Tolkien's Nobel Prize Nomination rejected due to 'poor prose'

[The Marquis de Leech]

"Anarchy" (I think he likely meant what we'd now refer to as "libertarianism") and Monarchism. That's two odd poles around which to build your alternative preferences.

'Libertarianism' in the sense of rehashed classical liberalism isn't really an appropriate terminology for Tolkien: 'rights' were an invention of the eighteenth century, and generally associated with the rise of the industry Tolkien so loathed. Can you see Tolkien idolising businessmen?

I think what Tolkien was getting at was a preference for a government of reactionaries that didn't actually use their power. A King who can rule without parliament, but does nothing but stick stamps in his stamp collection.

[Larry.]

Not to derail this too much, but I see Tolkien's sparkling prose inspired a "lost" 1966 version of The Hobbit.

[Arthmail]

Not to derail this too much, but I see Tolkien's sparkling prose inspired a "lost" 1966 version of The Hobbit.

Your link and your point are broken, Larry.

[Larry.]

Your link and your point are broken, Larry.

Link is now bad due to video being removed. It was of a "lost" 1966 cartoon version of The Hobbit that made Smaug into Slag the Dragon, Thorin became a man of Dale, and there was a princess. The cartoon style reminded me most of the Fractured Fairy Tales part of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Very trippy and it would make the purists hopping mad. Alas, such kitsch is not to be seen now.

P.S. I seem to recall there being a quasi-gnome or two in it.

[Larry.]

Huh, now it seems to be active again. Weird.

[Mme Erzulie]

To the people decrying the relevance or usefulness of this thread: I, for one, am quite delighted at the turn the thread has taken, and I am reading posts, thinking, re-evaluating and pondering. Maybe some minds will not be changed no matter the arguments or evidence they might be confronted with, but I (and hopefully others, as well) am open to changing mine.

The discussion so far has been respectful, insightful and to-the-point. If it's not to your liking, that's too bad, but I don't think that's enough of a reason to call for the discussion to stop.

Does it now?

As a linguist, I have to point out that you do seem to have a quite simplistic view of what constitutes "grammar", or "language".

In fact lolcat English is not "wrong". Quite to the contrary, it would be "wrong" to use proper grammar in a lolcat picture.

"Grammar" is no more than a (highly variable and ever-changing) social convention. No more, no less.

Chomsky would disagree.

And in fact, he didn't reduce his own point ad absurdum as much as your own. Because he's fundamentally right: Why should your perspective be worth more than that of a 5 year old?

See, this is where I find that the stance that art is subjective gets downright ludicrous. A 5-year-old is many things, few of which I would dissuade him or her from being, and while not wanting to suggest that a 5-year-old is wrong in finding pleasure in the things he or she does, I would not seek the viewpoint of a 5-year-old in my quest to find a good book (or other artistic artefact). And I would, all other things being equal, take the advice of someone who had read 500 books over someone who had read 5. Just as I'd be more inclined to trust a doctor with a 7 year education over a healer with a one year diploma.

Art is not counted amongst the sciences. But is that because there are no objective qualities to it, or because they are not readily available to us (as the human species)? A very difficult question to answer, of course (how can you prove the existence of something imperceptible to the senses?), but the fact that there is, as Shryke points out, a broad consensus about which spheres of merit works of art belongs to (and the concurrence seems to increase with the distance in time - Shakespeare's (works') artistic qualities are subject to less discussion than those of, say, Cormac McCarthy. In 500 years, he (McCarthy) might have eclipsed Shakespeare (though I, personally, see this as unlikely), or he could be completely forgotten - or anywhere in between, of course), indicates that there is something, however elusive and undetectable, objective about works of art (even if it is only objective within a framework - say that of the Western Civilisation over the past 3000 years).

One could argue that your final sentence is precisely the kind of reason why it never will happen. i.e. People are taught not to expect great art from a pop singer marketed at the young and female. Ergo no one examines her work in detail, and no one discovers - or imagines - the pattern and hidden meaning that allows Spears to be kicked upstairs to the immortals.

