How did you get involved with LOTR book?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Tolstoy... now there is a horridly boring writer... avoid at all costs .

[Agathon]

Originally posted by JohnT
David Brin isn't a big fan either... http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html

A few quotes:

This fits the very plot of Lord of the Rings, in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and 'natural' hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power-rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the 'good' side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

This guy is a moron, who doesn't come close to understanding the books.

This is pretty funny. Tolkien didn't like industrialism. A man who had fought in the trenches and seen the horrors of industrialized warfare first hand turned out to prefer the countryside and the natural world in place of Dark Satanic Mills. Wow, Tolkien must be the only person in the world to ever have felt that way.

Let's not ignore, but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racialism and belief in an inherent aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien weaved into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him. One that worried deeply about how "uppity" the masses were starting to become.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the books. There is what appears to be an inherent aristocracy of the elves, but this is an illusion. Each race is endowed with different gifts as Brin would have learned had he read the books. These are different but equal gifts.

A central theme of the books is the removal of the magic and the mythic (the elves) from the world. This is an inevitable process. Of course during the gradual withdrawal some other creatures become friendly with the elves and ally with their cause and want to be like them, but this is not because of any racial endowment; but it causes the elevation of the human tribes that do it. Of course they are doomed, because Middle Earth is a fundamentally human world and has no place for magic.

If Tolkien was such a snob, how does Brin explain the character of Sam, who starts off about as common as you get? Yet he has a love of the mythic and the elvish and elevates himself through his own acts to become a person of stature (a strong contrast is made between him and Merry and Pippin, who represent inherited status - but he is better than they are, solely due to his own character).

The only way in which one could accuse Tolkien of being worried about race is a fairly benign one. His mythmaking is self consciously English, since that was his purpose. Tolkien knew that the English (unlike the Irish and others) had no central mythology, so he set out to write one himself - that's not new - look at the Kalevala. Somehow this morphed into popular books, but that was never his intent. Tolkien loved different cultures and their myths and liked the idea that people could have something that was theirs, but not necessarily indicative of racial superiority.

Tolkien is well aware of ethnic chauvinism - he writes about it in LOTR. Why do you think the hobbits are ignored by everyone else for most of their history. No one even knows where they came from. The elves are self centred and even forget the Ents.

It's funny that people accuse him of things he opposed and wrote his opposition to in the text.

Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

But the whole set of ****ing books is based on the idea that myth and the mystical are gone, leaving us in a fundamentally human world, characterized by free will. If you look at the stories the elves don't really have free will. When they rebel or don't do what they're told the result is always bad for them. Human beings, on the other hand, are masters of their own fates.

Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Um, other than the orcs and trolls, all the races are on the other side as well. And Sauron doesn't have any hobbits, elves or dwarves. The defeated humans are not demonized. And orcs and trolls are bred to be evil, just as elves are bred to be good. The new world has no place for them either.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

No - and there's a scene in the books about this. The scene where Sam confronts the dead Easterling.

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

At the end of the books it is stated that Aragorn is the last of the Numenoreans. The good guys are fighting for a Middle Earth controlled by human beings. The others for a world controlled by a mythical power. Sauron is not supposed to be in Middle Earth any more than the elves are.

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.[/q]

There's no way this can be right. He hasn't read the books properly. The end of the Lord of the Rings is the beginning of the contemporary world. No magic, no mythical creatures, just human beings and what they make of themselves.

I'm sorry, this guy plainly does not know what he's talking about, He's accused Tolkien of championing ideas which the books clearly and intentionally subvert.

[Pekka]

Tolstoy.. gave me an idea to create fake identity of a toyboy who gives his services to rich women who are wives of powerful men. Then I could talk about what weirdos they all are, and what a nice job I have, and just.. have fun with it . Robert The Toyboy, the inventor of famous RobRubbing.

[JohnT]

Save me from the wrath of Fanboys!

This is a complete misunderstanding of the books.

No, it's a complete re-interpretation.

