Re: OT: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT

My 2c, FWIW:

Shakespeare:  I think treating him as "literature" is just plain wrong.
His plays are meant to be performed, not read.  I'd say the person in
the audience who doesn't quite follow every nuance of the dialogue
because they've never studied Shakespeare is still getting more out of
it than the student sitting quietly reading the play, even if they've
studied enough that they don't ever have to refer to a footnote.

>    Yeah, I think I was assuming too much when I said this.  I think I was
>    assuming that Tolkien meant for his languages to be realistic, but now
>    that I'm thinking about it, I have no idea.
How on Earth (Middle or otherwise) did the subject of realism come up?
We're talking about magical otherworldly creatures here.  Note, I don't
mean "this world has magic and Elves and Dwarves and stuff; how can
you expect realism?" - I'm well aware that suspension of disbelief is
limited and parameterized.  What I mean is that the language of the
Elves was, within the conceit of the fictional setting, a language created
*by* the Elves, essentially on a whim with full knowledge of what
language-making was all about the whole time they were doing it even
though no-one had ever spoken a language before!  It was then artificially
"evolved" over time by these (immortal!) Elves, again via intentional
tinkering that they undertook whenever they got bored with a particular
feature of the language.   I see no reason whatsoever to expect that the
result of this process would in any way resemble a "realistic" human
natlang.

>    This may be the case with Tolkien, i.e., how can you judge
>    a language based on its realistic properties if the very idea of
>    realism/naturalism wasn't around?
The idea was around; we're talking about the middle of the 20th century,
not some distant time period.  But I don't think it applies to his
conlangs.

>    I've never been a Tolkien fan, though I did give him a chance.
>    Quite frankly, I was surprised to learn that anyone really held him
>    in any kind of esteem.  Maybe that just shows how removed I am from
>    the sci-fi/fantasy community.
You can't really say anything like that about "the sci-fi/fantasy
community".  The only defining feature of that community is that they
like (some subset of) science fiction and fantasy literature.  I happen
to know plenty of SF/fantasy fans who don't like Tolkien.  My wife is
one.  I'm going to talk a little bit about her because your comments
about writing style vs. subject matter sound a lot like her. :)
She likes fantasy, but only well-written fantasy, which for her
means the likes of Robin Hobb, Orson Scott Card (Alvin Maker would be
the specific entry in the fantasy genre), David Eddings.  And for her,
Tolkien doesn't cut it.  She loved the movies, but could never get into
the books, because of his writing style.    For that matter, she
also thinks Stephen R. Donaldson is overrated.   And Modessitt is utter
crap.

Now, this is someone who really does like the fantasy genre per se.  For
instance, she likes to play EverQuest, and is terribly saddened by the
literary taste of most of the other players.  I mean, they are clearly
fans of the fantasy genre, but most of the time when you ask them what
their favorite work of fantasy is, they'll say "Dragonlance novel #15!"
or something.  <shudder>

But her favorite contemporary author is Neal Stephenson, and it doesn't
matter what "genre" he's writing in - nonfiction, SF, contemporary fiction,
historical fiction, whatever - he's just very entertaining to read
because of his style.

So you are not alone, even within the admittedly for-the-most-part-Tolkein-
loving  community of SF/fantasy fandom.

I used her as an example rather than me not only because I happen to
like Tolkein, but because I'm a different sort of reader.  I mean, I am
a fan of witty writing; I love a clever turn of phrase.  I also like
good characterization, which is why I'm also a big Stephenson fan - he
has an uncanny ability to write completely different characters, and
write from each one's POV with a high degree of verisimilitude.

But all of that "literary appreciation" stuff is secondary to me.
Mostly, I just want to read a good yarn.  And the Lord of the Rings is,
above all, a rippin' good yarn.

And I don't at all find that the availability of said yarn in a visual
medium renders the written version obsolete.  Far from it.  Books can go
deeper than even long movies.  They have devices available that just
don't work well on screen, like internal dialogue/monologue.  I mean, I
love the movie "The Princess Bride", but if someone was holding the last
copy of the movie and the last copy of Goldman's book over a fire and
giving me the choice of which to throw in, I wouldn't hesitate before
telling them to pitch the film.  The book is just on a whole different
level.

That may not be true in the case of LotR.  Tolkein's writing is, as you
said, mostly a means of getting the plot into the reader's head.    But
even so, given the above choice with his works,  I'd make the same
decision, despite the 17 Oscars (sorry, Mr.  Jackson).  I'm not a very
good visualizer, and I have a much clearer picture in my head of a lot
of Middle Earthian places and events than I did before the movies, and
it would be a true tragedy to lose the movies for posterity - but it
would be worse to lose the books.  And they do have *far* more content
in them than even the special edition DVDs.  Sure, the entire sequence
of Tom Bombadil drops right out of FotR; leaving it out of the movie was
definitely the right choice.  But it changes the whole mood of the
journey after that point, especially with the encounter with the
Barrow-wights.  And then there are the appendices, and the Silmarillon,
and on and on.

>    The best way to think of it is that there is a prototypical
>    conlanger (gay, bearded, male, left-handed, Lithuanian linguist?)
Hm.  Well, I'm 2 out of 6 (bearded and male) . . .

>    I'm at turns bored by the content of, for example, the Lord of the Rings,
>    or embarrassed by it, or offended by it.
Bored of the _Rings_, eh?  That'd make a good title for a parody . . .
what?   Someone's done it?  Drat.

I'd be curious to learn what portions embarrass and offend you, though.


>     [...] an assumption  that fantasy is different from "real"
>     literature.  This interpretation is kind of forced onto us now,
>     but *ideally* there would be no distinction between literature and
>     fantasy
Absolutely!

>     but a difference between careful (or thoughtful) writing
>     and careless (or utilitarian) writing.
Agreed.  But I don't think there's anything wrong with utilitarian
writing, if the story it's telling is entertaining.  Non-fiction is
another matter, and there it depends on the particular genre.  When I'm
just reading to learn, utilitarian writing is OK (although still not my
preference, becuase informative utilitarian text can get awful boring).
But if I'm reading philosophy, opinion, etc., then utilitarianism is
out.  This is why I'm a big fan of Douglas Hofstadter, whose writing has
to be among the most careful in the world; he exercises precise control
over the final appearance of each page, spends hours rewording to
balance out the whitespace or make sure the page breaks fall in
aesthetically pleasing places, etc.  Which is, in my opinion, going
overboard, but gosh I love reading his stuff.

>     First of all, if you take  Nabokov's Pale Fire
<Henny Youngman> Please do! </Henny Youngman>

Sorry.  Not a Nabokov fan.  :) Especially disagree with him violently as
regards what constitutes "poetry"; his "translation" of Yevgeny Onegin
is a travesty.  But that's even futher OT. :)

-Mark

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