ROTK - doubts

[Jon P. Inghram]

LOTR is really too full of old cliche' and way too epic to be readable, for me.

I didn't know something could become retroactivly clichéd.

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
I didn't know something could become retroactivly clichéd.

John, I'm serious () here, and that is the reason I always ask to Tolkien's fan if they did never read something else other than LOTR.
This because LOTR is in its most a simple copy of the already existing literature (unless someone think that JRRT has painted it on cave walls 45 thousands of years ago), that broadcast from Egyptian's myths (well, Babilonian and Sumeran where pretty well wrotten, to be honest) to literature that has been published the day before Tolkien took his first breath.

When thinking of Tolkien as the inventor of something innovative, people only shows that they think humanity has begun writing at the beginning of 1900...and that's sad.

[Drizzt]

And, to add another little bit to this discussion:

I appreciate Tolkien, even if sometimes he shows a bit too proud of himself.
What I really hate is that people that think to love his work only 'cause of LOTR, doesn't see how they are dumb.

There are a few works that Tolkien surely wrote with his own style and for his own pleasure to write them.
And there is a single work of Tolkien that is purely a commerce operation, wrote not because he felt the need of it, but because asked by his editor.

Now, strangely enough, EVERYONE loves Tolkien for his commercial work thinking that he is an inventor, that he wrote a masterpiece, and claim that every other Fantasy book is a copy of Tolkien and a commercial operation.
But, LOTR is obviously a commercial operation. And, not even the first in the world.
And, of all the works of Tolkien, the only one that's been targeted to the masses, wrote for the simple sake of selling it, it's the only one who have became famous...

[Gurm]

Dude, you're extraordinarily confused.

LOTR came FIRST, before his other writings. He wasn't "asked" to write it. He started writing it in the trenches during WWI, and sending bits and pieces home to his family.

PLEASE do your homework before spouting off.

Have I read other stuff? Yes. In the original language whenever possible. Before you knock it, demonstrate a little knowledge of it. Ok?

- Gurm

[leech]

As far as Fantasy Epics go, Tolkien did make the mold for many generations of books. He was the creator of Orcs, the one who defined elves for all those Dungeon and Dragons novels. He invented the halfling/hobbit, at least as a literary creature. Granted a lot of his ideas came from folklore from various cultures. But elves in folklore are not tall fair-skinned people with pointy ears. They are usually quite like pixies and faery.

Tolkien was more than likely the first one to create his own world with it's seperate history and legends to write about. He was definitely a great pioneer in that respect. He even created his own languages for this world.

Actually, Gurm, it was the Hobbit he wrote in the trenches in WWI (if I recall correctly) and his editor asked him to write a follow up. Though the editor did NOT ask for a HUGE book that was much darker and sinister than the Hobbit was. That was Tolkien's idea. Though I'm sure he had started on creating the entire world and the history of it during WWI but Lord of the Rings came afterwards. But LOTR is just more stories from Middle-earth. He had many works that were in progress still when he died.

Leech

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Gurm
Dude, you're extraordinarily confused.

LOTR came FIRST, before his other writings. He wasn't "asked" to write it. He started writing it in the trenches during WWI, and sending bits and pieces home to his family.

Sorry, it's pretty well written in a lot of biography of JRRT.
Tolkien did wrote LOTR on request of the editor.
Tolkien works can be subdivided in three categories:
1) The works he did for himself, only because he wanted to write them. In this category fall -for example- all the pieces of paper that lately become the "Silmarillion" (those, were wrote in trenches)

2) Books he wrote for his son. "The Hobbit", "Roverandon".

3) Books that he wrote because he wanted to sell them, on request of his editor: "The Lord Of The Ring"


And, what a case, the one who is a major hit is the one that has been wrote for selling.
After that, a lot of people knows "The Hobbit" and like it.
Finally, really few did loved the Silmarillion.


