China Mieville on Tolkien and Epic/High Fantasy

[barsoomcore]

drnuncheon: Just to ensure that peace reigns between us, I consider Zelazny a master writer and a great benefit to the human race. When I say I think he's not as good as Brust, that is still leaving him lots of room to be awfully good.

Peace?

 

[barsoomcore]

It all starts like this...

The only objective way to decide whether or not a work has a message is to determine the author's intent.

Objective? That presupposes that people have an objective point of view on their own thought processes.

Not really. It presupposes that they have a subjective view of their own thought processes as in Tolkien knew that he did not intend to send a message. He voiced that subjective opinion of his own work.

You are going to have to explain how reading an author's subjective view of their own thought processes provides an objective way to decide anything about their work.

To my thinking, subjective statements cannot provide objective information about ANYTHING. That, to me, is simply part of the definition of "subjective". I cannot accept your statement here without an explanation of the logic behind it.

My position is based on the lack of objective information about a work. I believe (as does most of the critical community) that the only objective source in analysis is the work itself. I'll develop this idea in more detail below. Obviously, if you can prove there are other sources of objective information, my position has no ground to stand on. But so far, you have been unable to prove that.

I respect an author's intent enough not to use my interpretation to deride their work or to assume that they take a certain moral stance on a given issue.

Deride? They take? I think you are misunderstanding the basic point of critical analysis. I don't investigate possible interpretations of literary works in order to either deride them or to make assumptions about the author. I investigate them in order to learn more about the world and myself.

(whole bunch of stuff about assessing interpretations)

Your point?

I think I can be forgiven for assuming you don't know anything about critical analysis, so I thought to provide you with the basics in an effort to show you why authorial intent is not required to assess interpretations. This is basic, first-year sort of stuff. I'm not offering some crazy idea on criticism, here. These are the basics you need to know if you want to set about investigating artistic works.

My hope was that by offering a coherent system of analysis you would see that knowledge about the author's intent is not required.

There is nothing else to go on but what the author himself says about a work.

There's the work itself.

The ONLY objective fact in critical analysis is the work itself. What the author thinks he said or claims to say is subjective. What anybody else thinks or says is subjective. All we have is the work.

All we need is the work. Historical context is interesting, and may provide fruitful avenues of exploration, but we don't need it. Biographical information is interesting likewise, but we don't need it. Certainly it's possible to learn a great deal from works about which we know relatively little -- there's no clear knowledge about Homer, and yet there seems to be a great deal to say about The Iliad. Is that discussion fruitless because it lacks any authorial credibility? Of course not.

Ergo, we don't need to pay the slightest attention to anything author says. If we don't want. We probably should, because we'll have new and maybe more interesting ideas, but judging an interpretation according to how closely it aligns with a given statement of the artist's serves no intellectual purpose.

Certainly doesn't mean I can't take what I want from the story that seems to have meaning and interpret as I will. It just means that I can't go cajoling the author into some corner attributing a variety of opinions to him because I interpret his work a certain way. Tactless and rude.

You seem to think that suggesting that a work contains certain ideas is equivalent to saying that the author possesses the same idea.

Rejection of authorial intent works both ways, though. If you reject intent as an objective source of information on the work, then of course the work ceases to be an objective source of information on the author's intent.

Does that ease your outrage? So when somebody creates an interpretation of a work, that is not equivalent to them creating an interpretation of the artist. And any effort to "prove" that an author must hold a certain idea because their work does fails.

He has written other stories with completely different elements and themes such as Sir Gawaine and Green Knight and I believe a science fiction tale of which I cannot remember the name.

Just as an accuracy point, Professor Tolkien did not write Gawain and the Green Knight. He was one of two editors (the other being Eric Gordon) of the primary published edition. It's a tremendous work and well worth the effort it takes to read it in the original Middle English.

Authors can and do use plot elements and themes to create stories. A competent story teller does such things and I believe Tolkien was a competent storyteller capable of telling a tale without sending me a message about how I or anyone else should live or whether or not class systems are right or how every friendship should be.

What exactly is the position you think you're attacking here? I never said anything remotely like this.

