There and Back Again: Five Reasons Tolkien Rocks (Guest Blogger China Mieville)
(The City & The City, an Amazon "best book" for June.)
The Author of the Century, of course, needs no help from anyone (least of all a speck like me). No force on earth could undermine either the juggernaut implacability of his sales, nor the world-historic scale of his influence, nor the truly enormous weight of his achievement. The man puts the 'epic' in 'epic win'. However--or, more accurately, because of that--every few years, certain as tides, someone will write a splenetic screed against the Professor, explaining why he's the devil/ worst things to happen to fantasy/voice of reaction/zomg most boring writer EVER /etc. The Oedipal Resentment motivating many of these attacks may be trivially obvious, especially in those from within fantastic fiction, but it doesn't follow that the substance of all the criticism is baseless. There are perfectly reasonable arguments to be had about the impact, nature, scale and success of Tolkien's work. The sheer religious zealotry with which some Tolkienistas defend the master, when it ignores those grounds for debate and refuses to countenance a flaw anywhere in the MiddleEarthian edifice, doesn't, then, help matters. Even more nuanced pro-Hobbit partisans sometimes--and acknowledging that there are always debates on this--choose what look to some of us to be questionable grounds for defence. Because there are arguments not only about what is regrettable in Tolkien, but about what is indispensible. Accordingly, what follows is a list of some Perhaps In Some Cases Somewhat Insufficiently Stressed Reasons We Should All Be Terribly Grateful To Tolkien. It may be redundant strictly qua defence, this defence of a corpus that is thriving, but perhaps it's not pointless anyway.
1) Norse Magic
For too long the Greco-Roman stories have been the Big Pantheons on Campus. Zeus this, Persephone that, Scylla-and-Charybdis the other, the noise is endless, and anyone smitten by the mythic has to work hard to hear any other voices. For some of us, there's always been something about this tradition--and it's hard to put your finger on--vaguely flattened out, somehow; too clean, maybe; overburdened with precision. Alan Garner, perhaps the most brilliant sufferer from this disaffection, once put it thus: to him, the Greek and Roman myths were 'as cold as their marble'.
Compare the knotty, autumnal, blooded contingency of the Norse tales, with their anti-moralistic evasive intricacies, their pointlessly and fascinatingly various tiers of Godhead, their heart-meltingly bizarre nomenclature: Ginnungagap; Yggdrasil; Ratatosk. This is the tradition that Tolkien mines and glorifies--Middle Earth, after all, being not-so-subtly a translation of Midgard.
For those of us who regret the hegemony of the Classicists' Classics, the chewy Anglo-Saxonisms of Mirkwood and its surrounds are a vindication. We always knew these other gods and monsters were cooler.
2) Tragedy
Unlike so many of those he begat, Tolkien's vision, never mind any Hail-fellow-well-met-ery, no matter the coziness of the shire, despite even the remorseless sylvan bonheur of Tom Bombadil, is tragic. The final tears in characters' and readers' eyes are not uncomplicatedly of happiness. On the one hand, yay, the goodies win: on the other, shame that the entire epoch is slipping from Glory. The magic goes west, of course, but there's also the peculiar abjuring of narrative form, in the strange echo after the final battle, the Lord of the Rings's post-end end, the Harrowing of the Shire--so criminally neglected by Jackson. In an alternate reality, this piece of scripting would have earned talented young tattooed hipster video-game designer Johnno Tolkien a slapped wrist from his studio: since when do you put a lesser villain straight after the final Boss Battle? But that's the point. The episode concludes 'well', of course, so far as it goes, but in its very pettiness relative to what's just been, it is brilliantly unsatisfying, ushering in an era of degraded parodies of epics, where it's not just the elves that are going: you can't even get a proper Dark Lord any more. Whatever we see as the drive behind Tolkien's tragic vision, and however we relate to its politics and aesthetics, the tragedy of the creeping tawdry quotidian gives Middle Earth a powerful melancholia lamentably missing from too much of what followed. It deserves celebrating and reclaiming.
3) The Watcher in the Water
Dude. That totally was cool. I mean, say what you like about him, Tolk gives good monster. Shelob, Smaug, the Balrog...in their astounding names, the fearful verve of their descriptions, their various undomesticated malevolence, these creatures are utterly embedded in our world-view. No one can write giant spiders except through Shelob: all dragons are sidekicks now. And so on.
