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DarthMI
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Post Bashing LOTR for Black and White Morality and Simplistic Good VS Evil Plot
on: April 27, 2014 11:14
One of the primary criticism against Tolkien today and why his works particularly Lord of the Rings did not age well is because the story is white and black morality and a generic good vs evil plot in fantasy.

Having read The Hobbit and currently reading The Silmarillon, I will definitely say Tolkien as a whole is not white and black (as seen by the Dwarves intending to fight human and elves over Gold before Goblins came in Hobbit). But thats a whole other topic and I am going to focus specifically on LOTR.


The modern popular stigma by fantasy fans (who are not LOTR fans or only went on one read in their lifetime) is that Tolkien mad eit seem like the fellowship and humans as a whole are all the good guys and Sauron's forces are all evil and that the plot is primarily good fighting evil (with no shades of grey).


While I agree LOTR is definitely less shades of grey compared to modern fantasy such as say A Song of Ice and Fire, The Elder Scrolls, and Warcraft, the story is filled with lot more of treachery than many people like to think. The Appendix at RoTK alone describes noble Elves being corrupted and throughout the main story there are side characters who technically aren't even evil but had their minds twisted by corruption and commit acts of betrayal such as Denethor (with the intent of good of failing to realize how wrong their acts are) and even major ones most famously Boromir. Gollum's story in the book (widely overlooked by the movies) is the struggle within him to either aid Frodo to destroy the ring or betray him and take it for himself.: In fact at key intervals in the plot, its Gollums good side that saves Frodo and Sam from utter demise. He could have merely left them to die and take the ring midway the story but he chose to aid them.


The Appendix frequently describes humans,elves, dwarves, and so on backstabbing each other back and forte.


Another example int he main story are some of the humans who sided with Sauron. THe movie fails to state the reasons why they chose to fight against Gondo and Rohan. For centuries prior, Gondorians and Rohirrim have been conquering a lot of lands. The humans portrayed as fighting against the good guys in the movies were victims of these conquests and were gradually being pushed out. So not only did they see it as a way of getting revenge but also to get some of the land that belongs to their ancestors initially back.


Another example is how some subbreeds/tribes of Orcs hate Sauron and the forces of Mordor because they were so abusive to their specific tribe/breed. These Orcs would still technically be evil but not on the same scale of savagery and warlust that Sauron's Orcs were and they themselves are far too cowardly to even dare take on the humans.


Even the Hobbits, believed to be the most honest and purest race in Middle Earth, have shown treacherous intent (though more on a personal scale and not evil enough to commit murder). Just before Frodo leaves the Shire he takes precautions to make sure his greedy relatives (who Bilbo was weary of in the Hobbit and he warns Frodo early on before the main quest begins to watch out for them) doesn't take away his possession and home Bagend before he leaves on a journey.

Before his farwell party, there was gossip among the Hobbits about Bilbo. Negative stuff such as how he's cooky and such. But everyone who attended his party did not dare tell him their true feelings and even put a smiling friendly facade (with some of them hoping Bilbo will leave something for them in his will).

The Hobbit example is minor but it should prove my point.


Its been over a year since I read LOTR so I'll stop here but I vaguely recall a lot more shades of grey morality in LOTR that shows its not simplistic good VS evil. After I finish The Silmarillon I will go on a reread and post more examples I can find.

What do you think? I'm not lying this stigma is so ingrained in pop media and among Fantasy enthusiasts I seen diehard fantasy nuts who read everything from A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter refusing to check out anything Tolkien period (not even bothering to read a few chapters of LOTR) because they are expecting a boring run-of-the-mill good vs evil story with rigid black and white morality!
Gandolorin
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on: April 27, 2014 01:09
Cure:
Read Tom Shippey's books "The Road to Middle Earth" (my copy 1992) and "Author of the Century (my copy 2001);
Patrick Curry's book "Defending Middle-Earth" (my copy 1998 );
Katharyn F: Crabbe's book "J.R.R. Tolkien" (my copy 1981);
Joseph Pearce's book "Tolkien - Man and Myth" (my copy 1998 );
Humphrey Carpenter's books "J.R.R Tolkien - a biography" (my copy 1992) and "The Inklings" (my copy 1997);
Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien's book "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (my copy 1990);
Christopher Tolkien's book as editor "The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays" (my copy 1997);