OF COURSE he's capable of doing this. You're quite right. In fact, this is exactly what he did. I have never said that LotR is a set of instructions on how to live or a statement on the rightness of any particular social structure. But it DOES reflect the Professor's point of view on the world. It does contain ideas about how people relate to each other, how evil affects human life, and what the price is of fighting against it. It's full of ideas like this. And there are almost certainly ideas about class structure in this book -- indeed, it would be bizarre if there were not.

Many of these ideas Professor Tolkien will have used intentionally. Many MORE of these ideas he will have used unconsciously, simply incorporating them into the work as part of his world-view. It's more than possible that ideas are present in the work that he did not intend to include. It's even possible that the work presents ideas he would not, if he thought about them consciously, agree with.

Certainly I have done things without being aware at the time that I was manifesting ideas (say, about violence or compassion) that I disagree with. Sometimes I never realised what my actions were saying until somebody pointed it out to me. I think this is a common failing and certainly one I would think the Professor capable of.

At the very least, I would not simply dismiss such a notion out of hand because it might be rude. It is not rude to suggest that an artistic work contains ideas not consciously inserted by the artist. An artistic work is on public display and as such is open to all interpretations that can be made to fit. If you don't want your work interpreted, don't publish it.

To force a message on an author because of something he created from his imagination primarily to entertain himself and other willing readers is ludicrous and rude.

To say that a given work contains a particular idea about the world is not "forcing a message on an author". It is a statement, an idea, about the work. Nothing more or less than that. It offers us no objective insight into the thought processes of the author, and certainly anyone who claims it does is talking right through their hat.

And you can tell them I said so.

 

[drnuncheon]

drnuncheon: Just to ensure that peace reigns between us, I consider Zelazny a master writer and a great benefit to the human race. When I say I think he's not as good as Brust, that is still leaving him lots of room to be awfully good.

Peace?

No! It is to be war between us!

*cough*

Er, yeah. Nothing personal, I just see the situation as exactly reversed. But they're two of my favorite authors, so I'll take any excuse to talk about them.

J
so how 'bout that Tim Powers guy?

 

[Pielorinho]

Tim Powers? Overrated .

Actually, I felt about his novels like I do about far too many novels. The first thing I read by him, Expiration Date, was pretty good. The second thing i read by him, Last Call, knocked my socks off -- I found myself literally having to put the book down near the climax because I was sweating, my heart racing, my hands trembling. It was a damn fine novel.

After that, though, everything I've read by him has impressed me increasingly less. He comes across as writing the same novel again and again. The last novel I read by him, the one that won the World Fantasy Award, was downright disappointing: I found none of the characters interesting, and the overall theme of the book was unpleasantly creepy.

Gimme Mieville any day over Powers.
Daniel

 

[Salthanas]

It all starts like this...



You are going to have to explain how reading an author's subjective view of their own thought processes provides an objective way to decide anything about their work.

To my thinking, subjective statements cannot provide objective information about ANYTHING. That, to me, is simply part of the definition of "subjective". I cannot accept your statement here without an explanation of the logic behind it.

My position is based on the lack of objective information about a work. I believe (as does most of the critical community) that the only objective source in analysis is the work itself. I'll develop this idea in more detail below. Obviously, if you can prove there are other sources of objective information, my position has no ground to stand on. But so far, you have been unable to prove that.

Deride? They take? I think you are misunderstanding the basic point of critical analysis. I don't investigate possible interpretations of literary works in order to either deride them or to make assumptions about the author. I investigate them in order to learn more about the world and myself.


I think I can be forgiven for assuming you don't know anything about critical analysis, so I thought to provide you with the basics in an effort to show you why authorial intent is not required to assess interpretations. This is basic, first-year sort of stuff. I'm not offering some crazy idea on criticism, here. These are the basics you need to know if you want to set about investigating artistic works.

My hope was that by offering a coherent system of analysis you would see that knowledge about the author's intent is not required.

There's the work itself.

The ONLY objective fact in critical analysis is the work itself. What the author thinks he said or claims to say is subjective. What anybody else thinks or says is subjective. All we have is the work.

