and do. My friend was deligheted by this ingenious plot twist, so all was well. But for me the film (and the book) has a point about the slipperyness of reality that I don't think my firend got (or perhaps saw but didn't think was all that valuable or interesting).
So I think that some folks don't mind things somewhat fluid and messy and unclear in a story (I'm like that) and others don't (e.g. my friend). This isn't to do with intelligence or education; it's more to do with personal preferences.
I think I see that play out in Tolkien appreciation - some folks want a solid answer you can know; others are happy with, or enjoy, ambiguity. "Who or What is Tom Bombadill" is the classic topic to spot the difference.
But similarly, I think some folks want the story to mean something (or not mean something), and others don't mind about that. Several different ideologies attract the seeker of a solid truth, so the people who like solid answers are not (in my empirical experience) in any one political, religous or other ideological group.
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squire
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 1:20pm
Post #32 of 67
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I would have said 13-year-olds, not nine.
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I understand what you mean about the inner child 'getting' large aspects of Lord of the Rings in ways that can't be ungotten later on in life.
But in my experience and in hearing others talk about their similar times, it's in early adolescence, not later childhood, that a book like LotR really grabs one. It's then in life that one begins to perceive how adults see things and so the adult themes in LotR hit a young adult with unexpected force, on top of the easy-to-follow adventure and magic and history, etc. that can appeal even to precocious nine-year-olds.
I certainly agree with your final proposition, exact ages aside, that Tolkien fandom contains ample emotions that recall those of youth. But I would say that's a truism about a heck of a lot more adult fan and other group-oriented debates than just the Tolkien community. Youth is a powerful time of life.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 4:02pm
Post #33 of 67
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Ah yes! Welcome to my world. Unfortunately, that's what goes on in my head after almost any conversation, anywhere. You're right, it is a trap, even though it can certainly be necessary.
Anyway, I think it's unlikely you'll be misunderstood here--partly because you're manifestly the kind of person that doesn't attack people .
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 4:15pm
Post #34 of 67
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I hadn't thought of that at all. I can see how those 2 mindsets could lead to all sorts of arguments that are caused by misunderstanding what the other person is actually arguing about!
I think I may exist in both camps. Hmmm.
You've given us some real food for thought!
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on May 15 2022, 4:19pm)
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
May 15 2022, 5:46pm
Post #35 of 67
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Rarely have I been so glad I'm not on Twitter
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Proposition: One reason things get heated in Tolkien fandom because it's a debate of inner nine-year-olds, but weaponised with adult levels of sophistication. I think that idea's worth a wry smile.
I think this is both witty and insightful. And, as squire notes, not limited to Tolkien fandom—or fandom in general, though it's arguably more susceptible to this phenomenon than some other types of discussion. I'm not always particularly charitable in my comments about the fannish phenomenon of implicitly (or explicitly) claiming ownership of the work one enjoys and appointing oneself the arbiter of who else can be considered a fan, but to some extent its understandable that people who feel a sense of belonging, in that a work of fiction has been something dear to them from a young age, also feel a sense of ownership over it. Not to say that's a deliberate thought process, but it sometimes has to be consciously resisted. Inner nine-year-olds are powerful.
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
May 15 2022, 5:54pm
Post #36 of 67
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I think I may exist in both camps. Hmmm.