Question is, why people can't enjoy things without the need to build a racism around them?
Why people need to build a wall around their brains?
There have been thousands of years of fantasy writing before Tolkien, and thousands of books of every genre(<- ?) before LOTR. Basic of book writing where old stuff when Tolkien did born, the way of write a book that would have kept a reader bound to it was common as water, in middle 1900.

LOTR IS full of old cliche'. LOTR is wrotten [I hate this verb, I can't never write it properly] following all the rules that were (and are) common for book writing. Obviously if someone only read Tolkien he comes to think it's an innovator -that's what I did- but after reading hundreds of books before and after LOTR, it come [other word I hate] up obvoiusly that there is nothing interesting in it.
Much more Tolkien's valuable books are "Three and Leaf" and "The Hobbit", for example, as they are somehow "originals"

All the characters seen in LOTR are cliche'. Every one of them (apart from Gimli) is prebuild, premade, and all of their role in the book can be guest the moment after they are presented.


Apart from this, it's a bit like a painter. The tools and the rules followed by Monet or Van Gogh are pretty the same. What's important it's the result from the use of those tools.
Tolkien surely knows how to play a reader, and it's really a great writer I really appreciate.

Have I read other stuff? Yes. In the original language whenever possible. Before you knock it, demonstrate a little knowledge of it. Ok?

Does this mean that you did read "La Divina Commedia" in Italian?
Did you read original Celts myths?
Did you read all Chrétiennes De Troyes' works?
Sir Tomas Mallory's work?
Wolfram Von Eschenbach?
Did you read Sumerian miths in sumerian language, or at least in English?
Did you read the "Odissea" and the "Iliade" in greek? Or in English?
Or Japanese miths, or the Bible, or the Coran, or Egyptian miths...
Did you take a look at Palenques' murals? They are the first fantasy ever wrote...


I'm not against Tolkien or, especially, against you. I'm against the "Tolkien is the first writer in history and it's best and only work is LOTR", that is often used by people to justify their dumbness.

And, not, I'm not telling you are dumb.

[The PIT]

Whos said LOTR is racist ?????

[Gurm]

Ok let's recap:

1. Yes, I did in fact read the Odyssey and Iliad in Greek, thank you very much. I also read a whole BUTTLOAD of stuff in Latin, and Russian. I'm working on my German so that I can read some German stuff as well. French I think I'll stay away from forever, thanks.

2. You wouldn't know a cliche in English if it bit you on the top of the head. (See, a cliche! Well, not REALLY a cliche, since I changed it around... but you get the idea.)

3. I never said that LOTR was the first book, but it comes pretty close to being the ultimate so far - at least as far as fantasy novels in the English language go.

4. You lump "The Silmarillion" in with books that JRRT "wanted" to write, and yet it was a commercial work that he never finished. It's dry and boring because he never wrote it himself. There was NO narrative completed, which is why it is a terrible hard read. Like it or not, LOTR was his baby, his masterpiece. He said so himself. I don't know which Biography you've been reading, but you have a lot of your facts horribly wrong. LOTR was a story set in middle earth, a land which JRRT had been crafting for 30+ years. It was only later that he ended up tying it all together. And yes, some of his other works are fun. Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, TREE and Leaf, etc. are all quite fun and nice, but were written for children.

5. You say that LOTR is a gigantic cliche. Show me the precedent. Sure, it's built upon earlier works. But show me the precedent, in works written BEFORE 1900, for the characters. You make some pretty bold statements, such as "every character is a cliche or stock character". Fine, show me the preponderance of other stories, pre-1900, which contain these "stock" characters. Then you manage to say Gimli ISN'T a stock character, despite the fact that he quite clearly IS.

I have a funny feeling that you haven't read NEARLY as much as you claim to have read, and that you're speaking out your ass. And, once again, I have to point out that EVERY TIME someone comes in here and starts in with "LOTR is boring, LOTR is cliched, LOTR is stupid, LOTR is a bad book" they have poor English skills and wouldn't know good writing in ENGLISH if it was about to decapitate them.

