A Critique of the LotR BOOKS

[Desdichado]

Umbran said it earlier, but before I read his post, I was thinking of making the same point -- Lord of the Rings is neither a modern novel, nor a historical-style epic -- it's a hybrid creature that incorporates elements of both in many ways. Saying that Lord of the Rings doesn't hold up under modern criticisms for it's failing as a modern novel is both a cop-out, and at the same time partly true.

Many of the "flaws" with the work are deliberate, and Tolkien knew very well that they weren't appropriate for a modern novel, but that they worked in the context he needed them.

LotR really is a unique beast -- which is why it fails even a casual attempt at serious literary criticism and yet has become probably the classic work of our century as well as the best-selling work (besides the Bible) of all time. Rather than arguing about parts that don't work for us individually, and trying to explain why they were done that way, I think it's perhaps more appropriate in the vein of the thread's probably purpose to simply state what doesn't work for you and why.

For me, I'm disappointed in recent readings with how ineffectual the Nazgul seem to be throughout Book 1. Although atmospherically and through description, they are established as credible and frankly quite potent and frightening threats, their actions continually bely their ability to actually stop Frodo and Co.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Should LotR be found on the fantasy/sci-fi or literature bookshelves in bookstores? Discuss.

While I consider it the equivalent of the literature that's on the lit shelves, I prefer to see it in F/SF because it's more likely to be found by folks who are interested in that genre.

OTOH, is it a literary slight to be placed on the same shelf as pulp F/SF? Perhaps, but I'm not bothered by it (but then, I'd file Tom Clancy and Thomas Hardy in the same section, since they're both fiction, albeit vastly different in quality).

I'm wondering what the folks with formal lit backgrounds define as "literature", and does Tolkien's work fit that definition?

 

[Darrin Drader]

Should LotR be found on the fantasy/sci-fi or literature bookshelves in bookstores? Discuss.

I'm wondering what the folks with formal lit backgrounds define as "literature", and does Tolkien's work fit that definition?

That's definitely not an easy one to answer because it actually has more to do with merchandising than it has to do with actual categorization. I went into a Borders looking for a Larry McMurtry book, so I went to the Western section. When I got there, I saw a sea of Louis L'Amour, but no McMurtry. I almost gave up and left the store, but decided to check the literature section and there I found most of the books he's ever written.

I feel that in terms of when it was published and the wide appeal the LotR has, it probably should be with the literature. I think that would show it a proper amount of respect and aknowlege how loved it is worldwide. That's my personal bias but there's this attitude among many academics that LotR is simply escapist fantasy. Those who buy into that philosophy (which I obviously don't) would have it filed next to the pulp so they don't have to aknowlege it as literature. I also find it interesting that a lot of the people who decry LotR as escapist fantasy teach things like the Fairy Queen, Morte D'Arthur, the Iliad, and other early works of a similar vein. An opposing, and more common sense view is that it should be with the fantasy because it will be easier to find that way.

So, this is really an excellent question. I say literature, but I'm not really convinced that I would do that if I were a business owner.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So, this is really an excellent question. I say literature, but I'm not really convinced that I would do that if I were a business owner.

Bookstores that stock Tolkien tend to have more than one copy of most of the titles they stock. Would it be bad, business-wise, to have Tolkien on the shelves in the literature section (to show it the proper respect etc) and in the SF/F section (where people will probably look for it first)?

-Hyp.

 

[The Serge]

I'm wondering what the folks with formal lit backgrounds define as "literature", and does Tolkien's work fit that definition?

I've a BA in English and I'm contemplating pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature (M.Ed. right now).

I would say that Tolkien stands as a literary work on two levels. First, he's the first (and, apparently to some people on this thread, the only) person to write in this fashion. While arguably Homer and the Beowulf author wrote "histories" and allegories based upon past events, Tolkien created an entire world (well, actually, really just a continent) in order to tell his tale, which in part was intended to reflect a lost myth for England. This was a clear goal of his, and this too, as far as we know, sets him apart from others who've written mythical tales.