I started out very firmly in the pro-literalism camp, and have only with great and uneven effort dragged myself towards the other. In the context of Tolkien fandom, I like to refer to my inner Hobbitish impulse: "they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions" (LOTR, Prologue). This definitely influenced my way of thinking about the movies during the heyday of my involvement in the purist wars. In the context of lore, I've come to feel this approach is very limiting, especially when thinking about "The Silmarillion," but I still see the appeal and sometimes find myself slipping back into it. I can certainly agree this causes all sorts of communication problems when people aren't fully aware of how others, or even necessarily themselves, are thinking about an issue.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 6:03pm
Post #37 of 67
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Shall we add George RR Martin for contrast
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In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine, Martin makes some comments about Tolkien. I don't think he's criticising Tolkien in a destructive way (c.f. Moorcock); rather he's making some observations about how Middle-earth works, and contrasting it to his own fantasy world, Westeros:
Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? ... The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that’s become the template. I’m not sure that it’s a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that. Martin quoted by Shaun Gunner on the Tolkien Society Website. The link to the original Rolling Stone interview has broken
In Westeros, by contrast matches one definition of 'grimdark' fantasy:
Adam Roberts described it as fiction "where nobody is honourable and Might is Right, and as "the standard way of referring to fantasies that turn their backs on the more uplifting, Pre-Raphaelite visions of idealized medievaliana, and instead stress how nasty, brutish, short and, er, dark life back then 'really' was". But he noted that grimdark has little to do with re-imagining an actual historic reality and more with conveying the sense that our own world is a "cynical, disillusioned, ultraviolent place" According to Roberts, grimdark is an "anti-Tolkien" approach to fantasy writing. George R. R. Martin's popular grimdark fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is characterized, in Roberts's view, by its reaction to Tolkien's idealism, even though it owes a lot to Tolkien. " 'Grimdark' in Wikipedia (the article provides other definitions of the term too) Faced with the existential threats of a climate catastrophe and an invasion, the rulers of Westeros totally fail (as far as Martin's books have reached) to combine to do much, and instead exhaust themselves in a complex, destructive dynastic war. It is very reminiscent of Tolkien's LOTR 2e Foreword comments about what would have happened if LOTR had been an allegory of World War II.
I wonder whether this is a pendulum-swing not just of fashion but of writers trying to do something new, rather than just splashing in the now well established Tolkien mainstream.
Relevant to the conversation we're having about 'comfort', escapism, realism, nihilism etc. how about Liz Bourke's comments in a review in Strange Horizons (not of Martin, but of a 'grimdark' story) :
It is that grim darkness that gives me complicated feelings. "Grimdark" is a shorthand in modern fantasy literature for a subgenre that values its gritty realism, and that attempts to overturn long-established heroic tropes. As much a locus for critical and definitional argument as anything else (eg: What counts as "realism"? Why are some tropes overturned and not others?), for me its defining characteristic lies in a retreat into the valorisation of darkness for darkness's sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action—in terms of personal morality - as either impossible or futile. (I think it's a nihilism that many people find comforting: if everything is terrible and no moral decision can either be meaningful or have any lasting effect, then it rather absolves one from trying to make things better, doesn't it?) Review, by Liz Bourke, of The Dark Defiles by Richard Morgan, published in Strange Hoizons
I'll turn this over for further discussion if anyone wishes...
(have just been called aaway --- supper!-- so any clarificatiosn of the vague and mis-spelled will not happen in the edit window. Please ask if something is garbled!)
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(This post was edited by noWizardme on May 15 2022, 6:04pm)
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DGHCaretaker
Rohan
May 15 2022, 8:00pm
Post #38 of 67
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This topic keeps lighting up the index. I have no interest in a book club, which I figured this forum section is about. But "Pooh" kept lighting up and, unable to avoid this bug zapper, I needed to see why.
So I'm guessing by "Epic Pooh" that the implication is Tolkien and Middle-earth are considered by some a glorified A. A. Milne and Hundred Acre Wood? Do I have that right?
It struck me recently that Tolkien has always been a very controversial author... Never once have I thought of Tolkien, in any possible way, as controversial, except perhaps for not using the Eagles to take the Ring to Mordor.
People just create controversies from anything intrinsically neutral around them by what they do with it. Some people thrive on it.
M&Ms for example. Sheesh.
(This post was edited by DGHCaretaker on May 15 2022, 8:03pm)
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
May 15 2022, 8:27pm
Post #39 of 67
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It's funny, I thought I was a purist, until I saw the first movie and got swept away. I still, personally, think it would have been better to stick closer to the original, including more of Tolkien's actual language and wording. But I found I could visit Middle Earth from someone else's point of view. I was quite surprised.
I think one can "morph" to another mindset to the extent it doesn't destroy the experience or seriously compromise it. Parts of the movies did for me, but I found I could sort of mentally "blur" those sections and still enjoy the rest. But it just isn't reasonable to expect everyone, or anyone in particular, to do that, which helps me stay out of arguments (mostly).
