
Is Tolkien Actually Any Good? (2003) - interesse
http://www.rilstone.talktalk.net/tolk.htm
======
mattmanser
I have read amazing books with boring stories. I have read amazing stories
with poor writing. Both are good for very different reasons.

Tolkien still stands out in my mind as one of the best story tellers I have
ever read. He was such a good story teller that people are retelling them in
every way they can imagine in books, films, role play games, computer games,
all sorts of media. D and D, warcraft, Diablo, all Tolkien rip-offs. Even
Harry Potter.

The awe inspiring bit _is_ the ambiguity, the hints of all the other stories
untold, the heroes with bit parts, mentioned in passing. He didn't just write
a story, he wrote a whole universe. What he did is rare, I can think of only a
handful of other works that pull off the immersion convincingly, Isaac
Asimov's Foundation, Ian M. Bank's Culture, Lucas' Star Wars (if they'd have
just left it at 4-6) and Herbert's Dune (just). And none of them quite touch
the awesomeness of middle earth.

He wasn't just good, he was amazing. Pure fluke perhaps, as the article hints
at, but what a great one.

~~~
crux
I think the article somewhat belies some of the assumptions underpinning your
comment. It's pretty clear that Tolkien was not being terribly _original_ in
creating his universe; his style was quite directly a pastiche of historical
styles nearly the whole way through, and all the things he included there are
pretty direct adaptations of the Northern cultures and folktales he liked so
much. Beowulf and the Anglo Saxons, Germanic folklore and the Germanic tribes,
et cetera.

Not that this is really a knock against Tolkien. But I think it's important to
deal with the notion that instead of creating something new, the man mostly
was very, very adept and very _dilligent_ at synthesizing the epic poetry and
folklore of the various northern traditions into a huge and accessible
tapestry.

Which is good, and is very appealing to the sort of kid who spent much of his
childhood eagerly reading RPG sourcebooks and monster manuals (like me). But I
think it's very short-sighted to claim that all fantasy is a Tolkien rip-off.
<i>Tolkien</i> is a Tolkien rip-off.

~~~
mattmanser
It is important to distinguish between inspiration and ripoff.

D & D mythology is a direct ripoff of Tolkien. It was not the inspiration for
it, it was a direct ripoff. Tolkien = humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, trolls,
dragons, etc. based in a medieval timeframe with magic. D & D = humans,
dwarves, elves, orcs, trolls, dragons, etc. based in a medieval timeframe with
magic.

And a lot of modern fantasy games are direct rip-offs of d & d or tolkien
(practically the same thing).

Northern European folklore was the inspiration for Tolkien. A lot of different
sources of inspiration. There was no one story where humans, dwarves, elves,
orcs, trolls, dragons, etc. were all protagonists based in a medieval
timeframe with magic.

It's very, very different. You seem to have a penchant for words, I'm
surprised you don't see it.

------
stcredzero

        | 'Here, spring was already busy about them; fronds pierced moss and mould, 
        | larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, 
        | birds were singing. Ithilean, garden of Gondor now desolate kept still 
        | dishevelled dryad loveliness.'
    

_This is bad writing because of its use of cliches ('green-fingered' larches,
for goodness sake); because of the way it lists facts ('birds were singing')
with out really building up a picture, and because of its ham-fisted
archaisms. It's one thing to use Latinate reversals when you describing a
firey demon on a bridge ('a red sword leaped flaming'); but merely irritating
to do so when you are describing the pretty countryside. And what the heck is
'dryad loveliness', anyway?_

"Disheveled dryad loveliness" is quite evocative for me. This reminds me of
many paintings of the Romantic period, many of which are also celebrations of
nothing more than "pretty countryside." Many modern people think of such stuff
as pablum, but there are places in the world that can be so beautiful, one's
breath is taken away. (One particular brook by Glendalough on a good day, with
no one else about, for one example.) If someone has never had this experience,
I would feel sorry for them. If one's cultural background in mythology is
based on action-oriented computer games, I can see how one might be annoyed by
"pretty countryside." In a game, this is the annoying, tedious bit one has to
get through for the good parts. In real life, it is a billion times more
compelling, complex, and stirring than any game ever written until now could
ever hope to be.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Tolkien is a literary god, but I also doubt
this author has the background to fully appreciate where he's coming from.

~~~
abecedarius
That quote is a misquote; the prose felt 'off' to me, and yep, grepping for
'dryad' brings up:

Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould,
larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds
were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a
dishevelled dryad loveliness.

Comma, Spring, colon, Ithilien, 'a'. I think the essay's author has a bit of a
tin ear, from this. Tolkien had great prose style, particularly fine at
description, as here -- here's a UChicago writing instructor in agreement,
listing him among other "superlative writers of description": <http://writing-
program.uchicago.edu/courses/index.htm>

[I've only glanced through the OP; this misquote just caught my attention.]

