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Comments
Remember that Tolkien was essentially writing the story he wanted to read, and the popularity of LotR in spite of its more obtuse and unwieldy moments speaks volumes about the quality of the rest of the writing. It certainly has its moments of pacing failure from a technical perspective, but they're not actually that common. Given his audience -- namely himself and fellow academics in history, mythology and languages -- I'd say his failures are context-dependant and subject to interpretation by an audience he didn't much consider during the writing.
I also note that his terminology was fantastic; "long sword" and "mail" are used rather than modern colloquial terms, which even C.S. Lewis fell prey to.
And everything about Alex's love for LotR's mythology now makes sense
I know all that, but I don't think it doesn't particularly enhance LotR's flaws in comparison.
I mean, yes, Tolkien did intend to make his stories as mythological as possible, and more about the middle earth and its history than about Frodo, Bilbo or Turin, but these stories are still told within said frame. And the fact that the whole history aspect is not really enjoyable unless you're really into history, Tolkien's other books or just plain ol' exposition really hurts the books, imo.
Sometimes I make myself chuckle by thinking that perhaps the falling out between Tolkien and Lewis was in part caused by the latter's tendency to give in to anachronistic terminology. I can just imagine Tolkien nerding out.
(I also wonder if Tolkien had anything to do with that Oakshott guy, or had read his book on sword typology.)
And the fact that the whole history aspect is not really enjoyable
unless you're really into history, Tolkien's other books or just plain
ol' exposition really hurts the books, imo.
In short, Tolkien represents a one-man renaissance of European mythology. The value in his works are that he managed this while still creating enjoyable stories, even if they get bogged down from time to time in said exposition. If you're familiar with the way the Victorian era mangled, horribly, medieval history and mythology through its largely conceited cultural perspective, it quickly becomes clear that this was a huge achievement of research, scholarship and writing.
The point I'm lancing at here is that, while his work has flaws from a contemporary mainstream perspective, they're extremely minor in comparison to his overall skill and relevance as an academic, historian, linguist and writer.
I'd never dream of calling Tolkien a bad writer. Hell, it's a matter of skill that he actually creates a compelling story despite his heavy flaws. However, the Lord of The Rings is mostly important for what it awakened in the public consciousness of literature, and quite frankly fantasy writers' desire to two-step in line with that novel by creating needlessly complex political systems and histories that are completely inconsequential to the story writ large are what is plaguing the genre.
I've still yet to be told why I should read Game of Thrones rather than just watch the TV show, for example.
I say "somewhat historical" because it's set in a fantasy setting that just happens to follow the actual rules of our own late medieval period. It's really good, if having too much nudity to comfortably watch with one's own family. But hey, HBO.
And frankly, Tolkien has just as many brilliantly-crafted sections and lines as he had ponderous ones. His descriptions of large battles also fall completely and utterly under the general abstraction-heavy style of Norse mythology, such as his use of present tense verb forms ("sword swinging, steel singing, no fucks giving"). In addition, his style actually morphed to suit the perspective. For instance, the sections dealing primarily with Hobbits are written in a style contemporary to himself, whereas those dealing with the perspective of the human beings is much more powerfully mythological.
I find that people generally tend to overemphasise Tolkien's writing flaws. I would argue, as a diehard Tolkien fan, that those flaws make some chapters an absolute chore to read, with the aforementioned forest-based chapters forming most of those examples. When swords were swung and Hobbit songs sung, however, the flaws generally attributed to his writing diminished.
I mean, yeah, I get that there were flaws. But the way some people talk about it, you'd think the entire book was painful to read. If that was the case, there'd be no way it'd have ever gotten popular. And hell, look at the literary wanking off surrounding Shakespeare, and his form of English is alien enough to make interpretation an actual task while inexperienced with his work.
As for what's plaguing the genre, I'd argue that extreme world building is sympomatic more than anything. There are some far bigger issues stemming mostly from a lack of proper grounding. Most fantasy writers are heavily mistaken about the medieval period, aren't well-read on mythology and draw their main inspiration from secondary or tertiary sources (such as Narnia or Dungeons and Dragons) rather than drawing their ideas from the "neutral" starting position that is an understanding of history and mythology. Tolkien sort of cheated in that respect, as his knowledge of history and mythology allowed him to kitbash a general structure and fill in the blanks. Few writers have such a systematic, efficient and well-grounded approach.
It's also worth remembering that part of what Tolkein was trying to do was to create an epic national saga for England, which didn't really have one, of the same kind as the Finnish or Icelandic sagas. To the extent that his novel created races like Hobbits and Orcs which are now almost treated as if they were creatures of "real" legends, he succeeded, although that went way beyond England.
Unfortunately, it has to be said that he was better at myth-making and world-building than at writing characters. A lot of the LOTR characters are ciphers (Legolas) or a bit stock (Sam Gamgee is every comic faithful servant you ever came across in a novel). The advantage of the films? Actors can compensate for that.