161–170 of 193 posts
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!
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. At the risk of making this political, our present era also has an old man who has earned the respect of younger generations by being well-informed, consistent in his views, with a strong moral compass and deeply c…
What's changed is we've as a culture realized that age doesn't automatically bestow wisdom. A wise old man is a valuable part of culture and society. But not all old men are wise and it doesn't seem to be a function of being old. Bernie has held his beliefs for decades. He was wise when he was younger and that's persisted (or developed further with the guidance of time and experience) into his current age. Wisdom is…
I think there are probably a lot of old men and women like Bernie out there, they just aren't very visible. What's unusual about Bernie is that he's managed to become famous and is in a position of power.
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!
Modern book reviews are often written by authors. Try the NY Times Book Review, NY Review of Books, or London Review of Books, to start.
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…
To make matters worse, some of these monstrosities aren't even complete in themselves but are the first (or Nth) volume in an excessively long series.
Perhaps novellas aren't commercially viable anymore, but I miss them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the original Lord of the Rings trilogy would really be filmable as a 1:1 book to film adaptation. As a book fan I think Peter Jackson did a pretty good job with it in general; the behind the scenes footage really shows that they did care about the source material. Fellowship particularly I would still say is great, Two Towers and ROTK have some moments that are either downright ridiculous or against the…
One thing Amazon could do is adapt the Lord of the Rings into a TV show. 60 one hour episodes could be interesting. Personally I prefer the books to the movies and dislike many of the changes. I'm following the "Other Minds and Hands" podcast/video. Corey "Tolkiien Professor" Olsen and Maggie Parke talking about adaptation especially for Tolkien but also lots else.
Presumably Amazon decided on an original prequel series for reasons; perhaps that they didn't see a need for an LOTR series after the Peter Jackson films (and other adaptations), or perhaps there were rights/exclusivity issues.
I found the first season of Rings of Power visually stunning, and some of the characters and environments were appealing as well, but it's hard to beat the original material. On the other hand, I feel like Wheel of Time could turn out great by cherry-picking the best parts of its source material.
Tolkien wrote the essential story - for our time : An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy. The primary actor is a wise old man who travels around, not using great powers, but waking them…
>An evil force that heavily used propaganda to spread their horrible ideas, and masses of people not only in Germany or Italy, but the rest of Europe and the US, refusing to acknowledge or oppose the reality of the evil, the grim future; and many even supporting it. Yeah, not much has changed in that regard. Though we likely have very different ideas of what that evil is nowadays.
Because you don't know that, I see a comment that attempts to disrupt good people from doing anything, promoting despair. Quoting my GP comment:
>> An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy.
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.
"Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
Elsewhere:
"... the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it ..."
Tolkien wrote the essential story - for our time : An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy. The primary actor is a wise old man who travels around, not using great powers, but waking them…
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…
What is the basis of that? It doesn't match what I've read Tolkien saying. Tolkien knew exactly what he was doing, was a leading scholar in the field of myth, and thought very deeply about it. If you want to understand, read his essay On Fairy-stories.
> no good postmodernist would object to modern readers finding meanings in literature that weren't consciously in the author's mind.
What does that means specifically? Who are you referring to? What is the basis of that? What does it have to do with this discussion?