Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[Iarwain]

Thanks for the understanding. I honestly don't mean to be offensive in any way.

I suppose for a while I felt a bit lost. I spent four or five years exploring Tolkien's corpus and rereading LotR, and then I stopped, and found myself longing for the days when I had read so much. I read some odd fiction, and a little nonfiction, and it was enjoyable but not enriching on the same level as Tolkien. I finished reading 1984, for instance, and didn't feel like I'd benefited as a person. I had perhaps been indoctrinated a little further against totalitarianism, but real values or ideas didn't come to me through it. Tolkien had given me a moral view of the world. This is fascinating, because he certainly doesn't moralize directly. Tolkien's books were the legends and folktales I grew up on, and they ended up serving the same function as traditional legends and folktales.

At some point I randomly picked up a copy of Plato's Republic. I read a bit, and put it down, picked it up again a few months later, and then dropped it again. This kept happening until one week I decided I was going to read through the whole thing. It was dull, filled with ridiculous views on eugenics and common marriage and poetry. It seemed something of a silly book and I didn't really see what made it so special.

Not long after I was required for school to read Mortimer J. Adler's "How to Read a Book". Adler lays out an excessively rigorous method of reading. The "proper" reader, according to Adler, makes detailed outlines, lists definitions, reconstructs arguments, and doesn't judge until he understands what's being said. I was inspired by Adler's book, and so I turned to the Republic, and started making an outline. Suddenly the book sprang to life, and I saw how incredibly unified and well-planned it was. More than that, I understood how Plato's view of justice, knowledge, and the Good applied to reality and made a lot of sense.

At the end of Adler's book, there was a list of books worth reading well (i.e. using his method), and so I looked for one that sounded really tough and interesting. Eventually I picked Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", and I spent about eight months struggling through it. It was a book like none I'd read before, fiction or non-fiction. Kant asks questions I'd never thought of: things about knowledge and perception and experience. Above all, he's difficult to read, and I would sometimes labor for up to half an hour on a page before I felt comfortable enough to move on. I've learned since that Kant is well known as one of the most difficult philosophers, but when I reached an understanding of his meaning, the insight and excitement were truly wonderful. I ended up really loving the Critique of Pure Reason. It gave me more than just a good reading experience; it gave me insights into the way people think and how we know what's true and what's not.

After I finished Kant's Critique, I felt burned out, and returned to my listlessness. I wanted to read something else rewarding on that level, but perhaps a little easier to get through. Kant and Plato had written in a way that communicated things about life. They were speaking directly to the reader, asking questions and suggesting answers. They were directly concerned with reality, in a way almost none of the books I'd read before were. Most of the fiction I'd read was either an exercise in triviality (e.g. the "Myst" novels, "Dune", Dumas' "Monte Cristo"), or had meaning only in a very indirect way. Somehow, next, I ended up reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which showed that fiction could do the same thing as the heavier philosophy I'd read, and communicate with beauty and poeticism I had not yet experienced.

Dostoevsky did more with his story than any author I'd read. Not only is his language more expressive and beautiful, but his characters have a reality that goes far beyond what Tolkien was creating. They deal with genuine human issues, they're living in the real world, they struggle with confusion because the line between good and evil isn't so clear. They have moral and spiritual difficulties that I can identify with. The structure of his book brings out all of these insights, and keeps us awake. We don't glide through Dostoevsky like we're watching a movie. We're intensely conscious of the overarching significance of the events of the novel, not just for the characters, but for our own view of the world.

There's more and obviously I could go on with a reading history for quite a while. As it is, I've simplified the above. There were lots of books read between these three and while I was reading them.

In any case, after quite a lot of expansion and realization, I returned this past summer to the Lord of the Rings, having left it alone in my bookcase for about four years. I appreciated a bit more some of the literary merits of Tolkien's writing, and how wonderfully networked various events and characters are. Most of all, I think I see now that LotR is an epic in the spirit of Homer, with Tolkien's values replacing Homer's. Instead of Homeric kleos, Tolkien uses self-sacrifice. He lauds the wisdom of Gandalf and Elrond over the sinister cleverness of Odysseus, and the helplessness of tiny Frodo over the arrogant rage of Achilles. It's a beautiful story, with wonderful moral implications, and it makes a monumental prose epic. I've just found that with the foundation Tolkien provided me, I could move on to better, richer books. I wanted to spare anyone who happens to be in the same position I once occupied that boredom of floating around with an unrealized desire for great literature, and urge them to explore the classics.