Actually, read the article. I selected a few choice quotes for flame-fanning purposes, but Brins article in toto doesn't come off as harsh as the selected verses.

[Verto]

This is a complete misunderstanding of the books. There is what appears to be an inherent aristocracy of the elves, but this is an illusion. Each race is endowed with different gifts as Brin would have learned had he read the books. These are different but equal gifts.

As we can read in LotR and The Silmarillion, Man was actually favored above the Elves in many ways; the Elves were supposed to live forever, whereas Man was given the blessing of dying, so that he could live with what's his face, the guy who created the mini-Gods and the Earth.

It's been a while since I read The Silmarillion, so details are sketchy.

The elves are self centred and even forget the Ents.

I wouldn't consider thems self-centered; just not troubled with the affairs of others, because they are so short-lived. Or maybe I'm the only one who sees a difference between this and being self-centered.

This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Sauron's Army included men, orcs, trolls, and the half-breeds; the "good" side included men, elves, ents, dwarves, and a pair of Hobbits. The orcs are the Dark Power's version of elves; ones that were corrupted. The trolls are the Dark Power's equivalent of Ents.

The Rohirrim were pretty average people, horse breeders. Somewhat lower in class than, say, some in Gondor.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by JohnT
Save me from the wrath of Fanboys!

This is a complete misunderstanding of the books.

No, it's a complete re-interpretation.

No. An honest interpretation is something that doesn't ignore parts of the text or obvious implications.

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. There are obvious counterexamples he would have noticed had he read the books properly.

Of course he could be one of those post-structuralist critics who think that the critic is more important than the author, but then he'd just be a moron.

[Pekka]

Just as a sidenote since I'm watching the extras of the Fellowship of the Ring dvd set.. oh man, this has got to be the BEST extras ever.. it covers SO much and not just crappy extra dvd with 24 minutes of material and few pics, clearly just put together fast because 'dvd needs to have extras'. Truly amazing set. I'm eagerly waiting for the Two Towers dvd set, when I can afford to buy it. It's certainly worth of every cent.

[JohnT]

Well, it's not my article and I have little familiarity with the source material, so I concede all your (unread) points. However, I note again that I quoted the choice parts, the ones that would fan the flames of conversation and that Brin is much more admiring of the work than my quoted selections make it seem.

[Verto]

I've not seen the extended versions yet.

[Agathon]

I read the article. Calling Tolkien a romantic is bizarre - his obsession with language and his tendency to avoid dwelling on inner space is enough to label him a classicist.

But that would be wrong too. Tolkien can't really be characterized, he's just himself.

BTW - I can't stand fantasy novels or most science fiction - I don't think LOTR really has much in common with them except being a poorly and confusedly imitated exemplar.

[Seeker]

The first book I had read to me was Robinson Crusoe.

Then I read the Dr. Seuss books.

The first real book I read was the Hobbit, followed by the Narnia series, then LOTR, then Earthsea Series...and I never stopped consuming that stuff since.

I always thought the Elves were gay. I didn't much care for Hobbits either.

But the Dwarves were cool. I remember I kept re-enacting the Battle of Five Armies in my imagination, except the Dwarves kill everyone.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Seeker
The first book I had read to me was Robinson Crusoe.

Great book.

The first real book I read was the Hobbit, followed by the Narnia series, then LOTR

Supposedly, Peter Jackson is working on making The Hobbit into a movie, and the Narnia books will be made into 7 movies, filmed in New Zealand and taking advantage of some of the LoTR sets.

I remember I kept re-enacting the Battle of Five Armies in my imagination, except the Dwarves kill everyone.

[Pekka]

Verto, really? Peter Jackson taking it on The Hobbit? That's great news! He's definitely the director who can do these kind of impossible movies.

[Verto]

I don't think it'll be that great, though. The Hobbit was a child's book, and as such very light, almost silly at times; it will be a dramatic change from LotR, and I'm afraid Jackson will take great liberties with the book, moreso than with LoTR.

[Verto]

He's also supposed to be taking on King Kong.