~~~
abecedarius
So, after complaining, what do I like about this passage? The hobbits have
come through a long journey of increasing trauma and lately are skirting Hell,
looking for a way in. They find unexpected beauty in Ithilien, part of a
pattern through the whole story of havens after dangers. Here's the full
paragraph:

    
    
      Day was opening in the sky, and they saw that the mountains were now
      much further off, receding eastward in a long curve that was lost in
      the distance. Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down
      into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous
      trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the
      Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth
      of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell
      had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in
      this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of
      clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss
      and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in
      the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now
      desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.
    

It _does_ get worked up about 'pretty countryside': that last sentence
practically wants to go in a poem. (The GARden of GONdor now DESolate... _s_
ti _ll_ a _d_ i _sh_ eve _ll_ e _d_ _d_ rya _d_ _l_ ove _l_ ine _ss_.) The
'poetry' caps the paragraph where it fits in the rhythm of the telling. I
didn't notice this artifice while reading the book, except insofar as it
marked it into memory to bring the scene back from "dishevelled dryad
loveliness".

I can't resist sharing another bit of found poetry, found by a program of mine
at <http://github.com/darius/versecop> \-- at the climax of all the action,
Sam stands on Mount Doom and sees Sauron's works fall to ruin:

    
    
      ... A brief vision he had   Of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it   Towers and battlements, tall as hills,   Founded upon a mighty mountain-throne   Above immeasurable pits; great courts   And dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs,   And gaping gates of steel and adamant:   And then all passed.
    

Line after line of near-perfect iambic pentameter. I don't know if Tolkien
consciously hid a Miltonic line in his prose there -- I sort of doubt it --
but I _am_ confident it was more than coincidence that put this longest iambic
passage my program found at _this_ moment of the story. Or that it's got more
than its share of alliteration.

(Running the same program over the works of Jane Austen brought up only a few
passages of two or three lines. Austen is great, just very different.)

Back to the first paragraph, "day was opening in the sky" -- "mountains
receding eastward in a long curve" -- "Spring was already busy about them" --
"fronds pierced moss and mould" -- "Ithilien... kept still a dishelleved dryad
loveliness". It's an awfully _animate_ sort of landscape in these words,
though not obtrusively so. I think that's another way the scene's brought to
life.

There are nine and ninety ways to write, but I gotta say this is one of them.

------
gcv
I found the critique misleading. It doesn't make sense to disparage Tolkien's
Middle Earth writing without taking his background into account. He was a
scholar of Anglo-Saxon legends and literature written in Old Saxon, Old Norse,
and Old English. He was also a linguist who worked on the Oxford English
Dictionary for two years. He was an expert on Beowulf; one of his most
celebrated scholarly works is "Beowulf and the Monster Critics".

The writing in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion echoes the style of
the work he studied and taught. I understand that many modern readers find the
style and language alien; after all, the English language and English
literature evolved considerably since Beowulf. Tellingly, the author of the
critique compares Tolkien to much later authors, all of whom use ordinary
20th-century (American) English. Tolkien is a modern writer who consciously
adopted an older cadence, and the author of the critique does not seem to
understand this.

(It's worth noting that The Hobbit and the first chapter of The Fellowship of
the Ring use a whimsical, less-grandiose style. I don't have a good
explanation for this, except to guess that they originated in bedtime stories
for Tolkien's children.)

~~~
crux
The author of this critique, more than once, refers to specific Tolkien
passages and mentions which specific historical styles or texts these are
pastiche of. Why do you think he doesn't understand Tolkien's field of study?

~~~
gcv
Because he repeatedly used the words "bad writing" without providing any
support for the assertion. He just provided sample texts — sample texts which
read to me like translations of Old Saxon and Old Norse. This implied to me
that he was saying that Anglo-Saxon texts are inherently "bad writing."

------
anigbrowl
You have to read it in context. It was written around the time of World War 1,
when movies were still in their infancy and radio was limited to maritime and
military use. Evocative descriptive language was the norm, because people were
not used to thinking visually and needed all that verbal detail to fill the
imagination.

