Is it me or is it Tolkien?

[The Procrastinator]

The business about Frodo - he is not the only one who was "meddled with" in the movies' compression/adaptation of the books, to the detriment of the story (and of course the character). I particularly disliked what was done with Treebeard and Faramir, all in the interests of an immediate dramatic effect I know, but very much to the detriment of the overall feel of the story. Overall I thought Jackson's films were very well done and won't be bettered, but I still feel those decisions were a real shame, and it irks me when I watch them.

Never mind, I shall always enjoy my periodic rereads! I'm with you, JD, I've never found anything extraneous in LOTR, and my constant wish has always been, "If only they were longer!"

[Grimward]

Hear hear, P. Faramir in particular was a travesty, especially that entire Osgiliath sequence. Unlike Frodo, however, Faramir's character didn't really have huge chunks of chapters devoted to him, although you could perhaps say that he had a sizable chunk of The Houses of Healing (or something like that) in ROTK that was eliminated. Despite losing the 3 chapters, and replacing Glorfindel with Arwen (and one or two other similar points), FOTR is my favorite of the 3 movies, which I agree were in general very well done.

[TheEndIsNigh]

So here's a thing thats been worrying me since we're getting serious.


If you distilled the trilogy down to the basic story you could probably shrink it into a fairly fast paced action story of 'normal' length.

Where does LOR start becoming a rich discription and development of Tolkien's world and stop becomming 'info dump'.

Would it get published today in it's current form or would some red penciled maniac 'go to work' on it like a barber in a prison camp.

[pyan]

JRRT spent over fifteen years writing, editing, re-writing, changing direction, re-writing yet again...as jd says, there's damn little wasted persiflage in the book.

Originally Posted by Tien

... you could probably shrink it into a fairly fast paced action story of 'normal' length.

"Normal" length? What's that, these days?

When you look at the series that have been produced as unbroken narrative lately, LotR is fairly short... Martin's ASoIaF, and Jordan's WoT, to name but two, both beat it into a cocked hat for sustained storytelling, albeit in multiple volumes.

[The Procrastinator]

Grim: It wasn't just the shortening, it was the character-and-function-mangling. Faramir was presented as a counterfoil to his brother Boromir - where Boromir was a "modern" man, representing the new way and the way that would eventually prevail, Faramir was something of a throwback, not unlike Aragorn himself - an echo of the past revived - along with Aragorn, he represented the brief flowering that was to come before the long slow decline/change. His character served a purpose in the larger theme - the lament for the things that are passing away - or it did in the book, anyway.

Pyan, you made me laugh with your comment about "normal" length - so true! And anyway even if you did shrink it, losing all the backstory and the character/history of Middle Earth, what would you have? Another crapperoonie fantasy book with as much substance as fairy floss, or should I say, elf floss.

Part of the appeal of LOTR for me is that its not just about the rich description, Tolkien's world etc. This story is more than just narrative - says something on a very deep level about what it is to be a human being - haven't got that yet from Martin's ASOIAF, despite all the words and action.

TIEN - maybe Tolkien would self-publish today?

[j. d. worthington]

TeiN: To be honest, I seriously doubt Tolkien would be published today, any more than Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, James Branch Cabell, etc., etc., etc. I could be wrong, of course, but my feeling from what I've seen with the publishing world is that, had they not come along when they did, and when editors (and publishers) would sometimes take a chance on going against what seemed market sense for the sake of a good book, we would never have had them at all.

Once they were published, of course, they became (either immediately or over time) the "standard"... all because they were different from "the way it's done" at the time, and they had the talent and the genius to do it, and do it well....

[Connavar]

I dont agree at all J.d.

If REH was realesed today the lit crowd would eat up his beautiful prose. The publisher would think of something they think are clever, promote him like the new Cormac McCarthy or something.

That is of course if he didnt write a dirty thing called genre fiction and specially fantasy...


Speaking about Tolkien i dont think he was that good of writer writing ability wise.

Which is why i havent finished LOTR yet despite the good characters the crazy discription was too much at the time....

[pyan]

After the success of The Hobbit, publishers were falling over themselves to publish LotR...IIRC, it was at a fairly advanced stage of being issued by Collins, but they had cold feet about the length...and when they pulled out, Unwin snapped it up.

So perhaps the formula is to have a runaway success with a children's or YA book...then get your blockbuster in on the back of it.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Connavar

I dont agree at all J.d.

If REH was realesed today the lit crowd would eat up his beautiful prose. The publisher would think of something they think are clever, promote him like the new Cormac McCarthy or something.

