What do literary types complain about when they complain about Tolkien?
Other than his descriptions of the plant-life, I mean. I have long suspected that the professor was making fun of himself when he described Bilbo: “…not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.”
His attention to female characters is pretty minimal.
I myself am a tepid fan of Tolkien and of the fantasy genre in general.
What criticisms of Tolkien do I encounter semi-regularly?
Some literary critics think his work shows signs of racism.
Some find him rather long-winded.
Some find his poetry and (especially) his “songs” rather long and tedious.
Some think he’s far too serious, considering the basic frivolousness of his subject matter.
In the mid-twentieth century, The Lord of the Rings did not at all match the kind of thing that most serious literary writers were writing and literary critics were praising.
You can Google up some details. The first sites I found that appear relevant (I haven’t yet had time to read them in detail) include the following:
http://www.patrickcurry.co.uk/papers/Tolkien-and-Critics.pdf (PDF)
Why They Hate Tolkien - LewRockwell
Kicking the Hobbit - The American Prospect
Why do some critics hate, others love Tolkien? | Inklings | LibraryThing
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | How Tolkien triumphed over the critics
Quick response - some of the early critics were snobs who did not think fantasy could be worthy of serious consideration
It’s a hell of a lot better in its social message than its contemporary darling Lolita and sold a lot better too.
All of which is understandable criticism, from people who completely misunderstand what he was trying to do.
I don’t necessarily agree with all those criticisms. In particular, I think charges that Tolkien was a racist or anti-semite are unfounded.
But I have encountered all of those criticisms of Tolkien, and I’m sure you have too. Whether they’re valid is a separate issue.
I don’t think any of them are valid at all. I just mean that I understand how they come to say it: because they are looking for a different kind of book than Tolkien intended to write.
I think you can make a case for racism. You really can. It’s not like, deliberate “I hate black people and am going to make them all the bad guys.” conscious stuff, but it’s certainly a product of its time and not exactly real inclusive. You can argue that it’s not “supposed” to be inclusive, because it’s an English Myth, and that’s grand and all, but when the “Mongols”, “Arabs” and “Africans” are all under the thumb of Evil, it’s pretty clear you’ve at least got some “and white people all save the day!” stuff going on.
That said, it’s more something to be aware of than something to criticize. It is very much, as I said, a product of its time and intent. Just something to approach with your eyes open, and not really fodder for what I would consider “literary criticism”.
Other criticisms I have seen are that people simply don’t like his style of prose. (“Overly descriptive” is something I’ve heard several times). And then there was that weird article by Michael Moorcock that I read not long ago, which, I confess, I went into with a certain skepticism, and found the criticism either outright incorrect (Talking about how everything goes back to how it was before in The Shire) or simply confused.
Oh, and I guess you can disagree with his naturalist/anti-technology “preaching” if you choose to see it as such a thing, or with his nostalgia for, essentially, simple life, but I think that’s also what a lot of people LIKE about his books, and there’s no harm in a bit of nostalgia.
My three main criticisms of Tolkien:
Plot inconsistencies and deus ex machinas
Terrible dialogue
Story too obviously reversed engineered from the ending (I know all stories are like that, but you should keep it subtle).
The bad guys in Tolkien are generaly often same folks as the good guys - just ‘gone bad’ for whatever reason, or are manuipulated by bad guys. Gollum was a hobbit once, the Numenorians mostly went bad (and were destroyed for it), the people of Harad were manipulated by Sauron - just like some Numenorians - etc.
OTOH, people of different non-white “races” can face racism of the ‘good guys’ and still choose to defy evil - for example, Ghân-buri-Ghân’s people were hunted and persecuted by other men, but nonetheless choose to help Théoden - in return, Aragorn (one crowned King) makes it the law that no-one is allowed into their forest without their permission.
They are portrayed as primitives, but as neither uninteligent nor evil.
I think it is more accurate to say that, in Tolkien, men of whatever race are capable of good or evil. In his legendarium, there isn’t much mention made of the non-white races other than in passing - but it isn’t the case that they are all on the side of bad. Some are (Haradrim) and some aren’t (the Drúedain).
A far more cogent critique is that, in his legendarium, powers are often stongly “racial” - there is lots of stuff about how the line of kings degenerated when the Numenorians ‘mingled their blood with that of lesser men’ or whatever. This had nothing to do with our ‘races’ though.
It may seem like it but it’s definitely not the way it was written. Christopher Tolkien goes into quite a bit of detail on how JRR wrote LOTR in the History of LOTR. It can get a little monotonous at times but it is fascinating on how JRR meandered through the story until he got to the end. He got all the way to Moria without any real idea of where he was going (at least nothing was recorded). It’s not until then that he begins to think ahead. The fall of Gandalf was written in part to explain why Gandalf didn’t go with Frodo to Mordor.
I was going to mention something like that… The story unfolds with new “convenient” developments at each turn. A little foreshadowing would have added a touch of elegance.
At the Council of Rivendell, the mines of Moria might have been mentioned, or the existence of Ents. Instead, the world keeps throwing out new surprises.
To his credit, a number of the Deus Ex Machinae are used against the protagonists. Nazgul can fly now? Oh, crap! A Balrog of Morgoth? Udun take my eyes! It’s still a plot contrivance, but it isn’t all just miraculous rescues.
Maybe the details weren’t written down in advance, but Sauron obviously put all his power into the Ring then went in hand-to-hand combat wearing it so that there would be the climactic finale at Mount Doom (and a way out of a hopeless situation), not because it made any sort of sense.
To my mind, a critique of Tolkien’s style is that he appears to be creating what is essentially a riff on European heroic poetry, combined with a more modern narrative, which can be jarring - like when the characters take time out from the action to suddenly declaim poetry (thinking of the funeral of Boromir), or when King Theoden grabs a horn and blows it so hard that it “bursts asunder”.
I always enjoyed this reader comment, from the old IOZ blog.
I am not a literary critic, but I do have a few criticisms of Tolkien. However, to be fair, most of them are not so much with Tolkien’s work itself as with the elements that were picked up and regurgitated endlessly by inferior imitators. That had the effect of magnifying weaknesses in the original.
Specifically, I think the Good Vs Evil division, where the Bad Guys are Irredeemably Evil, is a weakness, and it was unfortunately picked up by the Extruded Fantasy Product industry. Antagonists that are more shades of grey lead to more compelling stories, in my mind.
The sequence in the Mines of Moria gave us thirty years of dungeon crawls in Dungeons and Dragons et sequelia. Not Tolkien’s fault, of course.
The idea of a Natural-Born King who is Better than the Rabble is also, I think, something of a weakness. Another element that was grabbed by the EFP industry.
Heh, one of my favorite letters was from Tolkien to a German publisher who inquired (in the 1930s) for proof as to whether Tolkien was “aryan” (that is, non-Jewish) before publishing his works.
Tolkien’s reply was a classic, and I think puts to rest any notion he was an anti-Semite …
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-gifted.html
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His cover letter to his publisher makes clear what he thinks of racism, and that he was willing to simply not publish in Germany if they demanded some sort of declaration:“I … should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.”