- Gurm

[DukeP]

Originally posted by Gurm
and wouldn't know good writing in ENGLISH if it was about to decapitate them.
- Gurm

Ouch.
You sure do read some SHARP books, eh Grum?




~~DukeP~~

[gt40]

my head hurts from all this stuff.
you ppl really need a life

[leech]

Actually it could be said that most of the Greek writings were based off of much earlier things as well, for the most part from the Egyptians and Sumerians. The thing with tolkien is though, that he created his own world to write about. All the Greek and Sumerian, etc. did not. To the extent that he created Middle-Earth with all it's great detail, did not really happen much before his time. Even now, with the different fantasy realms created for writing in, there are MANY writers working them. Usaully it'll be a couple writers that create it initially, then it booms out commercially and everyone else decides to add to it.

Frankly it pisses me off that writers feel the need to do this.... A good example would be Star Trek (granted this is Sci-Fi which is only different because it's in the future I guess... we could debate that one forever..). Gene Rodenberry created the idea for it, then a lot of other writers latched onto the idea, then it became a conflicting mess.

Same thing with the Forgotten Realms novels. I stopped reading them after so long, because they just got weird and overly fantastic.

Tolkien's work in the Lord of the Rings is still great because it still has it's original feel to it, simply because it hasn't been opened to just anyone to write about it. It hasn't had people add to it and change it to how THEY want it to be.

Leech

[SpiralDragon]

Originally posted by Gurm
Ok let's recap:

1. Yes, I did in fact read the Odyssey and Iliad in Greek, thank you very much. I also read a whole BUTTLOAD of stuff in Latin, and Russian. I'm working on my German so that I can read some German stuff as well. French I think I'll stay away from forever, thanks.

if you are not being sarcastic then i envy you........ being dyslexic dosent help me mutch in learning leanguages ... i would love to learn latin..... i've read mutch to mutch mythology but in english only

[Gurm]

Of course I'm not being sarcastic. You ought to know by now that when I say I know something, I know it.

I think part of the problem is that too often fiction or literature is poorly translated. I see this quite a lot with european languages, and eastern languages. Now I'm not saying that we English-speakers have the monopoly on good translators, but there has been a serious scholarly attempt to translate things as best we can.

But I have seen some piss-poor translations of literature - not just Tolkien. But Drizzt's examples up above - the introduction to Theoden, for example, is COMPLETELY a paraphrase, not taken from the book at all, and part of it is culled from the third book!

It's bizarre. You've all seen the pages on the bad translations of movies - books aren't much better, I'm afraid.

- Gurm

[leech]

But I have seen some piss-poor translations of literature - not just Tolkien. But Drizzt's examples up above - the introduction to Theoden, for example, is COMPLETELY a paraphrase, not taken from the book at all, and part of it is culled from the third book!

You mean like that dialog from Eowyn in The Two Towers (Movie) is not until the The Return of the King (Book)? The part where she talks about being afraid of being in a cage. And actually that scene takes place AFTER Helm's Deep, and before Aragorn leaves to travel the Paths of the Dead. Which by the way, is not stated as any kind of test. It's just that Aragorn goes through there to get help from the soldiers that had broken the Oath to Isildur. So Aragorn and his rangers go through there and perhaps it's a test of Courage for them all, but not a test to prove that Aragorn is Isildur's Heir, which all the Dunedain know anyhow....

Any sort of translation, wether it'd be from book to movie, or from book to book (different language) you're going to run into some inconsistencies. Imagine if you tried to translate something like Finnegan's Wake into different languages. That would be a pain in the arse.

Leech

[Gurm]

I was just irked that he says "oh we knew Theoden would die as soon as they introduced him", when in reality they didn't "introduce" him at all in the English book. Jeez.

- Gurm