But the thing about the Watcher in the Water is WTF? Here the technique of under-describing, withholding, comes startlingly to the fore, that other great technique for communicating balefulness. We know almost nothing about the many-limbed thing in the water outside Moria. Some think it's a giant squid: me, I say not, given that it lives in fresh water, has too many tentacles, and that those tentacles have fingers. Which squids don't have. But we know three things. It is tentacular; it is badass; and it is weird. And that uncertainty is what makes it rock.
4) Allegory
Tolkien explains that he has a 'cordial dislike of allegory'. Amen! Amen! And just to be clear, there is no contradiction at all between this fact, and the certain truth that his world throws off metaphors, can and should be read as doing all sorts of things, wittingly or unwittingly, with ideas of society, of class, the war, etc. But here is precisely the difference between allegory and metaphor: the latter is fecund, polysemic, generative of meanings but evasive of stability; the former is fecund and interesting largely to the extent that it fails. In his abjuring of allegory, Tolkien refuses the notion that a work of fiction is, in some reductive way, primarily, solely, or really 'about' something else, narrowly and precisely. That the work of the reader is one of code-breaking, that if we find the right key we can perform a hermeneutic algorithm and 'solve' the book. Tolkien knows that that makes for both clumsy fiction and clunky code. His dissatisfaction with the Narnia books was in part precisely because they veered too close to allegory, and therefore did not believe in their own landscape. A similar problem is visible now, in the various tentative ventures into u- or dystopia by writers uncomfortable with the genre they find themselves in and therefore the worlds they create, eager to stress that these worlds are 'about' real and serious things--and thereby bleeding them of the specificity they need to be worth inhabiting, or capable of 'meaning', at all.
This is not a plea for naivety, for evading ramifications or analysis, for some impossible and pointless return to 'just-a-story'. The problem is not that allegory unhelpfully exaggerates the 'meaning' of a 'pure' story, but that it criminally reduces it.
Whether Tolkien himself would follow all the way with this argument is not the point here: the point is that his 'cordial dislike' is utterly key for the project of creating a fantastic fiction that both means and is vividly and irreducibly itself, and is thereby fiction worthy of the name.
5) Subcreation
Middle Earth was not the first invented world, of course. But in the way the world is envisaged and managed, it represents a revolution. Previously, in works such as Eddison's, Leiber's, Ashton Smith's and many others', the worlds of magic, vibrant, brilliant, hilarious and much-loved as they may be, were secondary to the plot. This is not a criticism: that's a perfectly legitimate way to proceed. But the paradigm shift of which there may be other examples, but of which Tolkien was by a vast margin the outstanding herald, represents an extraordinary inversion, which brings its own unique tools and capabilities to narrative. The order is reverse: the world comes first, and then, and only then, things happen--stories occur--within it.
So dominant is this mode now (as millions of women and men draw millions of maps, and write millions of histories, inventing worlds in which, perhaps, eventually, a few will set stories) that it's difficult to see what a conceptual shift it represented. And it is so mocked and denigrated--often brilliantly, as in the ferocious attack by M. John Harrison, that outstanding anti-fantasist, wherein he describes worldbuilding as the 'great clomping foot of nerdism'--that it's hard to insist that it brings aesthetic and epistemological possibilities to the table that may be valuable and impossible any other way.
This is a debate that needs to be had. These are stories contingent to a world the reader inhabits--full of 'ideal creations' that the writer has given, in Tolkien's words, 'the inner consistency of reality'. Whatever else it is, that is a strange and unique kind of reading. Tolkien not only performs the trick, indeed arguably inaugurates it, but considers and theorises this process that he calls 'subcreation', in his extraordinary essay 'On Fairy Stories'. It is astounding, and testimony to him, that his ruminations on what is probably now the default 'fantasy' mode remain not only seminal but lonely. Whether one celebrates or laments the fact, it is an incredibly powerful literary approach, and the lack of systematic, philosophical and critical attention paid not to this or that example but to 'subcreation', world-building, overall, as a technique, is amazing. To my knowledge--and I would be grateful for correction--there is not one book-length theoretical critical work, or collection, investigating the fantastic technique of secondary-world-building--subcreation. This is astounding. In Tolkien, fully 70 years ago, by contrast, we have not only the method's great vanguard, but still one of its most important and pioneering scholars.