That is of course if he didnt write a dirty thing called genre fiction and specially fantasy...


Speaking about Tolkien i dont think he was that good of writer writing ability wise.

Which is why i havent finished LOTR yet despite the good characters the crazy discription was too much at the time....

Have to disagree with you there, Connavar. Much as I like and respect REH, there are many reasons he wouldn't get that sort of recognition, very little of it having to do with writing genre fiction, as there is much less resistance to that (generally speaking) in the literary establishment these days than there was even 30-40 years ago.

Howard was good at fast-paced, action-oriented prose, with occasional prose-poetic passages. He was also quite good at standard forms of verse. But... he dealt with more simplistic views of the world, his prose is also often rather slipshod and hastily written, and his characterization (by intent) is anything but complex. These are things REH himself would have been the first to admit -- and often did, in his letters to various friends and correspondents.

Had he (or, for that matter, Tolkien) not written some of the works that helped define modern fantasy, the field as we know it would be unlikely to exist. And without that, I seriously doubt if either of them would be published by any major houses today, and I'm none to sure of any of the smaller presses, either (save vanity publishing). Howard, at least, simply isn't on anywhere near the same level of complexity, stylistic nuance, or polish as the writers of "standard literature", though he may be worlds beyond the typical kitchen-sink bestselling potboiler -- but it is there that the genre fiction element would come in. The literary critics would likely ignore him for the reasons stated above (had he not already had the reputation he has at this point), while the average best-seller (or even genre) reader would find his work too alien.

It really was a matter of him being a writer at the right time and place in order for his work to be published at all... just as it was for Lovecraft, Smith, Long, and a host of others who came up through the pulps... and Tolkien, via the scholarly work he'd done and a children's book which found a large audience. As Pyan notes, once the size of the book became evident, publishers began having second thoughts -- and even as it was, Unwin was none too certain of its reception, and rightly so as, while it sold respectably, iirc, it certainly wasn't an overnight success; it took publication in paperback form and the zeitgeist of the 1960s to gain it that status.

On the other hand, Tolkien wasn't a "flashy" writer -- he wrote solid, old-fashioned prose; but as a writer, I'm afraid I'd put him above REH by a fair margin, as he really did much better with his use of the language overall, and the nuances and subtleties of his characterization and suggestive detail. Howard was very much a pulp writer (in the main); Tolkien was much more literary in his background, and it shows.

[Connavar]

So if Tolkein wrote in the pulp era of REH he would be automaticly worse ?

For me its not like that its about ability not the writers backround.

I think for example C.S Lewis is better old fashioned writer than Tolkien. It doesnt have to be beautiful prose to be good writing.


Im the opposite of your views about in the last post.

I think if you judge REH by his writing ability, the ability to mix good prose with characterazation,action he is much better than many classic writers.

Simple views of the world ? Im not talking about what he writes but how well he writes.

Im not putting down Tolkien ability to create the worlds he created. Its impressive, i was talking writing ability,prose wise only. I have read many old fashioned and writers that wasnt flashy at all. I just struggles more with him than many writers of his type.

Im not saying REH is the best writer ever or the most complex. But that his prose is both effective and poetic at times. Which is rare even among those you call "standard lit"

I wonder if he would have as big rep among "standard literature" like Lovecraft,Chandler if he was was most famous for a less pulpy genre like horror,crime.

I think those two while good specially Chandler(not fan of HLP of what i have read) they were more than lucky with being one of the first of their kind. HPL's supernatural horror type didnt exist as much before him and Chandler was one of the first the ever famous Hardboiled detective fiction.

[Grimward]

Originally Posted by The Procrastinator

Grim: It wasn't just the shortening, it was the character-and-function-mangling. Faramir was presented as a counterfoil to his brother Boromir - where Boromir was a "modern" man, representing the new way and the way that would eventually prevail, Faramir was something of a throwback, not unlike Aragorn himself - an echo of the past revived - along with Aragorn, he represented the brief flowering that was to come before the long slow decline/change. His character served a purpose in the larger theme - the lament for the things that are passing away - or it did in the book, anyway.

Hmm, never meant to imply that Faramir was a travesty because he was shortened (apologies if it reads that way). No, no, no, whether it's the way they:

1. took Faramir's quote "...I could take it...now!" and used it to turn him into a villian for 15 minutes;

2. portrayed his release of Frodo & Sam in the middle of a skirmish in Osgiliath that NEVER happened in the book; or

3. completely missed the fact that he's supposed to be the more Numenorean of the brothers ("...the blood of the line of stewards runs nearly true in him, but does not in Boromir..." or something close to it)

Faramir in LOTR the movie was a travesty, period.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Connavar

So if Tolkein wrote in the pulp era of REH he would be automaticly worse ?

