Arrogant critics?

[Hex]

I fully support your right to do so

eeek not "wedding" speech, "birthday" speech... need more coffee.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

My own feeling is that a book should work best on its own (perhaps there’s an exception for full-on parodies)

Yes... Or Terry Prachett.

 

[Extollager]

In random fragments of thought: Pickwick Papers is the one Dickens I just cannot read

I hear you. Many years ago, I read Arthur Machen referring to three books that he read again and again, which gave him the experience (as he defines it) of "ecstasy": Don Quixote, Gargantua and Pantagruel, and The Pickwick Papers. By now I've read all of Dickens's novels at least once except Dombey and Son (which I expect to enjoy) ... and The Pickwick Papers, which I have tried repeatedly, till I have decided honor is satisfied and I probably will never read it.

Yet Pickwick was beloved for generations. I conclude that, in my case, the book's failure to appeal to me is probably due to a considerable degree to a defect in myself and in the atmosphere of our times.

 

[Extollager]

I do, though, wonder if it's fair to assume that because someone doesn't enjoy reading about hobbits walking in the woods, you can necessarily accuse them of not having had those experiences themselves.

Well, what I said was "I suspect that in some cases they don't like Tolkien because he loves things that they have not experienced or not much, and they resent that." I honestly have wondered about that possibility. I don't assume it of any particular person, nor of everyone who disparages Tolkien's writing, but I do think it probable that this is sometimes the case, and perhaps not rarely. It's one thing to object to how an author handles material: to explain why the author's words fail vis-a-vis the subject. It's another thing to object, evidently, to the subject itself. For example, you'll see disparaging remarks about the "bourgeois coziness" of the hobbits' lives*: as if it is in itself reprehensible to belong to the middle class and to enjoy being with one's family, having a pleasant place in which to live, etc. Orwell could object to moral shortcomings of the middle class (as of other social groups), but he was smart and decent enough also to be able to write about simple "bourgeois" pleasures like a nice cup of tea. Unfortunately I observe that Orwell is pretty well falling off the map for the present generation of media people, students, and teachers, whose foolishness would not stand up to Orwell's scorn.... But I digress. The next time you see someone disparaging Tolkien, check and see if they give any evidence of appreciating the kind of thing about which he is writing, such as perseverance, friendship, self-denial, the natural world, limits on the power of the State, hope, etc. If someone values such things but shows that Tolkien's treatment of them is defective, that could be a discussion worth reading.

*Tolkien gives us the hobbits' Shire as it appears to them, but some critics forget (or never read enough to discover) that Tolkien goes on to reveal that their pleasant and secure way of life depends on the Rangers, etc.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I don't like Tolkien because I find him boring - I also found Dark Materials dull I read the first of each and wasn't bothered enough by them or engrossed by them. Narnia on the other hand had me engaged from the start to the end - it gave me pieces that whilst i'm not religious have stayed with me to this day. Lucy's time with Aslan was always my favourite and the questions the Last Battle raised if anything are why I am not Christian.

 

[Extollager]

Generally speaking, I have problems with the argument that to truly “get” an author’s decisions you have get his references or antecedents beyond what the average reader would know, just because it’s such a good way of getting the author out of criticism.

I'm sure you're right, that advocates for a writer can make elaborate (but unconvincing) defenses of their favorite based on claims about the author's allusiveness, etc. On the other hand, in fact authors do make such allusions. Sometimes they may rightly assume that most readers would perceive those allusions. Tolkien's likely allusion to Pickwick could be an example; Dickens's book once was part of the furniture of a great many readers' minds (and the birthday speeches "work" on their own level even if one doesn't suspect the Dickens possibility). But never mind Tolkien. We suspect or know that even quite "esoteric" allusions may be found in, say, Love's Labour's Lost, or any number of other works, notably in the 20th century, such as in Yeats's poems, where the esoteric no longer needs quotation marks, but really is present.

But having said that, I should say that I think one of the good things about LotR is that it is not generally a work marked by literary games-playing. That would be contradictory to Tolkien's deeply held beliefs about the integrity of a "sub-creative" work of the imagination. I should revise my remark about a "meta-narrative." What I meant, rather, was that Tolkien is a more resourceful writer than he is sometimes given credit for being. I think he is drawing, likely without realizing it, on the whole British literary tradition, not in order to write a postmodern book but because his imagination has absorbed so much and because he loves so much. LotR is not, in some postmodern way, all about the author being Clever. It's a work of imagination, but an imagination that has deep roots in a literary heritage and a language and landscape -- the last-named being not only the landscape of the English Midlands but of Europe. It is a labor of love indeed.