There are plenty of other reasons to be grateful to Tolkien, of course--and reasonable reasons to be ticked off at him, too: critique, after all has its place. But so does admiration. Tolkien never lacks for encomia, but that's no reason not to repeat those most deserved, or, even more, to stress neglected reasons for justified and fervent praise.
Jon on June 15, 2009 at 11:54 AM
someone should write a list of the 5 five reasons why China Mieville is a serious slice of kick-ass! This was the freshest thing written about Tolkien in a while, especially considering Mieville's past statements on the man.
Siobhan on June 15, 2009 at 04:04 PM
Para 2: Harrowing of the Shire or Scouring of the Shire? It is pretty harrowing so I guess both work but if you are referring to that particular chapter... /nitpick.
Brooklyn Dave on June 15, 2009 at 04:40 PM
On Senior Editor Tom's recommendation, I am reading The City and The City, and it is fantastic. Still got 100 pages to go, but so far it has blown me away. I'm hoping you are a good closer Mr. Mieville!
Bob Lock on June 16, 2009 at 02:09 AM
Hi China,
Although I too think Tolkien rocks and is obviously The Author Of The Century I do wonder if perhaps fate played a big part in this, in that he happened to be the right writer with the right story at the right time. For example, would we be extolling the virtues of say George R.R.Martin here if A Game Of Thrones was published in 1954 instead of LOTR. Or what about The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson or even more recently Abercrombies' First Law Trilogy? I just mean to say that by being the first at getting an idea down on paper that perhaps the likes of which hasn't been seen before gives the trail-blazer quite an advantage.
I've been fortunate enough to have been given a copy of The City and The City as a birthday present and it's waiting patiently on my bedside table whilst I finish off a Jim Butcher book. I look forward to reading something from you again, so far every book I've had of yours has been a joy to read and I thank you for them. I do hope you have plans to delve back into the world of New Crobuzon once again.
Best wishes,
Bob
Flea on June 16, 2009 at 04:41 AM
Hi Bob,
Yeah, and if The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were published in 1580 it would have been clear how path-breaking Stephen R. Donaldson's work would be if not "over shadowed" by Shakespeare.
Best wishes (mingled with antipathy),
The Flea.
Bob Lock on June 16, 2009 at 06:25 AM
Hi Flea,
Sorry if my post has rubbed you up the wrong way somehow Flea, it was unintentional and merely an observation on my part. However, everyone is entitled to an opinion and I respect yours even though it doesn't seem you respect mine.
Best wishes (sans antipathy)
Bob :)
The Dude on June 16, 2009 at 10:50 AM
Hi China,
I am truly glad to see you've written an article like this.
I'm a huge fan of yours, I've read all your books (with the exception of King Rat) and I've also read many interviews that you've given online and you seem like a really nice guy that always has something interesting to say about any given subject.
However, ever since I've read that "Tolkien is the wen in the arse of fantasy" comment that you made a few years ago that I've harbored a little animosity towards your views regarding fantasy.
I am not a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I like the books, obviously respect Tolkien but I'd elect The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (that Flea mentioned) as "My Lord of the Rings", the epic fantasy against which all others must be judged.
But one thing that strikes me about most anti-Tolkien remarks throughout the years (that have increased after the movies) is the arrogance on which they are given. Michael Moorcock,Hal Duncan,you,MJ Harrison (I know he was a huge influence to you, but I really despise that guy) and many others all seem to make valid points against Tolkien, but then undermine them with some snide or sarcastic remark.
A few months ago Richard Morgan wrote an anti-Tolkien essay. He made really good points and then ended the essay by writing "I can't imagine how someone adult would want to read that"! That's incredibly insulting to all of Tolkien's fans, many of which are masterful writers in their own right: George RR Martin, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Stephen Donaldson,R Scott Bakker, Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, the list goes on and on.
Anyway, this is gotten long-winded but the point is that I'm glad to see that you can substantiate your points of view on both sides of the argument and that you're not some writer trying to be cool and edgy by attacking the ones that came before.
Best of wishes and I look forward to the books that you have planned for the future.
Tim McDonald on June 16, 2009 at 12:17 PM
Of course, most of those complaining about Tolkien have forgotten the most basic fact of writing fiction: They are competing for my beer money (re RAH), and most of them REALLY suck at it. Tolkien was a master, how much beer money has been wasted on his books again? Yeah, that is what I thought. When any of them make it to 25% of that number, I will at least listen to them.
