(Plot+Characters)*Voice^2=Literature? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Fordim Hedgethistle · 12-02-2004, 08:32 AM

There are all kinds of ways in which LotR is a "bad" novel -- in fact, there are ways in which it is not a novel at all, but a long story (which is how I try to refer to it at all times).

The beginning is overly long, with whole episodes of action and character entirely dissociated from the plot (Tom Bombadil et al.); there are huge chunks of expository prose in which the writer is "telling" not "showing"; there's the awkward shifts in tone and voice that Rimbaud has lemonly pointed out, the climax is drawn out with a long and uneven denoument. . .and on and on.

For many people these variations from the established 'norm' of novelistic technique prove too great a challenge. I'm sure we've all run across people who have said that they started FotR but "could not get into it" -- to these people I now say "skip the chapters bewteen Crickhollow and Bree, and give the story a chance to grab you at Weathertop", and this usually works.

And yet it all, obviously, holds together and I think that Lush hitnts at why: the organisational logic of the work is not narrative but thematic. The action is not organised around the linear plodding of events, but around the ideas that it develops and explores in and through its characters.

12-02-2004, 08:32 AM	#18
Fordim Hedgethistle Gibbering Gibbet Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Beyond cloud nine Posts: 1,844	There are all kinds of ways in which LotR is a "bad" novel -- in fact, there are ways in which it is not a novel at all, but a long story (which is how I try to refer to it at all times). The beginning is overly long, with whole episodes of action and character entirely dissociated from the plot (Tom Bombadil et al.); there are huge chunks of expository prose in which the writer is "telling" not "showing"; there's the awkward shifts in tone and voice that Rimbaud has lemonly pointed out, the climax is drawn out with a long and uneven denoument. . .and on and on. For many people these variations from the established 'norm' of novelistic technique prove too great a challenge. I'm sure we've all run across people who have said that they started FotR but "could not get into it" -- to these people I now say "skip the chapters bewteen Crickhollow and Bree, and give the story a chance to grab you at Weathertop", and this usually works. And yet it all, obviously, holds together and I think that Lush hitnts at why: the organisational logic of the work is not narrative but thematic. The action is not organised around the linear plodding of events, but around the ideas that it develops and explores in and through its characters. __________________ Scribbling scrabbling.