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

David P:
[speaking of what follows:]
> All right, I'm done. All the previous has been a defense or explanation
> of my *opinion*, not an attack, or an assertion of truth. After all, all
> I can assert is my opinion.
And likewise for me. In criticizing certain views below, I don't
intend to implicitly attribute those views to you.

Let me add, btw, that I don't at all feel that this discussion is
super OT. The particular variety of creative impulse motivating
Tolkien is similar to the variety that motivates most artlangers,
and different from varieties that motivate many other artists. So
understanding Tolkien is of especial importance to us.

> I wrote, and then and wrote, and then Joerg wrote:
> <<David P:
> > > Further, I remain to be convinced that Tolkien was actually a
> > > *good* language creator, rather than just a prolific, or highly
> > > public, one.
> >[pseudo-]Andreas:
You had three interlocutors, not two. Two of them have names
containing _And_, and even though one of them but not the
other follows this with _reas_, this has confused you.

> > I would like to try to convince you, then, but first I need to
> > know what you think are the criterial properties of being a
>> good conlanger.
> Joerg:
> A good question, and not an easy one.>>
>
> 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.
Contrary to Mark Reed's reasonable views, I think that the Elvish
languages were intended to be realistic, and are realistic.

Further, Joerg brought up the comparison to
abstract art.   I would compare it not to abstract art, but to some earlier
form of art.   I'm not too good with visual arts, but let's say in
comparison to
Shakespeare, since he's been discussed.   Were Shakespeare's plays realistic
> my judgment of what's good and what's not (since I base it on realism,
> unless the language is *overtly* striving for something completely
> different [I assume realism/naturalism to be the default (which is
> not an uncontroversial assumption, I realizse)])
I think verisimilitude is a major ingredient of what I most value
in an artlang, too. How do you judge 'realism'? To me, it's mainly
a matter of complexity, of scale, and of completeness. The more
complex, the more large-scale, and the more complete it is, the
more realistic it is. If this is enhanced by something like
the Joseph/Alma Walker framing of Tepa, the delightful effect
is intensified. This means that I find a conlang sketch that
fits neatly into orthodox natlang typological patterns less
realistic than, say, Teonaht, which is fantastical and is created
by someone who by present-day conlanger standards knows
comparatively little about linguistics and doesn't understand
fully at a conscious analytical level, as opposed intuitively,
how her conlang works. On the other hand, languages that seem
to go beyond what is plausible for a human language, such as
Ebisedian and Ithkuil, I don't find realistic (though they
have other attractions).

> Still Joerg:
> <<...it is an engelang...>>
>
> Come November, I'll be a four-year list member, but I seem to
> have missed out on this term.   What's an Engelang?
An engineered (con)lang: one that is designed as a solution
to an explicitly defined engineering problem.

> [pseudo-]Andreas wrote:
> <<> Slavish conformity is the enemy of creativity, but mindless
> > heterodoxy is not a virtue in itself. For example, the glorious
> > pluralism of American culture is scarcely enhanced (except as
> > black comedy) by, say, white supremacists or New Age astrologers.
>
> Then Joerg:
> I wholeheartedly agree. New Age astrologers are a harmless and
> sometimes amusing nuisance. The world would be neither better
> nor worse if they weren't there. White supremacists are a disgrace;
> the world would be better without them. But that's enough said
> here on that matter; let's not get deep into politics.>>
>
> I think Chomsky would disagree, as evidenced by his forward to
> that one book. ;)
Harrumph. Like a good American, he is defending the right for
disgraceful views to be published.

>But divorcing from the politics, I want to say here that this is
>not "mindless heterodoxy".   I realize you can say that, logically,
>this wasn't meant to apply to me specifically, but pragmatically,
>it did.   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.
My point was made in response to your argument that dissing JRRT
was good *because* it adds a dose of heterodoxy to conlangdom.
Critiqueing JRRT is good because no idol should be above debate,
but if a conlanger had merely said "Tolkein is crap!!", I would
not have felt that our community was the richer for it.

