"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”
The critique of your criticism isn’t that all criticism is just, like, opinion, man.
It is that, fundamentally, you are painting with an excessively broad brush, and in doing so, missing what makes these works interesting.
For example, claiming that all of science fiction is “literally kid’s stuff”:
This is hardly an example of "… 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 … ".
In short, you are not doing what you are claiming. You are simply dismissing. The appropriate response to such dismissal is, indeed, de gustibus non est disputandum.
How is this in any way difficult? It’s all broken down into separate clauses:
- Khazad-dum, Dwarrowdelf, Black Pit, Moria
- Barazinbar, Redhorn, Caradhras
- & 4. Silvertine & Cloudyhead, Celebdil the White & Fanudihol the Gray, Zirakzigil & Bundushathur
The first is in its own sentence. The second is separated out by a semicolon, and the third and fourth are presented paired together several times.
Malthus, if I recall Exapno Mapcase is actually involved in literary criticism of some kind as his job. When he comes in to lecture in these kinds of threads, he’s generally doing so from an academic standpoint, using terms of art that do not translate well into less rarified discussions.
You’re kinda’ making my point. I’m not saying criticism is invalid. What is invalid is that your criticism is right while mine is wrong. I’m going to guess that you think Ulysses is good (or great) literature. Does that mean my criticism that he is unreadable is wrong?
I think it would work that way if critics didn’t take themselves so seriously.
What terms of art might these be? “Science Fiction”?
If we’re taking criticism seriously, then perhaps understanding what the passive tense is should be a priority. “For that reason science fiction has traditionally been called an infantilizing form of fiction, literally kid’s stuff.” That’s not my opinion. It’s a statement about the way science fiction was considered in 1954 when LofR was published. And for many years after. And in many ways still is today.
I was part of the generation that tried to challenge that opinion. The work of writers like Ursula LeGuin and Michael Moorcock and the New Wave writers generally were adult, deep, well-written, and aware of mainstream literary values. Writers like James Gunn and Jack Williamson started teaching college courses in science fiction (the word that was used, and again covering the entire broad field). Academics formed the Science Fiction Research Association. I was a member for a while and gave formal papers at SFRA and Popular Culture Association conferences.
SF is my field. That’s a weird thing to say. People understand writing it, but nobody understands studying it as a thing. After all, their opinions are equal to everybody else’s. I don’t do much criticism myself anymore either; I’m mostly a historian looking at SF’s place in popular culture and the larger social and technological cultures of the 20th century.
You want my opinion on SF, read my words to see what they really say, and not some twisted reverse position you’re trying unsuccessfully to shove in my mouth. You shouldn’t go any further without trying to figure out how you could possibly get plain words so gigantically, ridiculously wrong.
Specifically, a history book written by an Englishman, the driest kind. How they can take something as exciting as history and suck all the life out of it I’ll never know.
Hah! You will note that I said “hardly nobody.” I usually include a weasel word. Remember that I said this was before the balkanization of genre fiction that came about in the 70s and 80s, when for better or worse fantasy and science fiction were still lumped together and the drawing-room detective fiction of Agatha Christie shared shelf space with the hard-boiled detective fiction of Mickey Spillane. Writers of fantasy and SF were less hindered by convention than mystery authors, so they were able to flit between sub-genres. This is why I think of Leiber as a SF author, not fantasy, because that was what I read.
No, it is not. Plenty of academic critics find adult value in science fiction - and always have.
Writers like H.G. Wells, Huxley, Orwell … all have been taken quite seriously as “adult” authors of science fiction (and all were writing lbefore 1954). If they are not, the shame was on the critics, not the writers.
Another who was writing fantasy at about that time was Peake. Are you of the opinion that Gormenghast was generally thought to be ‘kid’s stuff’ too? If so, your favorite Moorcock would have some harsh words for you, I fear - Peake was one of his literary heroes.
Okay, let’s take Moorcock. He wrote epic fantasy, just like Tolkien.
Elric of Melniboné is “… adult, deep, well-written, and aware of mainstream literary values”?
Okay … 
To me, he just seems very … adolescent. Full of teenaged angst and self-hatred.
Is that what is meant to be “adult”?
