Difference between Tolkien and the 'modern Fantasy' authors?

[power to the J]

Originally Posted by pyan

Well, I can tell that you and I are never going to agree on this question, so I'm not going to say much on the subject, because I have the feeling that it would degenerate into an ad hominem argument.... but I really don't see how you can criticise LotR for being too slow and introducing irrelevant details (Like what, by the way? I'd be interested to know which "elements introduced that end up coming to nothing" you refer to are), and then praise WoT for being epic, when it degenerates into a floundering morass of discussion on skirt lengths, braid-pulling and concepts hacked wholesale from just about everything published previously....

Possibly because the book is so good that it's used as a yardstick to measure every other heroic fantasy by?
I mean it's been a runaway best seller for over fifty years, consistently tops polls on "Favourite Fantasy Novels", continually gains new readers, young and old, and is one of the few fantasy novels that can be read and re-read with pleasure. If Jordan's writing enjoys the same level of popularity in 2057 as Tolkien's does now, I'll eat my hat.

Yeah I think that it's pointless for us to get into an argument over this. I like Jordan more than Tolkien, you like Tolkien more than Jordan.

[pyan]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Part of the problem, it seems to me after many such discussions with people (especially younger readers -- say, below 30) is that there's a huge trend to see even fiction writing as simply the conveying of information, in the sense of plot, rather than even being aware of the richness of the experience of reading, seeing (and feeling) the textures, sounds, colors, tones, nuances, and subtleties which add so much more to any piece of writing (or painting, or music, or sculpting, etc.) than just "telling a story plainly and simply". This latter trend in fantasy (as in most twentieth-century writing) seems to have been a combination of following the modernists' (often) leanness of prose (especially as influenced by Hemingway's "Kill your darlings")

This is exactly right, jd - and, alas, is promulgated in our own Critiques section, where at least half the comments and criticisms seem to be on the lines of "Cut out the descriptive bits...they slow down the story. Don't dump information on the reader. Don't use adjectives. Don't use adverbs...."

Far too often, what's left reads like a synopsis of a story that could have been much more. Try reading Dune, or Lord Valentine's Castle or Gormenghast........

[Kissmequick]

Originally Posted by pyan

This is exactly right, jd - and, alas, is promulgated in our own Critiques section, where at least half the comments and criticisms seem to be on the lines of "Cut out the descriptive bits...they slow down the story. Don't dump information on the reader. Don't use adjectives. Don't use adverbs...."

Far too often, what's left reads like a synopsis of a story that could have been much more. Try reading Dune, or Lord Valentine's Castle or Gormenghast........

Yep I have to agree too. Ofc in the critiques section they're right in that if you don't cut it down you probably won't get it published. But I like to read as much for the beauty of the prose as for the plot, which is why I'm a grumpy old woman who prefers older books to what is being published now. *sighs*

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by pyan

This is exactly right, jd - and, alas, is promulgated in our own Critiques section, where at least half the comments and criticisms seem to be on the lines of "Cut out the descriptive bits...they slow down the story. Don't dump information on the reader. Don't use adjectives. Don't use adverbs...."

And avoid adjectives as if they were the Black Plague.... Yes, I know. While there is a certain amount of wisdom in this view, it is far too overstated. The point is to have a judicious mixture of the two (in most fiction), where it doesn't feel as if it grinds to a screeching halt, or as if it's simply a sketch or notes toward the writing of a story.

Nor is either view off the mark in all instances. Some of Georges Simenon, for instance, is extremely terse and "lightly pencilled in"... yet his work is also often very good. Hemingway himself had a certain cadence and rhythm to his prose, and chose his words very carefully so that they would carry more associations and weight than simply "cutting out all the pretty bits". On the other hand, some writers, such as Joyce or Ballard, went the opposite direction (at least in some works), creating verbal bits of impressionistic (or surrealistic, in the case of Ballard) painting, which evoke emotion and wonder and many other emotions by the sheer power of their imagery and the music of their prose. So either extreme can work... but any prose style must be chosen by the type of tale, the subject matter, the internal logic of the story itself, or the writing is going to be unsuitable and awkward for that tale, leaving it feeling completely flat and amateurish....

