Lee Wrote:
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> Kat,
>
> You are most definitely not alone. There are
> aspects of Tolkien’s writing that are unbelievably
> ghastly, particularly the “poetry,” and my God,
> why does it all take so long to get nowhere. A
> friend wanted LOTR and the Hobbit as a gift; I got
> them for him, but I felt I wasn’t doing him any
> favors. After he tried to read them, he thought
> so, too.
>
> I disagree with Alex, by the way. I think the
> professor is right, after all: a story must have a
> pattern, and it is important that in a novel we
> see each event of the novel as correctly placed.
> A poor author let’s the rat out of the bag by
> putting things in that are unecessary (Tolkein to
> the max) and contribute nothing to the plot , by
> failing to have a clear idea of the order of
> events (see foregoing comment), and by failure to
> have a consistent point of view.* In Tolkein, the
> latter problem is evident in stylistic switches
> that are unjustified by changes in pace or
> character. And the diction? How far will T not
> go to find a archaic word or derivation. No Alex,
> it;’s not the professor’s remarks that are
> “pretentious waffle.” It’s Tolkein.
>
> ”We're talking about a children's fairy story.”
> Yeah, we are. But talk about child abuse. I think
> children should be protected from badly concieved
> and written pieces of literary doggerel like LOTR.
> The whole enterprise is like Johnson’s leg of
> mutton: “It is as bad as bad can be: it is
> ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.”
>
> Lee
>
> *A great example of this sort of thing is when an
> author in first person narrative describes things
> that person could not know, as when a young woman
> enters the room and he describes the back of her
> dress. I can’t recall whether Tolkein is guilty
> of such solecisms. I certainly wouldn’t doubt it,
> but I’d have to reread some, which is beyond the
> call of duty.
>
> P.S. A word in the interests of full disclosure.
> I was trained in literary criticism by formalists
> at the U of Chicago, which was at one time the
> center of “Aristotelian” criticism. I guess I
> could be a tad defensive.

Lee,

I can tell from the way you write that you were trained as a formalist. Did you have to read Cleanth Brooks and that group as well?

I wasn't trained as any particular kind of critic; I just sort of grew my own brand, so to speak.. and in the end I came out as a bit of a comparativist, with no particular compunction about including the author's life or pov or even a bit of history.

Well.. I can tell you.. it was something of a shock to come up against a pure formalist as formidable as this college professor (Mr. S), who I saw posting on the KDH Conrad board and recognized as a teacher from the college I had graduated from. He had quite a rep, so I started posting and asking questions about Conrad, then moved to the Hemingway board, where I got a great education in itself. This guy is fantastic. He knows Hemingway better than any person alive, I'll wager. He can even parse Hemingway out based on Cardinal Newman's theory of the "imperial conscience," something you might well appreciate, as I do. I never knew Hemingway could be so interesting and readable until then.

Thanks for posting,
Sue