Yes. If you missed that, you aren’t reading what he has been writing. He’s said explicitly that in at least three posts, starting with this one:
“used by those in the field” would indicate he is using terms of art. It does not matter what you would call the field; he’s talking using the terminology of people who analyze the field of literature, which needs to be more precise for their discussions.
Look at it this way: he’s categorizing in terms of categories and subcategories. There’s “science-fiction/science-fiction” and “science-fiction/fantasy” and whatever else.
If he were a zoologist or biologist talking about zebras, he’d want to make sure he’s talking about zebra zebra*, so an audience of zoologists/biologists don’t mistake which precise subspecies he’s talking about.
The problem here is, that if a zoologist or biologist waltzed into a Cafe Society thread about zebras, it wouldn’t really matter to everyone else if he’s talking about a literate zebra zebra or zebra quagga* – all anyone reading in Cafe Society would need to know is whether he’s referring to 'doper Zebra or an actual stripey equine.
or, probably more precisely quagga zebra, I think
** reverse as needed for pedantry
edit: well, looks like they did move all the subspecies under Equus quagga except for the Mountain Zebras. huh.
Close. I’m trying to explain why so many readers who might be expected to join the cult of Tolkien find his adulation puzzling at best. This article has a good summary of the range of reviews he got when the first part was published. The authors quoted hit topics similar to what we’re still talking about today. Some people - critics, writers, academics - liked LotR from the beginning. But many didn’t. That needs explanation in a way that the difficulties of Ulysses doesn’t.
This is a very good point. The rise in Rockwell’s reputation would have stunned art critics in the 1950s as much as the thought that Tolkien would be spoken of in the same sentence as, say, Nabokov would have gobsmacked literary critics. (I’ve been to the Rockwell Museum and studied how he built stories into his magazine covers; he’s amazingly impressive technically and his subject range was far larger than his Saturday Evening Post covers suggested.)
The major difference I’ve seen in 40 years is that there’s a better balance today. When academics first started championing popular entertainers they often overpraised in order to make them seem worthy of serious attention. Now talk seems better focused on cultural importance rather than intrinsic aesthetic value.
If anybody wants some writing I’ve done on sf history, a couple of fun articles are available here. I’m just getting that site ramped up, though.
…apparently rides in a howdah affixed to the back of one of the larger species of woolly mammoth. Just like might have happened in some early South Asian cultures, if they’d had woolly mammoths…
A “great” artist? Please provide a citation that is not from my almost-an-art-historian wife.
Now, Pyle, and to a lesser extent NC Wyeth, is great, by my uninformed lights. But that’s a different thread. This is the one where I can dis Tolkien without it being threadshitting.
It’s not a matter of “caring” but sales are an indicator of the number of people who like the book. I suspect that isn’t important to you (nor should it be, necessarily) but it’s probably, when ranking the worth of a book, far more important that your opinion, taken on its own.
As to Beowolf, it’s dreck. It’s important only because its old. If it were introduced into the modern world simply as a story on its own merits, it wouldn’t be worth a passing glance.
IME very little art tackles the full complications of life. However, if what a work of art tackles is what one is interested in, then one regards it as tackling the full complications of life.
IME, many literary people use “the full complications of life” as a euphemism for “human interaction”. Those same literary people would die of starvation if they had to open a tin of beans or fight off a particularly grumpy bunny rabbit.
You like to throw around the Tolkien “cult” thing. It’s a nice way to pre-emptively dismiss the validity of the views of those who enjoy Tolkien. It implies they can’t think for themselves, and their view are the product of brainwashing rather than clear independent thought.
As I understand it a key element distinguishing a “cult” is that cults tend to cut their members off from those outside the cult by various means. I don’t know that those who like Tolkien do that very much. I don’t see them drawing sharp lines around Tolkien and refusing to believe anything else is any good. But lovers of "fine literature? Whelp, that sort of behaviour is pretty much par for the course, for them.