And then go slam-dunk his critics, at any rate those of the 1950s and 1960s whose pompous opinions about Tolkien were cut to shreds by their (the pompous critics') own earlier (perhaps equally pompous) opinions that they stated years or decades before. Talk about shooting one's self in the foot, two of those idiots are very likely to be dueling it out for most pompous idiocy of all times.

[Edited on 04/27/2014 by Gandolorin]
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cirdaneth
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on: April 28, 2014 02:15
Gosh, Darth! You are upset!... and you are right of course, though posting here is rather preaching to the converted. Tolkien's nay-sayers don't tend to join CoE and we leave them to their mutterings out there in their "real" world.

Gandolorin's reading list is spot on, especially Tom Shippey. I've read LotR over and over, at least annually, for almost 6 decades (Ye Gods!) and I learn something new every time, about Tolkien, about humanity, and about myself.

Good reading, have fun, and stick around.
tarcolan
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on: April 28, 2014 10:23
You might also like the unused audio commentary for the films supposedly by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky at McSweeney's. Very amusing and puts a whole new slant on the tale.

I can see both sides of the argument. LOTR is quite clearly a battle of good against evil and despite the exceptions you have mentioned the characters are either on one side or the other. There are various ways of excusing this; it is a mythology and not supposed to be realistic, it was written by the victors and so naturally exaggerates the attributes of the two sides, it was written for children and so is simplistic. The last of these fails if we consider 'The Hobbit'.

It should perhaps be read in conjunction with the earlier histories. As you have said the people of the South may have historical reasons for wishing to attack descendants of the Numenoreans, who came to their lands at first to trade but then to dominate, oppress and exploit. It would not be difficult to find parallels in the real world, along with the consequences. You are also correct that the characters in 'The Hobbit' are not so black and white, and in that respect it is a more realistic story. So I think the question is why, when Tolkien was obviously capable of creating realistic characters and stories, was LOTR so different?
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Gandolorin
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on: April 28, 2014 02:28
tarcolan said:
It should perhaps be read in conjunction with the earlier histories. As you have said the people of the South may have historical reasons for wishing to attack descendants of the Numenoreans, who came to their lands at first to trade but then to dominate, oppress and exploit.

Possible, but the Númenóreans were at first and for a long time Elf-friends, so their travels would not have taken them far south (reachable by ship), nor would they have gone far east from their harbors. Of course, this is speculation, but not without reason.
Later, when we get into the period on the Black Númenóreans, who would have been natural allies to the Sauron-worshiping Southrons and Easterlings, they may have allied themselves to these - or Sauron may have had a so determined hatred for the Númenóreans, no matter what their inclination, that he allowed enmity even between two of his nominal supporters. Lose a number of Southrons and Easterlings (his true subjects) as long as they kill a sufficient number of Númenóreans (black at first), and build up a real hatred for any Númenóreans? Is this incompatible with his basic hatred of humans?
No.

[Edited on 04/28/2014 by Gandolorin]

[Edited on 04/28/2014 by Gandolorin]
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cirdaneth
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on: April 29, 2014 08:02
Side??? I am on noooobody's side. Because nooooobody is on my side. Noooobody cares for the trees any more ... (Sorry ... 'scuse me)
tarcolan
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on: April 29, 2014 10:15
Nurse! She's out of bed again.
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parluggla
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on: April 29, 2014 10:39
There is the purity and pristineness of Galadriel and her Lothlorien, of Valinor, of Arwen . . . versus things, beings, and places not beholding to honor, corrupted. So yes, that's pretty black and white.
Gandolorin
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on: April 29, 2014 02:24
parluggla said:There is the purity and pristineness of Galadriel and her Lothlorien, of Valinor, of Arwen . . . versus things, beings, and places not beholding to honor, corrupted. So yes, that's pretty black and white.

