Tolkien, Overrated?

[sune-ku]

]I liked the Hobbit. The other books...I got bored.

If you like fantasy, READ THE WHEEL OF TIME BY ROBERT JORDAN.

Best fantasy series ever IMO.

You got bored with LotR but made it through The Wheel of Time!?

Sorry, Wheel of Time has an epic story but a part of me just finds that hilarious, I read Lord of the Rings at 8 and got totally engrossed but struggled through the Wheel of Time at various stages between the ages of 16-20, but hey books are subjective!

OT: I don't really think you can call the man who virtually single-handedly spawned the modern fantasy genre overrated. It's perfectly fine not to get on with his writing style however, it is pretty dated.

I'm biased though, I got introduced to Lord of the Rings young and grew up a total convert!

 

[Carlston]

Well he did write books in a time people used their imagination more and more and didn't need CGI to force a image into their head...

For his time I would even call his drawed out tangents kids stuff compared to like War and Peace....

 

[GrimTuesday]

Well he did write books in a time people used their imagination more and more and didn't need CGI to force a image into their head...

For his time I would even call his drawed out tangents kids stuff compared to like War and Peace....

But he really didn't need to describe as much as he does. One of the things I love most about reading is I can see the characters how I want to see them. With LotR He describes too much which kind of takes my imagination out of the story.

 

[Saioon]

Although some see him as long winded and overly detailed I like that in fantasy, it makes you feel that its a world thats much bigger than the events its describing which I sometimes feel lacks in other fantasy works.

 

[Monsterfurby]

To all those who mention the overdescriptiveness, remember that The Lord Of The Rings was written in the 1940s, an era in which there were no televisions (and no CGI), and that much of what he was writing about he was writing about for literally the first time ever. It was a different era, and readers would have had no reference point for many of the elements of his story...in 2010 if you say "elf" then everyone has an image in their mind, but pre-television-age literature relied solely on words to paint its pictures.

That said, he's not a brilliant writer...the entire chapter with the barrow wight was completely unnecessary, for example, and the appearance of the eagles at the end is pretty much the definition of deus ex machina.

That said, I still really enjoyed it.

You definitely make a good point there. Descriptiveness by itself is not a bad thing, though I personally (matter of taste, I guess) felt that some of Tolkien's descriptions mainly served the purpose of letting him indulge in his world (any hey, that's his good right) but hindered the narrative flow a bit.

Edit: Or, to put it into other words: Tolkien takes a very strong role in building every detail into his own world and retaining control over it. There are some readers who enjoy this because it moves the medium closer to an immediately visual/sensual medium. However, others prefer to let a novel tell them the story and only hint at the world for them to fill it with their own imagination. There is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle between these two ways that I would consider optimal.

 

[Carlston]

Well he did write books in a time people used their imagination more and more and didn't need CGI to force a image into their head...

For his time I would even call his drawed out tangents kids stuff compared to like War and Peace....

But he really didn't need to describe as much as he does. One of the things I love most about reading is I can see the characters how I want to see them. With LotR He describes too much which kind of takes my imagination out of the story.

I'll give it that, what is it? Fifteen pages of what his house looked like on the inside? Guess when I found out he was also a little messed up from WW1 you can almost see him using it to keep himself rooted...not sure where but these story did help keep his sanity, but that's more the Ring books, Hobbit was him revisiting it all.

But I rather have to much thrown onto the page with a good story than far to little.

 

[The Cheezy One]

He created his own world. If you had to describe everything in your country, it would be a touch drawn out, wouldn't it?
If you think that it is too austere, go for The Hobbit. It is basically LotR lite.

 

[fgdfgdgd]

Shut your whore mouth when you talk about Tolkien like that Okay, i'll admit, he can be a little dry at times, but he is still brilliant as an author.

 

[guyroxorz]

No

/thread

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I believe Tolkien was more of a linguist than a writer. IIRC, he made languages, and then started to develop a world for them.

That said, I really enjoy reading the trilogy. It takes a while to get used to this style, but after that it's just smooth sailing for me (cept for the songs >_> ). It has a certain style. I guess not everybody likes it.

 

[Anggul]

I think the part that makes me love his work so much is the sheer scope of it, it's an entire world conceived in the mind of one man. Yeah some continuities have big worlds, but they're always thought up by many people, this is all from one man.

The Silmarillion, particularly the tales of the Children of Hurin, was incredible for me, it's a shame many people only know about Lord of the Rings, which is only the bit on the end of the whole thing.

 

[GrimTuesday]

Hey, OP! Listen, them's fighting words boy and unless you decide to use a topic that has an objective quality, that sort of talk does nothing good here, just breeds contempt. That's not fun for any party involved.

OT: I fucking love Tolkien, I dislike the fact that you've gone to the length to say that he is overrated.

I'm not trying to attack anyone's choice in literature and if it came across as that I'm sorry but the fact of the matter is I don't feel that Tolkien is as good a writer as he his made out to be. Like I said, He inspired many of the great modern authors and helped shape the genre of fantasy itself but in my opinion his stories are lacking in large part to him talking far too much about the world and its inhabitants and not enough time on the story.

 

[Ravek]

You ever listen to, say, the Beatles and wonder what made them so popular? Influence.

The Beatles were popular before they were influential.

 

[Monsterfurby]

He created his own world. If you had to describe everything in your country, it would be a touch drawn out, wouldn't it?
If you think that it is too austere, go for The Hobbit. It is basically LotR lite.

But worldbuilding alone, one could argue, does not necessarily make a great novelist.

There are plenty of great writers who set their stories in their own neighborhoods, and there are many very creative minds and world builders who would never get a novel through any publisher because they do not understand how to tell a story.

Now, of course Tolkien is not an extreme case, but a good example to illustrate how worldbuilding and storytelling are not necessarily reliant on each other. I agree, the world he created is amazing and he himself has displayed more interest in building that world rather than telling a story within it. Unfortunately, there is neither a good market nor huge prestige in writing mere descriptions of worlds, so he had to embed it in a story.

And the story, again, well, is not the best thing ever written in Fantasy. Is it entertaining? Sure. Is it interesting? Yeah. Is it influential? No doubt. However, the story takes the back seat with the world riding shotgun. That is something one has to keep in mind. Tolkien was a brilliant world builder, but an average storyteller.

 

[Kurokami]

I'm a pretty big fan of fantasy yet I hate the Lord of the Rings books and most of Tolkien's other books. To many of my friends who are also fantasy fans this is like blaspheme and I have on quite a few occasions had to defend my opinion in heated argument form.

My problem with Tolkien is I feel that he draws things out, especially descriptions. Also he has gone so in much detail that it kind of ruins the experience for me. It's one thing to develop you're world but there is such a thing as over developing it. It makes it so the reader is less involved in the telling of the story, you can't even think about what the rock looks because he has already spent half a page describing it.

How do you feel about Tolkien? What other writers do you feel are overrated and why?

Edit: I'm not refuting Tolkien's contribution to fantasy as a genre In fact I have admitted that he was a major influence to many of the best authors of our time.

I dislike him too, but many claim that how we now understand the fantasy setting is hugely related to his writing, so I can appreciate that while I don't like his works, I like what it has contributed to.