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W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

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Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#151

Post by watwut »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #144
watwut wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think this proves that "Young people’s contempt for the now-elderly generation (they’re Boomers) has reached incredible heights." Like at all. Especially since it popularity was an actual response to members of older generation bashing younger one. As in, it was literal response to that and relatively rarely used outside of context of the older people complaining about younger ones. I do not see younger gene…

Your English and your post history suggests that you are not from the Anglophone world. The generational tension I was talking about is a feature of it, I do not claim that it exists in the same way elsewhere.

And I am still aware of "do not trust anyone under 30" slogan from 60ties and aware and intergenerational issues of the past in the anglophone world.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#152

Post by hotnfresh »

tom_ wrote: post #35
cafard wrote: post #2

For a contrary view, Google for Edmund Wilson's essay, "Oh, Those Awful Orcs".

When I was a teenager, my mum suggested I read Lord of the Rings. Or perhaps it was The Hobbit. Whatever. There were some guys on horses, and maybe a spider. That's all I remember. It was boring as fuck, and I gave up at about page 70,000 - or so it felt like. I was still young enough that I hadn't realised that you could just give up at page 2 if you wanted. Anyway, dear reader, I guess my point is: if you hate this…

I bailed on Fellowship about 50 pages from the end, I think. Gandalf had just fallen a few pages back. Hated it, enjoyed basically zero pages I’d read. And I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of other fantasy, and routinely read long fiction books (mostly “classics”) that’d bore a lot of folks to tears. My favorite book is To the Lighthouse and about a third of it’s about an empty house. I finished every page of Lichteim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature (all three volumes!) and hot damn was a lot of that boring. I like the Telemachus books of The Odyssey.

LOTR, though, was too boring for me, just couldn’t keep going. I couldn’t stomach one more elf song or backstory of a tree. Though I acknowledge that’s probably some very-specific pathology of mine, rather than the book’s fault. I do seem to be wrong, in a sense, in this judgement.

Oddly enough, I later read The Hobbit, and loved that.

I do enjoy the Peter Jackson films (extended, especially for ROTK, which kinda sucks in its theatrical cut)

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#153

Post by hotnfresh »

vkou wrote: post #97
wolverine876 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jackson was the anti-Tolkien. The book and movie stories had the same character names, many of the same events, but otherwise were completely opposite. A few things off the top of my head, great and small: Tolkien's books were primarily about the corruption of power, and showed that the Good and Wise avoided it. There's the Ring, of course, but also Gandalf traveled around motivating people, rarely showing any magica…

> Tolkien's Aragorn was the epitome of duty and commitment, always putting life and limb on the line for it; Jackson's didn't want the job! There's a reason for it. A movie requires the protagonist to undergo a character arc, where their perspective on the world changes. ... Except that in this story, Aragorn already dealt with all those issues, and by the time of the Fellowship is just doing what he's spent his whol…

Like Beowulf, which Tolkien was famously pretty engaged with.

Beowulf’s already a brave badass at the beginning, and that doesn’t change, nor does he waver or second-guess his course or duty.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#154

Post by morelisp »

RugnirViking wrote: post #145
wrp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well...I've read some intellectual biographies of Tolkien, and a common complaint is that it's hard to pin down his views on much of anything outside of literature. He wasn't a systematic thinker, but tended to write what sounded good at the moment without much regard for consistency with what had been written before. He had to do a lot of later editing to remove logical conflicts in his stories. Remember that the im…

he famously got quite annoyed by people asking him about metaphors or whatever. "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." He very much did not want to talk about it and presumably intentionally avoided writing it.

Not writing allegory (a very specific kind of comparison) doesn't mean nothing in the book is a metaphor. It's willful ignorance to pretend LotR has no ideology or non-narrative (moral, epistemic, metaphysical, etc.) content. Tolkien just doesn't want people to say "... and so the orcs are the Germans."

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#155

Post by unethical_ban »

gattr wrote: post #110
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The primary actor is a wise old man…" And that is why it is hard to call that a myth for our time. Young people’s contempt for the now-elderly generation (they’re Boomers) has reached incredible heights. Moreover, though Gandalf rarely displayed his power, everyone outside the Shire suspected that he did possess power and belonged to an elite, and today there is great distrust of elites. I think a lot of idealistic…

On a side note, I enjoyed Joe Abercrombie's "The First Law" cycle. It subverts the "wise old man enlists young hero's services for a lofty endeavor" trope to great effect.