But them Boromir, Denethor, Gollum almost repenting and becoming Sméagol again (Sam's fault!), Frodo unable to complete the (anti-) quest without Gollum's intervention, Frodo too injured by the Morgul blade, Shelob's sting and the loss of the Ring to ever be healed in Middle-Earth, Gríma Wormtongue, Théoden corrupted for a time being by the former, Lotho Sackville-Baggins, the Hobbit Shirrifs who consent to doing practically Gestapo work (nominally for Lotho but ultimately for Sharkey = Saruman) until roused by the four Hobbits returning from the (anti-) quest.
And more, certainly.
And if you add the huge legendarium around it, the black-and-white reproach just goes down in flames like the Hindenburg Zeppelin at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey.
Tom Shippey and others have sent the pompous, arrogant (and therefore ignorant by definition) critics' reviews of the 1950s and 1960s (and later) through the shredder so thoroughly that to read a version of them again makes me shake my head in disbelief.
But then not everyone has had the occasion to read these books. And not everyone might agree with their arguments. Read them, if you have not. If you have, I am very interested in your comments.
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parluggla
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on: May 04, 2014 04:19
@Gandolorin: The critics of Tolkien specifically didn't like the purity and pristineness of Lothlorien. They didn't like the nobility of Aragorn, Boromir, and Faramir. As you point out, Tolkien worked with lots of different shades of grey; he developed conflicted, less than perfect characters galore. But again, the critics then and now want all talk of purity, pristineness, nobility, honor, etc. banished -- or at least severely circumscribed.
Gandolorin
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on: May 05, 2014 02:16
@parluggla
Can't find the thread where (I believe) I've posted it before, so forgetful Gando just has to type the quote from the book again. <groan>

Tom Shippey, "The Author of the Century", HarperCollinsPublishers paperback 2001 (hardcover 2000), page 306:

In 1961, critic Philip Toynbee defined "the Good Writer" in an article for the Observer for 23 April:

"tGW" is a private and lonely creature who takes no heed of his public. He can write about anything and make it relevant, even 'incestuous dukes in Tierra del Fuego'. He 'creates an artifact which satisfies him' and 'can do other'. When his work appears it will be 'shocking and amazing ... unexpected by the public mind. It is for the public to adjust.'

Uh-huh.

No incestuous dukes in LotR, and with an acerbic cynicism I would suppose that Toynbee expectantly drools for such passages in a book.

And the public (but not the suave critic) will be shocked and amazed and have to adjust.

Uh-huh.

The description of "tGW" fits JRRT perhaps better than any writer before or after him.
The public was delighted and had no trouble adjusting whatsoever.
The critics were shocked (and later more and more amazed), and utterly unable to adjust. They want their incestuous dukes in Tierra del Fuego (or whatever the critic's specific preference of antiheroes and their preferences was).

And among other reasons for their hostility I suspect (from reading Shippey and others) that they were overcompensating a subconscious inferiority complex: they were up against the man who at the time probably was the leading expert on English language. The critics as a whole were at the kindergarten to grammar-school level compared to JRRT - not something that overblown egos take kindly.

A last pot-shot: the critics were modernists who consider themselves just SO Avant-garde, and never got over getting pushed aside by post-modernism (though I use this term with trepidation, it originated in architecture. Its application to other spheres is highly dubious). I think of cell-phones here. Motorola was the unchallenged champion for analog cell-phones. They just utterly failed to comprehend the change to digital cell-phones and almost went down the drain. It's called a paradigm shift.