All we need is the work. Historical context is interesting, and may provide fruitful avenues of exploration, but we don't need it. Biographical information is interesting likewise, but we don't need it. Certainly it's possible to learn a great deal from works about which we know relatively little -- there's no clear knowledge about Homer, and yet there seems to be a great deal to say about The Iliad. Is that discussion fruitless because it lacks any authorial credibility? Of course not.

Ergo, we don't need to pay the slightest attention to anything author says. If we don't want. We probably should, because we'll have new and maybe more interesting ideas, but judging an interpretation according to how closely it aligns with a given statement of the artist's serves no intellectual purpose.

You seem to think that suggesting that a work contains certain ideas is equivalent to saying that the author possesses the same idea.

Rejection of authorial intent works both ways, though. If you reject intent as an objective source of information on the work, then of course the work ceases to be an objective source of information on the author's intent.

Does that ease your outrage? So when somebody creates an interpretation of a work, that is not equivalent to them creating an interpretation of the artist. And any effort to "prove" that an author must hold a certain idea because their work does fails.

Just as an accuracy point, Professor Tolkien did not write Gawain and the Green Knight. He was one of two editors (the other being Eric Gordon) of the primary published edition. It's a tremendous work and well worth the effort it takes to read it in the original Middle English.

What exactly is the position you think you're attacking here? I never said anything remotely like this.

OF COURSE he's capable of doing this. You're quite right. In fact, this is exactly what he did. I have never said that LotR is a set of instructions on how to live or a statement on the rightness of any particular social structure. But it DOES reflect the Professor's point of view on the world. It does contain ideas about how people relate to each other, how evil affects human life, and what the price is of fighting against it. It's full of ideas like this. And there are almost certainly ideas about class structure in this book -- indeed, it would be bizarre if there were not.

Many of these ideas Professor Tolkien will have used intentionally. Many MORE of these ideas he will have used unconsciously, simply incorporating them into the work as part of his world-view. It's more than possible that ideas are present in the work that he did not intend to include. It's even possible that the work presents ideas he would not, if he thought about them consciously, agree with.

Certainly I have done things without being aware at the time that I was manifesting ideas (say, about violence or compassion) that I disagree with. Sometimes I never realised what my actions were saying until somebody pointed it out to me. I think this is a common failing and certainly one I would think the Professor capable of.

At the very least, I would not simply dismiss such a notion out of hand because it might be rude. It is not rude to suggest that an artistic work contains ideas not consciously inserted by the artist. An artistic work is on public display and as such is open to all interpretations that can be made to fit. If you don't want your work interpreted, don't publish it.

To say that a given work contains a particular idea about the world is not "forcing a message on an author". It is a statement, an idea, about the work. Nothing more or less than that. It offers us no objective insight into the thought processes of the author, and certainly anyone who claims it does is talking right through their hat.

And you can tell them I said so.

The one problem I can see with all of the above is that it does not take into account that the work in question can be interpreted in a manner which the author actually was simply not aware of or that the interpretation is arrived at in a manner which is inconsitent with the work itself. Because the author is indeed writing from his own perspective it can be safe to assume that he not only considers any message he intends to send but also how that message should be delivered and understood. To understand the authors perspective you have to look beyond the book. Indeed you can choose to interpret a book in three different manners.

a) That any message drawn from a book is as valid as another no matter what basis an individual use to arrive at his or her conclusion.

b) That no message at all is inherant in a book therefore all conclusions are meaningless.

c) That some interpretations are a better approximation to what the actual message is than others. That messages read from a book operate on a sliding scale with some nearly matching the authors intent and which are consitent with the work whilst others have no real value at all.

A and B essentially imply the same thing, if we allow any interpretation to be as viable as another then the book in question has effectively infinite messages which in turn results in no actual message of any coherence.