Eh? Where did that come from? Tolkien was writing during the pulp period -- in fact, the majority of his published fictional work comes from that period. It just doesn't come from the pulp background, which is an entirely different thing.

For me its not like that its about ability not the writers backround.

Again, I have to disagree with you, especially when it comes to popular writing. Writers for the pulps had to (to a greater or lesser degree) bow to the demands of the editors and, beyond them, the readers, even when it meant going against the grain artistically, doing things they knew were not good for the sake of the story, in order to keep those paychecks coming in. That's just a fact of the business of writing for popular outlets -- something Tolkien didn't have to concern himself nearly as much with, while Howard made his bread-and-butter that way.

Which leads to the subject of Howard's prose.

I think if you judge REH by his writing ability, the ability to mix good prose with characterazation,action he is much better than many classic writers.

Simple views of the world ? Im not talking about what he writes but how well he writes.

Im not putting down Tolkien ability to create the worlds he created. Its impressive, i was talking writing ability,prose wise only. I have read many old fashioned and writers that wasnt flashy at all. I just struggles more with him than many writers of his type.

I'm sorry, but I really must strongly disagree with you on that. Not that Howard wasn't capable of writing very good prose (and frequently even better poetry), but that, as I note above, due to haste and occasional carelessness, plus his isolation from wider exposure to higher grades of literature (and education), his prose was also frequently slipshod at best. It was almost always entertaining, but it was not always well-written. Again, Howard himself was well aware of this, and bemoaned his faults (and did try to improve -- he did care about his writing, most definitely), and so were his contemporaries.

Again, Howard's characterization is, by his own admission, kept simple and direct. As he put it, he wrote heroes who, when in a jam, are "too stupid to do anything but cut, shoot, or slug themselves into the clear" -- this from a letter by Howard himself. That in itself becomes a severe limitation rather quickly. Tolkien, on the other hand, allowed his characters to be much more complex and nuanced, which in turn allows a much richer emotional connection, on more levels. He also did not limit himself to a particular sort of style or prose, but varied it according to the needs of his tale and the other things he wished to convey. While Howard also used varying voices, he did not have near the range JRRT did, in part due to the simple fact that he was a much younger writer, and his experience in numerous realms of life much more limited.

All of these things have a great deal to do with how good a writer becomes, and Howard was dealing with a lot of limitations Tolkien simply didn't have.

I think for example C.S Lewis is better old fashioned writer than Tolkien. It doesnt have to be beautiful prose to be good writing.

Again, I disagree here. Lewis, while often quite good, could also be rather hasty in his writing, and many of his things are simply not thought through, so that it becomes easy to spot errors and contradictions now and again; much more so than with Tolkien, who took time to very carefully craft his prose to convey precisely the subtleties of thought and feeling he wished to convey.

Im not saying REH is the best writer ever or the most complex. But that his prose is both effective and poetic at times. Which is rare even among those you call "standard lit"

I wonder if he would have as big rep among "standard literature" like Lovecraft,Chandler if he was was most famous for a less pulpy genre like horror,crime.

Lovecraft doesn't yet have that big a reputation in standard literature, though he's getting there. Chandler, on the other hand, has had something of that for a very long time. There are good reasons for both to be in the positions they are, and one of those which looms largest is simply that Chandler writes about things that more people can relate to both emotionally and intellectually than Lovecraft, who can be (for many people) a very difficult writer. For another, Chandler's prose is much simpler, more direct; whereas Lovecraft is much more old-fashioned, more nuanced, textured, and aiming at extremely subtle effects a great deal of the time, while appearing on the surface to be doing just the opposite. Lovecraft also, as Joshi noted, combined prose-poetic techniques with the classic essay form; a very unusual combination requiring careful attention from both writer and reader. Chandler, on the other hand was in some ways a follower of the Hemingway dictum "Kill your darlings". (Not entirely, no. There are passages in Chandler that are anything but; but on the whole it's a statement that applies.)

Tolkien lies somewhere between the two. While his prose is almost never as dense as Lovecraft, it is also seldom as spare as Chandler could often be -- but not never. Again, it depended on what he was striving to convey, as he chose the tone and voice best suited for a particular effect -- something a careful reading of his fantasy as published during his lifetime will reveal, and which is even more obvious when one reads the books of his work edited by his son. He was an incredibly painstaking craftsman -- much more so than almost any writer of his era I can think of, with the possible exceptions of Lovecraft and Cornell Woolrich, or perhaps James Branch Cabell.