McSweeny on June 16, 2009 at 12:24 PM
As noted by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Tolkien is quite fascist.
See here for more: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html
Lawrence Person on June 16, 2009 at 12:44 PM
China,
A very good point regarding the Scouring of the Shire. I'm not sure which critic first brought it up (it may have been John Clute, or perhaps whoever tackled it in the five volume Survey of Fantasy Literature), but much of Tolkien's power comes from ritual recapitulation. Just as Saruman's fall in the Scouring of the Shire recapitulates Sauron's fall in The Lord of the Rings, so too does Sauron's own fall recapitulate the greater fall of of the greater villain Morgoth in The The Silmarillion. It is those echos which provide much of the book's resonance, these echoes of greater things that indicate the falling condition of a world that suffers from (to use Clute's term) "thinning."
Dave G on June 16, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Why does nobody mention Vance in these discussions? I suppose if you've never read him you can't take him into account, but he, to my mind is the perfect example of a fantasist whose stories could simply not be told without the context of the worlds, societies and histories against which he tells them. From Lyonesse to Night Lamp it is these things that inform, define and constrain the characters and their tales. Yes, he has major and minor works, he wrote hugely more fiction than Tolkein, but the major ones are just that, and from a genuine master of written English.
A good article, however. Whatever your opinion Tolkein's influence and reach are too great to simply ignore or adore.
Uncle Jimbo on June 16, 2009 at 12:47 PM
McSweeny,
As noted by me, anyone who quotes Zinn & Chomsky is quite a douchebag.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Cardinal Ximenes on June 16, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Aside from questioning the wit of Zinn or Chomsky to recognize fascism if it backhanded them, I can't say it's terribly relevant to the worth of an author's writing.
If I expect to buy an author's consent to my politics at the same time as I buy his paperback, I'm plainly accustomed to dealing with cheaply-bought men.
DensityDuck on June 16, 2009 at 12:50 PM
Tolkein wasn't a fascist. Fascists merely believe some of the same things that Tolkein did.
*****
Point #3: It's worth noting that of all the monsters in all the books, The Watcher In The Water is the only one that nobody killed, or wounded badly, or even fought back against. The Watcher shows up and our brave heroes run like bitches.
Wobots on June 16, 2009 at 12:52 PM
OK, he rocks, but he also wrote The Silmarillion.
Assistant Village Idiot on June 16, 2009 at 12:55 PM
Zinn and Chomsky like to tell stories about hstory in which they leave out all that is inconvenient to their political point. It is therefore unsurprising they disapprove of Tolkien, seeing that he is the very medicine they need but cannot swallow.
Do not wonder why those who criticise Tolkien cannot seem "cordially dislike" him. It is not accidental, but religious. They read him well enough to understand the implications of his world are precisely what they cannot bear the world to be. They cannot pass by without sneering and insulting, because their hatred is not intellectual, but emotional. Once you know this, it leaps out at you in the writings of Moorcock, who says as much.
There is some that Tolkien wrote badly, in retrospect. Bombadil does not quite work or fit, for example. But those things seldom have much to do with the criticism of him.
Gilmoure on June 16, 2009 at 12:58 PM
David Brin has an interesting take on Tolkien: J. R. R. Tolkien: Enemy of Progress. Is worth a read.
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index.html
KR on June 16, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Uncle Jimbo,
As noted by me, anyone who doesn't get the joke makes themselves look a fool. (Hint: read the link McSweeny posted.)
Cordially,
K.
Carla on June 16, 2009 at 12:59 PM
McSweeny, Zinn and Chomsky probably think anyone to the right of Uncle Joe Stalin is a fascist, so that's hardly a damning critique.
kwo on June 16, 2009 at 01:05 PM
Why does nobody mention Vance in these discussions?
Good question! But I wonder how many fantasy fans asked the same question about Tolkein prior to the 70's?
Maybe someone should get Chomsky to call Vance a fascist? Might help.
Mark Buehner on June 16, 2009 at 01:05 PM
Context counts, friends. If Tolkien was a fascist, what does that make Homer? A sadist?
Gabriel Hanna on June 16, 2009 at 01:06 PM
I didn't like the the Thomas Covenant books. The second set especially, with its self-parodyingly pretentious language (using "orbs" instead of "eyes", WTF? Tolkein was an expert in Old and Middle English, what was Donaldson's excuse).