Possibly you get pulled back into that literal Hobbit mode when it's gone far enough that the rubber band snaps you back--when the enjoyment or sense that it's still Middle Earth ceases? I'm almost seeing a map with different dotted line boundaries for everyone. Some of us drop into the sea before we even reach the beach, and others of us get out to the continental shelf before it stops "being Tolkien." Or something.
I like the idea that so many people with so many variations of mindsets are able to immerse themselves in these stories. May it long continue.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 16 2022, 7:41am
Post #40 of 67
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"they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions"
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Gosh, that's a great quote to bring up here. Allowing for hyperbole and humour, that is nearly my friend. We had a discussion where I asked (part-joking) whether he'd like fantasy and sf writers to declare up front how their speculative fiction world differs from the real world. You know, I said, like a mathematics paper starts with "Let..." (and then lists anything you need to know about what x and y mean in this particular paper and whether the author deciding to explore what heppends if you vary one of the usual axioms of mathematics: everything other than having the appropriate level of mathematics knowledge).
He said (and I don't think he's joking) that this would be exactly what he'd like. I think a lot of the fun for him is thinking about how the speculative fiction conceit of the story works, and if he has to figure it out as he reads, he can't enjoy the story until he's solved that puzzle.
Or at least I think that's what it is. There are indeed
all sorts of communication problems when people aren't fully aware of how others, or even necessarily themselves, are thinking about an issue.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 16 2022, 7:53am
Post #41 of 67
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Thanks for this, Felagund!
At the risk of taking liberties with your liberties, you have me thinking that Tolkien sometimes does tragedy as well as comfort. I'm thinking about a comment by [citation needed]* about Shakesperaean tragedy to the effect of it all being driven by a hero with a character flaw. Macbeth is ambitious, Romeo hot-headed, Othello jealous and Hamlet indecisive. The only way for the story to end and for order to be restored is for the flawed character to die.
That is a little like, say, Turin, or Feanor?
Though ooooh! -- it is not Feanor's death that resolves anything: his oath has to 'die'.
And ooooh! too -- maybe the abominable oath, not the silmarils is the Sil. equivalent to the abominable One Ring of LOTR (which also must 'die' to resolve the plot)
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*Not only am I most unlikely to find the article I'm citing here, but I think it was journalism about a contraversial political figure, who the journalist thought had to go to improve things. SO if I coudl find it, I might not cite it anyway!
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 16 2022, 8:00am
Post #42 of 67
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I'm very happy with how the conversaiton is going, and I'm glad you're enjoying it too.
I've added something about GRR Martin's criticism of Tolkien (criticism as in observations based on critical thinking, rather than claiming that Tolkien wrote bad literature that appealed to bad people for bad reasons ) It arose from reading this, really, because I think GRR Martin had noticed pretty much what you are saying, and then wondered what would happen if he varied that convention. And that's interesting (or at least I think so) because we get a chance to see one kind of story that can result if you do things differently.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 16 2022, 8:08am
Post #43 of 67
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Yes - bit ironic for Tolkien to become The Precious
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It would be a bit ironic for an Tolkien to become The Precious to someone, or for there to need to be One Reading To Rule Them All. Didn't someone [citaton needed] write a book that involves how that sort of thing causes trouble?
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
May 16 2022, 5:10pm
Post #44 of 67
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I'm thinking about a comment by [citation needed]* about Shakesperaean tragedy to the effect of it all being driven by a hero with a character flaw.
I don't know where you first encountered the concept, but the basic idea of tragedy being driven by character flaws is derived from (a misrepresentation of) the concept of hamartia in Aristotle's Poetics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
May 16 2022, 5:57pm
Post #45 of 67
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I wonder whether this is a pendulum-swing not just of fashion but of writers trying to do something new, rather than just splashing in the now well established Tolkien mainstream.
