Moorcock blasts Tolkien

[Storm Raven]

And to be honest i had never even heard of Moorcook before joining these boards and i still dont know what it is he writes.
I at least know and have read what CS Lewis and Tolkien have written. Sound to me like someones jealous.

For all his faults, Moorcock probably has little to be jealous about. He is the author of the Elric series of books, as well as related series featuring the characters of Hawkmoon, Corum, and Ekerose. He won a Nebula award for the novella Behold the Man, and the Campbell and World Fantasy Awards for Gloriana. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers Hall of Fame, and has been given a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

In general, I would consider someone who claims to be a fantasy fiction fan but has never read anything by Moorcock to be akin to someone claiming to be a science fiction fan, but never having read anything by Larry Niven (i.e. woefully uninformed).

 

[Raven Crowking]

True that. I enjoyed Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) despite disagreeing with its politics, and I enjoy Lovecraft's writing despite the fact that he was a racist - which is quite obvious from some of his stories.

I have the same feelings about Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were people of their times, and reading their work is both fun and instructional (both in D&D and writing terms), but there is a racist slant to both authors. Sometimes, I think, Burroughs was aware of this slant and tried to fight it, but ultimately he was mired in it.

Still love the books, though.

OTOH, I don't think that the same can be said of Tolkein. Or at least, not to the same degree. It seems to me that Tolkein ascribed equal value to people, but that he didn't consider them to fit into the same roles in the world. He seemed to think that, for example, some people were better suited by birth to be kings, but that kings themselves were of no greater worth (having only a different social role) than farmers.

RC

 

[Mark Hope]

Why does there have to be any meaning in a story? Why can it just be entertaining and leave it at that?

And to be honest i had never even heard of Moorcook before joining these boards and i still dont know what it is he writes.
I at least know and have read what CS Lewis and Tolkien have written. Sound to me like someones jealous.

There have been a few statements like this in the thread. It does not follow that anyone who dislikes Tolkien must therefore be jealous of him. An examination of Moorcock's career achievements (either when the essay was written in 1978, or to date) will reveal that he has little to be jealous of. It's an attractive and easy way to dismiss someone's arguments, but it does not actually hold much water in light of the facts.

 

[dcas]

For all his faults, Moorcock probably has little to be jealous about. He is the author of the Elric series of books, as well as related series featuring the characters of Hawkmoon, Corum, and Ekerose. He won a Nebula award for the novella Behold the Man, and the Campbell and World Fantasy Awards for Gloriana. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers Hall of Fame, and has been given a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

Well, I doubt anyone will ever write a scholarly book entitled Moorcock: Author of the Century.

In general, I would consider someone who claims to be a fantasy fiction fan but has never read anything by Moorcock to be akin to someone claiming to be a science fiction fan, but never having read anything by Larry Niven (i.e. woefully uninformed).

Hmmm, well I am not really a fantasy fiction fan, but the four SF authors I think are generally mentioned as the biggies are: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Niven. Would Moorcock be among the "big four" of fantasy writers? (This is an honest question, not a rhetorical one, as I don't follow fantasy fiction.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

For all his faults, Moorcock probably has little to be jealous about.

I have to agree with Storm Raven here.

OTOH, I also have to point out (again) that by his own admission, not having read LotR, Moorcock is woefully uninformed about the work he is critiquing. His is not an informed opinion. It would be as though someone posted some part of their campaign on EN World, and I tried to make overarching statements about the campaign, and the ability of the DM, from those statements.

Even if you agreed with my conclusions, you'd have to consider that the reasoning behind those conclusions was likely to be faulty.

Likewise with Epic Pooh.

RC

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Define "safe" in this context.......

The honkey's will win and the honkey establishment will be preserved and the not-honkey establishment will be cast down and the not-honkey's will be punished. Say what you will, but Moorcock's reversal of this sells less than Tolkien.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hmmm, well I am not really a fantasy fiction fan, but the four SF authors I think are generally mentioned as the biggies are: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Niven. Would Moorcock be among the "big four" of fantasy writers? (This is an honest question, not a rhetorical one, as I don't follow fantasy fiction.)

That's an interesting question, all right.

I'd say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Tolkein and Howard belong in the Big Four for fantasy authors, but I am not 100% sure who the others would be. Eddison, Peake, Burroughs, Dunsany, Morris, Lewis, and Le Guin would all be in the running for me, as well as Moorcock.

Probably, I would say that the Big Four (in terms of both story and influence) would be Tolkein, Howard, Dunsany, and Lewis.