Have you read Hilary Mantel’s two Booker winning novels? Tolkien’s characters are pictures of eloquence by comparison.
Imagine yourself standing in front of a mountain range explaining the landforms to someone, and read the passage you quote out loud, with gestures. It’s a well written passage that is highly evocative of exactly how someone in that situation talks.
I used “cult” because I was quoting Brian Aldiss. You do a fine job of pre-emptively misunderstanding whatever possible meaning he could have by it.
IME, SF writers are fairly proud of their lack of effeteness and love to posture about how different they are from academics or literary writers. Of course, most of those same posers are libertarians, so anything else that might dribble from their mouths is immediately suspect.
That first paragraph, however, might have the germ of saying something interesting if you had some encouragement to expand on it. Please do so.
Not precisely, because it’s supposed to be written by someone who speaks in a way we would find archaic. But people aren’t actually very eloquent. They don’t speak in neat sentences, and they are often not very clear. Much (most, actually) communication is non-verbal.
Your initial criticism was that from the passage you can’t tell how many things are being described. If I was standing in front of a mountain range pointing out the various peaks to some visitors - particularly if I was (say) an Australian aborigine and they were European - I would sound exactly like that passage. Because I would be pointing at each as I rattled off the European and the Aborginal names.
Who is directly comparing Tolkien with Nabokov? They are different art forms that share the same tools. Can’t they both be great literature in their own way? Comparing Tolkien to Nabokov would be like comparing Rockwell to Pollock and concluding one is rubbish and the other a genius.
The best I could find with a short amount of searching is this one, which includes a discussion of critics reaction to a traveling Rockwell show. I have a good friend who is a professor of art history and graphic design and we have talked about Rockwell’s revival. You mentioned Wyeth; he, too, was looked down upon by contemporary critics as being a populist. He wasn’t as well-known as Rockwell so he didn’t attract as much critical attention.
Exapno you need to start talking straight, frankly. I’m seeing a distinct pattern in this thread of you stating things like they represent your view, but then resorting to the “hey, I’m just relaying others’ opinions” when called out. In two of your posts you have referred to the “cult” of Tolkien like you thought it was a useful characterisation, but now you’re just quoting Aldiss.
I’m not pre-emptively misunderstanding, what I’m doing is arriving at a view that you/Aldiss are I think quite deliberately using a perjorative term, well aware that it has highly negative connotations beyond whatever supposedly restricted meaning you/Aldiss are using, and I’m throwing such snideness back at you.
I probably over-did the macho references in the second paragraph of my post under reply, but that wasn’t my intention: most writers concentrate on something and if they are concentrating (as an example) primarily on human interaction, they are probably not dealing much if at all with one or more other topics such as (for example) survival or war or technology.
The point being that a claim that adult fiction (as opposed to alleged kid’s stuff") tackles “the full complications of life” is a hellava claim, and my experience is that little if any fiction could successfully make it. You ask me to expand my first paragraph but really, if something needs expanding its the view that adult fiction tackles the full complications of life. You should provide the examples of adult fiction that does that.
And in fact you should do more than provide isolated examples; if it’s a key characteristic of “kid’s stuff” that it fails to tackle “the full complications of life” then you should be able to demonstrate that as a general rule adult fiction does tackle the full complications of life.
Tolkien wrote many things - but he is best known for the LOTR.
Or os it your contention that any author who ever wrote a children’s book is automatically a “children’s author”? As you know, Peake also wrote children’s lit - before he wrote Gormengast.
Actually, when it was first published, Titus Groan was a critical sensation. It is referenced here:
Now, everyone who has studied mid-century British fantasy knows that there are three really big names that stand out from that time: Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Peake. All three wrote “kiddy lit” as well as serious, adult works. Lewis is far better known for his Narnia books, Peake is far better known for his adult works (Gormengast trilogy), and Tolkien is far better known for LoTR - although his kids book is of course set in the same universe and shares plot elements.