I went through much the same experience as the author, but I still think
Tolkien was OK, even though I no longer enjoy reading him so much. Sure, he's
turgid in places (the second chapter of the first volume of LOTR is easily the
worst part of the whole book), but then so's a lot of Charles Dickens' work. I
love _Great expectations_ but still wince at the hackery of _Hard
Times_...there's a reason nobody even tried to make a movie out of that one.

~~~
pasbesoin
WW II, actually.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings>

Although some Tolkien's underlying interest and work dates back to WW I.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit#Background>

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh, good catch. It was Tolkien who served in WW1, not his son. Sorry about
that. And I'm not sure its right to emphasise the contemporary literature from
his youth as I did, considering how much he was influenced by epic medieval
poetry. I should know better, I did school projects on him.

------
klb
The author of the article is a huge douchebag when he says things like "we can
see why people who read real books hate Tolkien like a phobia". Are you
kidding me? Get off your ivory tower. Criticism of Tolkien or anyone else is
justified, but phrases like that make my blood boil. Who decides what makes a
real book?

~~~
gcv
It's pretty simple, actually. Literary fiction makes for "real books," genre
fiction does not. The terminology is unnecessarily loaded, IMO. Both styles
have their followings, both can be highly enjoyable, and both have established
and respected awards.

I think the distinction between the two has to do with the primary driver of
the book. Genre fiction tends to be about telling a story about people and
events. Plot and character both get strong billing, but plot dominates. In
literary fiction, though, plot tends to be unimportant and character analysis
dominates. A whole book can take place inside the mind of one person over the
course of, say, one uneventful day.

This isn't an iron-clad rule, of course. By my definition, A Wizard of
Earthsea is basically literary fiction; not coincidentally, English teachers
sometimes assign it. Occasionally, a writer sprinkles fantastic or pulpy
elements in a work of literary fiction and earns high praise; Gabriel García
Márquez and Salman Rushdie do this routinely. It was kind of amazing that
Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go — very much a dystopian science fiction novel
— made the Booker shortlist in 2005.

------
noonespecial
_Tolkien was not a 'perfectionist', inventing history because Middle-earth
demanded it. Inventing history was a little game, a 'secret vice'; Middle-
earth grew out of the game. And it is clear that he did not take the game half
as seriously as some of his fans._

This is supplied as a criticism, but for me this is what makes Tolkien great.
I dislike immensely that feeling that authors are just throwing in fantasy-ish
sounding names and toss-away references to "deepen" the story. I can tell when
they're doing it, its cheap feeling, and it sucks.

The one thing you know for damn sure about Tolkien, is that when he mentions
some ancillary character or place reference, not only did he _not_ make it up
on the spot, there's very likely a whole file cabinet drawer on it somewhere
because he'd been thinking about it for 20 years.

It made his world _huge_ , internally consistent at nearly every turn, and
immensely satisfying to read about even if his prose was "dense" or "cliche".

The fact that it wasn't intended explicitly to be a book, and was something he
did for his own amusement is probably a key ingredient in the magic.

------
neilk
I think the author is right that the main pleasure of Tolkien is to revel in
the vast world he created, both strange and yet archetypally familar. Where I
disagree is that this is necessarily a bad thing.

I think we lack the vocabulary to describe this art form of building
convincing universes. We can only conceive of it as a subordinate to
narrative, with words like 'mise-en-scene'. But that doesn't quite cover what
Star Wars or Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons or Grand Theft Auto really are.
World-building is arguably the dominant art form of the late 20th century and
early 21st.

------
abecedarius
The article calls Le Guin a good writer and Tolkien a bad one. Le Guin herself
writes:

"I picked for comparison three master stylists: E. R. Eddison, Kenneth Morris,
and J. R. R. Tolkien; which may seem unfair to any other authors mentioned.
But I do not think it is unfair. In art, the best is the standard. When you
hear a new violinist, you do not compare him to the kid next door; you compare
him to Stern and Heifetz."

and:

"Tolkien writes a plain, clear English. Its outstanding virtue is its
flexibility, its variety. It ranges easily from the commonplace to the
stately, and can slide into metrical poetry, as in the Tom Bombadil episode,
without the careless reader's even noticing. Tolkien's vocabulary is not
striking; he has no ichor; everything is direct, concrete, and simple."

[http://books.google.com/books?id=ksOjjuy3issC&pg=PA83...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ksOjjuy3issC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=elfland+poughkeepsie)

------
cpr
A older friend of mine wrote this great assessment of Tolkien's work:

<http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0127.html>

(there's no way to escape its essential Catholic vision).

------
Tycho
The author quoted a Tolkien sentence about 'sombre trees like dark clouds on
the hillside' as evidence of bad writing... but personally I thought that was
a brilliant phrase.

