Psychological depth in Tolkien's characters

[Lush]

Way to make me break out in more hives, Phantom. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I don't want to get too far into the semantics of your previous statement, but unless I am completely misunderstanding your usage of "detailed exploration" and all that it implies, you are, in fact, insulting a huge chunk of what is considered to be great writing.

Then again, I don't want to be presumptuous.

Perhaps what you're insulting is the sort of writing that goes something like this:

"Jim felt that the existence of veggie burgers was intrinsically wrong in that it insulted the entire farm industry as he understood it. Though he did not realize it at the time, this emotion of mistrust toward veggie burgers stemmed from his suppressed feelings of lust for his 5th grade math teacher, who just happened to be a farmer's daughter. This emotion haunted him throughout his life and took on many forms of expression in his daily interactions with customers in the run-down diner in which he had been a server for over 5 years, his dreams of becoming champion in the tractor-race olympics being crushed after the recession hit the farming industry hard..."

Basically, I assume that you are expressing your disdain for writers that lay their cards out on the table and expect the big checks to roll in (as they often do, as one glance at the bestseller lists undoubtedly tells us).

But not all of detailed exploration works this way.

There, I hope I've made myself sufficiently clear. Now off to the druggist for some drugs for my hives.

[ 12:35 AM December 01, 2003: Message edited by: Lush ]