My apologies for any offense, I ought to have explained more fully from the start.



Thanks for enduring my longwindedness,
Iarwain

[Sauron the White]

The only other book written over the last 100 years that I think stands with LOTR is GRAPES OF WRATH. Maybe TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Lee ranks up there. I have tried at least twice to real ULYSSES by Joyce and failed miserably both times. I would put FINNEGANS WAKE in that same category.

Lots and lots of books on your list are more of "The Best of" from certain historical periods. Dickens wrote some great books including TALE OF TWO CITIES but lots of Dickens is just run of the mill nothing special stuff. My major in college was political science so I read many on your list including Plato, Marx, Mill and others. I cannot remember one of these men writing what I would call a great book that I want to come back to again and again for different reasons.

It is difficult - to me impossible - to judge fiction with non fiction. For example, I would rate William Schirers RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH as one of the great non fiction books of the 20th century. But I am at a loss to compare that to the creativity and artistry of LOTR of GRAPES OF WRATH. Sure they are all books, but its like comparing apples to cinder blocks. Is great reporting the same as great writing? I do not know.

[Sephiroth]

Hello, people, I'm new here as well.

Regarding Iarwain's post, I have a personal story with Tolkien that relates to it.
Since I was a kid, I've always loved books, and I read them all, all that fell in my hands. Some years ago, I think 1999, someone talked to me about Tokien and LOTR, wich I had never read before.

Well, before I got my hands into it, I met some other people, I think the same kind of people that gave Iarwain a reason to post this. They told me things like: "LOTR is the best book ever written, don't mind reading anything else". I was angry with that, because I already had read Kakfa, Borges, Orwell, Dostoievsky, GG Marquez, and that kind of phrase sounds to me, even now, as an insult. There are so many good books in the world that I think it's impossible so tell anyone else wich is better.

Of course, you can always say wich one you like best, wich one is more like you. But even then there's a chance that another book exists, one that you never read, wich you would like better.

Because of that, I kept myself far from Tolkien (what I now is a silly thing to do). I only read LOTR two years after that, because a friend of mine bought the book and I read some pages and liked it.

Anyway, now I love Tolkien, I love LOTR and I read the Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales, and I think those stories are deep and beautiful, and they mean a lot to me. But I'll never say LOTR is better than "One hundred years of Solitude" (finished in 1970) or "Fictions" from JL Borges. Just to mention two books from the last century. But I won't say that those ones are better than LOTR neither.

By the way, there is in "Fictions" a story about a fantasy world made called Tlön, wich I reminded when I first read LOTR.

PS: I beg your pardon for my lousy English.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Sephiroth:

Nice that you should mention Borges. Since the Literati seem to regard 'fantasy' fiction as some sort of printed leprosy, when confronted with an undeniable genius of the fantastic, like Borges, they resort to coinages like 'magical realism' to avoid infection.

Supercilious prats.

[Nerwen]

Interestingly, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" isn't exactly about a fantasy world, it's about a group of people inventing one, with its own languages, history etc.

Since the Literati seem to regard 'fantasy' fiction as some sort of printed leprosy, when confronted with an undeniable genius of the fantastic, like Borges, they resort to coinages like 'magical realism' to avoid infection.

It reminds me a bit of a story by Somerset Maughm, the name of which escapes me. Briefly, a critically acclaimed but unpopular novelist wants more people to read her books. Her husband advises her to write a standard detective story with a few literary touches. Lots of "intellectual" people, he explains, would just love to read thrillers but don't dare– her name on the cover will make the book respectable.

Still, the "magical realism" label does guarantee that the book at least won't be a stereotyped sword-and-sorcery yarn. There's a point to that– much of the fantasy section of any bookshop consists of third-rate Lord of the Rings rip-offs, with a few D&D cliches thrown in.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Interestingly, this Maugham secenario in a way was prophetic of The Name of the Rose- although there Eco, an established Literatus, was shoving two fingers at those of his colleagues who claimed detective stories were inherently lightweight and unintellectual.