I wonder how many books had Appendices before LOTR (fiction works obviously).
I remember I couldn't wait to finish the main novel so I could investigate the
Appendix!

~~~
elblanco
_'sombre trees like dark clouds on the hillside'_

Is amazingly evocative. I can see that clearly in my mind. It's perhaps no
coincidence why so many people, after seeing the movies remarked at how
similar the movies were to what they had imagined when reading the books --
the imagery was just _that_ good.

------
ErrantX
Tolkein is certainly not the best writer; but on the scale of fantasy writing
he is still near the top.

He always saved it for me by having such a wide and soaring vision of middle
earth and then delivering it.

The silmarillion is horrible though :-)

~~~
stcredzero
I just read The Silmarillion as a long extended appendix of LotR.

------
hsmyers
must not feed the trolls, must not feed the trolls...cause when the sun comes
out they will all turn to stone ;-)

------
jafl5272
The article talks about how slow the book is. He fails to realize that Tolkien
is writing about a very deep game of strategy. It's like watching grandmasters
play chess. Sometimes there is a flurry of captured pieces, but a lot of it is
maneuvering, which may seem boring to those who don't understand it.

------
crazydiamond
> In order to get there, we have had to follow, in remorseless day by day
> detail the Hobbits' walking holiday from the Shire to Rivendell, the
> highlight of which is the monumentally irritating Tom Bombadil, who
> communicates entirely in jingles

Strangely, I loved the detailed walk through the forests. It made me feel like
I was actually undergoing the walk. The entire book made me feel I made the
journey!

I read LOTR first time at around 39 and loved it. It's time now for a re-read
at 45. However, I've tried reading Silmarilion several times but never been
able to complete it.

------
teilo
Perhaps lost in this discussion is the fact that for all practical purposes,
Tolkien invented the modern fantasy fiction genre as we know it. Elves,
trolls, dwarfs, orcs, wizards, halflings, and all that. He is also the
predecessor to modern fantasy gaming, ala EQ and WoW.

Yes, one may find other examples of "fanciful" works, for instance, George
Eliot's "The Lifted Veil", early horror works of Stoker and Shelley, or
perhaps Jules Verne (which is not fantasy, so much as sci-fi), but modern
fantasy, as we know it, began with Tolkien.

------
wrs
"But it also turns the book into a sort of puzzle, a complicated thread of
back and forward reference which the dedicated enthusiast can attempt to
solve. ... If you do follow all the references then, of course, it all hangs
together beautifully."

Interesting that LOST _looked_ like this sort of story, and drew in a bunch of
dedicated fans on that basis, but turned out to be a more traditional
character-based story after all -- where the references do not, in fact, hang
together. Then out came the torches!

------
perlpimp
Meanderings of fantasy's writers make me nauseous. Tolkien's no exception.
What is good writing is an extremely subjective topic. Suppose his work is
some sort of accomplishment... though I never understood people's facination
with it.

English is not my first language, maybe thats one of the reasons I prefer
terse and to the point, yet beautiful writing. In my personal opinion, fantasy
is good for those with excellent reading speed.

~~~
elblanco
The celebration of Tolkien has much to do with the way he summarized the rich
traditional mythology of the English language and then wove a beautiful story
into that fabric.

------
mark_l_watson
My grandmother read The Hobbit to me when I was 8. I read it to my
stepdaughter when she was 8. Awesome book that we all enjoyed. Why the
question?

------
OttoSnard
Personally, I find Tolkien unreadable. I much prefer Michael Moorcock or
Robert E Howard.

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe not unreadable, but I definitely enjoyed the story he was telling much
more than the writing he used to tell it.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, but again this has to be taken into context, The Hobbit was a
children's story, and LotR was originally its follow-up that developed into
its own.

Today, I would classify LotR as as Young Adult novel and _not_ an adult piece
of fiction. Honestly, it's themes were vastly mature compared to the Hobbit,
however they weren't exceptionally mature for the time it was written.
Consider that Return of the King came out in the same year as Lolita, and
Fellowship/Two Towers came out in the same year as Lord of the Flies, which is
another 'adult' novel that is arguably a Young Adult novel, although IMO deals
with a much more mature subject.

Hobbits are a long lived race. Frodo had only recently 'came of age' when the
story begins, IIRC at 33 years old. Considering the traditional ages of
'coming of age' I'd bet he was the maturity equivalent of ~15 years old, and
he certainly behaves like it in the beginning.

IMO LotR was a great YA novel, just like The Hobbit was a great children's
novel. They're amazing stories that you can sit down and read with you kids,
but you're not necessarily going to be enjoying them as much as they are, and
in 20-30 years time, your kids might be reading them to your grand kids and
feeling the exact same way.

~~~
jimbokun
I enjoyed Lord of the Ring far more as an adult than when I originally read it
as a teenager.

