Darth Richard II Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 You'd assume wrong. For one thing, I've read the Silmarillion cover to cover two or three times at least. There again, the categories themselves are the crudest of dismissive stereotyping and so fairly useless as a descriptive tool; imagine for a moment trying to write a similar counter list for those who love Tolkien. Aww I'm just messing around. Usually I see your name come up when people mention Tolkien criticism so I thought it was weird you weren't included in the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diziet Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 You mean that's really Richard Morgan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 You mean that's really Richard Morgan? Yes, regular Richard there is. I'm a SIth Lord. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Boar of Gore Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 I don't know any other writer who expresses the love of nature as much as Tolkien. Perhaps Le Guin. The scene from Unfinished Tales where Tuor comes to the Great Sea and stands in awe stays with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maarsen Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Ehm - Jane Austen anybody? Dickens? Emily Bronte? Flaubert? Tolstoy? Guy by the name of Shakespeare. Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Cyril Tourneur.......... If you really think complex female characters weren't invented until the twentieth century, your reading has been singularly narrow in scope. Damn it man, my reading list is too long as it is! Don't keep adding names of writers I need to read. Just when I was getting the urge to reread LOTR again... :cheers: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Kids like the hobbit and LotR just fine. At least some. The difference is that things have progressed since him. LotR is a very basic fantasy with basic morality and basic views of people. People enjoy it - and they enjoy Harry Potter as well. Both are mired in the same absolutism that many enjoy. And both are mired in the same kind of absolutism that many find fairly dull and uninspiring. I think the difference is that it's now somewhat acceptable to bash Tolkien and say you don't like his works while still remaining a SFF nerd. Before, say, 1990, that'd be ostracism. Exactly. The lists like Roose's are fucking silly since they implicitly suggest the only reasons to not like Tolkien are bad ones. And beyond that, the idea that people criticize Tolkien because he's a sacred cow is the silliest one of all. Tolkien has never been less of a divine bovine then he is today. There's no reason to do it to be edgy because it's not edgy. It's just largely, I think like you say, that these days it's not hard to like SFF without liking Tolkien. There's way more in the genres these days and so Tolkien is no longer a load-bearing author. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tears of Lys Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Actually, most people I talk to irl who have tried Tolkien never liked it. That was true in the 1990s and its still true now. The Nobel Prize committee wasn't impressed in 1961 when LotR was nominated.Apparently, even Tolkien's own writing group, The Inklings, weren't all fans. I even know people who passionately hate Tolkien (before the films) because of the elves - the whole idea of a the Tolkien elf seems to piss some people off. They'd be apoplectic if they saw The Hobbit movies. :ack: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Or, you know, not everyone likes Tolkien. Some of y'all on this page seem to be ignoring the obvious. There is a difference between people who simply dislike Tolkien (i.e. he doesn't fit with their literary tastes), and active Tolkien-bashers. It is rather hard to bash an author for no reason other than "I don't like that sort of writing" - you need specifics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Exactly. The lists like Roose's are fucking silly since they implicitly suggest the only reasons to not like Tolkien are bad ones. No, you are perfectly free to dislike Tolkien (my own mother falls into this category, though you'll never see her writing about it online). Tastes differ, after all. I'm more interested in the active Tolkien-bashers, those who write hundreds of words castigating him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 There is a difference between people who simply dislike Tolkien (i.e. he doesn't fit with their literary tastes), and active Tolkien-bashers. It is rather hard to bash an author for no reason other than "I don't like that sort of writing" - you need specifics. What is it? Cause I'm not seeing any distinction here. No, you are perfectly free to dislike Tolkien (my own mother falls into this category, though you'll never see her writing about it online). Tastes differ, after all. I'm more interested in the active Tolkien-bashers, those who write hundreds of words castigating him. What's the difference? Some people feel the need to write more about things they dislike, some just shrug and move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inigima Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I disliked Tolkien before it was cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serious Callers Only Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I was meh about Tolkien like most everyone else. I gave away the Silmarillion after reading it a mere once, and the response of the giftee was 'it's like the bible'. Indeed old friend indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Kids like the hobbit and LotR just fine. At least some. The difference is that things have progressed since him. LotR is a very basic fantasy with basic morality and basic views of people. People enjoy it - and they enjoy Harry Potter as well. Both are mired in the same absolutism that many enjoy. And both are mired in the same kind of absolutism that many find fairly dull and uninspiring. I love how people consider Tolkien's portrayal of an objective system of morality as "basic". No, it's not basic, it's just clearly defined*, what with its emphasis on the rejection of power and the power of mercy. I remember once reading a complaint that Tolkien didn't have the balls to kill off Frodo. As if having his protagonist return home a shell-shocked veteran (a condition Tolkien was all-too aware of in real life) was somehow the "cowardly" option. *Rowling's morality, by contrast, is morally ambiguous in the proper sense of the term, i.e. incoherent, and a completely different thing from moral complexity. We have characters going on about the importance of choice, tolerance, and the evilness of certain spells - except that the bad guys are irredeemably evil, intolerance towards Slytherin is fine, and using the torture spell on a Death Eater makes you "gallant". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 What is it? Cause I'm not seeing any distinction here. What's the difference? Some people feel the need to write more about things they dislike, some just shrug and move on. Bash = hit (metaphorically) = savagely criticise. If you simply dislike Tolkien on the tastes differ front, you are unlikely to write hundreds of words about it, because, well, you realise tastes differ, and that while Tolkien might not be the thing for you, he might be for other people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Queen of Whores Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I remember once reading a complaint that Tolkien didn't have the balls to kill off Frodo. As if having his protagonist return home a shell-shocked veteran (a condition Tolkien was all-too aware of in real life) was somehow the "cowardly" option. Agreed. Having Frodo became a haunted shell of his former self is so much more powerful and thematically important than him just dying on Mount Doom or something. Even GRRM himself loves how The Lord of the Rings ended. Some people don't understand that Tolkien wasn't going for cheap or quick shocks and plot twists. He was going for a legitimately intelligent and deep epic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 The morality is "basic" in the sense that it is fundamental for the narrative, not in the sense of simplistic. There may be good reasons to dislike Tolkien and his style. I am not such a hardcore fantasy buff as others and there is loads of stuff I have not read. (I am also not such a hardcore Tolkien-Fan, I probably read LoTR about four times in 15 years and the last time was in 2004 or so.)I can enjoy some stuff (once) that I consider myself quite trashy, because language and style are hard to bear (sounding like a RPG transcript or so, e.g. Dragonlance and also "Painted Man").But the success of all this stuff seems to show that many readers do not care about language and style as I do not think I have read anything in newer fantasy that is better than Tolkien in this respect. (This does not imply that Tolkien is stylistically as good as many other "serious" writers.) Actually, quite a lot of best-selling Fantasy is annoyingly badly written, even if plots and characters are interesting. And the older stuff I have read (Eddison, Dunsany, Lovecraft isn't either). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Boar of Gore Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 The Nobel Prize committee wasn't impressed in 1961 when LotR was nominated.Apparently, even Tolkien's own writing group, The Inklings, weren't all fans. I even know people who passionately hate Tolkien (before the films) because of the elves - the whole idea of a the Tolkien elf seems to piss some people off. I hope you realise those same people would have disliked ASoIaF, and indeed all fantasy literature, even more than they disliked Tolkien. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I'll always like Tolkien whether it's cool to do so or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gillio Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I'll always like Tolkien whether it's cool to do so or not. Me too, I'd say we've followed him in and out of fashion a couple of times by now. :dunno: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Me too, I'd say we've followed him in and out of fashion a couple of times by now. :dunno:I was a "geek" and "weird" and a "loner" for reading Tolkein at school. Children are cruel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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