It is not the case that there is widespread acceptance of a scientific labelling convention for genres of books like that for species.
The argument, apparently, is that when Tolkien was writing there was no such thing as “fantasy” as a broad category - as both works of what we now call “fantasy” and works that we now call “scence fiction” were published in the same, “science fiction” pulps. From a quote upthread:
However, when you actually examine these claims, they prove the exact opposite of what is claimed: in fact, “fantasy” and “science fiction” were well-seperated back in the 1940s.
Take this pulp for example, referenced in the above quote:
Note the title: “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction”. How is this proof that the title “science fiction” is (or was) well-known as covering both?
The wiki (I know, not the best source, but still) gives the history of the title as follows:
[Emphasis]
It evolved into a solidly science-fiction magazine, but such were not its origins - it was originally going to be a magazine entitled “Fantasy and Horror”:
So the genres were, clearly, established back in the 1940s.
It clearly wasn’t a “literary norm” to refer to both fantasy and science fiction as “science fiction” at the time, and it clearly isn’t a “literary norm” to refer to them both as “science fiction” now. So when, and by whom, was this general use of the language established?
The general term sometimes used by academic writers to cover both was “speculative fiction” (invented by Heinlein in 1941), not “science fiction”.
[emphasis]
I haven’t found a single source that claims that “science fiction” covers all these genres, specifically “fantasy” and “science fiction”, but of course, I am happy to stand corrected - with actual sources.
Also note that even the term “speculative fiction” was once thought, by its creator, as excluding fantasy (it has since transformed into covering both).
1949 R. A. Heinlein Let. 4 Mar. in R. A. Heinlein & V. Heinlein Grumbles from Grave (1990) 49
Clearly, the genres existed then (as they do now).
There is no work of art, no novel, no painting, no composition, no poem, no opera, no film that is so universally loved and critically acclaimed that some pretentious ninny won’t pillory it and feel proud of him or herself for doing so. “Beowulf sucks!” “Charles Dickens was a hack!” “Shakespeare is SO overrated!” “Citizen Kane is boring and terrible!” “Classical Music sucks!”
There should be an Internet law meme for this, something akin to Godwin’s Law.
As a riposte to the silliness in this thread, I’ll leave here W.H. Auden’s NY Times review of The Lord of the Rings from 1956.* Also, an interesting New Yorker article from 2012 which pertains to Auden’s review and also to some of the accusations brought up in this thread.
Suffice it to say, I agree with Auden, and not the hooligans who think its fun to try to trash a literary masterpiece.
The Lord of the Ringsis enjoyed by adults, including those with refined literary tastes.
There is no masterpiece that can’t be attacked, even legitimately, from some angle or another. Humans are flawed and so are their creations. I’m not saying Tolkien is above criticism, hardly. But much of the “criticism” in this thread rises no higher than the “this thing I didn’t enjoy sucks!” variety. But worse, it goes further by attacking those who, honestly and from a sophisticated literary point of view, do enjoy it. The Lord of the Rings is not “Beowulf for children.”
The last point I’ll make is who gives a crap about past critics thought of something? Seriously. There are heaps of examples of work in the past that were trashed by contemporary critics but are much loved now, critics and the people alike!
*Apologies if someone else already posted this, but I didn’t see it.
Sounds like a character in a sitcom, the joke being that he’s unbearably long-winded and can’t resist giving every synonym he knows in every situation.
I’m honestly not trying to be a pain about it, but it really does kind of astound me that people can make heads or tails of the passage I quoted. I really, honestly did read it over three or four times the first time I came across it, and I really, honestly never did manage to figure out exactly how many places were being described. And I’ve read Joyce, so I’m no stranger to confusing prose. So this has been helpful in that regard, if nothing else.
But it’s one hiccup in a long novel that I otherwise found pleasant enough, although as I said, it will probably never be the world-changing read for me that it’s been for so many other folks.
