You just said that that was the usage “for those in the field,” who are presumably specialists. Most people outside the field would not label Tolkien science fiction.
:dubious:
Nobody else was writing fantasy in the 1960s?
Firstly, Tolkein wasn’t writing much in the 60s, certainly nothing that was being widely read.
And what were Michael Moorcock, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber etc writing in the 60s if not fantasy
It’s difficult to accept the worth of a definition of Sci Fi that encompasses Lord of the Rings is Sci Fi. If the same definition apparently excises the Elric novels from the fantasy genre, it becomes worthless.
Dragonriders of Pern, cough cough cough.
Genres of fiction are some of the fuzziest of fuzzy sets.
It seems to me such critics are attempting to pound round pegs into square holes, and then being annoyed that they do not fit. Same with your attemps to have him be “science fiction”, which even in the broadest of senses he isn’t.
What Tolkien was attempting to do is to write his own version of the heroic fantasy he studied. Naturally, the results are going to be quite different from, say, the literary experiments of James Joyce.
However, that does not make them worse, only different.
Once more into the breach.
I never at any time said Tolkien was writing science fiction. You only need to read my posts to see that.
I said that even people conversant with the entire field we now refer to in shorthand as science fiction tended not to think of Tolkien’s books as brilliantly written. People who are genre experts that know how best to apply literary norms to a specialized form of literature.
The two statements are so utterly different that I’m having trouble understanding how anyone could mistake them for one another. If I wanted to be snarky I’d say that the capability of doing so explains how they could manage to like Tolkien’s writing. And apparently I want to be be snarky, since I am indeed otherwise talking to walls.
Hi, wall. Tolkien is a writer known for work outside of what is called variously as literary, mainstream, or mimetic fiction. He wrote in a tradition that is known as the heroic quest, one that puts outsized emphasis on building a world, stripping it of the normal complications of everyday living, and exposing the hero to peril, both bodily and morally. These qualities are shared by additional forms of genre, notably science fiction and young adult fiction along with other types of fantasy. For that reason science fiction has traditionally been called an infantilizing form of fiction, literally kid’s stuff. Critically understanding the broader field of science fiction and fantasy therefore takes understanding of its differences from literary fiction and of the way it uses the strengths of literary fiction to overcome the narrowness of its concerns. Because science fiction and fantasy simplify the world in a way similar to children’s and young adult fiction those genre books are are often used as an introductory pathway into adult fiction. As such, those books are often held in great esteem throughout adulthood, having gained value in a way not replicable by those who read them for the first time after having experience with books that tackled the full complications of life, whether purely literary or in forms of genre. Tolkien is well known as an example of that lack of value because adults on first read wonder what all the fuss is about. There’s a snarky saying that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 13. The same is true for Tolkien. Bye, wall. Like your bricks.
"Even those who were conversant with science fiction generally as a genre tend to find Tolkien a puzzling writer to champion. "
Huh? What does “science fiction” have to do with anything? Tolkien’s works are not part of that genre - they are fantasy. As a shorthand, they occasionally get lumped together - but as “science fiction and fantasy” (sometimes “science fiction, fantasy, and horror”).
What difference does this make, if Tolkien isn’t writing in that genre?
This is like an appeal to authority fallacy on steriods.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html
Feel free, I guess.
So it isn’t just Tolkien you think is for kids - but presumably, all of science fiction and fantasy as well.
And this, you say, is the consensus from your “experts”?
Personally, I think it is a load of nonsense.
Yeah—if it isn’t about “going to work, paying bills, or dealing with in-laws,” it’s kids’ stuff.
When I was given the Tolkien books as a pre-teen, it was explained to me that Tolkien was a linguist who had first developed languages, then imagined the type of people who might speak those languages, then developed a mythology for those peoples in which certain roles were necessary. Finally, inspired by the ravages of WWI, he developed a story, weaving his experiences from the war into the mythologies of his peoples. Individual characters were of the least interest to him, he only created them to play the necessary roles in his mythology. And as in all mythologies, the role is 3-dimensional, but the occupier of the role remains rather 2-dimensional.
Tolkien was not a novelist. If anything, he was closer to a folklorist or a social anthropologist.
Well to be honest even Michael Moorcock saw science fiction and fantasy as not exactly a literary giant but more mass entertainment. He also thought most of it was kiddie trash, really. That’s why he took the helm of New Worlds the way he did. He wanted to create a space in which science fiction just might be able to create something with what he considered literary merit. I’ve read his selections of the best and frankly half of it’s boring or unreadable. I’m not sure he succeeded with his new wave, and it certainly didn’t create the ripple effect through the SF/F genre he was hoping for. Probably why he’s not well known today.
Anyway, his problem with Tolkien was in fact, that he thought it was kiddie fantasy (he directly relates it to Winnie the Pooh in his more well known essay). That the hobbits are cute, saccharine almost in their idyllic paradise and cutesy second-breakfast’s and all that. That we’re to believe they go off and save the world is ridiculous. The whole thing was engineered too closely to the classic hero, born-better-than-you, always-successful-through-trial myth. And totally sentimental. He felt that it wasn’t what the genre needed to grow and expand. He also, like most others, thought the prose was much too long winded. Mostly Moorcock’s problem with it is the stagnancy of the genre as a whole, helped immensely by Tolkien, so it’s not that he has a particular problem with Tolkien himself. He would’ve had a problem with any writer he felt didn’t push “hard enough”. That and he was a snarky 20 year old with a much too inflated ego, upset about the direction Britain was going in (looking towards the humble, rural past rather than embracing the awesomeness of the present, basically). He thought literature should address the country’s problems rather than hiding in fantasy worlds that perfectly cater to your every desire. Not that he did a good job of that himself, to be honest.
