[Amarinth]

hi kalessin! i've been following this excellent thread and am so impressed by the highly intellectual posts here -- i'm utterly intimidated to add mine! but please bear with mine, as i only hope to share a human "face" to some of what's been discussed here.

the arguments above can generally be classified into two areas: (1) the nature of the epic-fantasy genre as art and (2) the appreciation of the genre as art. the first is a matter for the proficient and artistic, as many of the folks above evidently are [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img], but for many, individual appreciation is their teacher, their gauge for what makes art great.

as the discussion verged into "standards" of postmodernism (child of the 7a, kalessin, aiwendil, etc.), i recalled a very spirited conversation i had with friends involved in the artistic pursuits, and who like many others of my acquaintance have agreed (or succumbed, more likely) to read but resisted "falling in love" with the sublime works of tolkien. in essence and in their words, their reservations are rooted in a feeling that there is a huge "pre-requisite" of socio-cultural knowledge needed to "suspend their disbelief" and effectively "feel and visualize" the novels. the standards for appreciating an epic-fantasy novel like tolkien's, they elaborate, are "too lofty and esoteric", in contrast to other "realistic" fiction like popular human interest documentary et al where the indvidual reader relies largely on his/her own internal set of standards wrought from "social pre-conditioning, experience, introspection". this was surreal coming from artists.

i've previously thought that my friends were just being contrary, or that i'm a bad endorsement for tolkien *sniff*, but lately i've noticed too with the added publicity from the film and common knowledge of my personal passion among peers that i get accused, more often than being a fanatic, of being a nerd. and that gets me into thinking, is there really some form of "pre-requisite" to appreciating tolkien? and if so, is the preference for other human conditon genres over epic-fantasy a form of self-identification RATHER than of recognition of great art?

if so, then this may explain some of prejudice or reservation against the epic-fantsy genre. previous arguments raised about many of the post-tolkien novels being corrupted orcs of the original elf are so true, and all these bear on the very nature of art. but of its appreciation, there is a possibility of another mode of self-identification, self-validation if you will, that operates along with the perception of the merit of art. perhaps for many people, finding some tangible truth and personal enlightenment is their probe, and epic-fantasy having so many imagined elements just defies a lot of "truth" by default.

or maybe i'm just a really bad endorsement, waaaaahhhhhh!