[Marky Lazer]

I guess all the "irrelevant details" shape Middle-Earth into a real world instead of some silly place where fairytale creatures hop around.

[Briareus Delta]

Originally Posted by Marky Lazer

I guess all the "irrelevant details" shape Middle-Earth into a real world instead of some silly place where fairytale creatures hop around.

I couldn't agree more. And the other great difference is simply... language. Tolkien was a Professor of Languages and his use of the English language is just second to none. The descriptive passages considerably enrich the book as far as I'm concerned and set him apart from all other writers.

I don't really read the fat fantasy series that dominate the bookshops today. They all seem derivative of Tolkien and pale by comparison. And the fantasy cliches abound. A horse is never a horse, it's always a 'steed', a month is never a month, it's always a 'moon'. And there is usually some unseen 'evil' persona in the background, sometimes they unashamedly call him the Dark Lord. Do something original - or don't bother.

[Marky Lazer]

In class I'm getting more and more into (and more and more lost) in phonetic and phonology; it makes me appreciate Tolkien even more.

[Pravuil]

Originally Posted by Briareus Delta

I couldn't agree more. And the other great difference is simply... language. Tolkien was a Professor of Languages and his use of the English language is just second to none. The descriptive passages considerably enrich the book as far as I'm concerned and set him apart from all other writers.

I have to agree with this point on Tolkien's use of language. Language aside however he excelled at describing the surrounding nature more than anything, to the point that nature and outdoors seemed his passion, as it most likely was aside from writing.

[power to the J]

The language is good in some parts like those that've been mentioned above, but there are other times where he absolutely goes over the top. Can anybody here who thinks J.R.R. Tolkien is so much better than a George R.R. Martin or even David Eddings say that those two (Martin and Eddings) have more fluff or useless descriptions than Tolkein?

[pyan]

more fluff or useless descriptions

Such as? Try and find a "useless description" in Tolkien: there's always a reason for description - it helps to define and describe events, people, places, etc.

Cut the descriptive parts out of any book, and you'll end up with a fast-paced, lean, sparse story, which is about as interesting to read as a telephone directory.

If you don't want descriptions in a book, read Martin Amis or Monica Ali: don't bother reading fantasy or SF - by its very nature, it's going to need information about differences between that world and ours, and that means descriptive prose.

[j. d. worthington]

Once more I have to agree with Pyan here, though I think I'd expand on it a little. It isn't just that the descriptions have serve the purpose of aiding the reader to experience (in Tolkien's case, not just visualize, but experience on many levels) his world, but they also serve symbolic, associative ends, too. Nothing in Tolkien was put there randomly... if you look at the way he struggled with, fought, refashioned, rethought, excised, rewrote, edited, and added to his work, from the original versions of what would become the Silmarillion to LotR, it quickly becomes evident that nothing is there gratuitously, or even simply to serve the purpose of visualizing the scene or even just for storytelling. In all of his descriptions, there are emotional/psychological symbolic resonances as well; sometimes to enhance the various meanings of what is happening with the characters, sometimes to contrast with (and thus heighten some aspect of) this... but absolutely nothing in Tolkien is "useless" or wasted.

In this, too, he is much more like the older writers such as Hawthorne, Poe, Dickens, Le Fanu, etc. And I think that is one of the major differences between modern fantasy writers and such as Tolkien -- once again faltering on the rocks of "modernist" writers in much the same way as fans so often falter on the rocks of Lovecraft's style when they try to imitate him -- by going for the obvious, surface element rather than capturing the essence; which, with the actual modernist movement, meant that descriptions, while often terse or even minimal, had to have the words especially freighted with associational resonance. They weren't simply "cutting out the useless prose"....