The problem with B is that you can never tell if you interpretation is entirly correct because unless you have some idea of what the authors intent was then how do you know if your viewing the work in the way that it was intended.
To understand how the work is supposed to be viewed you can really only try to gain some insight to the authors perspective on life and evaluate what he was trying to do. This involves not only considering his comments on the work but also his comments on life in general and also any other works related to that particular one. If some of the interpretations drawn are therefore more consitent with what the author has said and his other works its probably the case that they are more accurate than others, after all we can only really approximate what the exact message is. The fact that Tolkien says he was trying to write a book with no inner message is in fact a message in its own right. You could say then that his only message is that life has no meaning apart from that which you give it (which of course implies option a and says that the book has no meaning at all )

 

[Desdichado]

I agree with Salthanas, I don't think "the message" is binary in terms of author intent. Sure, something like the Iliad must be interpreted based solely on the its content, because we have nothing to indicate what the authorial intent was. Similarly, something like Orwell's 1984 can be interpreted simply based on what Orwell himself said it means, because he was around to tell us what it means.

However, I don't prefer either pole, because they are missing crucial pieces of info. To say that I can interpret 1984 based solely on the text of 1984, and then I come up with my idea that it's a scathing reply to the Reagan years and his domestic policy (again, ignoring the date of publication) and I completely ignore things that Orwell himself has said about the book, then that seems to be a fundamentally silly exercise.

 

[Umbran]

Because the author is indeed writing from his own perspective it can be safe to assume that he not only considers any message he intends to send but also how that message should be delivered and understood.

The fact that the writer is working from his own perspective in no way, shape, or form implies that any conscious consideration has been given to "messages". Some writers may give great thought to this, others may not. Humans are pretty well known for not really knowing what is going on inside their own heads.

Perhaps "body language" is a good analogy. When you talk to a person face to face, the details of their posture, movement, eye contact, and the like can tell you a great deal about what is going on inside their heads. Some folks (good actors, for example) learn to control their body language, but most folk don't control it most of the time. It projects meaning without any consicous intent on the part of the speaker. Similarly, a writer who has no intent to send a message can still have things creep into his or her work unannounced.

The difficulty with the written word is that the intentional and unintentional meanings are conveyed through the same medium, so they are difficult to disentangle.

c) That some interpretations are a better approximation to what the actual message is than others. That messages read from a book operate on a sliding scale with some nearly matching the authors intent and which are consitent with the work whilst others have no real value at all.

What about the case where the author's intended message is pretty vapid and empty, but the subtext and unintentional messages are interesting? The "value" of a message is subjective, and may have little to do with the author's actual intent.

The fact that Tolkien says he was trying to write a book with no inner message is in fact a message in its own right.

No offense meant to Tolkien in specific, but humans are not well-known for being 100% honest with each other, or with themselves.

 

[Salthanas]

The fact that the writer is working from his own perspective in no way, shape, or form implies that any conscious consideration has been given to "messages". Some writers may give great thought to this, others may not. Humans are pretty well known for not really knowing what is going on inside their own heads.

Perhaps "body language" is a good analogy. When you talk to a person face to face, the details of their posture, movement, eye contact, and the like can tell you a great deal about what is going on inside their heads. Some folks (good actors, for example) learn to control their body language, but most folk don't control it most of the time. It projects meaning without any consicous intent on the part of the speaker. Similarly, a writer who has no intent to send a message can still have things creep into his or her work unannounced.

The difficulty with the written word is that the intentional and unintentional meanings are conveyed through the same medium, so they are difficult to disentangle.



What about the case where the author's intended message is pretty vapid and empty, but the subtext and unintentional messages are interesting? The "value" of a message is subjective, and may have little to do with the author's actual intent.



No offense meant to Tolkien in specific, but humans are not well-known for being 100% honest with each other, or with themselves.

You can say that messages can be delivered unintentionally but you also have to accept that messages can be totally misinterpreted. If an alien comes down from planet Melville and reads LoTR he might, based on Melvillian interpretations of literature come to the conclusion that Tolkiens work obviously was about the political situation back on planet Melville. In the context of what some people seem to be saying we would have to consider this to be as valid as any other interpretation particually if we are using only the book as a reference point. However we can conclude that this interpretation is in fact bogus for the simple reason that Tolkien has never in fact visited Planet Melville (at least not to my knowledge), this however requires us to look outside the book and consider the context in which it was written in. The aliens conclusions from his particular perspective might seem entirely logical and accurate but that does not change the fact that they as near to meaningless as can be. Simply put trying to argue that any message is somehow relevant without considering the context of the work itself is IMO quite pointless unless the author has made it overwhelmingly clear which Tolkien obviously has not, otherwise there would be no disagreement on what the message actually was

What about the case where the author's intended message is pretty vapid and empty, but the subtext and unintentional messages are interesting? The "value" of a message is subjective, and may have little to do with the author's actual intent.

