Moorcock blasts Tolkien

[comrade raoul]

If I only read great literature by people whose values I completely agreed with, my reading list would be short and I would have missed almost all of the greatest reading experiences of my life.

Yes. I think everything you say is absolutely right. But there's an intermediate position here. One can recognize that we should still read, appreciate, and study books with reprehensible politics, but one might also argue that we should still try to expose any political commitments latent in a text, and explicitly engage those commitments as part of our experience of reading. Doing this might be very important: one might argue that art can be very seductive, and a capable writer (I do think Tolkien is a capable writer in this sense) can make a reader sympathetic to certain political attitudes without the reader or even, in some cases, the writer, knowing exactly what's going on. If this argument is right, then doing this becomes especially important for very prominent writers like Tolkien or Lewis, who reach a huge number of people, often on profound levels and when they are very young.

 

[fusangite]

This is PC crap. People are always pointing out the racial or sexual characteristics of heroes or villains and drawing conclusions about the author's own racism, sexism, or lack thereof.

What is politically correct is saying that these books should not be read or appreciated because of their racism or sexism. Noticing what the books have to say about questions of race or sex is just being analytical and honest about the books.

I love these books, in spite of the fact that they are clearly racist. Intellectual rigor, ie. paying attention to what the books are saying is not an invention of the political correctness movement or even in an invention of the modern era. For as long as people have been reading books and thinking about them, they have formed opinions about the prejudices, philosophies and agendas of their authors. Ancient Greece had literary criticism for God's sake. Think of how intellecutally impoverished a world we would live in if we only read books literally and failed to extrapolate thematic elements from them.

The fact is that every single non-white character in the books is evil. And none of them have dialogue. If Tolkien didn't have an opinion about non-white people, he would have made everybody as white as Saruman and the other bad guys.

Ad absurdum. PLEASE!!! You're seeing what you choose to see.

Surely you must acknowledge that some books do have subtext. Right? You can't seriously be suggesting that no ever written books have themes or messages beyond their direct literal statements.

Assuming, then, that you acknowledge that many books do have such elements and that, I hope, that these books are well-represented in what we consider to be great literature, I have to ask: if Tolkien is great literature, why would his works not contain theme, subtext and metatext?

It's almost as ridiculous as the people who attacked Peter Jackson claiming he was capitalizing on the Trade Center attacks by naming the second LotR movie The Two Towers. People just need to get a clue and stop trying to read so much agenda into everything.

Look buddy. Suggesting that great literature may contain submerged themes is not a conspiracy theory; it's the consensus of everyone who studies it.

 

[JohnSnow]

Please avoid the temptation to get condescending.

Just to clarify, it really was an aside, not an attempt at condescension.

I've run into lots of smart and otherwise well-informed people who have never read Goldman's own remarks on the subject and assumed he was serious. I suppose I should have assumed that you know, but you know what they say about assumptions...

My apologies if it came across as condescending.

And so are the people on this thread who are saying his style is clearly good because people have ripped off his plots and world-building for years. (Although notably, no one's tripping over themselves to rip off his style.)

Agreed. I don't think Tolkien's imitators are proof of anything, other than that it's very easy to make a buck knocking off a popular work.

People not tripping over themselves to imitate his style, well, that's true. But on the other hand, how many fantasy writers could be professors of language and literature at Oxford University? You'd have to basically have Tolkien's background to imitate his style with any success. And fortunately, most writers are smart enough to realize that they don't. So I wouldn't call that proof of anything other than that, as far as has been demonstrated, only Tolkien could write what Tolkien wrote.

Yeah, because it's impossible that someone who created something we loved as children could turn out to make some really strange artistic choices later on, including using ridiculous caricature voices for multiple characters including, most infamously, Jar-Jar Binks.

Now who's being condescending?

Should all the aliens have spoken perfect English? I suppose that's the Star Trek solution - duck the issue entirely. Subtitles? Some people complained bitterly about having to read dialogue, and Lucas had "established" that most characters in the story spoke the trade language of the Empire/Republic (presented as English). To convey the concept that it's not their native language, some of them speak a funnily accented version of it...even in the original trilogy (Yoda, Ackbar).

As to Jar Jar...well...everybody makes mistakes. But I still maintain people can always read into something what they choose to.

My two cents.

 

[Mark Hope]

The fact is that every single non-white character in the books is evil. And none of them have dialogue.

Don't some of the orcs in Cirith Ungol have dialogue? It's pretty poor, but I'm sure they say some stuff...

Sigh. This kind of post is a sign that I should go to bed. I was really enjoying this thread as well...

