A rising dislike of Tolkein?

[The Killer Snark]

The only thing I really hate about Tolkien is when he barrages you with geography lessons during slow paced parts of the narrative. This is a real problem during the middle travelogue part of the first (reading it as six divisions) books.

[Night's_King]

The only thing I really hate about Tolkien is when he barrages you with geography lessons during slow paced parts of the narrative. This is a real problem during the middle travelogue part of the first (reading it as six divisions) books.

This is a problem of many fantasy writers, I think. Just look at GRRM or Robert Jordan.

[The Killer Snark]

GRRM does it more in small chunks, though, and the map is easier to follow. Tolkien gets you used to particular locations, and then throws more place names within those locations at you or comes up with new names without even hinting where they are.

[Night's_King]

GRRM does it more in small chunks, though, and the map is easier to follow. Tolkien gets you used to particular locations, and then throws more place names within those locations at you or comes up with new names without even hinting where they are.

Oh, I meant that a little different, should have made that more clear.

While Tolkien describes the landscape excessive, GRRM likes to overdescribe food and Jordan womens cloths. I like how Tolkien overdescribes things and he does a better job than the other two, imho.

[The Killer Snark]

As a foodie, I actually like Martin's overdescriptions of food, however, if only out of morbid curiosity at how inedible it sounds.

[Zorral]

It's a matter of taste, like everything, I guess. I extremely love Tolkien, The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarilion... the world, the history, the cultures, the cool characters, he invented goddamn languages.

technically speaking his writing can sometimes be heavy and hard to face with. I remeber reading the same paragraph over and over and discarding the first book each time for a month. In it the hobbits walk in a forest and Tolkien discribes it. He can be really annoying when discribing things.

But here's the main reason for disagreement about him, In my opinion.

Tolkien was extremely affected by mythology and fairytales. There's a clear divison for good and evil, there's a quest to defeat the villan, it's pretty sured to be happy ended (I guess you can disagree when it comes to The Silmarilion). The plot twists are good, but aren't really shocking and they are predicted. The legenderium is complecated but the story isn't . The characters aren't too deep and hard to really connect to. You can love them, yeah.

So it's whether you like to drown in thoughts about Arda, magical Elves, beautiful landscapes, battles and stuff, or you don't. I do.

Children of Húrin is anything but happy ended. It's part of what provides the impressive power this reader received at least from what was published out of his working of backstory for what takes place in the age before LOTR.

But I've never been able to read the Silmarillion. It's not shaped fiction as is LotR. It's notes and outlines and speculations for world building, in the most turgid of prose.

My willingness and capacity to read annotated citations in scholarship in my own fields is boundless, but have failed every time to find the energy to wade through this.

[Jo498]

As has been pointed out before, the LotR is far from having a "happy ending". Almost all the stories in the Silmarilion have a tragic ending, except for the mission of Earendil and the following aid of the Valar (which nevertheless leads to the destruction of Beleriand).

It's been a few years that I read LotR and some of the landscape and geography description may be a little overdone. But I agree that GRRM is a much worse offender. Food is not even the worst case, every detail of the clothing is described to a far larger extent than I would need and the obsession with heraldry borders on the pathological. All of this is necessary or at least o.k. for introduction and stage setting... ONCE! But these description keep showing up in every bloody small council meeting already in the first book. And it does not get better; some of the worst is in ADWD and I read the "Mercy" sample chapter yesterday and it's there again. Braavos has been described several times already, I do not need another whole paragraph about its crooked lanes etc.

[Lyanna Stark]

As has been pointed out before, the LotR is far from having a "happy ending". Almost all the stories in the Silmarilion have a tragic ending, except for the mission of Earendil and the following aid of the Valar (which nevertheless leads to the destruction of Beleriand).

Indeed. I always get a bit confused when Tolkien gets slammed with "too much happy ending". Silmarrillion is especially lacking, perhaps. Even LOTR itself isn't all that jolly and skipping either. The furthest is "bittersweet" I think. It quite annoyed me how they dropped the ball on that in the movies as well. Sure, Frodo went to the undying lands, but that was so sugary sweet it seemed doused in syrup. While the touched upon Arwen's fate should she stay in Middle Earth in the second movie, it was all completely forgotten in the third one.

[Zorral]

LoTR was the template for the schemata of consciously, individually created High Fantasy. That sacrifice is necessary for the defeat of evil is part of that, as well as the knowledge that evil's defeat is always only temporary.

Frodo sacrifices the most in LoTR. In epic literature the warrior who gives his all for the sake of his side's cause will go to Heaven, if the principal creators were Christian, or to a good place in the Underworld, if they were, say, Greeks or Romans -- as well as win everlasting fame in this world, i.e. immortality.

So Frodo taken on the last sail from Middle Earth to the west, the Undying Lands -- which always makes me think of Avalon and the various Celtic legendary designations of the west and afterlife.

One of the greatest achievements in modern fantasy for this was Joy Chant's Red Moon Black Mountain and Grey Mane of Morning. As the books were primarily geared toward what is now called the YA market though, once there's a return from the secondary world, the great sacrifice returns to life in the here and now, which always seemed a bit of a cheat, to me anyway. The conclusion of Pullman's Dark Materials is the sundering of the two young lovers -- as well as other characters' deaths.

As far as the geography of Middle Earth -- I admire how he does it, though it is startling empty, particularly considering how humans fill every geographical niche there is, with our capacity for breeding. These are journeys that matter -- the characters are going somewhere, and they keep moving toward it, i.e. a true quest, not a mcguffin quest and / or the mistaken conviction on the part of so many quest fantasy writers that moving is plot and story. It's not.

[Bastard of Balmora]

If you read The Bris of Thror in Tolkein: Excised Errata, you'll see the connection. Also check out the deleted LOTR song "Gondor, Gondor über alles"

Spat out coffee. Jolly well done.