Arguments from personal authority now? That is even more worthless than arguments from authority of some claimed (but not demonstrated) ‘critical consensus’.
I am reading what your words say. So far, your words hardly live up to your description of the worth of criticism. I see no nuanced discussion of Tolkien in your words, or for that matter, of science fiction.
Sure, you like Moorcock better than Tolkien - but I hardly think that these days if one was to place the epic fantasy works of Moorcock beside those of Tolkien, the literary worth of the former as opposed to the latter would be obvious to all. Maybe in the 60s and early 70s they looked like hot stuff, but they have not aged very well …
Malthus, read and UNDERSTAND what Exapno Mapcase is saying. You are talking past each other in part because you aren’t paying attention, maybe because you got your feelings hurt. But arguments from personal authority are worth something when the person is an actual authority. You wouldn’t pull that on Stephen Hawking.
Exapno, PM me with info about where to find some of what you’ve written.
Those may not be the best examples, though, since they were all writers of “mainstream” literature whose works also included at least one science fiction novel. Plus, they were all British, and I’m not sure science fiction was as “ghettoized” in Britain as it was in America.
Tolkien was also British.
No, I would trust Stephen Hawking on quantum physics.
I would not, however, trust a critic who claims Moorcock is “adult” and Tolkien is not. Why should I? Unlike quantum physics, this is something I can judge for myself.
Matters of personal taste are not subject to arguments from authority.
Edit: feelings hurt? Not so.
Yes, and that was Thudlow’s point. In the US all genre fiction was ghettoized until fairly recently. The more-genteel crime fiction moved to the suburbs first. Space operas and fantasy are still stuck in the hood.
The Hobbit is a kiddie “chapter book” pure and simple. Great fun for fifth graders but it was not written for adults. Exapno’s point is that AT THAT TIME, in 1954, ALL fantasy and sf were considered by critics and English professors to be crap for kids. Same with comic books. Quit being offended that the pros of the time don’t share your modern sensibilities.
I’m not sure what the relevance is, though, considering that the subject of the thread is a British writer, and not an American.
If the issue is “Tolkien criticism”, then surely it makes more sense to locate his position within the literary traditions of the UK, and not America?
Yes, the Hobbit was intended as a book for kids - but I thought we were talking about Lord of the Rings, which very clearly was not.
And once again, it is simply (and provably) untrue that in 1954 “ALL fantasy and sf were considered by critics and English professors to be crap for kids”. I’ve quoted numerous exceptions - to take only one, Peake. An almost exact contemporary of Tolkien, he was a fantasy author immediately “taken seriously” by contemporary critics.
I’m not “offended”, I’m simply disagreeing.
I would tend to agree with this. JRRT took great joy in discovering what words different people used to describe common themes and archetypes. And his own invented languages reflected this in their structure. Which is why, I think, that his writings resonate with so many people. Especially in view of how bad some of his prose was. Even his worst prose was based on very compelling themes. A reader who recognized those underpinnings and found resonance with them tended to be very forgiving.
At least I was, and am.
I thought we were talking about Tolkien in general. And LOTR, as shown by many of the people in thread, was more YA than adult.
That’s what I get for leaving out a weasel word. 
Anyway, most of the critical bibliography for Peake that I found is for his kiddie lit, not Gormenghast. And until Orson Welles came along, HG Wells was, in his time, known mostly for his history and pinko views.
But my most important point, to me, is that I don’t like fantasy or Tolkien in particular and am still pissed off about how fantasy took over the bookstore shelves in the 70s. 
I don’t think that’s his whole point, is it? Exapno’s point (I believe) is that LOTR is not good literature for adults. Readers (generally) only like LOTR if they read it while young. He is buttressing his argument by pointing out that contemporary critics didn’t like LOTR. (Exapno, please correct me if I’m wrong.)
Personally, what contemporary critics thought isn’t all that important. Contemporary art critics didn’t like Norman Rockwell and similar illustrators for various reasons (but often because it wasn’t “serious” art, created for mass publication). Today Rockwell is considered a great artist because modern audiences don’t have a bias against illustrators.
If nothing else the example of these “Nordics”, who lived on the steppes and fought on horseback like the Mongols, should be enough to dissuade any critic from trying to draw very many parallels with reality.