The LotR Trilogy

[Tale]

What the fuck? it's pretty well known that Tolkien wrote in the epic rather than the modern style with the possible exceptions of The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters. I'm not sure why what I said is even slightly controversial.

Neither am I. This thread is hunter souffle.

[Ironwood]

God, what happened in here ??

 

[Murgos]

God, what happened in here ??

 

It's a LoTR thread on the internet, what did you expect?  It's, like, a nerd synergy.

[Margalis]

In the epic style is what Iain actually said. He's talking about writing in the style of Norse and Old English Epics-with-a-capital-E.

He specifically mentioned Homer and Homer wrote in the Homeric style, which is characterized by economy, hexameter (IIRC) and a specific sort of simile I forget the name of. ("Ajax pounced on the men like the wolf at the foal...")

Also the Illiad isn't particularly epic in that it has a fairly narrow scope and is rather short.

[UnSub]

Gilagamesh is a lousy myth. Thank god they got better from there.

[Sheepherder]

This is probably stupider than the Hemingway comment.

Almost as dumb as commenting on stylistic differences when you can't manage an eight word sentence without mangling it.

[lamaros]

Too much  , I think I'm full.

In the epic style is what Iain actually said. He's talking about writing in the style of Norse and Old English Epics-with-a-capital-E.

He specifically mentioned Homer and Homer wrote in the Homeric style, which is characterized by economy, hexameter (IIRC) and a specific sort of simile I forget the name of. ("Ajax pounced on the men like the wolf at the foal...")

Also the Illiad isn't particularly epic in that it has a fairly narrow scope and is rather short.

Yah this is what i was WTFing at. Tolkien is nothing like Homer. But it's not a very useful tangent this, so I'll let it go.

[Triforcer]

Gilagamesh is a lousy myth. Thank god they got better from there.

Yeah, I was mad about how it left out Tom Bombadil. 

[Cyrrex]

That's odd, the last book I read ALSO failed to include Tom Bombadil.

This thread has turned into complete wank, by the way.  I think Sky once said that "some of you people are so smart that you've looped right back around to stupid".  I think that applies here.

[Ironwood]

Wurd.

[DraconianOne]

In the epic style is what Iain actually said. He's talking about writing in the style of Norse and Old English Epics-with-a-capital-E.

He specifically mentioned Homer and Homer wrote in the Homeric style, which is characterized by economy, hexameter (IIRC) and a specific sort of simile I forget the name of. ("Ajax pounced on the men like the wolf at the foal...")

Also the Illiad isn't particularly epic in that it has a fairly narrow scope and is rather short.

In order to drag this thread down to the depths like the sea-bound Charybdis, daughter of Poseidon, might drag the swft vessels of merchants and pirates into her gaping maw, I might point out that Homer probably didn't write anything at all. The Illiad and Odyssey are considered largely to be examples of the oral tradition of Greek storytelling (no sniggering at the back) which is part of the reason why it's economic in form and why there is much usage of epithets and simile (which may actually be called Homeric Simile). It is hexameter though - dactylic hexameter to be exact or "heroic" hexameter as it was often called because of the many epic tales that used it (Illiad, Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses etc.)

Ironwood got to write about Beowulf and Tolkien - I spent a couple of years translating parts of the Odyssey and the plays of Aristophanes. On the plus side, Aristophanes features more people wanking than I remember there being in Tolkien.

[Teleku]

Is this where I get to admit the Silmarillion was probably my favorite Tolkien book?  Or will that get me stoned?

[Samwise]

It wasn't my favorite, but I didn't regret reading it or anything.  And rereading LotR afterwards gave me lots of fun moments where I was able to make connections I hadn't before.

[Cyrrex]

Is this where I get to admit the Silmarillion was probably my favorite Tolkien book?  Or will that get me stoned?

Don't be a fool.  Tolkien was, as is herein proven, a terrible writer.  Terrible!  That he was able to string thousands of seemingly random words together to accidentally form one of the great epics of our age is pure luck and a series of silly coincidences.  Several of the posters in this very thread will verify my claim, so no need to argue.

[UnSub]

He wasn't a terrible writer, but he needed a good editor to tone down the descriptive text and keep him focused.

To cite one of his bastard offspring as an example, I think Raymond E. Fiest's "Magician" was a much better book because an editor went through and reduced the amount of descriptive text. That his success then meant he could release the 'uncut' version plus write further, sloppier, much more description intensive titles wasn't a plus imo.

[lamaros]

He wasn't a terrible writer, but he needed a good editor to tone down the descriptive text and keep him focused.

To cite one of his bastard offspring as an example, I think Raymond E. Fiest's "Magician" was a much better book because an editor went through and reduced the amount of descriptive text. That his success then meant he could release the 'uncut' version plus write further, sloppier, much more description intensive titles wasn't a plus imo.

