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Great Debate 2008: Is Tolkien Too Wordy?

Started by SDragon, August 18, 2008, 08:22:34 PM

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Steel General

I'm sure this has been mentioned oodles of times already, but remember that Tolkien never intended LOTR to be published. It was supposed to be a "linguistic exercise", IIRC he was nearly 'bullied' into getting it published.

I've read the Hobbit, LOTR and Smith of Wooten Major... I've tried to read the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales a couple of times, but got 'bored'.

But the same thing happened the first time I tried to read the first Thomas Covenant series, I went back later and 'flew' right thru them, and enjoyed the read.
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SA

I don't like Tolkien as a writer.  At all.  I think I have semi-fond memories of the Hobbit, but, looking at the book again, I'm not sure why.  As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter how great a story you can invent if your delivery is laboured and uninteresting, so he may be a good story-crafter but not so great a story-teller.

EDIT:

But I didn't answer the question.  Is he too wordy?  Yes.

LordVreeg

Quote from: Ninja D!Tolkien is seriously taught in schools?  Wow.  I've never heard that before.
Full year of English Lit in my High School.  Mid Level course, so it was interesting watching the brilliant teacher using this engaging storyline to draw in the lower-level students.  I was kind of ducking it, becasue I first read through LOTR in 4th grade. so I was shooting for an easy A, while reading Tolkien  (sounded like a good proposition).  Joan Mountford (see below) figured out early on what I was up to, and bribed me with AP credits to read other comparable works and write up critical analysis on those as well as grading me on much of the more advanced literary functions of Tolkien's works.

here is the current status of that wonderful woman who taught it.  
8:15-9:45 Early Morning Sessions
Teaching the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (MS/HS) Chesterfield
Joan Mountford and Jack M. Rode
This workshop will focus on the approaches to teaching the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Presenters
will discuss their experiences in bringing these fantasy classics into the classroom, share ideas and material for teaching fantasy,
and discuss ways to win approval for incorporating such works into the curriculum.
Joan Mountford, now in her fourth year of retirement, taught in New Hampshire public schools for 35 years, 33 of them at Alvirne High School in Hudson; it was at
Alvirne that she taught the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien for more than a quarter century. She has been a regular presenter at NEATE for over twenty years, was runner-up for
NH Teacher of the Year, and received the Distinguished Career Award from the New Hampshire Association of Teachers of English. Jack M. Rode has been teaching in
New Hampshire since 1979, and at Profile High School in Bethlehem, New Hampshire since 1981. Over the years, he has taught English in grades 9-12, as well as Latin
I and II. In the spring of 2004, he began a one semester course for seniors in Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, being inspired

VerkonenVreeg, The Nice.Celtricia, World of Factions

Steel Island Online gaming thread
The Collegium Arcana Online Game
Old, evil, twisted, damaged, and afflicted.  Orbis non sufficit.Thread Murderer Extraordinaire, and supposedly pragmatic...\"That is my interpretation. That the same rules designed to reduce the role of the GM and to empower the player also destroyed the autonomy to create a consistent setting. And more importantly, these rules reduce the Roleplaying component of what is supposed to be a \'Fantasy Roleplaying game\' to something else\"-Vreeg

Hibou

Two of the things that may make writers like Poe and Lovecraft seem a little less wordy and/or easier to read than Tolkien may also be that most of their material came in short stories... and even though they tended to ramble a lot you could finish a story in a short amount of time. As for their actual content, the works are damn wordy. Every bit as much as Tolkien. They're also of a different genre, usually more horror even in Poe's case, and some people find that easier to read.
[spoiler=GitHub]https://github.com/threexc[/spoiler]

Pellanor

I tried to reread LotR a couple years back. I made it about as far as Tom Bombadil before I had to put the book down. I just could get into it. I don't know if it was wordiness or just where he focused the detail, but it just never pulled me in.
One of these days I'll actually get organized enough to post some details on my setting / system.

Acrimone

So I hadn't looked at The Silmarillion in about 2 years, so I decided to open up to a page and read the first passage that I found.  I love the flow of these words, and this really is a blistering insight into human nature, although it's about Elves.  

[blockquote=From the Silmarillion]Now Fingolfin, King of the North, and High King of the Noldor, seeing that his people were become numerous and strong, and that the Men allied to them were many and valiant, pondered once more an assault upon Angband; for he knew that they lived in danger while the circle of the siege was incomplete, and Morgoth was free to labour in his deep mines, devising what evils non could foretell ere he should reveal them.  This counsel was wise according to the measure of his knowledge; for the Noldor did not yet comprehend the fullness of the power of Morgoth, nor understand that their unaided war upon him was without final hope, whether they hasted or delayed.  But because the land was fair and their kingdoms wide, most of the Noldor were content with things as they were, trusting them to last, and slow to begin an assault in which many must surely perish were it in victory or defeat.  Therefore they were little disposed to hearken to Fingolfin, and the sons of Feanor at that time least of all.[/blockquote]

I think the main difference between this passage and most things more modern is that this can be read aloud and sound really, really, really, really good.  Indeed, it's almost meant to be read aloud.