Certainly I agree with your assessment of the Extruded Fantasy Product which clutters the bookshops. But this hostility to 'fantasy' erupted when the LR was first published, long before the clones appeared. Indeed Tolkien was protesting against something of the sort when he actually *defended* the Beowulf-poet's focus of monsters, rather than the Dark Age politics so many scholars evidently wanted to read. Mike Drout (I think) has referred to this phenomenon as "Dyson's Law:" No writing can be considered 'good' if it contains an Elf.*



*This derives from an anecdote related by Christopher Tolkien: at one Inklings as his father began to read one of his pieces, Hugo Dyson, lounging on the sofa, loudly moaned "Not another f***ing Elf!"

[Nerwen]

Interestingly, this Maugham secenario in a way was prophetic of The Name of the Rose- although there Eco, an established Literatus, was shoving two fingers at those of his colleagues who claimed detective stories were inherently lightweight and unintellectual.

Yes, I seem to recall an awful lot of people insisted they only read The Name of the Rose for the philosophy...

But this hostility to 'fantasy' erupted when the LR was first published, long before the clones appeared.

True, but I believe "magical realism" is a fairly recent term, and by the time it appeared there was quite a good reason why a lot of people were suspicious of anything labelled "fantasy".

Anyway, the "magical realism" label was one of the great triumphs of marketing: "Fantasy? How can people read that junk? Now let me get back to this wonderful novel about psychic powers and supernatural beings."

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Iarwain

The "proper" reader, according to Adler, makes detailed outlines, lists definitions, reconstructs arguments, and doesn't judge until he understands what's being said.

Oh honey, I'm so sorry this book exists...

The proper reader may indeed need to do things like this at times, but the proper writer should make it his or her goal to make these things completely unnecessary. I can only hope Adler's book didn't require note-taking to be properly understood... I would hate to need a book to teach me how to read a book that teaches me how to read! It would get so cyclic...

My bookshelves aren't quite so full as some others (give me time! and money! and more bookshelves!) but as far as it goes, I've read a substantial amount. A varied substantial amount. I've had a well-worn library card for as long as I can remember and I'm chasing after an English Lit degree that doesn't really pertain to my life goals, but hey who said bureaucracy needs logic? I have at least fifty books sitting in my dorm room right now, after having forced myself to bring only the bare essentials to school with me. Lurking on sagging bookshelves at my parents' house a few hours from here, I have a few hundred more.

I've read maybe ten pages of The Brothers Karamazov and adored each word, each sentence, each idea. Adored. And I loathed Crime and Punishment almost as much as I hated The Grapes of Wrath. I think Hamlet is nowhere near as profound as Little Red Riding Hood and I rank Neil Gaiman next to John Donne. I think T.S. Eliot's a hack, I have no idea what the difference between Wordsworth, Emerson, and that other guy is, but I think Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell should be handed to everybody upon their fifteenth birthday. I love Poe but think he got lazy, and I won't read Dickens any more on principle. I think Harry Potter should be taught not in Lit classes but in courses on sociology. I've participated in dirty limerick contests in bars and I've written pages upon pages of iambic pentameter discoursing on the nature of Shakespeare's villains. I'm disappointed in the New Testament for taking four gospels to get the story across. I've never forgiven Kafka for taking so many pages to get Gregor out of bed. I'm completely in love with haiku and folklore, I believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is nice and all, but One Hundred Years of Solitude was mind-numbing. Borges makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, while Ben-Jeloun and Achebe leave me ambivalent. I read parts of a trashy romance novel this summer called Duke of Sin; it was terrible and wonderful, much like Galadriel. I like graphic novels; Stardust is on my floor right now, and I spent a sizable portion of a bus ride reading Batman. Moby Dick bored me to tears. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer made me want to commit seppuku with my pen.

What was my point?

Ah, yes.

The reason any book is wonderful, so say I, is because people like to read it. If people like to read books with the aid of other books, have at it. I mean, hey, some people own handcuffs, you know?

The reason I like Tolkien but hate C.S. Lewis is because I enjoy reading Tolkien's stories, whereas I feel like Lewis is shoving his down my throat, maybe twisting now and again to get them deeper. Literature is pass/fail. Classics, historically speaking, pass. That doesn't mean we should have to read them. That just means other people have either liked them or have been too afraid to admit that they suck because people with more social power have said that they don't.