Andreas:
> <<but the sort of
> person who'd dismiss conlanging because all conlangers he/she knew
> liked Tolkien is not the kind of person I want aboard, nor the one
> whose opinion of the hobby I'm interested in.>>
>
> Excuse the glibness of this, but this sounds like the mother telling
> her child with respect to the bully, "Anyone who calls you names is
> not your friend."  The response is, "Well, duh, Mom."   You still
> have to deal with them, though, unless you move for total isolationism.
> Some people think this is the way to go.   I never did.   Perhaps this
> can be seen as a crucial difference between people; something that
> can't be changed.   If so, there's not much that can be done.
Who are these people you have to deal with? I accept that if you
perversely want to gain recognition and acceptance from the general
public then you will have to pander to its prejudices and
obtuseness, but it sounds like you're coming up against people
giving you grief for being a conlanger.

> Now this is just about writing:
> The sense of "genre" you were taught in literature class is still
> taught in literature class.   I'd argue that "genre" can no longer
> be defined that way, though.   For example, take a genre like
> "stream of conciousness".   This is a genre attributed to authors
> like Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Faulkner based purely on the style
> of their *writing*.   The same goes for the various other genres
> from way back when the term was introduced.   Now, though, I'd argue
> that the term "genre", as defined by the *publishing industry* (and
> this is crucial here), refers *only* to content/subject matter.  Now
> there are tons of genres--no longer just "mystery" or "sci-fi" or
> "fantasy", but the various types of genres that have been introduced
> into popular writing--the most popular of which is what I call the
> "opposite perspective" genre.   There are a bunch of books coming out
> now where the whole point is to go to a certain time period and
> show the point of view of someone whose point of view was not
> generally taken into account.   This even happens with literature,
> not just time periods (I'm think of Lo's Diary), and something like
> fairy tales (the basis of Frank (?) Maguire's career).   There's also
> the quirky format genre.   These are the novels that get published
> where, say, the entire novel is a series of e-mails.   Or maybe there
> are pictures included, and newspaper cutouts, etc.   Even David
> Eggers has done a bit of this.   Another type is the general historical
> novel, where any old story is taken and put into a particular time
> period, and that's its trick (this would be Cold Mountain, Snow Falling
> on White Cedars, etc.).  This is what I mean by "genrefication": Nothing
> can be published that's not in a specific content-based genre.
I share your views here, but it strikes me that the bad thing
is not genre per se, but simply mediocrity. Remove the
genrefication, and the mediocrity would surely remain. (E.g.
translate Snow Falling On Cedars to the present day, and it
wouldn't suddenly become a better book.)

> Now, is disregarding my last statement, is this bad?   Certainly not.
> There are some good ideas here.   The problem comes when the publishing
> industry steps in and realizes a popular trend and suddenly publishes
> nothing but the genre fiction.  Why?   Because the goal of a serious
> writer is to get published.   How do you get published?   You have to
> write publishable material.   What is publishable material?
> Something that can be sold to a particular audience (and if you doubt
> this, just pick up the current Writer's Market.   Everyone's
> advice is: Remember your audience; think of the type of reader you
> want reading what you write; etc.).
As John Cowan reminds us (or me -- maybe it was private mail), JRRT
is a towering figure in 20th century literature for the completeness
with which he ignored these dicta. He wrote only for himself, or
for an imaginary audience, with not a sop to the actual market,
and in full (and, at the time, very reasonable) expectation of
being alternately ignored and derided. One of the odious things
about 'genre' (in your useful sense of the term) is that it
saps the individual authorial vision of its individualizing
quiddities.

[...]
>This is what I object to.   Why?   Because what I enjoy, what
>entertains *me* when I read, is excellent writing.
[...]
>*That's* what I enjoy, and that's what I'm not getting from what
>I call "genre fiction", and I think it's because the point is the
>genre and not the writing.
I completely agree. _The Lord of the Rings_, though, is excellently
written (even if not to everybody's) taste, and is the very
antithesis of genre fiction. It virtually *defines* the antithesis
of genre fiction.

> Now, how does this relate to Tolkien?   Not directly.   First of
> all, Tolkien wasn't writing in this era.   Tolkien was writing when
> you could pretty much write whatever you wanted, and the publishing
> industry had a completely different criteria for judging what was
> publishable and what wasn't.
Not really true. The notion of the 'literary novel' was firmly
in place in his day, and then as now the British 'market' was
dominated by the novel of manners.