Contrast it to a passage from a more modern book, one that I dearly love and hold in the highest of esteem, The Intiate Brother by Sean Russell:

[blockquote=From the Initiate Brother]Crossing to the window, he leaned out, blinded by the force of the wind.  He realized he had no time to spare, not knowing when the guard might be changed.  When the wind veered toward him and he judged the rope would blow nearer, Shuyun reached out blindly with the spear.  SOmething soft seemed to roll under the shaft as he pulled it along the rock, but it did not catch on the barb.  Again the wind offeredhim a chance, but this time he did not feel the rope at all.  If it catches on a projection, I am lost, the monk thought.  Forcing a calm over himself he waited, dividing his attention between the direction of the wind and the stairway.[/blockquote]

You just can't read that out loud to someone... it's not the right sort of writing.  It's meant to convey information to the reader directly, to be soaked up straight off the page.

And that, I suspect, may be the biggest difference between "modern fantasy" and Tolkein.  His "wordiness" allows the listener to keep up with what's going on.

Now you might say this isn't a fair comparison... after all, the second passage is an "action" passage and the former is narration.  So let's look at something a little more tactical.  Because I was looking for something in particular, this passage was not chosen entirely at random.  I picked a chapter in the book before opening to a random page.

[blockquote=From the Fellowship of the Ring]They stumbled after him wondering what had happened.  Doom, doom went the drum-beats again: they now sounded muffled and far away, but they were following.  There was no other sound of pursuit, neither tramp of feet, nor any voice.  Gandalf took no turns, right or left, for the passage seemed to be going in the direction that he desired.  Every now and again it descended a flight of steps, fifty or more, to a lower level.  At the moment that was their chief danger; for in the dark they could not see a descent, until they came on it and put their feet out into emptiness.  Gandalf felt the ground with his staff like a blind man.[/blockquote]

There's just something that sounds wonderful about that... and I'm very fond of the way Tolkein uses explanatory sentences after simple declarations.  "At the moment that was their chief danger;" followed right upon by "for..."  It gives a reader the chance to play around with the timing of how things are said.  He did the same thing in the first passage when describing why Fingolfin thought that an attack seemed like a good idea.

Just for further comparison, here is another passage -- also from one of my absolute favourite authors (Elizabeth Moon):

[blockquote=From The Deed of Paksenarrion]Paks wondered what would be left at the ambush site, since Sir Felis had sent a troop of his soldiers out to retrieve the bodies.  Would she even notice it?  As the sun neared its height, she began to worry that they'd missed it.  But it was clear, when they came to it. Deeper tracks, round-hoofed, of ridden horses, and the mules' tracks veering from side to side.  Bloodstains on the fallen leaves, and on the rocks that edged the road.  A few spent arrows, mostly broken.  Mal pointed out the traces she missed, chatting the while about trees.  In the end, Paks found the way the wagons had been taken.  Freshly cut boughs, the leaves hardly withered, disguised the wagon's track into the woods...[/blockquote]

The difference is even more striking here: fragment sentences designed to convey images to the reader, but utterly unsuitable for reading out loud.  And something like "In the end, she found the way the wagons had been taken" sounds simply awful read aloud -- it sounds like the speaker is hurrying for an appointment, late for lunch, or otherwise wishing to get out of his current situation.  

Now, I will be the first to admit, I am no Tolkein, but if he were to write about this same scene, I suspect, in all humility, that it would look something like this:

[blockquote=From my fevered imagination]They came to the site of the ambush, after such a long ride that Paks was afraid they had missed it entirely.  Yet once upon it, she saw her fear was unwarranted; for there was no mistaking the disarray of veering tracks and hoofprints, nor could one fail to see the stains where blood marked rock and leaf.  They looked about, discovering a few spent arrows, but those mostly broken; and Mal talked all the while of trees and the forest.  When Paks would miss a sign or trace, he would interrupt himself to point it out, though she did not find it chiding.  The path of the wagon's flight was finally revealed to her when freshly cut boughs, perhaps too hastily placed, were pulled back to reveal the wagon's tracks into the woods...[/blockquote]

Anyway, my primary thesis is this: Tolkein's writing is verbal in a way that most modern fantasy simply is not.  It is meant to be a story that can be read out loud.  It is not meant to be a private transmission of imagery from author to reader.

I could, of course, be mistaken.  I should also not be taken as saying that one is superior to the other.  I am just trying to explain what I see as the differences.
"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."
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Elemental_Elf

Quote from: AcrimoneSeriously.  At least it was when I was in high school and college which, by some standards, was a while back.  I have personally known 4 English teachers who included Lord of the Rings in their junior or senior year curricula.

Ever since the Lord of the Ring movies came out, most High School English Teachers avoid Tolkien like the plague. Heck, its even frowned upon to use Lord of the Rings (or any of Tolkien's works in general) on the state run English proficiency exams simply because the movies made the books to 'pop culture' oriented (or so one of the exam graders stated to me once).