I read. A lot. Published work, unpublished work, the back of my shampoo bottle...

Yes, Tolkien is wonderful. Yes, classics are wonderful. But...

Read whatever helps you get through your life in such a way as that you are as good a human being as you can possibly be. K? Thx.

[tar-ancalime]

Thanks for your last post, Iarwain. You've told us something really personal and I know that isn't always easy to do.

I also think you've written a more illuminating post on another level--by giving specific examples from Plato, Kant, and Dostoevsky like you did, you made crystal-clear what it is you're getting at. But I think that what I said before holds--you can't give anyone the insight you got from Mr. Mortimer J. Adler (am I the only one hearing "J. Evans Pritchard" there?) any more than you would have let anyone tell you those things before you were ready to hear them.

And Fea, despite your rather vehement rejection of Adler's methods, isn't his main point--to live with, and in, a piece of literature until you've got a solid grasp of what the author was getting at, or at least until you're quite sure you don't care to find out--what you do yourself as a reader, albeit without the visual aids? It strikes me, at least the way Iarwain is presenting it (and I certainly haven't read it, so I'm speaking with absolutely no authority here), as an exhortation to read attentively and closely, and not to put books aside merely because they're difficult. Not bad advice--and really, no one is standing over you ready to rap your knuckles with a ruler if you don't complete your lists of definitions or whatnot.

(Oh, and nobody asked, but since we seem to be sharing literary taste, I'm racing through the complete oeuvres of Amitav Ghosh and Connie Willis at present, having finally moved to a city with a decent library. I'm not sure yet if either of them are going to occupy places in my heart like the ones for Tolkien, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and some others, but they're definitely the flavors of the month.)

[Iarwain]

Fea, I get the sense that you're a person who would really enjoy Wordsworth. Try this out:

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html

Also, you're both sort of wrong about Adler. He reminds the reader several times that his method is applicable only where necessary, and he doesn't give any sort of rubric for aesthetic critique. (When he talks about reading poetry, he says that if you don't understand it, you should read it again and read it aloud and circle words that seem strange to you. This is nothing like Prichard, as you can tell, it's sound practical advice.) Adler's ultimate point is that books with more to offer are the ones that will be best at helping you get through life and be a good person. Fea, your comments on a lot of those authors are really petty. I don't seem to recall any ideas in the first ten pages of the Brothers K, and as it's about Fyodor Pavlovich being a sponger and abandoning his son, there's not that much to love.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Iarwain

Fea, your comments on a lot of those authors are really petty.

Depth is just really big shallowness.

I don't seem to recall any ideas in the first ten pages of the Brothers K, and as it's about Fyodor Pavlovich being a sponger and abandoning his son, there's not that much to love.

I suppose the key thing, then, is to mention that I didn't read the first ten pages. I read whatever was anthologized in a tattered old book I found for a quarter in a used bookshop. Wish I could tell you which ten or so pages it happened to be... Ah, actually, I can.

[Nerwen]

Hi, everybody! Newbie here.

Now, regarding things literary: Iarwain, I think it's great that you're getting into the classics of your own accord. You did sound quite patronizing in your initial post; I guess by now you've realized that the fact that something's a revelation to you doesn't mean it is to everyone else.

To be honest, this Adler fellow's advice sounds absolutely deadly to me! I believe I speak for many people when I say that the thought of having to analyze everything in such a laborious fashion would completely kill my pleasure in reading. I appreciate it worked for you, but you need to understand that for people who are USED to reading complex texts it's quite unnecessary. Eventually, you will not need to use this method. (I never did, but then I grew up reading the classics.)

Also, you maybe need to consider other theories of the purpose of literature (or art in general), rather than taking Adler as the be-all and end-all. Many works which are considered classics do NOT teach moral or philosophical lessons, at least not in an obvious way. If you expect everything to do so, you're going to be disappointed.

[Ghazi]

Originally Posted by Iarwain

Not long after I was required for school to read Mortimer J. Adler's "How to Read a Book". A

I purchased this book a month or two ago at the repeated suggestion of a friend of mine who credits the reading of this book with his sudden, and (frankly) unexpected, success in graduate school. I have yet to read it , but I'm ready to move on to something else and more schooling will likely be required, so maybe I should take a look.