Anyone pretending to hate Tolkien now is just a hipster dick.

[sologdin]

a hipster tolkien hater says:

I hated Tolkien back before it was cool to hate Tolkien, before Moorcock wrote Epic Pooh

or so.

[Raksha 2014]

LoTR was the template for the schemata of consciously, individually created High Fantasy. That sacrifice is necessary for the defeat of evil is part of that, as well as the knowledge that evil's defeat is always only temporary.

Frodo sacrifices the most in LoTR. In epic literature the warrior who gives his all for the sake of his side's cause will go to Heaven, if the principal creators were Christian, or to a good place in the Underworld, if they were, say, Greeks or Romans -- as well as win everlasting fame in this world, i.e. immortality.

So Frodo taken on the last sail from Middle Earth to the west, the Undying Lands -- which always makes me think of Avalon and the various Celtic legendary designations of the west and afterlife.

One of the greatest achievements in modern fantasy for this was Joy Chant's Red Moon Black Mountain and Grey Mane of Morning. As the books were primarily geared toward what is now called the YA market though, once there's a return from the secondary world, the great sacrifice returns to life in the here and now, which always seemed a bit of a cheat, to me anyway. The conclusion of Pullman's Dark Materials is the sundering of the two young lovers -- as well as other characters' deaths.

As far as the geography of Middle Earth -- I admire how he does it, though it is startling empty, particularly considering how humans fill every geographical niche there is, with our capacity for breeding. These are journeys that matter -- the characters are going somewhere, and they keep moving toward it, i.e. a true quest, not a mcguffin quest and / or the mistaken conviction on the part of so many quest fantasy writers that moving is plot and story. It's not.

Just a shout out that I also love Joy Chant's books. I thought that Grey Mane of Morning was the better of the two; mainly because parts of Red Moon, Black Mountain seemed like imitation Tolkien (I didn't care for the princess) and she did so much better with the Hurnei and the gods of that world (the sacrifice chapter is one of the best pieces of fantasy I have ever read). Grey Mane of Morning is an incredibly rich reading experience. I never thought of it as YA; though, what with implied rape, infanticide, sexual activity.

I've never noticed Tolkien's geographic descriptions weighing down his narrative.

Frodo's leaving Middle-earth seemed very sad to me; a bittersweet coda to the triumph over the forces of darkness.

[Ruin]

I really enjoyed Quenta Silmarillion, Of Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin.

[Zorral]

Just a shout out that I also love Joy Chant's books. I thought that Grey Mane of Morning was the better of the two; mainly because parts of Red Moon, Black Mountain seemed like imitation Tolkien (I didn't care for the princess) and she did so much better with the Hurnei and the gods of that world (the sacrifice chapter is one of the best pieces of fantasy I have ever read). Grey Mane of Morning is an incredibly rich reading experience. I never thought of it as YA; though, what with implied rape, infanticide, sexual activity.

:agree:

Contemporary people in the so-called developed world are so unused to discomfort it's hard for a lot of people to comprehend that prices must be paid for anything, and pain and suffering are part of that. But we don't believe in suffering, so the real suffering in the midst of which we live we manage not to notice. What is the percentage again of U.S. children who don't get enough to eat?

[JC Denton]

The one thing that would have made LOTR 10x better and would have removed alot of the criticism from it being a bit cliched:

Either Frodo or Sam should have died at the end.

And no, Frodo's "spiritual death" and departure at the Gray Havens doesn't really count

[HexMachina]

Why would that have made the story better in any way shape or form? Killing a character off does not automatically make it better, and I actually prefer the bitterness of Frodo doing all he has done to save Middle Earth, and then being unable to remain. I much prefer that to killing of a main character for.no purpose

[The Marquis de Leech]

The one thing that would have made LOTR 10x better and would have removed alot of the criticism from it being a bit cliched:

Either Frodo or Sam should have died at the end.

And no, Frodo's "spiritual death" and departure at the Gray Havens doesn't really count

Utter nonsense.

Frodo has his life destroyed, and returns home a shell-shocked veteran, having failed in his Quest to destroy the Ring. This makes far more interesting reading than having Frodo killed off by a stray lava stream at Orodruin. Not least because the shell-shocked veteran phenomenon was one Tolkien was intimately acquainted with, having lost all his friends in the First World War.

[TheButcherCrow]

I wouldn't consider myself one of the best read people in the world but I'm far from illiterate. I've read Ovid and Homer, I've read Dante and Shakespeare. I've read Austen, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Joyce and De Bernieres but I find myself utterly incapable of reading Tolkien. Everytime I try, I get a few chapters into Fellowship and I just feel my will to live ebbing out of my soul :dunno:

[Arataniello]

Utter nonsense.

Frodo has his life destroyed, and returns home a shell-shocked veteran, having failed in his Quest to destroy the Ring. This makes far more interesting reading than having Frodo killed off by a stray lava stream at Orodruin. Not least because the shell-shocked veteran phenomenon was one Tolkien was intimately acquainted with, having lost all his friends in the First World War.

Precisely. The fact that the Shire "was saved, but not for [Frodo]" is about as bitter-sweet and sad an ending as there could be. Having him die in Mordor and the other hobbits free the Shire and live Happily Ever After would have been much more of a cliche, surely?

[James Arryn]

Utter nonsense.

Frodo has his life destroyed, and returns home a shell-shocked veteran, having failed in his Quest to destroy the Ring. This makes far more interesting reading than having Frodo killed off by a stray lava stream at Orodruin. Not least because the shell-shocked veteran phenomenon was one Tolkien was intimately acquainted with, having lost all his friends in the First World War.

This.

No emotional amputation. Rather, emotional gangrene. Much less sophomoric.