Tolkien A or B?

[Firefoot]

I dislike the separation of all novels into one of those two categories. While some, no doubt, fit squarely into one or the other (having read few of the novels given as examples in the blurb that Lal quoted, I can't really express an opinion), I think that the very best of stories combine the two elements; they should be intrinsically linked with each other.

Nor do I see why a novel using plot and character to drive the story must be "conventional."

This, in particular, revolted me:

B novel, however, can incorporate plot and character (though it occasionally dispenses with such trivialities altogether)

While I have read a story or two that can be described as 'without a plot,' the ones I can think of were exceedingly dull. A fascinating exercise for the writer, no doubt, but uninteresting to read. If a piece must be analyzed before it has interest and significance to the reader, it's hardly worth the read, in my opinion. It should catch your attention, be excellent in itself, and all the better if there are further depths to be analyzed... but then you have to put it back together. It should be more than the sum of its parts, I guess.

The language is like the framework and structure of writing; the story it tells should be the picture... or even, in some cases, the other way around. But you can't dispense with either part. An unframed picture is incomplete, and a frame without a picture is simply ridiculous.