WHy TOLKIEN and LOTR is overrated!!!

[daniel_hokkaido]

Mostly everything which is popular is overrated. It is just human nature to chat and discuss a common interest and over time it snowballs, and even though a series like LotR is a good one, people have a tendency to over rate things they like. We all do it.

I have had a tendency all my life to avoid the popular because one is mostly left scratching their head as to why so many people like it. LotR has clearly been embraced as some of the best fantasy literature by society. I have read the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the lotR...and was read them as a child. They are good yarns for sure.

Personally i find the hobbit Tolkien's best book.

But for something which I adore, HP Lovecraft, I am sure people could easily accuse me of over rating him. Once we transcend objectivity in really loving something we cease to look at it clearly. So maybe I do over rate Lovecraft and under rate LotR. Makes no difference to me though.

Hell, I forget who, but one Russian writer once said (to paraphrase) "I love my country like i love my wife. I may criticize her but if anyone else does i will murder them"

Hmmmm insert 'troll' for murder and we have this thread.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by bertold

It was. Perhaps not English, but at least two translations I know of were published seperately in six books (corresponding to Tolkien's "books", of course).

I think that Harry was referring to the period that Tolkien was alive.

In theory, I have a six (actually seven, including the appendixes) book set of LotR. It's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Mil.../dp/0618037667. But I can't quickly lay my hands on it, which means that it's buried somewhere in my library, or one of my sons has absconded with it.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think that's the point about Sam - he doesn't desire it. And let's not forget that ultimately the Ring corrupts even Frodo. Does that, perhaps, tell us that Sam is a "better" person than Frodo?

Define "better."

Gandalf did not seem to have any question that Frodo was the Ring Bearer, even though others, including Sam, bear it for a while. Could Sam have sustained the Quest himself, as did Frodo?

Good questions don't really have answers, do they?

[Ak Mike]

Ahi and Lady Blue (and Harry) - hope it's not too late in the thread - but please read Orwell's brilliant essay "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" - available right here in mobileread in an e-book called "Fifty Orwell Essays."

Orwell discusses, and eviscerates, Tolstoy's position on Shakespeare.

[GeoffC]

This is an unusual thread - and it's been rated!

Can we all please calm down and stop the brickbat throwing, we're in danger of hurting the cute otters .....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ak Mike

Ahi and Lady Blue (and Harry) - hope it's not too late in the thread - but please read Orwell's brilliant essay "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" - available right here in mobileread in an e-book called "Fifty Orwell Essays."

Orwell discusses, and eviscerates, Tolstoy's position on Shakespeare.

Thank you for the recommendation - I shall certainly read it!

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Ak Mike

Ahi and Lady Blue (and Harry) - hope it's not too late in the thread - but please read Orwell's brilliant essay "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" - available right here in mobileread in an e-book called "Fifty Orwell Essays."

Orwell discusses, and eviscerates, Tolstoy's position on Shakespeare.

...

I'd rather wait for a summary of it by somebody else, as my opinion of Orwell is pretty dismal, and an English author "eviscerating" a far better Russian writer for his low opinion of Shakespeare is more than a bit suspect.

- Ahi

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by ahi

...

I'd rather wait for a summary of it by somebody else, as my opinion of Orwell is pretty dismal, and an English author "eviscerating" a far better Russian writer for his low opinion of Shakespeare is more than a bit suspect.

- Ahi

As is a Russian writer eviscerating a far better English dramatist.

I'm just sayin'.

[Ak Mike]

Ahi - if your opinion of Orwell is "pretty dismal," than I respectfully decline to attempt to summarize Orwell's discussion of Tolstoy. Orwell in my view is the greatest English language essayist and critic of the twentieth century. In those disciplines he is far superior to Tolstoy, especially the cranky older Tolstoy.

Tolstoy, of course, did create greater novels than Orwell, but Orwell was no slouch in that area.

Orwell had interesting things to say (in those essays) about a number of important figures, including Swift, Gandhi, and Twain. His comments about Mark Twain were that Twain was a man of powerful and subversive vision, but that through either cowardice or a desire for popularity Twain held back and presented himself as a harmless genial comedian.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ak Mike

His comments about Mark Twain were that Twain was a man of powerful and subversive vision, but that through either cowardice or a desire for popularity Twain held back and presented himself as a harmless genial comedian.

I think he was right in the description, but wrong about the motive, except perhaps, indirectly correct about the popularity. That Twain held back is true enough, but that was probably as much practical financial calculation as it was desire for popularity. I grew up now & then in a part of the country that was very much a remnant of the period that Twain lived in, & believe me, his private views about religion - which is where he held back - would have destroyed him had they become public.