I'd hate to see what would happen if The Great Gatsby were ever made into a mega movie hit... :P


Back on topic here, I believe Tolkien's work is a tad too wordy for the current generation. In an age of text messaging and to-the-point information flow, yes Tolkien is too wordy. At the same time, most works of fiction from any time prior to say the 80's is really too verbose for most people. I know when I was in high school (some 4 years ago) I struggled through Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness and Mobey Dick. At the time, the stories felt, how to put this, they felt pushed, as if the authors were intentionally finding ways of making inane conversations or describing things for far too long of a time. Heck, that last sentence is much to wordy, even for my tastes.

My point is that people want faster and faster information flow. We don't necessarily need page upon page of description because we have so much vicarious experience (through TV and the Internet) that we can easily imagine what a Dragon looks like or a whale or the jungle. What's needed is a faster pace to keep our increasingly shorter attention spans engaged in the story.  

Nomadic

Acrimone that is a brilliant deduction. Likewise EE. Though I will say that I personally prefer the slower pace of the older fiction works compared to the modern ones. Then again I don't watch TV and I try to avoid the more fast paced parts of the internet (not to mention the fact that I type out my text messages on the phone in full with punctuation and all). So perhaps I am just a slower person, more enjoying a time before kids had their heads stuck in a computer, one hand on an iPod and the other texting on their phone in short broken sentences.

LordVreeg

Acrimone,
Well said and supported.
Though there are other factors involved, Tolkien's background in Old English and the well-documented Shakespearian influence(1&2) would naturally cleave to a format meant to be spoken aloud.  At the time of publication, his tendencies towards the things he knew best were well known.

In a letter to Rhona Beare in 1958 he wrote, "I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place." In an earlier letter to his publishing company, he explained, "Middle-earth, by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in'¦. It is just a use of Middle-English middle-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men '˜between the seas' (3)

And as to the power of this 'storytelling modality'

"Sam withdrew the elven-glass of Galadriel again. As if to do honour to his hardiness, and to grace with splendour his faithful brown hobbit-hand that had done such deeds, the phial blazed forth suddenly, so that all the shadowy court was lit with a dazzling radiance like lightning; but it remained steady and did not pass.

'Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!' Sam cried. For, why he did not know, his thought sprang back suddenly to the Elves in the Shire, and the song than drove away the Black Rider in the trees."
(4)

I would concur that there is a like or dislike, an affinity or opposition, for this bardic cadence.  If one is waiting for him to 'get to the point' thorugh all his verbosity, one might not be looking for the beauty of the language itself.






1.-http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QLQ/is_2007_August/ai_n19450553
2.-http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-2827-4
3.-http://www.physics.ccsu.edu/larsen/astronomy_of_middle.htm
4.-ROTK 234
VerkonenVreeg, The Nice.Celtricia, World of Factions

Steel Island Online gaming thread
The Collegium Arcana Online Game
Old, evil, twisted, damaged, and afflicted.  Orbis non sufficit.Thread Murderer Extraordinaire, and supposedly pragmatic...\"That is my interpretation. That the same rules designed to reduce the role of the GM and to empower the player also destroyed the autonomy to create a consistent setting. And more importantly, these rules reduce the Roleplaying component of what is supposed to be a \'Fantasy Roleplaying game\' to something else\"-Vreeg

sparkletwist

Quote from: LordVreegand I link again to the issue
I read plenty, thanks.
Still not a fan of Tolkien.

LordVreeg

[blockquote=Sparkletwist][blockquote=LordVreeg]
and I link again to the issue[/blockquote]

I read plenty, thanks.
Still not a fan of Tolkien.[/blockquote]
Not a fan?  Thought you enjoyed the Movie...Hell, I enjoyed the movie a ton, and I only go to a few movies a year.  I thought it was still quite the story, even disregarding conversation about the writing.
VerkonenVreeg, The Nice.Celtricia, World of Factions

Steel Island Online gaming thread
The Collegium Arcana Online Game
Old, evil, twisted, damaged, and afflicted.  Orbis non sufficit.Thread Murderer Extraordinaire, and supposedly pragmatic...\"That is my interpretation. That the same rules designed to reduce the role of the GM and to empower the player also destroyed the autonomy to create a consistent setting. And more importantly, these rules reduce the Roleplaying component of what is supposed to be a \'Fantasy Roleplaying game\' to something else\"-Vreeg

Ninja D!

What have I started... :/

But the real question is this : Who is hotter; Ginger or Mary Anne? (Or for sparkletwist; Gilligan or the professor)?

[/attemptedmoodlighteningthreadhijack]

Nomadic

Quote from: sparkletwist
Quote from: NomadicIf something feels wordy to you that is an opinion formed by yourself and not fact. Solid perception and nothing else.

That wasn't directed at your post it was directed at the threads original post (sdragon's) and was reiterating my statement that people can't say that something is too wordy or not. Wordiness is based on opinion (short of actual word counting which is likewise ridiculous).

Raelifin

One of these is Tolkien.

Quote from:  George R. R. Martin: A Storm of Swords
B = Robert Jordan: Eye of the World
C = Tolkien: The Two Towers[/b
[/spoiler]

sparkletwist

Quote from: Ninja D!Or for sparkletwist; Gilligan or the professor
That wasn't directed at your post it was directed at the threads original post (sdragon's)[/quote]
Ah. You really should quote more. ;)