Additionally, Tolkien is the only author I know of who also created a great deal of extraneous material that, while beneficial to a deeper understanding of his "masterpiece," is not essential reading. I disagree with those who posit that The Silmarillion must be read in order to fully grasp LotR. Reading it certainly does offer a better understanding, but LotR can stand on its own well enough. Most other writers who are part of The Canon (which, in and of itself, is a whole other debate when it comes to determining who belongs and who doesn't) who refer to other works, often refer to another established text, myth, belief, or historical event. Tolkien's references are to materials that only the characters are familiar with unless the reader deigns to read that additional material. This reinforces the creation of a "fantasy" world.

I think the placement of Tolkien in the "fantasy/sci-fi" section of bookstores is due to the desire to codify everything and because it's what people expect. I find it interesting that Stephen King, who has written many fantastic stories (horror if you want to use that term) and Anne Rice, who has written many fantastic stories (gothic horror if you want to use that term) are found not in the "fantastic" section, but in Fiction and Literature. I suppose the veneer of "realism" in those stories, their greater accessibility to those who think they're reading about "real life," makes such material seem more literary. It's interesting that you'll find Moby Dick in the literature too despite the clearly supernatural elements in that text. Or Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Finally, on the notion that LotR can't be critiqued using established standards... Utter nonsense. Anything can be critiqued. The problem is not all methods of approach are appropriate for every book. I don't know that New Criticism (which has dominated Literary Criticism for some time now) is the only approach to reading Tolkien, much less other authors. There are different ways to read and consider any text. The sad thing about criticism is that everyone thinks they can do it with a degree of competence and this simply isn't the case. Having an opinion on something, particularly a poorly conceived opinion based strictly upon one's own attitudes or ideas, tends to cause the critic to ignore the what was written. Although some would argue that this approach is just as valid as any other, I strongly disagree.

Why the hell can't I write short posts..?

 

[LightPhoenix]

I feel that in terms of when it was published and the wide appeal the LotR has, it probably should be with the literature. I think that would show it a proper amount of respect and aknowlege how loved it is worldwide. That's my personal bias but there's this attitude among many academics that LotR is simply escapist fantasy.

To be fair, that's a view that is held by more than just academics, but the majority of our culture. Escapism is very much considered at best an undesirable trait in our society, while "realism" and cynicism are considered more neutral to even beneficial.

As for LotR, I would rather see it in the "Fantasy" section. More exposure means more people reading it. There are definitely a group of people that will avoid the "Literature" section simply because it's stuff they had to read in school, let alone because they find it boring for one reason or another. I suspect that group is rather large, myself.

And obviously based on my quotation marks, I don't particularly subscribe to definitions of Literature and Fantasy as book companies would classify them. To be semantic, technically everything fiction is fantasy - they're practically synonyms. Now while obviously there are different types of fiction, these labels are very much abused and, IMO, very much constraining.

You see a similar problem with video games,especially RPGs. There's computer RPGs versus console RPGs. There's action RPGs, adventure RPGs, tactical RPGs, and pure RPGs, and it's all a gigantic muddle where labels really do nothing but to confuse the issue and cause people to judge a game not based on the game itself, but on predefined categories. Worse yet, it can cause developers to constrain themselves to one formula based on these ambiguous terms.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Bookstores that stock Tolkien tend to have more than one copy of most of the titles they stock. Would it be bad, business-wise, to have Tolkien on the shelves in the literature section (to show it the proper respect etc) and in the SF/F section (where people will probably look for it first)?

Yes, for the following reasons.

One, it's more work for the employees. When you deal with the volumes of books they carry, it's important to keep everything in one location, even if it really belongs in more than one. That way it's easily and quickly found.

Two, it's a waste of space. There's no reason why it should take up shelf space in two places when it can just take up space in one. LotR, while a classic, is not the only book out there. As I said in my previous post, I suspect there are a large number of people that avoid the Literature section altogether. Which means it's just wasted space.

Three, since it sells so well, it makes sense to put it on a stand out in a prominent location, rather than in either area. Especially given the huge success of the movies.

Four, as someone mentioned, the majority of the population thinks of it as fantasy. And that's where they'll look first. More effort on their parts means lesser sales, unfortunately. And bookstores are first a business, second a literary guide. People that work in bookstores aren't necessarily English Lit majors either - the first place they'll probably think is fantasy as well.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I've a BA in English and I'm contemplating pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature (M.Ed. right now).