I think this is a good way of putting it. Despite periodic attempts to present A Song of Ice and Fire as a story told in opposition to The Lord of the Rings, or even as a way of spiting it, GRRM has always spoken openly about his enjoyment of and influence by Tolkien. I see his books as existing in dialogue with Tolkien's (a dialectic, to use a fancy-sounding academic term), which I think is a good thing for the fantasy genre. Though it bears noting that as much as Tolkien has a thumb on the figurative scale of his Secondary World, periodically interrupting "the long defeat" with eucatastrophe, Martin tips the scales of his world in the opposite direction to make it more miserable. Contrary to claims that the setting of ASOIAF is realistic, or "just how things were back then," Westeros is full of theme park medievalism, reflecting a simplified vision of the Middle Ages, bordering on caricature when it comes to, for example, the extreme passivity of Martin's peasants (except when they become religious fanatics or outlaws who need to be put down like mad dogs).
Tolkien actually did wrestle with some of the questions Martin points to regarding orcs. Much of Myths Transformed consists of Tolkien grasping for a way out of the moral horror show of a race of sentient beings who exist only to be abused by evil overlords and provide enemies whom the good guys can slaughter in large numbers without needing to feel guilt or moral ambiguity. Tolkien failed to find a solution, and I think that's a legitimate flaw of the legendarium. On the other hand, his depiction of "evil" humans has nuance, even if he doesn't dwell on that to the same extent as Martin. Also, GRRM's solution to the "enemies who can be killed without guilt" problem was to have the kingdoms of men be menaced by an army of zombies, so... 
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CMackintosh
Rivendell
May 17 2022, 6:40am
Post #46 of 67
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I wonder whether this is a pendulum-swing not just of fashion but of writers trying to do something new, rather than just splashing in the now well established Tolkien mainstream. [ snip ] Tolkien actually did wrestle with some of the questions Martin points to regarding orcs. Much of Myths Transformed consists of Tolkien grasping for a way out of the moral horror show of a race of sentient beings who exist only to be abused by evil overlords and provide enemies whom the good guys can slaughter in large numbers without needing to feel guilt or moral ambiguity. Tolkien failed to find a solution, and I think that's a legitimate flaw of the legendarium. On the other hand, his depiction of "evil" humans has nuance, even if he doesn't dwell on that to the same extent as Martin. Also, GRRM's solution to the "enemies who can be killed without guilt" problem was to have the kingdoms of men be menaced by an army of zombies, so...
But some thought, nonetheless, that there had been a remote kinship, which accounted for their special enmity. Orcs and Drûgs each regarded the other as renegades. [ Author's note. ] – In The Silmarillion the Orcs are said to have been bred by Melkor from captured Elves in the beginning of their days (p. 50; cf. pp. 93-4); but this was only one of several diverse speculations on the origin of the Orcs. I took that thought, that there had been some ancient link between the two, and after a while, turned it into my own story - not fanfic, but an independent story, set on a planet of Alpha Centauri, not on Middle Earth:
https://www.multiverse.org/forum/the-miscellany/enclave-at-the-end-of-time-%E2%97%A6-members-work/9599-the-vheratsho-in-the-nyerlika-eyrie
I thought an ancient link between Orcs and Druedain was quite probable, with Orcs having been mashed up from brutally abused Avari, degenerate Maiar, and corruptible predators, as disposable footsloggers in the war against anyone contesting Melkor's sense of entitlement. And once the Orcs were let loose on the world, some of them were touched by Eru's grace, to use a set of words Tolkien would've been very familiar with, and renounced their life as predators on other speaking beings, and thus were lifted into a life of their own, as Druedain. Another version of Aule's making of the Dwarves. And since the Orcs were descended from Elves and Maiar, and the Druedain were descended from Orcs, there was always a little of that ancestral power over nature, that "magic".
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CMackintosh
Rivendell
May 17 2022, 7:03am
Post #47 of 67
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As a fan of both Tolkien and Moorcock, I should perhaps add my voice. Tolkien is that rarity in fantastic fiction, I find: he manages not to take a lot for granted. One time when he does take things for granted, the language of the three trolls complaining and arguing over how to best cook a group of tasty dwarves who have blundered into their campfire site, he turned me off and I almost put The Hobbit down. I find his distances quite believable - he shares that with JG Ballard and Mervyn Peake, both of them born and raised outside of the land of their parents.)