A couple of points:

1. Many people are, in fact, studying (in various shapes and forms) popular music and individual artists (including Britney Spears). Of course, not all of them are studying the purely artistic qualities of these subjects. But, as I alluded to earlier in this post, benefit of hindsight is always valuable (although there is something to be said for temporal and social immediacy as well) in separating a subject from its surroundings (reviews, hype, critique, social impact, fans, image, perception etc.). The surroundings are of course inextricably linked with the subject, but time and space can make it easier to ascertain their possible causal and dependent relationships.

2. Britney Spears is a performer, first and foremost. She sings and dances. While performers often experience unsurpassed popularity in their lifetime, their fame often fades with time (although the advent of recorded music might change this). Can you mention any performers from Gershwin's day? Quite possibly. What about from the 19th century, which gave us composers such as Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann and Liszt (a great performer in his own right)? My point here is simply, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Take Max Martin, on the other hand. He wrote (alone and with co-writers) "Baby, One More Time", "(You Drive Me) Crazy", "Oops!... I did it again", "Stronger", "If You Seek Amy", "Till The World Ends" and many more for Britney Spears. He also penned huge hits for acts like Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, N'Sync, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Katy Perry, Ke$ha and Avril Lavigne. He's "had" 13 number one hits in the US alone. In 200 years, he might be remembered much like Johan Strauss II is today (maybe the "King of Dance" as opposed to Strauss' "King of the Waltz"), whereas the aforementioned performers might be little more than historical curiosities (with the caveat that recorded music might change this).

Apologies for all the parentheses, folks!

[Jon AS]

Not to derail this too much, but I see Tolkien's sparkling prose inspired a "lost" 1966 version of The Hobbit.

Wow that dragon might be worse than the one on the atrocious German cover.

[dog-days]

2. Britney Spears is a performer, first and foremost. She sings and dances. While performers often experience unsurpassed popularity in their lifetime, their fame often fades with time (although the advent of recorded music might change this). Can you mention any performers from Gershwin's day? Quite possibly. What about from the 19th century, which gave us composers such as Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann and Liszt (a great performer in his own right)? My point here is simply, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Performers from the nineteenth century are operating under the slight disadvantage that there were no recording devices available at that time. You seem to be operating on the assumption that 'great art' is art which is in circulation for a number of years. However, can great art not just as well be temporary or ephemeral in nature? I think that in recent times there's been a whole movement dedicated to producing art that is impermanent .e.g Andy Goldsworthy. And going right to the other end of history, we have the performance of (by nature unrecorded but highly probable) works of oral poetry, now lost to us.

See, this is where I find that the stance that art is subjective gets downright ludicrous. A 5-year-old is many things, few of which I would dissuade him or her from being, and while not wanting to suggest that a 5-year-old is wrong in finding pleasure in the things he or she does, I would not seek the viewpoint of a 5-year-old in my quest to find a good book (or other artistic artefact). And I would, all other things being equal, take the advice of someone who had read 500 books over someone who had read 5. Just as I'd be more inclined to trust a doctor with a 7 year education over a healer with a one year diploma.

Yes, but then, you aren't a five year old. Another five year old might rate his opinion over yours. A Very Hungry Crocodile or Ulysses? Hmm. I'm geeky and bookish. I take recommendations from geeky and bookish people. My extrovert, party girl flatmate would hate my idea of a good book and perhaps vice versa. You're participating in a thread about the nature of art on a fantasy book website; naturally, you wouldn't seek input from a five year old. Like draws like.

[James Nicholls]

See, this is where I find that the stance that art is subjective gets downright ludicrous. A 5-year-old is many things, few of which I would dissuade him or her from being, and while not wanting to suggest that a 5-year-old is wrong in finding pleasure in the things he or she does, I would not seek the viewpoint of a 5-year-old in my quest to find a good book (or other artistic artefact). And I would, all other things being equal, take the advice of someone who had read 500 books over someone who had read 5. Just as I'd be more inclined to trust a doctor with a 7 year education over a healer with a one year diploma.

I find your analogy lacking. Medicine is a science. That's not to say there isn't some contention about what are the best methods of healing a given case, but there are hard facts behind the reasoning. You take an aspirin to cure a headache, and that's more or less proven to work (let's assume the headache isn't the symptom of some larger problem). Medicine is a hard subject. Literary criticism is about as soft as you can get. I don't deny a reader of 500 books is better poised to place any given work within a set context and compare that work to other works, but I do deny that his opinion of the quality of the work is inherently better than the reader of 5 books.

