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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

#171

Post by wolverine876 »

morelisp wrote: post #117
jl6 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, while the great old powers were waging fruitless war, it was the little people who struck the decisive blow, so perhaps it’s a lesson for our time of how both bottom-up and top-down can collaborate.

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".

In LoTR, the ruling class knowingly sacrifices, and loses, its powers by helping to destroy the Ring.

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

#172

Post by wolverine876 »

elihu wrote: post #125
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…

> "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…

To address one point,

> Tolkien didn't like allegories and insisted that the ring wasn't symbolic of anything

The former is true, the latter is not:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37205904

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

#173

Post by wolverine876 »

Sakos wrote: post #127
elihu wrote: post #125

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…

> What's changed is we've as a culture realized that age doesn't automatically bestow wisdom.

That's no new realization, but a continuing pattern, generation after generation. The youth of the 1960s took that idea much further than today's kids.

'Every generation thinks they invented sex.'

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

#174

Post by wolverine876 »

smfugit wrote: post #111
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…

There are no essential stories for "everyone". Cause everyone is different. What the cactus needs and what the redwood needs are not the same thing. The stories they need will always be different.

There are no common needs and desires, and no common stories? That doesn't seem to match the data, at all. LOTR, as one example, is among the best-selling fiction of the 20th century.

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

#175

Post by wolverine876 »

croes wrote: post #115
wolverine876 wrote: post #98

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…

I don't like the deus ex machina trick of turning Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White. That's like Spock's inner eye lid. BTW the primary actors are Sam and Frodo and their friendship where one carries the burden of the ring and the other carries his friend.

It was based on the Bible and the Resurrection. Tolkien was an observant Catholic and openly talked about the religious elements in LOTR. For example, the description of Gandalf's white rainments are similar to Jesus's in the Gospels.

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

#176

Post by Sakos »

wolverine876 wrote: post #173
Sakos wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What's changed is we've as a culture realized that age doesn't automatically bestow wisdom. That's no new realization, but a continuing pattern, generation after generation. The youth of the 1960s took that idea much further than today's kids. 'Every generation thinks they invented sex.'

I'm not really talking about the current generation (especially since I'm not a part of it). I'm talking along longer timespans as a longer process. Hundreds to thousands of years. The old being wise goes back a long time, and we didn't just realize it's bullshit yesterday.

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

#177

Post by piaste »

musicale wrote: post #165
tom_ wrote: post #35

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…

Having recently slogged through some fantasy/sf tomes weighing in at 900 pages or more, I have to say that they make Tolkien - or Dickens for that matter - seem terse by comparison. 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.

It is difficult to tell a coherent story that ends in a satisfactory manner within a preset number of pages. Endings, outside of "and this is how everyone died", are inherently arbitrary and artificial, and it's tricky to disguise that. And if you're blessed with imagination, there is always one more character to do justice to, one more neighbourhood to explore. (Or, if you're Tolkien, one more etymology to plant.)

At the same time, there is a certain type of curious, intelligent, often young reader that delights in those details. They want to know more about that character who spoke two sentences but made a big impression; they want to know how the neighbourhood the protagonist walked through came to be so peculiar.

The market for massive 18-book series is a product of the happy match of that type of writer with that type of reader. But it's totally OK to not be that type of reader.

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

#178

Post by lizardking »

bombcar wrote: post #96
propter_hoc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say it's massively unlikely that someone who read LOTR and disliked it would enjoy the Silmarillion.

I usually dump to the Children of Hurin first, because that's more "readable" - the Silmarillion is very Old Testament and takes some heavy archeology to get the stories out.

The audio book helps with this a lot imo. I prefer the original to the recent Andy Serkis recording, but both are great.

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

#179

Post by lizardking »

mberning wrote: post #32
shrubble wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read The Silmarillion, by chance? It gives a great deal of the background mythology of LOTR.

I got about 1/3 through it.

The last 2/3 of the book are the best part!

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

#180

Post by ComputerGuru »

atombender wrote: post #157
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.

I spent a couple of hours reading through reviews there on your suggestion - thank you!

But I feel like I would only read those reviews after finishing the book myself as part of a post-read “imaginary book club session” because, as you say, it seems the reviews really do stand in for reading the books!

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