The wrong kind of details: the components of wonder (aka lmp's rant)

[littlemanpoet]

Kuruharan:

Cross examined? What have you been up to?!

Um, logging onto a new website. No kidding. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

...about the cultural difference between the "mountain" and the "sea-coast." Would it make any difference in the types of details that an author put into a story depending on which "stream" he/she was drawing from? Meaning, in the original mythos certain things would be more important to the authors than they would be to people reading a story derived from this myth a few thousand years later. Is that where "the writer must draw from her own mind...and bring her own unconscious/subconscious to bear upon the fresh spring water" to make the story more accessible to the audience?

In a word, yes. My tastes in fantasy are admittedly eclectic, so I love the stuff that's drawn straight from the high mountain streams, and I also love some of the stuff drawn from the briny wide river flowing into the harbor. But in terms of modern fantasy stories, every old myth has to be mediated for the reader in order for (1) the original meaning to come across the cultural and chronological divide, and (2) for the author/writer's gloss on that meaning to do so as well.

Just to explicate the analogy a little further, Tolkien drew from a specific set of streams while, say, Robert E. Howard drew from some of the same streams, but some different as well. Beside that, they brought differing world views to their writing. Tolkien was concerned with (among other things) nobility of character while Howard was concerned with the innate incorruption of the uncivilized as compared to inevitably corrupt civilization.

But here's a new question based on the old:
If the Hobbits are Tolkien's mediation for Middle Earth, what mediates for other authors, such as Howard, Kay, LeGuin, etc.?

By the way, I agree with your thoughts on Frodo "seeing" the Enemy at the Mirror and on Amon Hen and on the way to Mordor.

On the choice between Lobelia and telemarketers, Lobelia hands down. Hear hear! Especially the way she has a final curtsy at the end of the book. Nice touch, no?