Chris on June 16, 2009 at 01:22 PM
Mr. Mieville, thanks for the very enjoyable comments. Concerning a full-length treatment of sub-creation, you might check out The Mind of the Maker, by Dorothy Sayers. But to me, the definitive (or at least most accessible) statements on sub-creation were by Tolkien himself: On Fairy Stories, Leaf By Niggle, and Mythopeia.
Orion on June 16, 2009 at 01:24 PM
McSweeny: "Tolkien is quite fascist."
I call Godwin on this thread.
Lawrence Person on June 16, 2009 at 01:27 PM
Hate to spoil the joke, but the Zinn and Chomsky reference comes from a McSweeney's parody, not the real articles...
Andrew X on June 16, 2009 at 01:34 PM
I'm just gonna chime in and mention that, when Jackson started shooting LotR, I remember saying "betcha anything Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire don't make it in". I said this because I am unnaturally brilliant.
OK, not. I'm not a film guy, and I couldn't even really defend the statement, I just felt it would be the case. (I never liked or 'got' Tom Bombadil, he was too damn jolly, and I couldn't stop picturing Paul Bunyon.)
I do get why the Scouring was quite significant to the book, it's actually probably my most re-read chapter. But, it just wouldn't have worked in the movie.
For starters, interestingly, it is almost the entire trilogy re-told in micro-scale. Humble little creatures smothered by growing evil rise up with the help of wiser souls (Merry and Pipin playing the Aragorn role) and cast off the evil, etc etc. The EVENT of it was important to the story, but the telling of it would be especially repetitive in the film.
Then, of course, there are a few grumbling souls who have noted that Return of the King (film), wonderful though it was, just sort of..... took........... for ............... EVER .................. to................. come ........................... to ............... an ........................................................................................... end.
Now try throwing the whole scouring in. RotK really would have needed two films..... and now it's not a trilogy, its a... quad-rogy? Naawwww, no one would have been upset about that.
So I think Jackson made the right decision. Just thought I'd jump in and defend it.
NYCcon on June 16, 2009 at 01:43 PM
Unfortunately, the author, Mieville, is a Trotskyite Communist who has even stood for election under the banner of the UK's Socialist Alliance (garnering something less than 500 votes). As such, his political views are far closer to fascism than Tolkein's Catholic, anti-industrial and somewhat (classical) liberal views.
Mieville likely would find citation to Zinn and Chomsky persuasive authority. (Although, yes, it's a good parody).
Mikee on June 16, 2009 at 01:45 PM
Jurgen, and all the other works of James Branch Cabell, bear reading as well.
Jonathan Card on June 16, 2009 at 02:53 PM
DensityDuck, man, if I'd been drinking milk, it would have gone right out my nose at that. My first reaction was, did it have to be so bad to do that? If you've had a long day, chased by Wargs, and the door finally opens, and you're looking into a big black hole, you're going to go six feet in the air and come down running if a bat flies by your ear.
But, I guess it can't be like that. All of the other monsters were plot points by themselves. Bard killed Smaug, Gandalf and Glorfindel were both willing to take on Balrogs by themselves, and Sam got Shelob (and, frankly, if you get killed by a hobbit, I think your monster certification should be revoked), but the Watcher's only purpose was to get the 9 baddest guys in Middle Earth, together, working as a team, to say, "There may be an goblin army of unknown size ahead of us, not to mention Something Else, but if we turn around, we have to get past that thing in the pond." Nothing you describe could be awful enough to make that sound like a good decision.
Chris on June 16, 2009 at 03:31 PM
And cliffhangers! Don't forget the cliffhangers. The books would have been so boring without the nail-biting suspense that followed when each major character managed to fall off a mountain at some point in the Quest. And adding additional plot tension by making Arwen's life inexplicably bound up with the fate of the Ring was inspired, baby!
Riddle me this Precious:
Q: How would LoTR have been different if Robert Heinlein had penned it?
A: About 50 chapters shorter. Frodo would have flown a giant Eagle to Mount Doom and simply dropped the Ring down the mountain's piehole. The would have been some lovely air-to-air combat scenes with the Ringwraiths, but the issue would never have been in doubt.