Art is not counted amongst the sciences. But is that because there are no objective qualities to it, or because they are not readily available to us (as the human species)? A very difficult question to answer, of course (how can you prove the existence of something imperceptible to the senses?), but the fact that there is, as Shryke points out, a broad consensus about which spheres of merit works of art belongs to (and the concurrence seems to increase with the distance in time - Shakespeare's (works') artistic qualities are subject to less discussion than those of, say, Cormac McCarthy. In 500 years, he (McCarthy) might have eclipsed Shakespeare (though I, personally, see this as unlikely), or he could be completely forgotten - or anywhere in between, of course), indicates that there is something, however elusive and undetectable, objective about works of art (even if it is only objective within a framework - say that of the Western Civilisation over the past 3000 years).

To give another analogy, let's talk about human beauty. Scientists that study such things have noted that humans show preferences for symmetry between the left and right hand side of the face, and this has been noted across all cultures. We also prefer faces that fit average proportions for the society we live in. Also on that theme each culture has different standards for beauty, a fact you can see by comparing advertising in different countries but also portraits from history (which were generally doctored to make whoever commissioned the painting more beautiful). There's also the concept of the Golden Ratio that can be applied to many aesthetic fields (from cereal packets to the waist to shoulder ratio of attractive men).

Although it's far less scientific in fields such as literature, music, film, there are similar patterns which govern people's appreciation of art. In Western music there are common chord formations that many hit songs use. In storytelling we have The Hero's Journey, which is still being used to this day. Some of these preferences seem to be engrained in the human psyche, and some seem to be merely cultural conventions that shift and change over time. We arrive at a story with preconceived ideas about the way we want things done. While some of these ideas are common, some of them aren't. And that is why you get divergence of opinion.

As a critic you can stand back, study the patterns and say "People generally like this about this piece of work/this artist/this genre/this form". You mentioned Katy Perry at the end of your post, someone whose music I hate because I find her lyrics very trite and dishonest*, her arrangements too clinical and her use of form too conventional. And yet I can guarantee there are people who find her lyrics very relatable and inspiring, the arrangements full of energy and a comforting familiarity in her conventional songwriting. We are hearing the same thing, but it only resonates with one of us. I think it's shit, they think it's great. Subjective.

(*I believe she believes in what she is saying, but what she is saying doesn't correlate with my experience of the world.)

Now most critics won't rate Katy Perry, but the trouble with critics is they are cut from a specific strata of the audience. They are typically above average in intelligence, have a high opinion of themselves and value intellect above emotion. Couple that with a need to attract an audience so they can put bread on the table (which can result in artistic compromises for the sake of writing an entertaining column) and you have a very one-sided view of art. And these are the people who write the history books on art and decide what art is considered of value, based on their own narrow view of the world. Of course their opinions are overturned every so often (as happened with Led Zeppelin, who never received critical claim but who are regarded as one of the best bands of all time), but considering how small a percentage of the population are critics their opinions are given disproportionate importance.

I'm still enjoying this discussion very much btw ;)

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Um, without meaning to drag this whole discussion up once more, the idea that it is impossible to define what makes prose within art 'good' or 'bad' is quite simply wrong.

Its a science, with set rules, and a shit-ton of theories. Its not a case of being an elitist (though these people may exist). As it happens there are specific standards by which the literary community will judge prose. Now, some have different standards to others, but they are still cold, hard standards. Not sure why literary criticism is seen as some sort of vague hocus pocus type concept by some posters here.

I think the underlying problem is the criticism often comes without a comprehensible definition of the standard being used. So, to non-experts, it looks more like just personal preference/bias/snobbery.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

'Libertarianism' in the sense of rehashed classical liberalism isn't really an appropriate terminology for Tolkien: 'rights' were an invention of the eighteenth century, and generally associated with the rise of the industry Tolkien so loathed. Can you see Tolkien idolising businessmen?