Finally, on the notion that LotR can't be critiqued using established standards... Utter nonsense. Anything can be critiqued. The problem is not all methods of approach are appropriate for every book. I don't know that New Criticism (which has dominated Literary Criticism for some time now) is the only approach to reading Tolkien, much less other authors. There are different ways to read and consider any text.

Which is really not any different than the argument I've been making. Sure, youcan compare it to other fantasy novels that are considered 'good' by today's standards. It might even measure up well against some of the books that have more closely modeled Tolkien's writing style, such as Memory, Sorrow, and Thorne, but when you try to take it out of the context of the time it was written, in the opinion of many people, the criticism will be lacking because it will lack the context in which it was written. But granted, there are a number of different approaches to analyzing any text.

The sad thing about criticism is that everyone thinks they can do it with a degree of competence and this simply isn't the case. Having an opinion on something, particularly a poorly conceived opinion based strictly upon one's own attitudes or ideas, tends to cause the critic to ignore the what was written. Although some would argue that this approach is just as valid as any other, I strongly disagree.

Very eloquently put. And not to go on beating a dead horse, but this is the reason that I object to the premise of this thread. Before you can start trying to find weaknesses in a work, you really should have an adequate critique of it first, and coming up with the critique or critiques you are going to work from is much more important that stripping out the negative elements.

Why the hell can't I write short posts..?

Because the only quotes I ever see from you are well thought out and explained, which requires a greater degree of thought than most people, including myself, are interested in puting in on a messageboard.

 

[barsoomcore]

Well, I'm glad I finally gave in and poked my head in here. I assumed I'd see poor reaper strung out over some hot coals while the elusive (but somehow always available for blame) "Tolkien fanboys" applied barbecue sauce and knocked back a six-pack of 1462.

(Have I got that date right? 'That was a proper 1462, that was')

Anyway, there has certainly been much more civilized discussion in this thread than I dared to imagine there might be. Well done, us! And congrats to Eric for re-opening it even though it did look a little dicey there for a while.

Now, I guess I belong to the "Tolkien fanboy" camp. I honestly think these are tremendous works of literary genius. The more I read them, the more impressed I get with the good professor's talent and vision and insight.

That said, the orcs at Cirith Ungol -- yeah, okay. It's pretty darn convenient, isn't it? It's got nothing on, say, your average Edgar Rice Burroughs novel ("What? You say you're the son of the Emperor of the nation currently at war with the nation the woman I love happens to be the daughter of the Emperor of, and she's this very moment sealed up in a high tower room to which you happen to know a secret passage to, and you're dissatisfied with your father's efforts to make war on her father's nation, which combined with the fact that you're in love with her, you'll help me free her, but fortunately you're not so in love with her that you'll stand in the way of my future marriage to her? Lead on!") but as a coincidence, it's a pretty big one.

There's a couple of ways to consider this, and which way one chooses probably says more about how one WANTS to interpret the books, rather than any inherent quality in the books themselves.

You could say, "divine providence" and make a case that the books are deeply infused with (and even largely about) the idea that grace works upon us all, and without it we can never truly succeed. The self-slaughter of the orcs is just one example of this (other candidates being Gollum, Bombadil and the Eagles) and so is an expression of Tolkien's point, rather than a failure of his imagination.

You could say that it's in fact perfectly logical and well-supported by the rest of the story -- orcs, they kill each other. A lot. Over very little.

You could say that it's just a failure of Tolkien's imagination -- he couldn't think up a good way to get them out of this little fix and so hand-waved a solution.

All three of those ideas have some merit to them -- the second one perhaps least of all -- but I'm not sure any of them are completely convincing. I mean, the idea that he just couldn't think up a way for them to escape seems kind of unlikely, doesn't it? Given the other six million words of the text. But I don't think any of these reasons really provide a slam-dunk explanation of the text. It's problematic, no matter how you slice it.

As far as the delay of Frodo in getting out of the Shire -- that he (and to a lesser degree, Gandalf) make a serious error in judgement here does not to my mind make them less sympathetic characters (heck, if you had any insight into MY life, you'd see that I have no right to condemn other people for lapses in common sense) -- indeed, it frankly makes them MORE sympathetic, given where the story is about to take them. These bumbling rustics who have apprehension of how important they are in the scheme of things eventually make the right decision and actually manage to get the Ring to the Cracks of Doom. That Frodo grows so much and then at the end is unable to defeat the Ring's pull is pretty much the whole point of the book, says me.