Mitch H. on June 16, 2009 at 04:47 PM
Well, more accurately, a lot of proto-fascists loved the hell out of Tolkien, usually reading it just before growing out their hair, planting an occult pot plantation in a back holler & breaking out into a massed chorus of:
"The branch of the linden is leafy and Green
The Rhine gives its gold to the sea
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
Tomorrow belongs to me"
Mieville's quite right about the importance of world-building, although I rather think that there were valid examples of "sub-creation" that pre-date Tolkien. Lovecraft's stuff, for instance, is more world-building than character or plot, to the point where he seemed incapable of anything more elaborate than a short novella, but still there carried over an elaborate poetic paranoia, porting world-details from story to story in a fairly consistent fashion.
tbrosz on June 16, 2009 at 05:39 PM
"Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things."
That line alone, and all it implies, was worth the price of the book.
Tennwriter on June 16, 2009 at 05:40 PM
Bob,
Without antipathy, but eh no. I read a lot of Chronicles which while interesting if dreadfully slow is just not on the same scale of goodness or on the level of subtle grandeur, and enough Martins to decide that disgust mixed with boredom was the appropriate reaction. Chronicles would have done better, but it would have probably led to other writers bettering Donaldson in subsequent decades. Martins would have been buried relatively soon, and there's a decent chance most of us would never have heard of the man.
I haven't read Abercrombie.
Moorcock...well, R.A. Salvatore is a lot better. Moorcock had a power to him, that I'll admit, and I've enjoyed a number of his stories, but if he belongs in teh front rank of any army, then tis a sad army.
David Ross on June 16, 2009 at 05:42 PM
As a world builder, Tolkien was first rate. As a composer of novels not so much, and that is why Peter Jackson was able to improve upon Fellowship and Towers (although he too got bogged down in Return).
Don't get me started on Donaldson.
If we are talking about rivals to Tolkien: the first three books by George R R Martin in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series has set the bar for the genre. If you disregard the Daenerys and later Arya chapters, it is a character-driven tragedy; a portrait of a continent in collapse because of misrule, ambition, and chaos.
Iain Abela on June 16, 2009 at 05:45 PM
I was a tolkien hater, I read them once, and was never able to re-read them. It wasn't until I read a book called Tolkien and the great war, or something like that. It is a biography of Tolkien before he wrote LOTR. This I found was a perfect accompaniment to the series, I re-read them, and enjoyed them even more. He is a Genius.
China, you too are pretty good, I am super excited to read the city and the city
Stretch on June 16, 2009 at 06:40 PM
I've re-read Tolkien's masterpiece every few years since ... well ... quite a while ago. He withstands the preverbal "test of time." Middle Earth has a depth no other fictional place can match (OK, Ringworld is damn close). Is there any among us who couldn’t hike their way from North Farthing to Minas Tirith (Orcs and Wargs notwithstanding)?
But for me the ultimate proof of his greatness is to listen to Tolkien read from his works. Truly the direct heir to the Nordic Saga singers. This is what Vikings must have felt like while listening to the saga heralds.
Curmudgeon Geographer on June 16, 2009 at 06:57 PM
Folks, please follow McSweeney's link. It is a spot on parody.
Tolkien Fan on June 16, 2009 at 07:10 PM
China Meiville,
I've seen your The City on the B&N shelves many times, but ignored it till now. I enjoyed your post very much, and will take a look at your book my next bookstore visit.
Tyrone Slothrop on June 16, 2009 at 08:46 PM
Mr. Mieville,
Quite apart from the ideas you express here, most of which I agree with, I'm knocked out by your writing. I want to buy one of your books.
T.S.
daddy dave on June 16, 2009 at 09:25 PM
Nice article.
"Why does nobody mention Vance in these discussions?"
I'm also voting for Vance as an under-rated Tolkein. He was building worlds at around the same time, and I think "The Dying Earth" actually predates Lord of the Rings. There aren't huge armies sweeping across the fields in Vance's work but there are some pretty interesting places and characters.
M. report on June 16, 2009 at 09:38 PM
"The Scouring of the Shire" will be reenacted soon, at a
location near _you_ , courtesy of the State Bureau of the
Dark Arts; see the fun, boo the One. :)
Over my years of reading Heroic Fantasy, I have built up
a fairly detailed "Mythical Map" of Europa, and Tolkien
seems to have located his world somewhere between Germany
and Britain; Poul Anderson paints a truer, darker, picture
of the Nordic lands in books such as "Hrolf Kraki's Saga"
and a truly grim short story called "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth".