No. I was simply pointing out his belief in a government that did very little, and what that would mean in his time and place. The idea of a monarch who exercises only very limited authority is how I could see someone supporting both monarchy and anarchism. But again, that is based on the time, place, and point in history in which Tolkien wrote -- what his vision was. I am not saying he is someone who would endorse the POV of today's libertarians.

I think what Tolkien was getting at was a preference for a government of reactionaries that didn't actually use their power. A King who can rule without parliament, but does nothing but stick stamps in his stamp collection.

Well, yes, exactly.

[James Nicholls]

Um, without meaning to drag this whole discussion up once more, the idea that it is impossible to define what makes prose within art 'good' or 'bad' is quite simply wrong.

Its a science, with set rules, and a shit-ton of theories. Its not a case of being an elitist (though these people may exist). As it happens there are specific standards by which the literary community will judge prose. Now, some have different standards to others, but they are still cold, hard standards. Not sure why literary criticism is seen as some sort of vague hocus pocus type concept by some posters here.

You seem to have missed the observation that those standards while nice in their own right aren't authoritative. They aren't objectively better than any other standards one wishes to judge something by.

[Fryie]

Chomsky would disagree.

1. He most probably would not, although I'm quite confident he's never expressed his views on lolcat grammar. Still, you'll find no modern linguist, of whichever tradition, that would refute the basic claim that language is in some ways arbitrary and socially determined, or that jargon, creole and lower-class sociolects are as "worthy" as standard varieties with written grammars.

2. I couldn't care less. Generativism was a completely wrong turn linguistics took in the 60es, without no empiric foundation whatsoever, with highly unscientific and ideologically determined concepts about language, without any solid empirical foundation whose main claims have not stood up to anthropologic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, neurolinguistic and first and second language acquisition studies based findings. The sooner that crap is all forgotten, the better.

But then, that's a very different subject altogether.

[Verboten]

Fyrie I demand that you read Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson it is written entirely in Jamaican patois and it is beautiful.

[Fryie]

I fear I would not understand a thing though. :/ But thanks anyway, maybe someday I'll try!

[Verboten]

The first two paragraphs:

Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don’t be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anansi story:

It had a woman, you see, a strong, hard-back woman with skin like cocoa-tea. She two foot-them tough from hiking through the diable bush, the devil bush on the prison planet of New Half-Way Tree. When she walk, she foot strike the hard earth bup! like breadfruit dropping to the ground. She two arms hard with muscle from all the years of hacking paths through the diable bush on New Half-Way Tree. Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back. She name Tan-Tan, and New Half-Way Tree was she planet.

It's not hard to understand and it is a very good novel because despite, or maybe because of the limitations of the patois she still creates beautiful moving passages and a fantastic story. I like using it as an example of how it takes skill to craft a well-worded piece and that well-worded does not always mean conventional. It's also great science fiction.

[Fryie]

Just because it's not Standard English, doesn't mean it is "limited" in expression, although we may feel it is. That was the point I was trying to make. :)

[Verboten]

Just because it's not Standard English, doesn't mean it is "limited" in expression, although we may feel it is. That was the point I was trying to make. :)

Oh, okay. :)

[Mme Erzulie]

Fuck. I had just spent 30 minutes writing a reply, then I hit the keyboard shortcut for back in the browser, and now it's lost. Fuck.

Fryie, can you recommend me some literature that disproves (or argues against) Chomsky's universal grammar?

[Fryie]

Of course I am very biased on that issue, so you'll hear a lot of people insisting that Chomsky hasn't been disproved after all. (For whatever crappy reasons.)

There has been a somewhat recent discussion, based on an article of Evans & Levinson 2009. The Myth of Language Universals. Be sure to read the open peer review at the end of the article as well, as it contains both supportive and negative reviews, so you can in fact make up your own mind. If you have access to the Lingua journal, there has been a special issue devoted to the matter including more reviews and a response to the reviews by the original authors which is less provocative, but in a way more "scientific".

From that article, of course, you'll find references to a lot of other authors with similar opinions, so there should be plenty of stuff to read.

The first few chapters of Willam Foley's "Anthropological Linguistics" are also somewhat devoted to the issue, though that's more of a general-philosophical overview.

Other than that in comparative linguistics, typology, endangered language studies, etc. etc., you'll see that Chomsky is most often not even considered.