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

[Verboten]

I read the Lord of the Rings when I was nine after reading the Hobbit when I was seven. I read it hoping for MOAR DRAGONS and instead got 150 pages of tedium before there was anything interesting going on and alas, there were no dragons introduced in the text though I struggled 'til the end. I re-read them both when I got the Silmarillion at age sixteen because I felt like it.

Also Tv Tropes should be banned as a link. Unless one is discussing actual tropes within the genre. That is all.

[dog-days]

Also Tv Tropes should be banned as a link. Unless one is discussing actual tropes within the genre. That is all.

Agreed. I was once trapped there for sixth months. Now I'm in rehab. We have meetings.

[James Nicholls]

Also Tv Tropes should be banned as a link. Unless one is discussing actual tropes within the genre. That is all.

It's a highly entertaining site, and quite accurate. Haters gonna hate.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

....the same way I agree with those that say that Tolkien knew what he was doing in terms of style. He was aiming for - and achieved, I would argue - a very specific effect. Nevertheless, his prose might still fall short of the other nominees, even taking that into consideration.

Very nice post overall. On this last point, I agree completely. Had critics said "we saw what he was trying to do, but he failed miserably, and doesn't compare to (name author)", I'd have no problems with it. It was those critics who essentially attacked his goal of creating a piece of proto-English myth to whom I object.

[Grack21]

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, hardly anyone had heard of John Donne.

Walter Scott was a hugely popular author for the whole of the nineteenth century. Who reads him now?

I take issue with these two. Donne was hugely popular in his day. Unless you're saying he was forgotten for a time, which I can go with.

And I read Walter Scott, dammit!

[Grack21]

It is quite easy to find things most people will agree are bad (and The Eye of Argon is one), but impossible to find things everybody will agree are good. I certainly have met well-read and articulate people who thought Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky wrote unreadable tripe and their fame is just effect of some unfortunate accident. I suspect some of them would argue Shakespeare and The Eye of Argon are of comparable quality and this position would be defensible from their POV.

Oh, Shakespeare had some big detractors all right. Mark Twain and T.S. Elliot come to mind, ANd I could have a field day with the oxfordians.

[Grack21]

It's a highly entertaining site, and quite accurate. Haters gonna hate.

That site is as accurate as me trying to write calligraphy with my dick. ANy idiot can add something and it's not checked over or sourced at all.

[Zach H]

I figured I'd actually take a quick look since I have a Tolkien and Greene book on the same shelf.

There were many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them were large iron-bound chests of wood. All had been broken and plundered; but beside the shattered lid of one there lay the remains of a book. It had been slashed and stabbed and partly burned, and it was so stained with black and other dark marks like old blood that little of it could be read. Gandalf lifted it carefully, but the leaves crackled and broke as he laid it on the slab. He pored over it for some time without speaking. Frodo and Gimli standing at his side could see, as he gingerly turned the leaves, that they were written by many different hands, in runes, both of Moria and of Dale, and here and there in Elvish script.

I like this prose because it takes time from the physical adventuring of the quest to focus on the atmosphere of the moment. The company is in a dark, scary, place, sure, but the moment seems to be amplifed in melancholic normalcy by taking the time to focus on a book. Perhaps the most shining moment of the prose here, and one that lesser writers of the quest would botch, is "other dark marks like old blood that little of it could be read." Not drops of bood, but drops like old blood. This is poetic imagery to me. I see lost culture and art, inherent hmanity. I see not just evidence of physical sufferining, but faded and smudged ink, the slow decay and lingering sadness of things that lurk on the cusp of their passing.

'Then you mustn't go,' Peter said, prepared to solve all difficulties with one plain sentence, and Francis let his nerves relax, prepared to leave everything to Peter. But though he was grateful he did not turn his face towards his brother. His cheeks still bore the badge of a shameful memory, of the game of hide and seek last year in the darkened house, and of how he had screamed when Mabel Warren put her hand suddenly upon his arm. He had not heard her coming. Girls were like that. Their shoes never squeaked. No boards whined under their tread. They slunk like cats on padded paws.

I like this prose because it portrays a truthful moment of daily life in a manner that likewise paints the mundane in extraordinary light. To me this an inversion of the Tolkien scene. Instead of normalizing the fantastic we see the normal being redrawn into something of a dream world. Mabel moves like a ghost, perhaps is a ghost to Francis, and in turn instills in him a dread that you suspect also provides him with something of an inexplicable thrill.

I'd say my own literary horizons are expanded by being able to read and appreciate both authors.

