Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[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 Nerwen

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."

I took an interesting course on magic[al] realism in short fiction (ironic that it included, on top of the short fiction, at least six full length novels...) and first day wrote down the difference between definitions of magical realism and fantasy.

Fantasy has the elements of the fantastic with no hesitation about admitting that these things are strange or unnatural.

Magical realism is characterized by the 'realism' part of it: though there are elements of the fantastic, they are firmly located inside the realms of normalcy. Magical realism disregards religious scriptures or stories where the 'magical' occurrence has a religious or spiritual blame; otherwise every story with Catholic iconography would get shunted into the category. Other genres have a reason things happen; in magic[al] realism, the 'magic[al]' aspect of it all is something you might see when you walk down the street.

Hazy terms even when defined, so examples:

Stories characterized by complete nonchalance about what I might call supernatural occurrences might be Maria Luisa Bombal's New Islands (though I argued that Yolanda served as a metaphor for something else, my professor insisted that she simply was that something else, and that was perfectly fine in the story; please note I will strive not to give away any plot points of anything I reference); Julio Cortazar's Axolotl (as if that could possibly be a normal part of every day life, yet there is no question that it's a total logical happening); Carlos Fuentes's Aura (a brilliant use of second person narrative; until I read it, I didn't know there was an author out there who could pull it off; Aura and/or Consuelo are a natural, if dabbling with the supernatural, part of life which Montero simply accepts). Breaking into bigger works, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is gently strewn with exaggerated bits: nobody lives that long, for example, and when is a book more than a book? Fables and fairy tales usually fit into magical realism: Hey Little Red, is it normal for a wolf to dress up as grandma and talk? Well... I mean... I believed he was really her...

Terry Pratchett creates worlds outside of ours to house his stories: he's making no attempts at convincing his readers that "This could really happen." Anne McCaffrey has her Pern. Even J.K. Rowling is solidly fantasy because even though the books take place on 20th Century Earth, she made a very solid distinction between the magic world and the non-magic world, with laws and law-keepers in place to keep it that way; when her Muggles learn about magic, they deny like it's their job.

In the hazy middle ground are C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. I can't fully comment on The Chronicles of Narnia because I can't remember if I ever finished them. But I can comment on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: I want to call it fantasy because there is a door that separates the two worlds, though events from both worlds do shape events in the others; I'll leave this up to others.

The Lord of the Rings. Part of me is begging to say fantasy. C'mon, Middle Earth? Trolls, Elves, Dwarves... Hobbits? Magic Rings and dragons.

Except for the key argument that Middle Earth is Earth as it was back in the day; this argument is supported by the statement in, I believe, the Intro of The Fellowship in the simple comment that Hobbits slip away unnoticed these days in crowds because they have a natural ability to be unseen (magical realism) and humans are inept. Though you get characters like Eomer crying out on the fields of Rohan that "Wow, we live in a crazy world, where legends old folks told me show up with wings on their feet," you also get him accepting that orcs are a natural part of Rohirric life. The belief and disbelief in specifics of what another culture would call the supernatural follows logical human trends: you tend to have more faith in what's been ingrained in you since birth. Tolkien's use of psychological norms and his references to our Earth argue Magical Realism. Consciousness of religion in the revision argues (don't shoot me) not-allegory-but-applicability: a conscious motive on the part of Tolkien to give a reason.

I rather suppose that Tolkien's Middle Earth stories were magic[al] realism the first time through, and consciously not in the revision.

And my argument for why magic[al] realism is taken more seriously in literary circles than strict fantasy (a devil's advocate argument to be sure) is that 'it's much harder' to write a story in which you ask readers to suspend their disbelief when they can look around them and say "Um... I don't think so." Fantasy worlds can be viewed as a crutch: "How do you know that's impossible? You don't live here. Only I, the brilliant author, know the laws of physics and logic in this world." When you write something that can be disregarded as made up s**t and you set it in a world where people can check their facts, your writing requires certain other techniques or concentrations to keep your reader firmly under your control. Magic[al] realism, by existence, requires a more layered approach to story telling. Since literatis beg for layers [like parfaits; or onions], they can dig their sharp dirty little claws into magic[al] realism, confident in that one of their first little club rules is being followed.

As always, I'd like to insert a final point that only elitist snobs actually care about labels and pseudo-intellectual hype (and literary theory) when they go in search of good books. My next argument? Graphic novels have a place in the canon. Until next time, folks...