Which authors have disappointed you the most?

[soulsinging]

So,yes,it's all about philosophy etc...I suppose that's the same with every book we read. I can sometimes ignore stuff like this if a story is 'good' enough (in other words...if I enjoy it),but not with TLOTR,the Tolkien philosophy is just too obvious and all-pervasive all the way through.
Tolkien was one of the worst for one-dimensional characters too! And the perpetuation of the old bourgeois values is also annoying (everyone in their 'proper' place)...for instance every line that Sam Gamgee utters in the books and worse,in the movies,just makes me want to cringe in horror! 'I'll sacrifice myself for the greater good sir' type of stuff...It's all,'Mr Frodo this and Mr Frodo that'...you know?
Whereas The Silmarillion was a much more kind of adult work I thought...the characters are not so juvenile and silly or whatever I suppose.

I completely agree with the characters assessment. I actually remember finding Aragorn infinitely more interesting in the movies than he ever was in the books (on the other hand, the attempt to flesh out Faramir was a miserable failure). I also felt like the writing never varied... action or reflection, it was the same tone throughout which made the action fall flat and the interludes drag.

I think the Silmarillion succeeds more because it is more episodic and closer to the sort of epic poetry Tolkien loved so much... so you could feel his prose come alive a bit more when the characters were as much gods as the heroes of Beowulf. It also has a lot of darkness and pathos, and borders on Greek tragedy at times, which gives it a more gut level impact.

That Moorcock article is interesting and I agree with much of it in the political sense (overt Christian themes, conservative views). At the same time, it doesn't really convince me as to why ipso facto "comforting = bad and challenging = good." Why does lit have to challenge and accept the dreary ambiguity of modernity to be deemed worthwhile? What's wrong with occasional escapist comfort?

It also seems hypocritical to lambast Tolkien for conservative Christian views and then praise Pullman for doing the same thing only with liberal atheist ones... isn't Tolkien challenging liberal views as much as Pullman challenges conservative ones? Why is Tolkien preaching to the choir and Pullman challenging readers? Doesn't that depend entirely on the reader? Even as a lib/atheist that agrees I found Pullman to be pretty heavy-handed with his views to the point of distraction.

Furthermore, it's interesting that despite all this, the success of LOTR in the US was mostly driven by a very liberal counterculture movement. That undercuts his implied argument that it can only be read as (gross simplification) conservative propaganda. In the states, it WAS challenging in its environmentalist overtones and a seeming critique of capitalist war machines.

On a personal note, the Richard Adams inclusion is interesting. I wonder if my more recent ambivalence to LOTR has to do with how much I loved Watership Down... which I hadn't really realized tackled many of the same themes in what I felt to be a much more exciting and engaging read.

 

[Elflock]

[/QUOTE]'the Silmarillion ... also has a lot of darkness and pathos, and borders on Greek tragedy at times, which gives it a more gut level impact'.

Yes,it's not a kid's book...

'Furthermore, it's interesting that despite all this, the success of LOTR in the US was mostly driven by a very liberal counterculture movement. That undercuts his implied argument that it can only be read as (gross simplification) conservative propaganda. In the states, it WAS challenging in its environmentalist overtones and a seeming critique of capitalist war machines'.

Yeah,well as I said,I can't argue these things intellectually like some of you lot!!
I know what you mean and it was the same in England and everywhere else too. We were idealistic teenage hippies in Australia in the early 70's who read Tolkien because older people told us it was 'cool'. Like Carlos Casteneda and Herman Hesse and that....right? (you had to be there...
But Moorcock sort of says that in this quote below...he just has a bit of a different take on it,like there's not a lot of difference between Hippies and house wives...

"I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anaesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits, and for rabbits".

But really for me,all intellectual considerations with books,authors,writing etc are almost irrelevant...I just like some things and I don't like some other things. I don't care why! The interesting thing for me is that it's often the so-called more 'literary' authors who I don't like!!