 

[Toby Frost]

I completely agree. There’s something very honest about LOTR, almost naïve in a good way. I think that too makes it hard to judge, especially in the way that modern readers are trained to expect subtext or irony. But at the same time it’s the product of considerable skill. It’s not ironic or tongue in cheek: you have to take it on face value. I always got the feeling that Mervyn Peake was writing in a very slightly wry way. I didn’t get that feeling as much with Tolkien. As you say, it isn’t “clever” in that way, although it is the product of a very clever mind.

 

[aThenian]

To revert to Pullman - I've read his comments on Narnia/Lewis in the past, and found them intensely irritating. His criticisms seem to me to be at a very superficial level - Narnia has one character (Susan) condemned for being interested in her looks - therefore Narnia is sexist and bad (never mind that Narnia contains some of the most delightful and rounded female characters in children's fiction); Narnia uses the Arabian Nights as a model for the wonderfully exciting and entertaining Calormenes, therefore Narnia is racist and bad (but why shouldn't Lewis make use of the Arabian Nights tradition, and is there any way he could have portrayed an Arab society that Pullman would have found acceptable?); and, of course - Narnia is overtly Christian in inspiration, therefore it is peddling children religious fairytales, so once again Narnia bad (though it seems to me that it is the Christianity that gives Narnia its richness and depth - and I say this as a non-religious person.)

It's as if Pullman is holding his nose and condemning Lewis according to his rather pompously held checklist of values. And yet the start of HDM is set in a very romanticised, traditional, elitist surely "backward looking" Oxford - and boy, does he wallow in all those rituals, there's no subversiveness at all. (Interestingly Tolkien and Lewis, who actually were Oxford dons, never chose college life as an ingredient for their fantasies.) And then, it seems to me, that Pullman actually takes the inherently hierarchical nature of his Oxford set-up, and entrenches it further, by adding the daemons - if you're the Master of a College, or a Lord, you get an eagle or leopard, if you're a servant you get a dog. It practically is medieval in its fixed hierarchy. And then Pullman accuses Lewis and Tolkien (for essentially this is what it boils down to) or being reactionary...

 

[aThenian]

some readers have objected to the comedy of the first chapter, with Bilbo's after-dinner speech and all. It has seemed to them mere self-indulgence

Now, I love that chapter. (Why would anyone object to comedy, anyhow? Isn't that one of Tolkien's strengths - the sheer lightheartedness at times?) I find a lot of Tolkien's prose powerful and moving. If anything grates a bit at times, its the noble, high flown speech of the Gondal chapters (and I'm always glad he didn't go back and rewrite everything in this vein, as apparently he did consider). I would say if you are going to criticise LOTR on literary terms, it's easiest to do so on structure (like many I could do without Tom Bombadil, and there are other parts of the plot which are a bit baggy).

But really, I think. it's what you like and what you don't. I love LOTR, for the same reasons others have mentioned: the richness of the world, the melancholy, the landscapes, the friendships, the sense of history... I'm always totally immersed, even though I don't share Tolkien's values in many respects - e.g. I don't have any nostalgia at all for pre-industrial English rural life. But I still love the Shire.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

never chose college life as an ingredient for their fantasies.

Well, except perhaps "That Hideous Strength" which uses college politics very well

condemned for being interested in her looks

Except that is actually only a symptom, not the reason given if one actually reads the text. c.f. Lucy and Susan in Prince Caspian, you can see the "rot" starting to set in. I always thought a bogus complaint.

 

[Extollager]

like many I could do without Tom Bombadil

Care to comment on this? Maybe it will help -- ?

Tom Bombadil

There's another aspect to Bombadil too. Briefly, I've argued that one of the strengths of The Lord of the Rings is that it surveys the Four Loves (affection, friendship, romantic love, self-giving love or charity). In the Bombadil and Goldberry material, we see the effervescent happiness of newlyweds. Time seems to be something different for them. Thus though they've perhaps been together for thousands of years as hobbits and men measure time, for them they are newlyweds and don't have children yet. I'm a little shy of mentioning this, but it was my own experience as a newly married young man years ago that gave me the key. My happiness with my young bride set loose in me a torrent of verbal playfulness that, I later realized, was very like Bombadil's nonsense. I don't think I will be more specific than that. I couldn't prove that that kind of experience was at work in Tolkien, but I wonder. Glimpses we get of Tolkien's early married days suggest to me that it was, e.g. the humorous and slightly erotic picture he drew of his half-dressed wife arranging her dark hair. See also the first poem in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, about Bombadil's courtship, wedding, and honeymoon.

So now I feel quite strongly that if one took out the Bombadil material, LotR really would lose something, even though I agree that it is detachable from the plot. There's a lot more to the book than plot. It's as much a poem as a plot-driven story.