LotR is a very strange book. There's nothing else much like it -- which is one of the reasons I like it so much. I find that I greatly enjoy many of the qualities that some people list as failings.

It rambles. Thank heavens for the rambles, and the endless descriptions! The story takes time. It asks you to invest a great deal over the course of the book, but I certainly find the payoff worthwhile.

That characters appear and then disappear is again, one of the great attractions. And this is a quality I think that gets overlooked in a lot of modern criticism -- at least "pop" criticism (movie critics and suchlike). It's tempting to say that a story should only include such elements as are crucial to the plot. That elements that do not contribute significantly to the working out of the narrative ought to be dropped, as if brevity in story-telling were the prime virtue to which all other qualities should be dropped.

But "extraneous" elements serve an important purpose in a story -- they keep you guessing. As Tolkien introduces one character after another, you can never be quite sure who's going to turn out to be important and who isn't. The usual cues -- the amount of information given about the character -- don't work because Tolkien invests even characters who have almost nothing to do with the plot (Bombadil) with all sorts of dialog, description and so on. So you can't relax, sit back and expect the author to only tell you the important bits -- you have to work it out for yourself who's important and why.

Now, I do happen to believe that much of Fellowship is what it is because JRRT didn't really know where he was going -- but I like that about it. It delights me because it puts me in the same position as the hobbits -- with no way to distinguish important from insignificant, ally from foe. I'm not sure he meant to do this -- I think it just happened as a matter of course of the way he was writing.

But I don't think that stories improve according to how much information that isn't essential to the plot gets removed. Hamlet would shrink considerably, for example, but would it get better? I am unconvinced.

As for the songs -- again, I love them. I love the fact that in this world, when Boromir dies, his three friends spontaneously make up a long and involved song for his funeral. I want to live in a world where that happens!

But then I love musicals, so there you go. I do think Tolkien was an exquisite poet in the tradition of older Anglo-Saxon-based forms.

Okay, maybe I'm a raving fanboy unwilling to allow any criticism of my favourite book. But a couple of points in my defense:

I didn't drag in any marketing statistics. A quick look at popular culture over, say, the past thirty years simply has to dispel any idea that there's a necessary connection between what's popular and what's good. I'm thrilled that so many people appear to love a work that means so much to me, but I don't for a second take it as evidence that the work is any good.

I didn't call reapersaurus names. Not even "pettifogging hornswoggler", which I've always wanted to call somebody.

I didn't utterly reject the suggested errors in the book, and even admitted that one of them could be, in fact, a failure on Tolkien's part. Pretty broadminded of me, huh? Huh? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Uh-huh.

I didn't try to claim some special status for the book. I think you can apply any critical stance you like to any work you wish to. The whole idea of critical theories is that each of them offers a different way to approach a work, and thereby offers new insights into the work and ourselves. Treating the work as a modern novel is every bit as valid an approach as treating it as an epic. That goes for the fanboys as much as for the "roasters". If it happens to seem less effective from one approach, well, that doesn't necessarily make it a worse book -- I'd be interested in seeing somebody offer up a work that succeeds as both an epic and a modern novel. Heck, throw in musical comedy, revenge tragedy and comic book! I got a copy of Lankhmar: City of Adventure for anyone who can come up with a candidate that succeeds in all those categories.

And no, Singing In The Rain doesn't succeed as a revenge tragedy, people. Perhaps if Gene Kelley had done a soft-shoe over Donald O'Connor's twitching, dismembered corpse...

 

[Spatula]

I find it interesting that Stephen King, who has written many fantastic stories (horror if you want to use that term) and Anne Rice, who has written many fantastic stories (gothic horror if you want to use that term) are found not in the "fantastic" section, but in Fiction and Literature.

I find King & Rice in bookstores exactly where I'd expect them to be - in the Horror section. A few stores don't have seperate horror sections, and throw the horror books the general Fiction section, which is no surprise. Fiction/lit is the place for the books that don't fit into
any of the specific genre sections that are present in a particular store.