YMMV.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

The honkey's will win and the honkey establishment will be preserved and the not-honkey establishment will be cast down and the not-honkey's will be punished. Say what you will, but Moorcock's reversal of this sells less than Tolkien.

Hmmm.

And who are the "honkey establishment" in LotR?


RC

 

[Mark Hope]

Moorcock has fun, candy writing, without too much thought or style. It is highly repetitive, often recycling the same plots, even the same stories, over and over again with some vague notion that "these heroes are all the same hero"; I think this is merely a cover for having a very few ideas.

A common misconception. While there is thematic repetition in some of Moorcock's work and similar plots do crop up in a handful of places, this is not true of the vast bulk of his work. I've cited a few titles in a previous post, but you might wish to compare works such as Gloriana, Behold the Man, Warhound and the World's Pain, Revenge of the Rose, Fortress and the Pearl, An Alien Heat, all four Pyat books, the Corum books, the Kane novellas and the Second Ether trilogy (to name but 22!) to see that this argument is without merit where the larger body of his writing is concerned.

For all his faults, Moorcock probably has little to be jealous about. He is the author of the Elric series of books, as well as related series featuring the characters of Hawkmoon, Corum, and Ekerose. He won a Nebula award for the novella Behold the Man, and the Campbell and World Fantasy Awards for Gloriana. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers Hall of Fame, and has been given a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

Exactly. I don't agree with everything Moorcock says in Epic Pooh, but it's one thing to disagree with some of his conclusions and another thing entirely to ascribe mean-spirited character traits to him and make false claims about his writing and attitudes.

I have the same feelings about Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were people of their times, and reading their work is both fun and instructional (both in D&D and writing terms), but there is a racist slant to both authors. Sometimes, I think, Burroughs was aware of this slant and tried to fight it, but ultimately he was mired in it.

Still love the books, though.

Great example. I had a Conan marathon a while ago and read all of the REH stories back to back. One thing that struck me again and again were the strong racist overtones. I often had the opinion that REH wasn't even aware that they were there - that he just happened to think that this was how people really were.

OTOH, I don't think that the same can be said of Tolkein. Or at least, not to the same degree. It seems to me that Tolkein ascribed equal value to people, but that he didn't consider them to fit into the same roles in the world. He seemed to think that, for example, some people were better suited by birth to be kings, but that kings themselves were of no greater worth (having only a different social role) than farmers.

While nowhere on the same level as REH, I do think that Tolkien had a certain amount of class bias. As with REH, I don't think he was really aware of it as anything other than just being his personal world-view, but there are whiffs of it in LotR without a doubt. The last time I read it, I got a funny feeling from some of his passages about the greater worthiness of the High Men. It was clear that there was no malice behind it, but I was reminded of the way that some neo-Nazis have latched onto his work as a piece of Aryan rhetoric. Utterly absurd, of course, but the echoes of the ubermensch are there nevertheless. And, let's face it, it's an attractive idea still today that certain folks have "the right stuff" - it speaks to the human desire to excel and to feel a sense of inborn value.

 

[Mark Hope]

That's an interesting question, all right.

I'd say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Tolkein and Howard belong in the Big Four for fantasy authors, but I am not 100% sure who the others would be. Eddison, Peake, Burroughs, Dunsany, Morris, Lewis, and Le Guin would all be in the running for me, as well as Moorcock.

Probably, I would say that the Big Four (in terms of both story and influence) would be Tolkein, Howard, Dunsany, and Lewis.

YMMV.



RC

Yeah, that's a hard one. I'd agree with Tolkien and Howard for sure. Don't think Lewis deserves one of the top spots. I'm not sure about Dunsany. He has certainly had the long-lasting influence, although has fallen in comparative obscurity. On terms of influence, Moorcock might deserve a place on this list (the multiverse, law and chaos, doomed heroes, and bigass runeswords are widespread in no small part due to him) but I don't know how widespread his appeal is. He seems to have been an influence on many writers, rather than on many readers, similar to Dunsany. Still, he has staying power and I'd think he will go the difference. YMMV, like you say

Hey, what about:
Raymond Feist
David Eddings
Terry Brooks
Robert Jordan



As for the validity of the criticisms of LotR in Epic Pooh, the admission that he hasn't fully read the book does scupper the larger argument to some degree. But I do note that the criticisms in the essay relate more to tone and style (something that you can get a feel of from an incomplete reading) than to the completion of the plot. Still, it's a fair point that you make.