 

[Xyanthon]

I’ve been (and still am) a fan of both Moorcock AND Tolkien ever since I was old enough to be interested in fantasy. Equally, I like C.S. Lewis as well as Robert E. Howard. I think there is plenty of room in the fantasy field for complex issues dealing with shades of grey; protagonists who may or may not be all that heroic; classic tales of good versus evil; etc. See, that is what I love about fantasy; it can take on so many forms and be really entertaining and liberating (or in some cases really dismal). I think much of the arguments of who is better, more complex, trite, trash, etc are all really missing the point. The fact is they are all opinion. So despite Mr. Moorcock’s views (and I believe he perfectly justified in having them) I have my own different opinion which to me is the more valid and trumps his in my little corner of the world. So I’ll go on being a fan and dreaming of relaxing in the Shire with a beer or delving into the decadence of Melnibone; wielding a lance on dragon back or stepping through the back of the wardrobe; being witness to dark and unspeakable rituals or bearing witness to the birth of gods; riding a sand worm or swimming beneath the sea. In my flights of fantasy, there is more than enough room to accommodate them all

 

[Remathilis]

Having read 98% of everything in this thread, I can't help but think Moorcock has a point, but its not a really strong one.

Moorcock is saying (in essence) that fantasy should be used as an instrument of social commentary. Basically, he comments Tolkien is "safe" by not challenging the social norms in his world (Aragorn is a fit ruler because he is born into it, Arwen never challenges her place in elf-society, Sam is a servant who never questions his lord, etc).

Elric, by constrast, is anti-society. He doesn't fit into the world he is born into, but doesn't take on the trappings of true evil. Instead of filling his role in society, he rebels against it.

Apples and Oranges, I say.

However, to say one is superior to another is a straw-man. Social commentary has its place, but a diet of it can make one bitter and jaded. Its like saying the best Sci-fi should only be Brave New World, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange. They are all important books, but Star Trek, Star Wars, and Buck Rodgers all have a viable place in the pantheon as well.

 

[fusangite]

Don't some of the orcs in Cirith Ungol have dialogue? It's pretty poor, but I'm sure they say some stuff...

I don't know what you're talking about but I'm only referring to the humans in the books.

 

[JohnSnow]

What is politically correct is saying that these books should not be read or appreciated because of their racism or sexism. Noticing what the books have to say about questions of race or sex is just being analytical and honest about the books.

I love these books, in spite of the fact that they are clearly racist. Intellectual rigor, ie. paying attention to what the books are saying is not an invention of the political correctness movement or even in an invention of the modern era.

True. Paying attention to what books say is not an invention of political correctness or of the modern era. However, assuming that every minor plot point in a book is profoundly significant IS. Literary people need something to write about. If they just accepted that the racist subtext in Tolkien's books isn't really there, what would literature PhD candidates write their theses about?

Following your line of thought, the Elric stories are clearly an indictment of albinos.

Gieven that most medieval societies WERE sexist, is it sexist to portray that? I don't particularly think so. I'd argue you can learn more about Tolkien's opinion about women by looking at what Eowyn DOES do than at how many women characters exist in the books.

Assuming, then, that you acknowledge that many books do have such elements and that, I hope, that these books are well-represented in what we consider to be great literature, I have to ask: if Tolkien is great literature, why would his works not contain theme, subtext and metatext?

Just because I'm saying the stories don't have the theme, subtext, and metatext you claim they do doesn't mean they don't have any. It does mean I find it simplistic to read racism into the story simply because of its presentation of some characters as villains who are "swarthy" or "dark" or clad in black. Especially when two of the central characters overcome the racism and prejudice of their own societies to become fast friends. And all of these really significant villains are part of Sauron's faceless hordes. Unless you're going to attach significance to the symbolism of the color black. In which case you're attaching racist significance to the school of thought that bad things come from dark places.

There are other examples I could give, like Saruman (the White) being one of the chief villains. Or the central role of Denethor in furthering Sauron's aims (a white male of the same race as Aragorn, but less lineage).

Sauron, by the way, is completely formless and never appears in the story.

There's plenty of subtext about the conflict between nature and technology, the danger of pride, the perils of playing god and so forth. There's mythological significance to things like "Men of the West" "the land in the East" or even that Sauron's minions came from the South. All of that is embedded in centuries of European mythology. Maybe you can argue that those myths themselves are racist, and you might be right.

So I ask, does drawing on those myths make someone racist? Even when they're clearly writing that racism and intolerance are BAD.

To paraphrase Freud, sometimes an orc is just an orc.

 

[Prophet2b]

What is politically correct is saying that these books should not be read or appreciated because of their racism or sexism. Noticing what the books have to say about questions of race or sex is just being analytical and honest about the books.

I love these books, in spite of the fact that they are clearly racist. Intellectual rigor, ie. paying attention to what the books are saying is not an invention of the political correctness movement or even in an invention of the modern era.

Wow... You know absolutely nothing about J.R.R. Tolkien.

I'm going to strongly recommend you go read some Tolkien biographies and some of his other works before you say anything else along these lines, because you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I could spend a good hour writing up a post detailing Tolkien's critiques of racism and what he believes concerning the equality of men and women (which we can find in other sources, either by him or people who knew him, etc. - studies have been done). But I don't really have the time.

This is just absurd. Completely and utterly. Tolkien was the farthes thing from a sexist and a racist that one could possibly be. His books had absolutely nothing to do with those topics.

What you read into it is your own fault. Not his. Don't blame the author for the reader's inferences.

 

[MerricB]

No doubt Tolkien was an Anglican Tory...

But he wasn't. Tolkien was a Catholic. That was - and probably still is - quite unusual in England.

Cheers!