Epic Pooh - Moorcock Review of Tolkein/Lewis

[con]

in all honesty i never greatly enjoyed lord of the rings. i found myself admiring the man vision of the world for his time more so than the quality of the writing. however i did find myself enjoying the hobbit massively about 8 years ago.i read it 6 times.even them i would probaly have likened it to a fairytale. i believe tolkien does have a fairytale writing style and his transferring of this style into a more adult environment in the lord of the rings didnt quite work for me.however the degree of the criticism that was unveiled in this review is the comments of a man who obviously fails to grasp the delights a fairy tale like story can induce in a person young or old especially in the fantasy jonra.this is a man who didnt even enjoy the hobbit!!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by con

however the degree of the criticism that was unveiled in this review is the comments of a man who obviously fails to grasp the delights a fairy tale like story can induce in a person young or old especially in the fantasy jonra.this is a man who didnt even enjoy the hobbit!!

Well, no, not really. Moorcock values the original fairy tales as well as several modern handlings of similar material, and has written some solid praise of each at various times (there are several such comments in the course of this article, as a matter of fact). It has nothing to do with not being able to appreciate such tales, but rather with the problems he sees with Tolkien's style in particular, and even more with the ideology which informs the narrative voice in Tolkien's work.

[con]

yes but he likens it to the idelogy which informs cs lewis writings.which i dont think is altogether similar enough for the comparison.and also he is discouraging repeated attempts at fairytale styles of writing in future fantasy you can argue that he has no real problem with this fantasy style but he is encouraging the fantasy epic to go more along the lines of malazan books or wheel of time.great fantasy but there has to be room for the previous aswell.its not just the writing style hes critisizing its the concept.

[j. d. worthington]

Again, I have to disagree. (I can't imagine Moorcock supporting the idea of more fantasy such as The Wheel of Time. That is the sort of thing which would really bring out a diatribe from him!) As for the ideology between Tolkien and Lewis... actually, they are very similar, and from many of the same sources. It is simply that Tolkien didn't go down the path of blatant allegory, but rather let his views on such things inform his work in its own way, whereas Lewis became both a Christian apologist and more than a little heavy-handed with his preaching the message.

No, what Moorcock has a beef with is the sort of fantasy which insists on infantilizing its audience, which is how he perceives large swathes of Tolkien's work (and, to some degree, I have to agree with that perception). It isn't the "previous" sorts of styles he objects to, but Tolkien's particular sort of approach (and that of writers with a similar slant); when it comes to learning from and extending older types of storytelling, Moorcock has been very much a supporter of such throughout his career, both as writer and as editor of New Worlds. He himself has frequently paid homage to various writers of the past, from older sff writers to those of the Gothics and the Victorian and Edwardian eras -- even Spenser has had an (openly avowed) influence on some of his work. And, as I mentioned earlier, he has praised quite a few writers who use the fairy-tale approach; he just prefers them to have more of the complexity in Weltanschauung of the originals....

[con]

two things.i believe that tolkeins ability to talk down to a reader, that talking down is an element of what fairy tale is.and also why do you say the wheel of time would not be something he would champion.admittedly it is happy go lucky at times but the dialogue structures realities of war and strife and close contact with the internal struggles of the characters seems to be the type of work a fan of ursula le guin would admire.

[j. d. worthington]

For one thing, Moorcock is very chary of planned series of that nature; while not denying them the possibility of artistic worth, he is more than aware that the majority of such things quickly degenerate into repetitiousness and inflated bombast... if they were ever anything else to begin with. "World building", per se, interests Moorcock little, as he indicates in his article. It is an aspect of the misplaced pedanticism so prevalent in much of sf and fantasy.