Fiest wrote descriptively intensive titles? Which ones would they be? I haven't read his books in a bit, but my memory is the books getting worse because he got sloppier and didn't seem to give a shit any more, not because he got indulgent.

Also I don't know why the Tolkien fans have such a hard time admitting his prose in LotR isn't great. It doesn't mean you have to stop liking the book. I enjoy reading quite a few books by people you could say have shitty writing skills, doesn't mean I have to come out saying they're like Hemingway or Homer... (residual lols!)

[Teleku]

Because I liked his prose?  I'm fine with admitting I like reading some books by shitty writers (Harry Turtledove is a guilty guilty bad pleasure), but I always enjoyed Tolkien's writing.  I've actually never seriously heard anybody criticize it until this thread.  But then again, I enjoy heavily descriptive writing.

[Samwise]

I've actually never seriously heard anybody criticize it until this thread.

It always seems to come up in discussions about the movies.  Which means that whenever I hear someone bashing Tolkien's writing style I always quietly suspect that it's because they can't admit they'd just rather watch a movie with lots of things fighting other things than read a book with lots of words in it.

 

[Sheepherder]

Also I don't know why the Tolkien fans have such a hard time admitting his prose in LotR isn't great. It doesn't mean you have to stop liking the book. I enjoy reading quite a few books by people you could say have shitty writing skills, doesn't mean I have to come out saying they're like Hemingway or Homer... (residual lols!)

Because compared to other examples of the genre Tolkien's work is actually pretty sparse, and some of his methods appear fairly similar when you aren't doing something shortbus like trying to compare an action scene to a dialogue?

Really, you read way too far into that, this is a forum, not an epic.

[UnSub]

Fiest wrote descriptively intensive titles? Which ones would they be? I haven't read his books in a bit, but my memory is the books getting worse because he got sloppier and didn't seem to give a shit any more, not because he got indulgent.

I thought his Daughter of the Empire had long sections of unnecessary description, as did some of his Riftwar Saga. However, he also did get lazier / sloppier in pulling stories together.

It's been a few years however. I distinctly remember enjoying the edited Magician over the uncut Magician.

[K9]

Is this thread basically what it is like to do a degree in literature? Because I like to believe so 

[Murgos]

Is this thread basically what it is like to do a degree in literature? Because I like to believe so 

No, I think that to get a degree in Lit you have to agree with what your professors tell you and parrot it back to them.

I think this thread is closer to what it must be like once you have the degree and are trying to get hired in to a Lit dept at a Uni.

[Ironwood]

Is this thread basically what it is like to do a degree in literature? Because I like to believe so 

No.  If it had been like this, I'd have been sent down for putting some bodies in the ground.

[Soln]

I  Tolkien's use of the ;   

[lamaros]

Is this thread basically what it is like to do a degree in literature? Because I like to believe so 

It is exactly like this, except you have to come up with a funky title for your thesis. Something like "From the Ebro to Mount Doom: How J R R Tolkien ennobles the legacy of Hemingway".

Mount DOOM!

[Sheepherder]

It is exactly like this, except you have to come up with a funky title for your thesis. Something like "From the Ebro to Mount Doom: How J R R Tolkien ennobles the legacy of Hemingway".

Mount DOOM!

Robert Jordan's sex scene with the bald chick in For Whom the Bell Tolls that consisted of nothing but written groans wasn't pure fucking author wankery at all.

[Margalis]

I will say that Tolkien was a far better writer than 95% of the people who put out fantasy. Ok, 99.5%.

But again, ability to craft great prose is largely academic, especially in narrative-heavy genres. Nobody gets into reading because they're way into prose stylings.

[VainEldritch]

Is this where I get to admit the Silmarillion was probably my favorite Tolkien book?  Or will that get me stoned?

It will not get you stoned by me...

The Silmarillion is an odd book, and I love it. It somehow manages to separate itself completely form all the other literature that I've read over the years. I can separate them in my mind: The Silmarillion and Everything Else. The division does not seem subjective or arbitrary. It just seems correct.

[jpark]

Rainy weekend.

So I introduced my GF to the series in which we watched the extended versions of all 3 films in 2 days.

Fantastic time - she loved it.

[Ratman_tf]

Peter Jackson's films are a really neat adaptaion of the animated movie by Bakshi. Once you realize that, and they they're really not adaptations of the books, everything works out.

[Teleku]

wat

[Yegolev]

I'd not use the word "everything".

[murdoc]

I like these movies. Especially the first one that doesn't have that Bombadil guy in it.

[IainC]

I enjoyed the walking scenes.

[Ratman_tf]

I'd not use the word "everything".

EVERYTHING