As for HPL -- as I recall, your only experience of him (at least, the only one I recall seeing you comment on) was "Polaris", which is scarcely typical in many ways. Very Dunsanian (even though written before he had ever read Dunsany) rather than in HPL's own "typical" voice or manner. You might try The Case of Charles Dexter Ward for something more "mainstream" from his pen, or "The Colour Out of Space" for a glimpse of something that is truly uniquely Lovecraftian....

[Wiglaf]

The thing about Tolkien is that he apparently had something against periods. How many semicolons can a man put in one sentence? He also has views on language perhaps not shared or cared about by many readers. Finally you add inserted songs and poems and some folks could lose interest.
Otherwise he is not that different in tone than many other British authors from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth.

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Eh? Where did that come from? Tolkien was writing during the pulp period -- in fact, the majority of his published fictional work comes from that period. It just doesn't come from the pulp background, which is an entirely different thing.



Again, I have to disagree with you, especially when it comes to popular writing. Writers for the pulps had to (to a greater or lesser degree) bow to the demands of the editors and, beyond them, the readers, even when it meant going against the grain artistically, doing things they knew were not good for the sake of the story, in order to keep those paychecks coming in. That's just a fact of the business of writing for popular outlets -- something Tolkien didn't have to concern himself nearly as much with, while Howard made his bread-and-butter that way.

Which leads to the subject of Howard's prose.



I'm sorry, but I really must strongly disagree with you on that. Not that Howard wasn't capable of writing very good prose (and frequently even better poetry), but that, as I note above, due to haste and occasional carelessness, plus his isolation from wider exposure to higher grades of literature (and education), his prose was also frequently slipshod at best. It was almost always entertaining, but it was not always well-written. Again, Howard himself was well aware of this, and bemoaned his faults (and did try to improve -- he did care about his writing, most definitely), and so were his contemporaries.

Again, Howard's characterization is, by his own admission, kept simple and direct. As he put it, he wrote heroes who, when in a jam, are "too stupid to do anything but cut, shoot, or slug themselves into the clear" -- this from a letter by Howard himself. That in itself becomes a severe limitation rather quickly. Tolkien, on the other hand, allowed his characters to be much more complex and nuanced, which in turn allows a much richer emotional connection, on more levels. He also did not limit himself to a particular sort of style or prose, but varied it according to the needs of his tale and the other things he wished to convey. While Howard also used varying voices, he did not have near the range JRRT did, in part due to the simple fact that he was a much younger writer, and his experience in numerous realms of life much more limited.

All of these things have a great deal to do with how good a writer becomes, and Howard was dealing with a lot of limitations Tolkien simply didn't have.



Again, I disagree here. Lewis, while often quite good, could also be rather hasty in his writing, and many of his things are simply not thought through, so that it becomes easy to spot errors and contradictions now and again; much more so than with Tolkien, who took time to very carefully craft his prose to convey precisely the subtleties of thought and feeling he wished to convey.



Lovecraft doesn't yet have that big a reputation in standard literature, though he's getting there. Chandler, on the other hand, has had something of that for a very long time. There are good reasons for both to be in the positions they are, and one of those which looms largest is simply that Chandler writes about things that more people can relate to both emotionally and intellectually than Lovecraft, who can be (for many people) a very difficult writer. For another, Chandler's prose is much simpler, more direct; whereas Lovecraft is much more old-fashioned, more nuanced, textured, and aiming at extremely subtle effects a great deal of the time, while appearing on the surface to be doing just the opposite. Lovecraft also, as Joshi noted, combined prose-poetic techniques with the classic essay form; a very unusual combination requiring careful attention from both writer and reader. Chandler, on the other hand was in some ways a follower of the Hemingway dictum "Kill your darlings". (Not entirely, no. There are passages in Chandler that are anything but; but on the whole it's a statement that applies.)

Tolkien lies somewhere between the two. While his prose is almost never as dense as Lovecraft, it is also seldom as spare as Chandler could often be -- but not never. Again, it depended on what he was striving to convey, as he chose the tone and voice best suited for a particular effect -- something a careful reading of his fantasy as published during his lifetime will reveal, and which is even more obvious when one reads the books of his work edited by his son. He was an incredibly painstaking craftsman -- much more so than almost any writer of his era I can think of, with the possible exceptions of Lovecraft and Cornell Woolrich, or perhaps James Branch Cabell.