I think Moorcock didn't read far enough into the Lord of the Rings. Everywhere in Middle Earth there are caveats; you can do this but not that. History ties, but does not bind; ancestry likewise. Sam, watching a battle of humans, wonders if the enemy soldier had any choice in going to war. The Orcs are vicious complainers and arguers, but their complaints and arguments are perfectly understandable to anyone who's ever been in any regimented activity. And there's this tragic feeling of exile over everything. (Tolkien must've felt his separation from his father and then his mother and also the religious separation from his relatives on both mother's and father's side quite sharply.)
Certainly there is an element of Pooh in Tolkien; but then there's also an element of Beowulf and Grendel; and (as I argue) an element of Africa that isn't anywhere near Winnie The Pooh.
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squire
Half-elven
May 17 2022, 11:54am
Post #48 of 67
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Very good comments - Moorcock has a bee in his bonnet and omits what won't fit
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Thanks for the thoughts on Tolkien's breadth, and on his instilling the pain of exile into his works. Very nice insights. I found the Moorcock essay hard to follow or sympathize with, perhaps because I have no idea who he is. Others here, like you, have read his books and are hearing his thoughts from that perspective.
As a passing note, because it is an interest of mine, I am surprised, I have to say, that the Trolls' language in The Hobbit repelled you so strongly. Their urban English accents are of a piece with all the other voices in The Hobbit, and have little to do with the way Tolkien crafted voices in either The Silmarillion (high epic throughout) or The Lord of the Rings (deftly reflecting the various cultures of Middle-earth). Rather, in The Hobbit the voices are self-amused parodies of various 'types' of Englishmen: Thorin's pretentious businessman's bloviating, Bilbo's nervous bourgeois insecurity, the Trolls' workingmen's slang, the Rivendell Elves' university snideness, the goblins' melodramatic villainy from Victorian drama, Gollum's mewling old-lady whining, Beorn's hearty rustic farmer, the Mirkwood Elves' upstairs-downstairs contrast, and of course Smaug's aristocratic condescension.
My feeling is that this is all quite wonderful and adds greatly to The Hobbit's cleverness and entertainment - but grant that it has nothing to do with the world of The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps one expecting that would indeed put the book down numerous times.
squire online:
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Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 17 2022, 3:44pm
Post #49 of 67
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An idea with an interesting history, then!
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I didn't know that about the concept of hamartia in Aristotle's Poetics, so it is interesting to hear it.
I suppose the reason this misrepresentation has survived is that it works - or seems to? Of course whether itworks more than superficially is another thing (having 'discovered' that about Turin or Feanor's oath, I'm not sure how it helps all that much).
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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 17 2022, 3:57pm
Post #50 of 67
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Tolkien's (almost accidental) linking of Orcs and Druedain
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I'd forgoten about that! And I do enjoy the ideas you go on to put forth ,CMackintosh:
I thought an ancient link between Orcs and Druedain was quite probable, with Orcs having been mashed up from brutally abused Avari, degenerate Maiar, and corruptible predators, as disposable footsloggers in the war against anyone contesting Melkor's sense of entitlement. And once the Orcs were let loose on the world, some of them were touched by Eru's grace, to use a set of words Tolkien would've been very familiar with, and renounced their life as predators on other speaking beings, and thus were lifted into a life of their own, as Druedain. Another version of Aule's making of the Dwarves. And since the Orcs were descended from Elves and Maiar, and the Druedain were descended from Orcs, there was always a little of that ancestral power over nature, that "magic".
The portrayal of the Druedain is also an example of something in Tolkien that has not dated well, from many readers' point of view (that is, there's a bit of 'Hollywood natives' about them for me and I think many other people). So yeta antoher example of somethng that pleases/jars is noticable or unremmarkable, according to one's own opinion, outlook, experiences, taste and personal preferences.
Hmmm - maybe we should have 'MOOETAPP" not as sort of champagne dispenser, but as an abbreviation to indicate something that has no objectively agreeable answer beceause it is about each reader's Mindset, Opinion, Outlook, Experiences, Taste and Personal Preferences
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