The funny thing is, Moorcock did a reversal of the trope and brought out an anti-hero for his books. But he did it needing the money - his books are almost all slap-dashed off so he could get the payments so he could pay his authors contributing to New Worlds. He never had the time himself to really create the literature he wanted to - instead trying to fund a space for others. I love his books, he is in fact my favorite author, but they’re not literature either.
You need not speak of Michael Moorcock in the past tense. He is still living.
I know he is; I’m talking about the fact that he wrote this essay a long time ago, and whenever you go to read it wherever he’s had it published, he generally has a bit tacked on in front in a very contrite tone that implies he’s kind of embarrassed about his essay now. So that is to say I don’t know if he still believes what he wrote in that essay, but his criticism at the time was…what I summarized above. So I’ll use a past tense for his thoughts about Tolkien as they took place in the past.
I, for one, liked his wordy descriptions. He could envision a forest or a mountain and have it come to life on the page. It seems a lot of people just wants to get through the endless background and into the action, but I submit that such is the wrong way to enjoy LOTR. It has weight because you know there were ages of history past, and it piques your interest because he gives the merely glimpse of a thousand years and your imagination fills in the rest. I would have enjoyed LOTR a lot less if he was less wordy and simply moved on from one event to the next. I want to know what the dwarves of the north called the Lonely Mountain, I want to know that Gandalf has a bunch of other names. These things are important, if not to the immediate story, then to show why the immediate story matters
For me, the issue really is Tolkien’s prose style, which I have always found quite off-putting. As I’ve described in other threads, it took me a few tries before I finally got all the way through Lord of the Rings. When I finally did (as an adult), I found it a pleasant enough read, but not something life-changing. I admire Tolkien’s work more than I can say that I like it, and it really is because the long-winded prose gets in the way of really getting into the story. It feels less like reading a novel, and more like a particularly dry history textbook. I have little doubt that this was a big part of contemporary critics’ ambivalence about the book.
It’s funny that YogSosoth should mention the multiple names. Here’s a passage that I’ve quoted before, as a particularly infamous example of Tolkien’s challenging prose:
As I’ve said before, if you can work out how many different things are being named there, you’re a better man than I am! 
Try Gloriana for what he could do when he put in the effort.
One person’s slog is another’s paradise 
What attracts aome people to Tolkien is exactly that it carries with it a sense of being located in time, of having a fully realized universe in which it is set - that (say) when the characters are wandering by some ruin, you can be sure that ruin has an actual history, that actually has had an impact on the universe in which the characters are wandering about.
This makes sense, given Tolkien’s inspirations.
Of course, for those not charmed by such, it will appear tedious - it just breaks up the action. Legions of inferior imitators have in effect parodied this, by just making up a bunch of legendy-sounding stuff, hoping it will have the same effect. The difference is that when Tolkien is discussing (say) the same mountains having different names in different languages, he’s actually created the languages and the significance they have in each … he’s done the work, and (for those who care for such things) it shows.
I know a number of people who’ve encountered Tolkien for the first time as an adult who love the books. That’s anecdotal, sure, but what is the “unreadable” criticism based on?
I guess I can’t take any criticism seriously other than “I don’t happen to like it for these reasons”. Many “serious” critics love James Joyce (an oft-used example) and yet I find him totally unreadable. Does that make my criticism wrong?
I lot of people don’t like Tolkien’s wordiness which I totally understand and respect. And yet I love his prose. The description of Eowyn confronting the Witch King is one of my all-time favorite passages in literature. Why do we have to have a battle of “your criticism is wrong and mine is right”?
Moorcock though Tolkien too long-winded - but apparently, he loved Peake. Dedicated one of his books to him, in fact.
Now, I love the Gormenghast trilogy myself - but claiming that Tolkien is long-winded, while championing Peake, is very much a pot vs. kettle situation! 
One dwarven mine and three mountain peaks.
I certainly don’t agree that all criticism is merely subjective; but when an author is criticized by some for exactly the same thing that other people praise him for…
Ursula Le Guin is one writer who is certainly “conversant with science fiction generally [and fantasy!] as a genre,” and she has written in praise of Tolkien in general and his writing style in particular. See, for example, her essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” (Here’s a Google books excerpt, and here’s a blog post commenting on the piece).
One point that Le Guin and others have made is that Tolkien’s writing works well if you read it aloud. The passage that MrAtoZ quoted, for example, is marvelous if you read it aloud (or even just hear it in your head).
But really, I think the final answer to Tolkien criticism is that J. R. R. Tolkien was writing for himself and for other readers who like the same sorts of things that he himself liked. (And the quoted passage was the kind of thing that Tolkien, with his interest in languages, loved.)
This is the standard criticism of criticism. Everything is merely personal opinion, and the only thing of importance is whether I personally like or dislike something.
There isn’t anything new to add to this age-old discussion. The only useful rejoinder is that many people disagree with this stance. They find it interesting to discuss what makes a work good or bad, succeed or fail, literature or entertainment. They take pleasure in looking deeper into a work than surface enjoyment, to study its structure and form and impact and import and value, as well as its place in culture and its similarity to other works and its moment in a creator’s career and the other thousand points that make up criticism as opposed to reviewing. They find it worthwhile to see what other people have to say about a work after studying it deeply. You can, if you like, consider it another type of world-creation, making a work larger than just the work in itself by putting it into the larger world of literature with all the dimensions and facets that it brings.
Or you can simply dismiss it by saying it’s all opinion. But if it’s all opinion and all opinions are equal, then why do people give their opinions so loudly and take such offense when others disagree and form little cults of like-minded people so that they can pat themselves on the back for having similar opinions? My opinion is that the “just an opinion” crowd is kidding themselves because when I look at the world it doesn’t work that way.