I agree that Orwell was an excellent essayist, but I think as a novelist he was nothing to compare to Tolstoy. My favorite Orwell is Down & Out in Paris & London. In fact, I view it as required reading, & I have given a copy to each of my sons as they hit college age. And yes, I know it is fictionalized, so maybe it would count as a novel. As a novelist, I think that Orwell was basically a political critic, a socialist with the rare ability to draw back from utopianism. But politics and "isms" make for poor novels, although not unimportant ones - as can be seen, I think, in the politico/religious stretches in War & Peace.

[Ak Mike]

Harmon - I see on rereading that essay on Twain that Orwell is actually tougher on Twain than I had remembered. He says that Twain worshipped success, that he switched sides in the Civil War when he saw the North was going to win, that he could not resist what you call the "practical financial calculation" - that he had none of the courage of the real artist. An interesting essay.

As to Orwell as a novelist, your comments are just - and yet. . . . I disagree that politics has to make for poor novels. I don't think Catch 22 is a poor novel, for all that it is driven by a political perspective. I don't think 1984 is a poor novel despite being as you correctly (though implicitly) point out, essentially a dark political tract. It's just a different kind of novel.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ak Mike

Harmon - I see on rereading that essay on Twain that Orwell is actually tougher on Twain than I had remembered. He says that Twain worshipped success, that he switched sides in the Civil War when he saw the North was going to win, that he could not resist what you call the "practical financial calculation" - that he had none of the courage of the real artist. An interesting essay.

I tend to agree that Twain lacked artistic courage, but that's probably because he was not a first rate writer. He was, essentially, a village explainer. I don't know about physical courage - his side switching strikes me as more of a lack of a dog in the fight. I intend to read the essay, though. I have the collected essays in Everyman, & have downloaded the .prc. I'll bet that Twain was good company, though.

As to Orwell as a novelist, your comments are just - and yet. . . . I disagree that politics has to make for poor novels. I don't think Catch 22 is a poor novel, for all that it is driven by a political perspective. I don't think 1984 is a poor novel despite being as you correctly (though implicitly) point out, essentially a dark political tract. It's just a different kind of novel.

I don't think that in either C22 or 1984, we put down the book with a sense of having learned to know a character, or having been living in the book. Both those novels are propositional, and when novels go in that direction, they elevate an idea over the reality of human existence. C22 is absurd, and its characters are stick figures. And I can't even remember anything about the protagonist of 1984, not even his name, because the reader never really gets to know him. (Not that I don't enjoy both books!)

Let me put it this way. If you are on a desert island, do you really want C22, or 1984? Or do you want Anna Karenina or Middlemarch or even LotR? Which one are you going to reread with pleasure, and find yourself more deeply engaged with each rereading?

[Ak Mike]

Harmon, you are certainly have a true appreciation for literature, but your tastes run to the nineteenth century ideal of examination of the souls of characters and tracing their lives, rather than the twentieth century focus on the existential dilemmas of man. Kafka's characters are stick figures if even that, and maybe The Trial is not the book to reread again and again in the short twilight of a deserted tropical isle - but don't tell me that Kafka is not great.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by daniel_hokkaido

Mostly everything which is popular is overrated. It is just human nature to chat and discuss a common interest and over time it snowballs, and even though a series like LotR is a good one, people have a tendency to over rate things they like. We all do it.

Except LOTR has been 'popular' for about half a century now. How long before 'popular' becomes 'classic'?

If the definition of 'classic' is having endured the test of time, and most people say it is, then when do we make that judgment? Personally, I'd say a hundred years, and LOTR is almost halfway there.

It's certainly no flash in the pan, nor merely a popular novel, that's for certain.

So, no, it's not 'over-rated', whatever the OP means by that - unless he means "I don't like it," in which case it is, I guess, although why HE gets to judge and the rest of don't (we're just picking on him) I don't understand.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ak Mike

Harmon, you are certainly have a true appreciation for literature, but your tastes run to the nineteenth century ideal of examination of the souls of characters and tracing their lives, rather than the twentieth century focus on the existential dilemmas of man. Kafka's characters are stick figures if even that, and maybe The Trial is not the book to reread again and again in the short twilight of a deserted tropical isle - but don't tell me that Kafka is not great.

My taste runs to both. I just think that things like 1984 and C22 are one trick ponies, are not the best writing around, and therefore don't need or much bear rereading. I think it's not a question of taste, so much as a matter of density or complexity in the novels, coupled with how good the writing is. 1984 and C22 are neither dense nor complex, and the writing is competent but not masterly. Kafka is much more complicated than either, or so it seems to me. And Proust, certainly a 20th century author, or at least not a 19th century one, tops all of them. Actually, I'm not sure if anyone ever rereads Proust, so much as continues to read him...