The american tolkien

[Falcon2909]

>country is called dorne
>its ruler is named dorne martell

BRAVO GEORGE

[The Bard of Banefort]

. . . you mean Doran? 

[Big P]

It's not an apt description of George R. R. Martin.  He and Tolkien are authors of epic fantasy but their works are separated by time and culture.  Song of ice and fire is for adults with mature themes.

[Aldarion]

30 minutes ago, Big P said:

It's not an apt description of George R. R. Martin.  He and Tolkien are authors of epic fantasy but their works are separated by time and culture.  Song of ice and fire is for adults with mature themes.

So is Lord of the Rings.

[Lord Lannister]

It's a literal case of apples and oranges. Both authors have their different strengths and focuses. 

Martin has more interesting characters and interactions. Plus the line between good and evil is blurred gray. Tolkien is definitely better at world building while keeping his story focused and not getting bogged down. 

You can enjoy both for what they are. I think the defining difference is one story is finished while the other is unlikely to be.

[Jaenara Belarys]

I like Mr. Martin's works a lot, but......GRRM is a very good writer, but Tolkien's works started off the genre. Plus, the LOTR has the benefit of actually being complete. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

I grew up watching the Lord of the Rings movies and they have a special place in my heart, but I have never been able to get into the books. Wish I could say otherwise.

[Lord Lannister]

18 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I grew up watching the Lord of the Rings movies and they have a special place in my heart, but I have never been able to get into the books. Wish I could say otherwise.

I've experienced that to an extent as I got older. As a teenager I couldn't get enough of the books. As I got older, I found it had less appeal to me. Until recently when I listed to the audio books at work, I hadn't had anything to do with the books in years. 

Though my first immersion into Tolkien's works since I read ASoIaF did help me appreciate how well Tolkien managed his story. Even though there was a wider world beyond the main characters and events happening elsewhere, Tolkien definitely managed to keep the story focused and for the most part didn't get it get bogged down. 

[Jaenara Belarys]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I grew up watching the Lord of the Rings movies and they have a special place in my heart, but I have never been able to get into the books. Wish I could say otherwise.

I needed to watch the movies in order to really work up the desire to actually read the books. I'd read the first few pages of LotR: FotR, but it seemed too boring and the way they were talking was nigh on incomprehensible as compared to other books. Then I read the books, and found they're not boring. Simply the effects of reading the stuff before the rising action. 

[Mark of the West]

I came to Tolkien's literary work relatively late in life, my thirties, and after having seen the movies. I loved them and it led me to devour his legendarium wholly, usually starting a walk through Middle Earth as the leaves start falling every year.  Martin's more adult-centric world (and it is. I mean,  like Boromir says, one does not simply do the tango with their sister in Mordor. Or. Maybe they do, but Tolkien left that somewhere in the margins)  interested me in a more immediate way. That's not an indictment or  affirmation of either, just an observation. Jaime is probably my favorite character despite his obvious flaws. His story is certainly one of the most interesting because of his simultaneous heroism and depravity. I hope to God he follows a  less predictable arc than in the series. But, I love both author's works for  what they are. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

I'm one of the few people who is not all that into the LoTR films. They're fine as swashbuckling action fare, but I much prefer the books' slower, steadier building of tension, and its rich sense of place and time. For me the biggest weaknesses in Tolkien's writing is his human characters. Boromir and maybe Denethor aside, they're mostly flat and devoid of inner conflict. Otherwise I love the poetic, sublime nature of his writing, tinged of course with sorrow for things lost.

With Martin, character writing is one of his greatest strengths. He has a few groaners peppered throughout (like Asha's sex scene, ugh), but by and large he has created an expansive pantheon of characters with various spectra of character traits, motivations, opportunities, and limitations. I agree that Tolkien is better at pacing and overall narrative structure, but arguably Martin is trying something far more ambitious in ASOIAF: he's doing a multi-level epic that include personal experiences, societal critiques, and an almost Jungian layer of dreams, prophesies, visions, myths, and faintly remembered histories. There are plenty of flaws to point out, but at the same time I am continually amazed that the books that we have so far were in fact written by just one person. It's an astounding accomplishment, even unfinished.

[Aldarion]

10 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I'm one of the few people who is not all that into the LoTR films. They're fine as swashbuckling action fare, but I much prefer the books' slower, steadier building of tension, and its rich sense of place and time. For me the biggest weaknesses in Tolkien's writing is his human characters. Boromir and maybe Denethor aside, they're mostly flat and devoid of inner conflict. Otherwise I love the poetic, sublime nature of his writing, tinged of course with sorrow for things lost.

With Martin, character writing is one of his greatest strengths. He has a few groaners peppered throughout (like Asha's sex scene, ugh), but by and large he has created an expansive pantheon of characters with various spectra of character traits, motivations, opportunities, and limitations. I agree that Tolkien is better at pacing and overall narrative structure, but arguably Martin is trying something far more ambitious in ASOIAF: he's doing a multi-level epic that include personal experiences, societal critiques, and an almost Jungian layer of dreams, prophesies, visions, myths, and faintly remembered histories. There are plenty of flaws to point out, but at the same time I am continually amazed that the books that we have so far were in fact written by just one person. It's an astounding accomplishment, even unfinished.