As for HPL -- as I recall, your only experience of him (at least, the only one I recall seeing you comment on) was "Polaris", which is scarcely typical in many ways. Very Dunsanian (even though written before he had ever read Dunsany) rather than in HPL's own "typical" voice or manner. You might try The Case of Charles Dexter Ward for something more "mainstream" from his pen, or "The Colour Out of Space" for a glimpse of something that is truly uniquely Lovecraftian....

A interesting post J.d and i was alittle too emotional in my earlier post.

I agree with you about pulp writers bowing down to editors. You can see that. Reading REH you get that feeling. I just think despite that era,the limitations that came with it, he deserves bigger reputation to be hailed like Chandler among standard lit as one of the biggest writers genre of his time. Chandler wrote in same era, same limatation but just like you say crime is easier for people to relate to fantasy of REH's kind.

I didnt want to sound like dissing Tolkein when i havent even finished LOTR. I cant judge him that fast.

Before we got alitle sidetracked what i was trying to say is that REH,HPL etc would have it easier to get published today.

The bizz is much bigger today than at their times. There are place even for the worst writers to sell. More freedom too, no magazines that you have to write "pulp" enough to get realesed.

Even if their work wouldnt as original at it was in their "real" time.

I have read more stories from HPL now that im starting to like him more and more. He is really dense. He makes Tolkien look not so old fashioned and look fast paced in comparision. It was just his antiquarian prose was hard to get use to. I think more highly of him now than i wrote in my earlier post in his forums.

I just wrote him in this cause he is seen today the most influential horror of the century, that gets him credit as one of the most important american writers. He is not Chandler level yet of rep but he is getting there.

Not comparing him to REH or someone else just think its interesting he escaped the name of his era with so few famous stories. With his rep in literature i expected him to have 50 world famous stories, not a live work less than that number

I just think its sad REH is seen only as pulp among people that dont know his reading personally.

His rep is only creator of Conan and maybe important for creation of modern Fantasy like Tolkien and co .
I think Chandler is great, i love his writing just think its interesting cause of his more mainstrean genre he can escape the the pulp name while other greats of the same time and in genre fiction cant.

[j. d. worthington]

I agree with you that it's sad REH is seen almost exclusively for that, when he wrote a rather large variety of things; and even with his heroic fantasy, he's often judged by those who haven't read much of his work on the worst aspects of it, rather than the best (which, as Fritz Leiber pointed out, were often very good; he compared "The People of the Black Circle" favorably, for instance, to some of the lesser Elizabethans).

I do agree that REH deserves a better reputation than he has, but he may be on the verge of that, with the newer editions of his work, the scholarly tomes coming out on him, and in general a renewed interest in him as both a fantaisiste and a regionalist (and sometimes a combination of both).

Glad to hear you're finding HPL a little easier going. And yes, he is a very dense writer, in many ways; and his style is also in several ways a reflection of his 18th-century favorites -- something that is even more notable in his verse, where he was almost wedded to the heroic couplet for a great deal of his writing life. (When he did break away from this form -- and not all of his pieces in this vein are bad; some of his satires and even some of his pastorals vary between rather good to very good -- his verse could be quite powerful, as with his Pindaric ode "On a Battlefield in Picardy" or his fantastic poetry, especially the Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets and the like.)

Tolkien, of course, simply may not be to your taste; and there are times when his prose can be a bit pedestrian, but that is seldom really the case. Most often, he casts his prose in the form very well suited for his purposes, and it can vary from the almost childish tone of the earlier parts of LotR (reminiscent of The Hobbit for some very good reasons, reasons connected to the development of the tale and the characters' growth), to the really quite poetic "high" tone of many later parts of the book (especially those concerning Gondor and, in a somewhat different poetic vein, those concerning Rohan), to the very poignant (some of the things involving Lothlorien; several bits in Ithilien; the moments when we see the "lost hobbit" in Gollum, etc.). But Tolkien sometimes requires careful reading to truly appreciate the subtleties of his prose, whereas Howard wrote much more simply, to be read more quickly, and with the knowledge that he was writing for a wider range of audience, from young boys to octagenarians, and often paid much less attention to the stylistic subtleties and niceties that can make prose itself a richer experience.

Again, this is not always the case. Sometimes the innate poet in Howard came through -- I think particularly of some of the passages of "Beyond the Black River", for instance; where the use of language and imagery, especially the hints of the supernal, numinous, and mystically menacing are so suggestive and contain hints of such vistas that it can take your breath away. But (again), in general, that constraint to write fast action-oriented prose (and the fact he died so young) kept him from developing that to the level of which he was capable.