Hi again,
Posted by wortworm:
The rest of Runewind's post was well stated but that above is one hell of an 'ad hominum' attack (attacking the person instead of the argument).
That paragraph isn't really an argument or debate of the sort that might contain
ad hominem or other logical fallacies - heck, I flatly agree with his premise in the opening statement
. It's just speculation on why he'd bother writing such an article, that happens to express some less-than-complimentary opinions of certain SF fans and aspects of Mieville's attitudes.
Posted by Olive:
To argue that the Shire had no heirarchies demonstrates a somewhat cursory reading in and of itself. Interesting point about Gondor, but with the wizards (which I've slipped for space) I think that there are heirarchies that aren't based on domination, but that can still be seen as bad if you are uncomfortable with heriarchy.
The Shire had a Mayor, who gave speeches, ran the postal system, and supervised the Shirrifs. It had a Thain, which was a vague title, and more or less honorary by the time of the events in LotR. It had wealthy families who owned a lot of land. This is a hierarchy? Simple elements of traditional polite deference in friendly business relationships (the Frodo-Sam "master-servant" thing) don't constitute a "hierarchy" to me.
"Hierarchies not based on domination" sounds a bit oxymoronic to me. Perhaps you mean Denethor-type insane rantings about Gandalf standing behind all thrones. But domination is still domination even if it is kept secret, and I think it would have changed the books considerably if Gandalf were really willing to do that.
Posted by Olive:
The other side of this coin is that Tolkein, who was involved in WW2, was to personally involved to have had any real emotional distance form it and therefore lacks the ability to make any kind of rational comment on it, unlike Meilville, who in case it matters, is as highly educated as Tolkein was.
It was the Great War (World War I) in which Tolkien served in the trenches, though he may have lost a son in World War II, and may have been in England during the Blitz. As to education - well, Mieville's writing is well-executed technically, but I don't think I'd consider
any modern liberal-arts education comparable to what you could get from Oxford in its glory days, which is what Tolkien had. Nor is the young Mieville's education yet leavened by the years of life experience Tolkien had before writing LotR.
Posted by Olive:
'trendy poseur' isn't a particulalry helpful line for anything expect exposing your bias. It doesn't really mean anything as a term of analysis. That goes for the epithets used in the last paragraph too.
If by "exposing your bias" you mean "expressing my opinion" of how he stands in comparison to Tolkien, then yes, that is what those words were meant to do. They are not an argument in themselves.
Posted by Olive (quoting Moorcock):
What I found lacking in Tolkien which I had found in, for instance, the Elder Edda, was a sense of tragedy, of reality, of mankind's impermanence.
Man, I'd have expected more perception from him.
"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and be forgotten."
"The love of the elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now."
"'Yet also I should be sad,' said Theodén. 'For however the fortune of war may go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?'
'It may,' said Gandalf. 'The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed. Let us now go on with the journey we have begun!'"
"But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."
Posted by Fast Learner:
All good stories have a message, imo.
As the old saying goes, "Art with a message is not art - it is propaganda." There's a reason MGM's logo contains the words
ars gratia artis - art for art's sake.
Posted by Mark:
Is that available somewhere in print? Online, perhaps? If so, can you dig up a link?
It's right in the Forward to LotR.
"The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-Earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt; they would not long have survived even as slaves."
Posted by Celtavian:
In the case of Tolkien, I don't think he intended for their to be a meaning.
Referring once again to the Forward...
"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical."
Hope this helps!