What Martin is doing is what Tolkien was doing with his whole Legendarium. And, arguably, Tolkien's approach was better in some aspects: he did finish the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings... but he never did finish the Silmarillion, or the oh-so-aptly-named Unfinished Tales. In fact, Christopher didn't finish sorting through his fathers unpublished work by the time of his own death.

One major difference I had noticed between the two is the nature of the world. For all his descriptions, Martin's worldbuilding is largely a backdrop for the action. Characters are the focus, and the story itself revolves around them. For Tolkien, world itself is a character. This likely stems from what they were trying to do: Martin's books read more like history, while Tolkien's books are mythology (hence the "poetic, sublime nature" of Tolkien's writing you had noted).

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 hours ago, Aldarion said:

What Martin is doing is what Tolkien was doing with his whole Legendarium.

Well, obviously Martin is deeply indebted to Tolkien. The whole notion of monomythic high fantasy world building is Tolkien's invention, and so in that respect ASOIAF is following what Tolkien already did, as you say, probably better.

But my point about a more ambitious endeavor is different. Despite it intricate details about place, language, and mythic history, Lord of the Rings is a pretty simple story. It's an epic tale of an unlikely hero and his compatriots; the tone consistently teeters between wondrous discovery, foreboding, and the melancholy of change and loss. This is not a fault. The simplicity is part of why the narrative is fairly tight, some tangents aside.

Not only is Martin working with a much bigger cast of characters (and paying a lot more attention to the writing of their characterizations), his story is his attempt to tackle some really hard moral and philosophical questions. I think the fact that Tolkien made escapist fantasy that was nevertheless deeply affected by the ugly realities of his time was something that really resonated with Martin, and Martin has built upon that and then some.

Martin loves hero narratives, he thinks myths and songs are not just beautiful, but important for human life--and yet, how to reconcile the fantasy with all of the complexities, moral grey areas, banalities, and ugliness of reality? How to account for atrocities committed not just by the Orcs of the world, but also the Aragorns? How to capture the very real possibility of human self-extinction? And how to nevertheless manage a successfully inspiring hero's narrative when including all of these more complicated considerations? These are all very tall orders. How successful he is in his work can be debated, of course, but regardless it's an astoundingly ambitious project.

[broken one]

Not a specialist, but for me Tolkien and GRRM belong to different... subgenres? I see GRRM and Sapkowski in the same league of "earthly" or "realistic" fantasy. Shades of gray instead of manichean duality, more psychology and politics.

Tolkien's works are elevated. I like Silmarilion a lot, it made big impression on me, while LoTR not very much. The mixture of pathos and adventure seems bit archaic.

BTW I am astonished every time people judge GRRM's characters through black/white glasses, dany the brutal, jon the traitor, ygritte the rapist and so on. Tolkien is always alive (unlike Lenin).

[Falcon2909]

22 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

It's a literal case of apples and oranges. Both authors have their different strengths and focuses. 

Martin has more interesting characters and interactions. Plus the line between good and evil is blurred gray. Tolkien is definitely better at world building while keeping his story focused and not getting bogged down. 

You can enjoy both for what they are. I think the defining difference is one story is finished while the other is unlikely to be.

But Tolkien doesn't ask the question - what was aragorn's tax policy?

[Loose Bolt]

42 minutes ago, Falcon2909 said:

But Tolkien doesn't ask the question - what was aragorn's tax policy?

How much and to whom lord Cerwyn paid taxes 250 AC ?

[Curled Finger]

I received the LOTR and Hobbit as Christmas presents when I was maybe 17.  The maps moved to different walls as I relocated and ultimately disintegrated.  The Silmarillion was the only hard back book I bought as a young person.   This is rich story telling that transported me through the chaos of my youth.   Of course there were only animated movies back then. When movies finally did become available I was awestruck.  Still there is no other telling of these tales quite like Tolkien's own writing.  Move this encounter up a few decades to roughly 2013 and finding Martin's epic.   Have read these books as many times as any of the Tolkien and again there is no retelling of the story quite like Martin's writing.  While I still think of children in terms of Hobbits I am so pleased to add house words to the adults the children became because of the influence Martin has had.  I don't believe there is a 1:1 translation of Tolkien's epic while Martins translates well--perhaps it is the age of wonder that encapsulates LOTR etal where maturity and forgiveness allow me to enjoy Westeros come to life.  

Just finished reading the Eye of The World because Amazon got me interested in the story--I am not really up for a 14 book read though it really is quite a marvelous tale.  Loved Fritz and the Fool and Memory Sorrow and Thorn.   None were Tolkien or Martin but stood alone on their own wonderful story telling and perspectives on fantasy.   While I agree that the comparisons between the authors is a bit over argued there is no denying Tolkien created a fantasy for the ages where Martin brought the telling of this type of tale into contemporary reckoning of the genre.  I cannot read ASOIAF as anything other than tribute and perfection to all the great fantasy and horror and historical fiction that came before.   Tribute doesn't require comparison.  Just real pleasure in the reading.    

[Lord Lannister]

1 hour ago, Falcon2909 said:

But Tolkien doesn't ask the question - what was aragorn's tax policy?

I'm really not interested in being drawn into a discussion about the merits and cons of each author personally, I just enjoy their works. 

While Martin's criticism of those specifics could hold some water, it's not as if his own world doesn't have those concerns concerning economics, demographics and the such. We could quibble back and forth on that or just accept that the genre is called fantasy and it doesn't always have to be completely realistic to be enjoyable.