[James Nicholls]

That site is as accurate as me trying to write calligraphy with my dick. ANy idiot can add something and it's not checked over or sourced at all.

And yet somehow the relevant Tropes are linked to relevant examples with relevant descriptions. They must attract a better class of idiots than most websites.

[Tears of Lys]

It's been a while since I've reread LotR and didn't recognize that first paragraph until I got to "Gandalf." At first I thought it was another book entirely and was quite intrigued and wanted more.

:blushing: :ohwell:

[Grack21]

And yet somehow the relevant Tropes are linked to relevant examples with relevant descriptions. They must attract a better class of idiots than most websites.

Yeah, but the actual examples of those tropes isn't linked to anything. Anyone can just throw shit up there. So there's no way to know if the examples are accurate or even real.

[James Nicholls]

Yeah, but the actual examples of those tropes isn't linked to anything. Anyone can just throw shit up there. So there's no way to know if the examples are accurate or even real.

Most of the examples I've read are accurate, and the ones that aren't have been matters of personal disagreement rather than out and out fallacies. One might suggest that to verify whether the example is accurate one needs only watch/read/consume the media in question, so there's a source for you, ready made. There is an editing culture on many of the more popular pages, just read the discussion tab to see evidence of it, although it's not as strong as that of Wikipedia. Failing all of those things, perhaps you'd do best to exercise your own judgement on things, and not believe everything you read.

[Larry.]

I figured I'd actually take a quick look since I have a Tolkien and Greene book on the same shelf.

There were many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them were large iron-bound chests of wood. All had been broken and plundered; but beside the shattered lid of one there lay the remains of a book. It had been slashed and stabbed and partly burned, and it was so stained with black and other dark marks like old blood that little of it could be read. Gandalf lifted it carefully, but the leaves crackled and broke as he laid it on the slab. He pored over it for some time without speaking. Frodo and Gimli standing at his side could see, as he gingerly turned the leaves, that they were written by many different hands, in runes, both of Moria and of Dale, and here and there in Elvish script.

I like this prose because it takes time from the physical adventuring of the quest to focus on the atmosphere of the moment. The company is in a dark, scary, place, sure, but the moment seems to be amplifed in melancholic normalcy by taking the time to focus on a book. Perhaps the most shining moment of the prose here, and one that lesser writers of the quest would botch, is "other dark marks like old blood that little of it could be read." Not drops of bood, but drops like old blood. This is poetic imagery to me. I see lost culture and art, inherent hmanity. I see not just evidence of physical sufferining, but faded and smudged ink, the slow decay and lingering sadness of things that lurk on the cusp of their passing.

'Then you mustn't go,' Peter said, prepared to solve all difficulties with one plain sentence, and Francis let his nerves relax, prepared to leave everything to Peter. But though he was grateful he did not turn his face towards his brother. His cheeks still bore the badge of a shameful memory, of the game of hide and seek last year in the darkened house, and of how he had screamed when Mabel Warren put her hand suddenly upon his arm. He had not heard her coming. Girls were like that. Their shoes never squeaked. No boards whined under their tread. They slunk like cats on padded paws.

I like this prose because it portrays a truthful moment of daily life in a manner that likewise paints the mundane in extraordinary light. To me this an inversion of the Tolkien scene. Instead of normalizing the fantastic we see the normal being redrawn into something of a dream world. Mabel moves like a ghost, perhaps is a ghost to Francis, and in turn instills in him a dread that you suspect also provides him with something of an inexplicable thrill.

I'd say my own literary horizons are expanded by being able to read and appreciate both authors.

Nice selection. Of the two, I do prefer Greene's on a whole, in part because how he captures the fear of perdition and the corruptibility of humans, from The Power and the Glory:

'Oh no, I'm not. You can't deceive me. Listen, I've given money to boys - you know what I mean. And I've eaten meat on Fridays.' The awful jumble of the gross, the trivial, and the grotesque shot up between the two yellow fangs, and the hand of the priest's ankle shook and shook with the fever. 'I've told lies, I haven't fasted in Lent for I don't know how many years. Once I had two women - I'll tell you what I did...' He had an immense self-importance; he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part - a world of treachery, violence, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt. He said, 'Why do you tell me all this?'

In that single passage, not only is the corruption and pettiness of human deception and crimes revealed (the way in which the penitant confesses and what he confesses), but also the view of the corruptibility of the world, its vices and the hopelessness for humans alone to change and to do something else. It is also an excellent foreshadowing of what transpires in the second half of the novel with the whisky priest. The writing is more fluid to me, perhaps because there isn't the sense of Greene trying to ape the mannerisms of a previous narrative mode, and it is both more subtle in its presentation of its themes (consider what the whisky priest becomes) and more powerful because of the ultimate meanings behind those actions and words. Tolkien is variable in those qualities and the narrative often is creaky due to his attempt to tie in the One Ring story with the earlier (and never finished) mythology he had created for that setting. Perhaps I'll write more about this later in the week, but I do want to finish re-reading The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American first.