(The Four Loves article is here:

Touchstone Archives: Rings of Love

 

[aThenian]

Well, except perhaps "That Hideous Strength" which uses college politics very well

Ah, don't know that one.

Except that is actually only a symptom, not the reason given if one actually reads the text. c.f. Lucy and Susan in Prince Caspian, you can see the "rot" starting to set in. I always thought a bogus complaint.

Yes, I agree with you. In fact, you could even argue that it displays a certain sexism on the part of Lewis's critics, that they home in on the Susan's interest in "nylons and lipstick" as being the whole issue, and then claim that this necessarily implies an attack on the entire female sex.

 

[Ursa major]

The very word "philology" will sound strange.

Grimm times indeed....

 

[Toby Frost]

Ah, don't know that one.

I'm a bit short of time, so I'll summarise: it's bonkers.

 

[aThenian]

There's a lot more to the book than plot. It's as much a poem as a plot-driven story.

I do agree, absolutely. Plot probably isn't really why anyone reads (and loves) LOTR. I admit I often skip Tom Bombadil when I'm rereading, but I don't feel that it shouldn't be there, either. LOTR is a story drawn from a vast mass of material, and maybe Bombadil could have ended up as an appendix - like Aragorn and Arwen - and for me that would be fine, but every reader probably has their own view on which bits are essential. Hmm, maybe time for a reread...and will read your article too.

 

[aThenian]

Care to comment on this? Maybe it will help -- ?

Tom Bombadil

I think, for me, there are enough still points and contrasts in the book without Bombadil. There is the Shire, Rivendell, Lorien, the Ents - and the harking back to the Entwives, Sam and Frodo's quiet time in Ithilien (which I really love)...the peaceful passages of everyday are terribly important, I agree. But I find Bombadil a bit...random? Whimsical, almost. But that is just me. I suppose another thing that maybe makes me uneasy about Bombadil are his magical powers - I think one of the strengths of LOTR is that is uses its magic fairly sparingly (and of course the most magical artefact of all, the Ring, cannot be used). Bombadil, by contrast, seems to be able to do pretty much anything and everything, and of course is utterly immune to the power of the Ring. Admittedly, that is just within his own realm, but it seems to subvert the structure of the book in some ways, by introducing an arbitrary element to what is otherwise a fairly consistent system of magic/power.

 

[Extollager]

aThenian, I do hope you'll reread the book as you suggest you might.

I'm very doubtful that Tolkien would say Bombadil possesses any magical powers. Magic has no power over him; and he possesses a natural and wholesome authority over his realm. But he's no magician.

 

[Extollager]

By the way, I think Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis's essay "Talking of Bicycles" may help the present discussion about critics and LotR. Lewis proposes that there may be one of four modes of experience or attitudes towards something:

1.unenchanted
2.enchanted
3.disenchanted
4.re-enchanted

I believe that some of the people who disparage LotR are "unenchanted" vis-a-vis things it celebrates, as I indicated in nos. 37 and 44 above. They have never, or only a little, known things such as love for a particular place, or close friendship; or in some other domains of experience have not known, or known well, what Tolkien is celebrating and defending. Others are people who may have known such experience but, thanks to their education or whatever, have become disenchanted. For example, they may have youthfully loved literature and learning and then, unfortunately, gone to university and been immersed in literary theory, fashionable leftism, and so on, and lost their first love. For the unenchanted, Tolkien's work may seem bogged down with a lot of stuff that gets in the way of the excitement of battles and monsters. For the disenchanted, Tolkien's book may be a colossal exercise in Marxist "false consciousness," the kind of "conservative rubbish" that needs to be cleared away so that we will all get in board with activism for social justice, etc. -- or just irrelevant to one's task of Getting Ahead.

Most of the "Bicycles" essay, but not its beginning and end, may be found here:

Present Concerns

For some reason, the link will take you to page 66 of a different essay. You lose page 67, and the Google material begins with page 68. You also lose page 72, the last page. I think there's enough of the essay here that the fourfold "scheme" will be pretty clear.

 

[Nick B]

This discussion, (though I have not really been involved, has made me want to re-read LotR. It has been some 12 years since my last venture into middle earth.

To me, it is a powerful story of sacrifice, struggle, love and loss, and eventualy the triumph of good over evil. The cost is high. The epic scale, and heroism always touch me to the core. No other work has truly had the effect on me that LotR has.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've said before that I loved The Hobbit. However, by the time I read Lord of the Rings my friends had told me everything that happens in it, and I'd also watched the cartoon adaptation - both of which killed any sense of 'the journey of discovery' that makes a book most enjoyable.

I've been increasingly tempted to re-read it, though, along with a few other classic sf/f books that I know only by reputation. I suspect that I won't be able to appraise in the same technical terms as a modern novel, precisely because it was never written to be one.