For another, such things tend to simply rehash simplistic views of things, rather than coming to terms with the moral complexities of the issues they (supposedly) revolve around. The appearance of moral complexity in this sort of work tends, more often than not, to be just that -- appearance; it lacks genuine substance and is very much surface, following stereotyped, flat handlings of such matters. It presses button "A" to get the response "relevancy", and button "C" to get the response "deeply philosophical", rather than genuinely requiring either the writer or reader to participate in examining any of these things in a meaningful fashion. Their internal struggles are, by and large, simply the same thing we've seen countless times before, in slightly different dress. They aren't organic -- that is, they don't emerge from the internal growth of the story or the characters -- they are calculated and false. They are hackneyed and have been done before, usually better.

And, simply, the majority of them are just gawdawfully written. The prose is serviceable at best, often meandering and vague, frequently confused, full of solicisms and poor constructions, hackneyed (again!) structures and tropes, and just general, all-around slipshod craftsmanship. Le Guin, whatever her faults may be at times, is most often a very careful craftsperson, conscientious with what she puts on paper. Such was not the case with, for instance, Richard Jordan. To put it bluntly, Jordan was a hack, plain and simple. That he had some innate talent, I will not deny; but that it ever resulted in anything of genuine worth is extremely dubious, to say the least.

(I mean no offense to you personally, but I've read far too much to have much patience with the likes of Jordan, I'm afraid.)

[con]

ok i actually lost intrest on jordan couple of years back and in no way would i consider him one of my favourite authors, however there is some originality there. its fair to say some elements could even be described as cheesy but i would not consider the man to be a hack.i dont see any real part of his writing struggle to be deep meaningfull and philosophical.the feelings of the characters their desires and struggles are simply expressed they dont veer into obscurity with an aim of dazing the reader into the notion that he is experiencing something profound.the man tells simplistic enough of a tale(the first book was split in two and distributed as a childrens fantasy i know because this is how i started reading him) but with intelligence and emotional insight.i think retaliation against someone like jordan is an oversight by those of us who expect innovation on a grand scale every time they read a new book( i dont mean any disrespect also and just my point of view).incedentally your viewpoint on wheel of time doesnt stretch to the malazan books does it?

[j. d. worthington]

Not read the Malazan books at this point; one of these days I will probably do so, but as at the moment I have a "to-be-read" list for about ten years ahead....

[con]

hey let me know in 10 to 11 years if ya get to it.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by con

hey let me know in 10 to 11 years if ya get to it.

Always assuming I haven't kicked the bucket by then....

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I persevered with the malazan books for 5 volumes - more than any other epic fantasy series has ever gotten out of me in a long while. Then, I gave up. Multi-volume epic fantasy demands a certain willingness for prolonged immersion that I find it hard to muster up no matter how good the work at hand might be.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by knivesout

I persevered with the malazan books for 5 volumes - more than any other epic fantasy series has ever gotten out of me in a long while. Then, I gave up. Multi-volume epic fantasy demands a certain willingness for prolonged immersion that I find it hard to muster up no matter how good the work at hand might be.

That's a shame because for me it's probably the greatest EPIC fantasy series I've ever read, hence my regular habit of expounding its virtues. You could always wait 'til the final book arrives next year and then complete the 5 final volumes. Think of it as a break between innings or as a rest at the halfway point of a marathon.

J.D. really would enjoy them too IMO.

[Window Bar]

These kinds of debates occur in virtually all aspects of our lives:

Salmon in a wine sauce vs. boiled beef and cabbage;
Artfully tailored French fashions vs. a homemade hippie dress;
The Barcelona Museum of Art vs. a half-timbered country cottage;
A ten-year-old vintage cabernet vs. a fragrant home-brewed beer;
Artfully-thin ballerina vs a bouncing buxom woman;
The architecture of a Bach chorale vs the plaintive longing in an O'Carolan harp air...

I'm wasting pixels here -- the list is as long as anyone cares to make it. My point (assuming there is one) is that life offers many treasures. I pity those that insist upon limiting themselves to a very few.

Hmmm, may not... I guess my list above could have included "an ascetic monk vs. a lover of the broadness of life."

-- WB