Bob Lock on June 17, 2009 at 03:32 AM
Hey Tennwriter,
First of all, many thanks for curbing your antipathy :)
Yes, I can see how readers could easily get put off Donaldson's work as he does ramble on and on and you have to persevere to peel back the verbosity to get at the juicy core of his writing. Perhaps another thing that readers won't like about Chronicles and The Gap Series even, is that they both contain anti-heroes which many could find difficult to warm to. For example, if I remember correctly, Covenant rapes a young girl right at the start of the series, not exactly endearing him to the reader. Same goes for The Gap, which has Angus Thermopyle who you immediately take a dislike to.
However, I only mentioned those writers as a quick example in my first post, you could easily put many more examples (as we have already seen posted) in their place. The main object of my original post was just to ask China if he thought that by being the first to come up with something so 'off the wall' as a story containing dwarves, elves, orcs and various monsters etc, Tolkien had a big advantage over those who came after.
Best wishes,
Bob
supergee on June 17, 2009 at 04:34 AM
M. John Harrison believes that worldbuilding is a solitary activity that grows hair on the palms.
NickG on June 17, 2009 at 08:43 AM
@Siobhan
Perhaps me old China (apols) is mistakenly half refernecing that wonderful stroke of middle age apocrypha, the harrowing of hell? Easy, I spose, what with all the half present allegories floating about.
Astra on June 17, 2009 at 11:02 AM
Excellent post and thoughtful comments.
Another person in addition to Vance who is sadly neglected is Mervyn Peake. He transformed the Dickensian grotesque to a fantasy setting in a way that clearly has been profoundly influential (not to mention a great read).
I read Richard Morgan's Tolkien essay recently and was struck by the narrow limitations that he places on the definition of quality fantasy. If we do not get to learn of the inner motivations of the orcs, for example, then we are being fed a flawed, black and white worldview. In a story that shows the downfall of Saruman and (even more poignantly) the results of the different choices in the Denethor/Boromir/Faramir triad, I think there is enough moral ambiguity on the part of the "good guys" to suffice. There is also the elegiac quality of the story, in which the destruction of the ring also leads to trauma for its bearer, the end of an age, and the diminishing of the elvish presence on Middle Earth. Plus, he gave scant consideration to the astounding quality of the world development, in which, as Mieville puts it so well, the story of the ring flowed out of the long, rich history of the world Tolkien crafted rather than the other way around.
--E on June 17, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Granted, irony is often difficult to recognize when it cuts so close. I'm glad someone pointed out the McSweeny's is a parody, because when I read it, all I could think was that it was tongue-in-cheek. I've had similar conversations with friends, and we were laughing our asses off.
Bob, while A Game of Thrones and the Thomas Covenant books may be all flavors of awesome, the question remains if they would ever have been written had not Tolkien come first. It's not a question of who beat whom to the punch; there is a potential causal relationship here, and that cannot occur if the factors are shuffled through time.
Milo on June 17, 2009 at 03:07 PM
Interesting article. I do agree that Tolkien's work is not without contradiction or flaw, but as a creative and imaginative genius he has few peers.
Brian on June 17, 2009 at 06:32 PM
"There is some that Tolkien wrote badly, in retrospect. Bombadil does not quite work or fit, for example. But those things seldom have much to do with the criticism of him"
On the topic of Bombadil: "Tolkien himself said that some things should remain mysterious in any narrative, hidden even to its inventor".
As a reader its both entertaining and frustrating to not have a definitive answer to some questions. Half the fun is in reading, the other half is guessing/wonder what a character like Bombadil is. Is he one of the Ainur? Is he Maiar. Is he god himself? Tolkien does not say. And thats the point.
Ted on June 17, 2009 at 07:39 PM
I have always thought that one of the main subplots of the trilogy was the growth, both literal and metaphorical, of Merry and Pippin: they start off as irresponsible and end up leading a military campaign. The "scouring of the shire" chapter is key to that subplot. They, like Middle Earth, have lost their youth and moved into a new age.
VillageIdiotsDaughter on June 17, 2009 at 09:49 PM
Mr. Mieville, I must thank you quite heartily for writing this article. I am a Tolkien fan who is unfortunate enough to be surrounded by friends who do not recognize Tolkien's genius, simply because they struggle through the first chapter of any of his books, and dismiss it as 'boring'. It is nice to know that there are others who truly appreciate what Tolkien has done for this world.
Much thanks,
VID