>However, what Tolkien gave rise to (and some people have commented
>on this) is a whole host of followers that aren't trying to write,
>but they're trying to write something that can be thought of as
>Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus the Silmarillion and the
>Hobbit).   So, whenever I think of Tolkien, there's immediately this
>negative association (i.e., "He's the one that started it all...").
>Of course, this isn't fair: He didn't intentionally do anything.
>He was just writing.   Yet, this isn't the whole story.
>
>The rest of the story is his actual writing.   His writing does not do
>anything for me at all.
Fair enough. Most of it's not much to my taste either.

>It just seems like writing from the era and place.   Like
>Lord Dunsany (well, different era, but the same kind of thing).
From the era and place? What, England in the 1950s?!

>I place no personal value at all on his writing.   And, I've already
>said that plot isn't going to do it for me (plus, I'm at turns bored
>by the content of, for example, the Lord of the Rings, or embarrassed
>by it, or offended by it).   Plus, since I can get all the content in
>a visual format now, with the movies (which many have said were as
>accurate as they could be [and I heard that the many scenes that didn't
>appear were actually filmed and reserved for the DVD's...?]),
>why would I bother reading the books?
The films offer mere glimpses of the majesty of Middle Earth, which
is why they distress and delight me in equal measure. Interestingly,
the most novelistic element of the book, viz the character of
Gollum, is handled well in the film. So no, the film is no
substitute (though I harbour the belief that a Kurosawa or
Kubrick might have been able to do the book justice).

>It literally is, to me, a waste of time, and not at all worth
>reading, by any stretch of the imagination.   Does this
>mean they're of no value to anyone else?   No.   They're of value
>to anyone who deems them to have value.   Does this mean I'll
>recommend the books to someone else?   Maybe as a punishment.
>Or to someone who I think would actually get something out of
>them.   But, in general, no.
Nor would I, because you'd normally recommend something that
you feel would suit the other person's established tastes. But
_The Lord of the Rings_ is sui generis. So if someone says,
"Can you recommed a good novel?" I'd never dream of recommending
it. But if someone said "Can you recommend one of the great
works of art", *then* I'd recommend it.

><<(c) because his work is fantasy. <<snip>> Disdain on grounds (c)
>is more painful, because
>it arises from a smallness of soul rather than from a smallness
>of intelligence: it is dismissive of imagination, of subcreation
>(in the tolkienian sense), and of course of conlanging.>>
>
>I very strongly object to this.   First of all, it underlies 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, but a
>difference between careful (or thoughtful) writing and careless (or
>utilitarian) writing.   For example, what this assumes is
>that: (a) imagination can only exist in fantasy, and that therefore (b)
>everything else is somehow lacking, or suffering from the "smallness of
>soul".
There is an (I think) essentially valid distinction between
'fantasy' and 'realism' (not 'fantasy' and 'literature'),
which, crudely, hinges on whether the fictional setting is the
real world or an imaginary one. A common reason for disdain
for Tolkien is the prevalent view that literature is necessarily
'realist' (in the sense defined above) and that fantasy is
escapist: realism holds a mirror up to ourselves; fantasy allows
us to flee from ourselves into a palliative world from which
we learn nothing. It is this view, the dismissal of imaginary
(nonallegorical) worlds, that arises from a smallness
of soul. (Furthermore, to claim that Tolkien's subcreation was not
in intense dialogue with the real world is simply ignorant -- an
ignorance which thankfully can be remedied by some of the few good
books on his work that are now available.)

>First of all, if you take Nabokov's Pale Fire, I think it fulfills
>all three of the criteria above (including conlanging), but it most
>definitely is *not* of the fantasy genre.
I think you didn't absorb what I had said. I was criticizing
disdain for Tolkien's work on the grounds that it is fantasy.
I was not criticizing mere dislike of Tolkien's work, or
arguing that only fantasy displays imagination.

[...]
>And forget all that, just literature in general: The whole point is
>creation.   Not just story creation, but linguistic creation (consider
>Beckett).   Just because something lacks dragons or elves doesn't mean
>it's lacking in imagination.
No, what lacks imagination is contempt for something because it
has dragons and elves.

And if you think that creation is of such paramount importance,
then you don't have the smallness of soul I described. (Not that
I had ever said you did, mind!) But in so valuing creation, you
are not in the aesthetic mainstream (and nor was Tolkien and
nor are conlangers).

--And.

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