[power to the J]

Such as? Try and find a "useless description" in Tolkien: there's always a reason for description - it helps to define and describe events, people, places, etc.

Now tonight I'm goign to have to look through LotR to find specific examples. Tomorrow I'll post what I've got.

Cut the descriptive parts out of any book, and you'll end up with a fast-paced, lean, sparse story, which is about as interesting to read as a telephone directory.

True, but too much description is incredibly boring and very frustrating to read. There needs to be a balance, and there is none in LotR, IMO.

it quickly becomes evident that nothing is there gratuitously

There defenitely are gratuitous excerpts and bits of decription in LotR. When J.R.R. spends a page telling me about the history of the family of a character I only see for another page and a half, how does that add anything to the story besides fluff?

[Ursa major]

Doesn't the level of acceptible detail depend on whether a reader is simply following the story or willing to immerse themselves in the created world; and on whether the story is vivid enough to keep the reader's attention while the richness of that world, and of its creator's imagination, is described?

Books can be too short, in which case they may not allow the richness of the invention time to blossom in the reader's mind; and what may be left after overenthusiastic pruning is a series of half-ar**d info dumps, the worse of all worlds.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by power to the J

There defenitely are gratuitous excerpts and bits of decription in LotR. When J.R.R. spends a page telling me about the history of the family of a character I only see for another page and a half, how does that add anything to the story besides fluff?

I'd be interested in examples of this you cite; but I'm willing to wager that they fall under the headings I describe above: comparison, contrast, and deepening the implications and emotional resonance (for both the characters and the reader) of ongoing events, thus making the story itself more impactful -- hardly "fluff" or gratuitous. Another purpose it serves is to show that each of the characters here has a life every bit as important; theirs simply remains "a tale untold", but as much a part of the fabric of the whole as the "greater" events depicted; by including such, Tolkien makes us more aware of the scope and implications of the main thread of the narrative; it takes on wider and deeper meaning and applicability. As I've remarked elsewhere, I've read the darned thing close to 20 times over the past 40 years, in its entirety, and I'm afraid I can't think of an example that fits either of those terms.

I'm reminded of the passage where Faramir and his men ambush the Haradrim, and Sam is looking at the body of one of the enemy, and we're given a moment's insight into that man's life through Sam's eyes. Now, that can be considered as a "nice moment" of characterization or a "wasted" bit of description, but the fact is that it not only provides the reader with a better understanding of the world Tolkien has presented, but it also provides Sam with an understanding that the issues aren't black-and-white, and serves as an ironic contrast to Frodo's empathy with Gollum, which Sam (until much later, and even then only dimly) does not share, as here Sam shows something very like that sort of empathy, but for a being who is actually much more "other" than Smeagol. In fact, it may be the very fact that Smeagol/Gollum is, in origin, closer to Sam that prevents Sam from having that ability to feel for him, for if he does so, he has to recognize his kinship and all that that implies... and that is simply too dangerous to his most basic understanding of the world and the difference between the good and the evil in it. Again, it serves to say many different (yet related) things, and to increase the depth and emotional complexity of the action -- hardly fluff, gratuitous, or wasted.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

Doesn't the level of acceptible detail depend on whether a reader is simply following the story or willing to immerse themselves in the created world; and on whether the story is vivid enough to keep the reader's attention while the richness of that world, and of its creator's imagination, is described?

Books can be too short, in which case they may not allow the richness of the invention time to blossom in the reader's mind; and what may be left after overenthusiastic pruning is a series of half-ar**d info dumps, the worse of all worlds.

Ursa: What it seems to me you are saying here has reminded me of something once said by William Godwin, which also ties in with what I've been saying as well:

It is the refuge of barren authors, only, to crowd their fictions with so great a number of events, as to suffer no one of them to sink into the reader's mind. It is the province of true genius to develop events, to discover their capabilities, to ascertain the different passions and sentiments with which they are fraught, and to diversify them with incidents; that give reality to the picture, and take a hold upon the mind of a reader of taste, from which they can never be loosened.