There surely would have to be a reason for the author making his message vapid though unless your saying that he arbitarily made it subjective which would strike me as pretty meanlingless

 

[barsoomcore]

To understand the authors perspective you have to look beyond the book.

First off, I am unconcerned with understanding the author's perspective. If you wish to formulate theories as to what the author is trying to say in a book, then indeed investigating biographical material (such as, for example, the author's stated intentions in writing the book) is important.

But I'm not talking about figuring out what the author meant. I'm talking about investigating what the book says -- which may or may not have anything to do with the author's intentions.

Indeed you can choose to interpret a book in three different manners.

a) That any message drawn from a book is as valid as another no matter what basis an individual use to arrive at his or her conclusion.

b) That no message at all is inherant in a book therefore all conclusions are meaningless.

c) That some interpretations are a better approximation to what the actual message is than others. That messages read from a book operate on a sliding scale with some nearly matching the authors intent and which are consitent with the work whilst others have no real value at all.

You are missing the actual state of affairs. The question is not the manner in which interpretation is undertaken. That is immaterial. The real question is: "How do we assess different interpretations of a work?"

I refer you to my post on basic critical analysis -- we determine how well-supported the interpretation is by the text, and we decide how interesting the interpretation itself is. Some interpretations ARE better than others, but NOT because they more nearly match the author's intent. They are better either because they are better supported by the text, or they are more interesting, or both.

Interpretations are not "correct" or "wrong". They are more or less powerful, interesting, useful, insightful, whatever. But the notions of "correct" or "wrong", like the notion of "meaning" that I railed against previously (and still do, in my heart of hearts) suggest a non-productive way of thinking about interpretation.

If an alien comes down from planet Melville and reads LoTR he might, based on Melvillian interpretations of literature come to the conclusion that Tolkiens work obviously was about the political situation back on planet Melville.

And of course if he were to say the book is ABOUT Melville, then he is making a biographical statement about Tolkien's intent in writing the book, a statement that any listener would at least require some substantial evidence to before taking seriously.

But perhaps he instead says, "You know, when Tolkien talks about the Ring, he says a lot of things that sort of apply to the Wakkamakka back home. Maybe he's saying in the end you have destroy things like the Wakkamakka." There's no problem with that, surely? We wouldn't say he was WRONG, would we? We might be surprised that a work we think of expressing so clearly the sentiments of our times would have such broad applicability, but no doubt we would shrug and say to each other, "That Professor Tolkien sure speaks to a wide range of folks."

The reason we know, for example, that LotR is not an allegory on WWII is pretty simple -- it's awfully hard to make that notion work. Who's Hitler? Who's Churchill? Where's France? When's D-Day? In an allegory of WWII we could reasonably expect representations of these and a million other things. If we don't find representations of the key elements of WWII, then we will have a lot of trouble arguing that the text is a good allegory of WWII. That interpretation is not well-supported by the text.

 

[drnuncheon]

Tim Powers? Overrated .

Actually, I felt about his novels like I do about far too many novels. The first thing I read by him, Expiration Date, was pretty good. The second thing i read by him, Last Call, knocked my socks off -- I found myself literally having to put the book down near the climax because I was sweating, my heart racing, my hands trembling. It was a damn fine novel.

After that, though, everything I've read by him has impressed me increasingly less.

When he's on top of his game, he's incredible - like in Last Call, or The Anubis Gates (which I highly recommend! One of the best time-travel stories ever, and one you need to read a second time to truly appreciate). He came to mind because of the 'pushing the boundaries' discussion - although in his case, the treatment of magic in Last Call actually pushes it back towards its roots and away from the D&D-ish 'wave a stick and shout magic words' that has infected so much fantasy. You can tell that there are rules and a certain "logic" to it, but it's not a scientific logic - and yet it still seems plausible.

I didn't care nearly as much for Expiration Date or Earthquake Weather, but that's another story.

J