[Horselover Fat]

And yet somehow the relevant Tropes are linked to relevant examples with relevant descriptions. They must attract a better class of idiots than most websites.

Hey pal,Westeros has the best class of idiots in all the Internet.

[Seli]

Most of the examples I've read are accurate, and the ones that aren't have been matters of personal disagreement rather than out and out fallacies. One might suggest that to verify whether the example is accurate one needs only watch/read/consume the media in question, so there's a source for you, ready made. There is an editing culture on many of the more popular pages, just read the discussion tab to see evidence of it, although it's not as strong as that of Wikipedia. Failing all of those things, perhaps you'd do best to exercise your own judgement on things, and not believe everything you read.

That is the strength of the site, and the relevance even for this discussion. It shows that different viewpoints of the same work are possible and can be equally valid at the same time. And it forces you to consider if you trust what you read, which is a good thing in any age, but especially in this one.

[Galactus]

Just one point.

Tolkien is said to be archaic, and reminiscient of the Eddas.

Remember that these are literati from scandinavia. They've almost certainly read the Eddas, and the sagas. They're not neccessarily going to be impressed by "Oooh, sparse prose ala. vikings! How exotic!" the way anglos might be.

[Larry.]

That and then when you consider the contents of Nobel's will:

“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction ...”

Leaving aside the issue of if the story is viewed as derivative or weak, would Tolkien's writing ever fit those parameters?

[Shryke]

Depends what you define as "An Ideal Direction".

[Shryke]

You argue that Shakespeare must be better than the Eye of Argon because almost everyone thinks it is and then slam my supposed linking of quality with popularity. I suppose you don't see the hypocrisy here?

No, because you are ignoring the order of logic here.

I am not saying Shakespeare is better then TEOA because more people say it is, I'm saying because it's better then TEOA, everyone thinks it is.

Pretty much everyone believes that things that are dropped fall, but this does not mean the laws of gravity are based on popular opinion.

Generally people prefer their wine not to taste like vinegar. People have shared cultural concepts of beauty, on the whole. There's a craftsmanship to most things that will account for much of the population. But that doesn't make it objective, it just makes it what people generally like. You will always find someone who disagrees with you.

Sure, they are called Italians.

But, to be serious, you've chosen a decent example here. Wine, and taste in general, is based on certain expectations. Shit tastes bad, no matter how much some illusive person might claim it doesn't. I mean, they can say "It's my opinion", and it certainly would be, but that doesn't mean it's not a bad opinion.

The trouble with viewpoints such as yours is that you discern between the opinions of people "in the know" and those who aren't. That's just intellectual elitism, and I won't stand for it. I'm not saying Dan Brown is better than [insert obscure but well reviewed author here] purely on the basis that Brown has sold more copies. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as better or worse, at least in the objective sense. If you wish to say that you think whoever is a better writer than Dan Brown and here is your reasoning, then go ahead. I maintain that your standards for what constitutes good writing are subjective, even if agreed by an "expert" panel (and even if I agree with them).

Yes, and? You act like this is unwarranted or bad or something.

When a 5 year old tells me Go Dog Go is the best book in the world and that War and Peace sucks because it's too big, is this a valid opinion? Or does that child lack the experience and skills to properly make this evaluation? (fyi - the answer is the second one)

I'm certainly being "intellectually elitist" when I tell that child "No, you are wrong. You'll know better later.". I am using my superior experience and skills and knowledge to make a better assessment of the relative merits of the books in question.

It is quite easy to find things most people will agree are bad (and The Eye of Argon is one), but impossible to find things everybody will agree are good. I certainly have met well-read and articulate people who thought Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky wrote unreadable tripe and their fame is just effect of some unfortunate accident. I suspect some of them would argue Shakespeare and The Eye of Argon are of comparable quality and this position would be defensible from their POV.

And those people would be full of shit.

Now one can argue that Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky aren't as good as they are made out to be, certainly. But that's a whole different argument. (more of a jockeying for positioning between set levels, based on subjective criteria to some extent)

Literature is as objective/subjective as the grammar used to write it.

[Horza]

ps: new poster here, Lucerne is the name of really pretty lake in the Alps, hope to settle on in here in the coming days/weeks.

Welcome aboard!