I enjoyed the writing and some of the world, but the lore was really confusing and I didn't really understand the beef at the end.

Spoilers

I guess the main wizard is to gandalf what homelander is to Superman? Like, what if he were more self-interested?

I also didn't like how they didn't resolve Logan's story. I guess I'm supposed to read another trilogy to figure it out.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#156

Post by ajkjk »

pjbster wrote: post #147
ajkjk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Drivel" seems like a strong word. All that stuff works pretty well, despite how much it annoyed you.

Possibly. However, after further reflection, I am unable to come up with a scene with redeeming dialogue in any of the films. Obvs. my take is offbeat because the films were a massive commercial success and the Academy showered them with awards.

I mean I agree that the Hobbit films are drivel but the LOTR trilogy is just amazing. It has a twinge of 90s affect that you have to ignore (similar to how the original Star Wars trilogy has a 60s-pulp-adventure feel that is rather dated now). And there are a bunch of discrete problems (the ghosts, the "cool legolas moves", too much slow motion) that we roll our eyes at. But otherwise they work, overall, and very much deliver on the premise. The information is delivered differently than the books but it gets at the heart of the universe anyway... imo.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#157

Post by atombender »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #89

Wow. So this is what an actual book review by someone that knows how to actually write looks like. Yes, Tolkien is a literary mastermind, but set that aside for a minute: I feel lucky to have read the review itself. If modern book reviews in mainstream media were still written this well, I think more people would read books!

I recommend giving The New York Review of Books a try. Their stable of guest writers is legendary, from J. M. Coetzee to Zadie Smith.

They established a kind of genre of review where the review isn't so much reviewing the book as it is retelling it in magazine form. In many cases I've had no desire to read the book itself, because the review was so in-depth and comprehensive, not to mention well-written.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#158

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

RugnirViking wrote: post #145
wrp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well...I've read some intellectual biographies of Tolkien, and a common complaint is that it's hard to pin down his views on much of anything outside of literature. He wasn't a systematic thinker, but tended to write what sounded good at the moment without much regard for consistency with what had been written before. He had to do a lot of later editing to remove logical conflicts in his stories. Remember that the im…

he famously got quite annoyed by people asking him about metaphors or whatever. "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." He very much did not want to talk about it and presumably intentionally avoided writing it.

He very definitely did write at least one very clear allegory in his short story "Leaf by Niggle".

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#159

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

jl6 wrote: post #134
morelisp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a profound misreading; royal birthright, aristocracy, and the ruling class are not taken to task or shown to be "fruitless" at all in Tolkien, and while today we may read Frodo as "the common man" his contemporary presentation is firmly (pastoralist and conservative English) upper middle class. The Baggins are landed gentry, not "the little people".

Reasonable Marxists may disagree on the class status of the Bagginses: https://users.pfw.edu/wootdm01/bilbo.html Personally I think that as well as their local status, their class can also be analyzed from a global perspective, where the hierarchy of the wider world goes Eru > Ainur > Maiar > Eldar/Edain > Other Men/Elves > maybe Dwarves > everything else including Hobbits. In global Arda it matters not that Frodo wa…

> Aside from Aragorn and possibly Faramir, the ruling Men are depicted as weak and flawed.

Prince Imrahil is also a great noble of Gondor. And in Rohan, we see Éomer and the late Theodred without notable flaws. Flawed but nonetheless worthy nobles include King Théóden, Lady Éowyn, and Boromir. Steward Denethor is a complex case. King Brand of Dale is largely outside of the story proper, but is also seen as a great leader.

The Marxist analysis seemed to me flawed, particularly in presenting dwarves as below men in the social hierarchy. The men of Laketown had an elected leader; the dwarves had a kingdom, and though driven out of it they had regained some measure of wealth in their lands of exile. They were indigent at Laketown, but that's because they'd lost much on their travels. Nonetheless, they were fêted. Once re-established, the kingdoms of Erebor and Dale were close allies, and dwarves and men lived in harmony.

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