OK, enough babbling!
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parluggla
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on: May 05, 2014 06:41
I do think Tolkien was too much of a retro-style writer for "modernist" tastes. That's what most of the fuss was about, IMHO. As Hercynian pointed out to me, LotR appeared in an era when modern realism was riding high. The only people pushing MacDonald, Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott etc. were the old English tearcher marms at your typical high school. No, I don't think the negative critics had any sort of inferiority complex about Tolkien. Far more likely was they had a whopping superiority complex and looked down their noses at Tolkien.

[Edited on 05/06/2014 by parluggla]
cirdaneth
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on: May 06, 2014 12:32
To know what was retro in 1955 UK, you'd have to have been here and old enough to read Tolkien, the teacher marms having taught you to read.
Gandolorin
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on: May 06, 2014 02:19
parluggla said:I do think Tolkien was too much of a retro-style writer for "modernist" tastes. ... No, I don't think the negative critics had any sort of inferiority complex about Tolkien. Far more likely was they had a whopping superiority complex and looked down their noses at Tolkien.
[Edited on 05/06/2014 by parluggla]

I would question how widespread "modernism" was outside a (basically snobbish and elitist) coterie of critics and a small readership. Don't forget, up to our very day having massive sales success is looked upon in some quarters with disdain. One wants to keep that feeling of belonging to a (self-appointed) elite, and that means that the knuckle-dragging masses just simply cannot appreciate the rarefied (often read: confused, illogical, self-contradictory, obscure for the sake of obscurity, or even worse obscure to camouflage the pitiful vapidness in content) products of the in-crowd ("literati" was a vapid term used at one time).

"Literati" sidetracks me to Tom Shippey quoting Joseph Pearce's "Tolkien - Man and Myth" (1998 ), in his, Shippey's, "The Author of the Century (2000)," page xxi of the foreword:
"was echoed up and down the country wherever one or two literati gathered together". {Susan Jeffreys} meant, surely "two or three literati", unless literati talk only to themselves (a thought that does occur) ...

What was echoed was horrified dismay at LotR having just placed first in a poll for the five books belonging on a list of books of the century by the British bookshop chain Waterstone's (and a BBC program) in 1996. Because of the uproar, many more similar polls were conducted, every result probably feeling like a two-by-four smashed into their teeth by the "literati". Finally, a poll came out where the Bible pushed LotR to number two - but the former is certainly not a book dating from the 20th century.

As to the critics having a superiority complex, that is what I would call as in the above post an overblown ego. I also stated (no question, this is conjecture) that I suspect a subconscious inferiority complex. Some at least noticed Tolkien's mastery of language, only to complain that he wasted it on this subject matter - and also to tell a story! That was something that was just not done (for some "literati" in a "modernist" book. Others may not have noticed it explicitly or openly, but may have not been able to really ignore it as they would have wished. The unreasoning, and uncalled-for, viciousness in some reviews, for me, clearly bear the mark of someone being confronted with a book the type of which they had been railing against for a long time, to find their "wisdom" shunted aside, totally ignored (again, overblown egos don't like this).

And had they just stuck to saying "I do not like the book", fine. But no, the poor fools continued to make perditions of the imminent decline in popularity and shortly thereafter demise of it. One pompous American behind also commented that the book's popularity was a uniquely British quirk.

Then came 1966, the Ace Books pirate paperback in the US, and soon the official paperback. The "literati" with the above predictions must have felt like a mosquito squashed into the mud by an elephant - but here I am probably massively underestimating their capacity for self-delusion.

[Edited on 05/06/2014 by Gandolorin]
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parluggla
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on: May 06, 2014 05:51
Gosh, Gandolorin, you sound just like my neighbor Hercynian. He's a crusader against all things modern realism too. I understand modern realism's original purpose to be criticism of society's ills, exposure of hypocrisy, etc. But it's been a long time since realism has restricted itself to that lofty goal. And the fact that LotR has been such a vote-getter only underlines something Hercynian also said to me, that is, the masses -- not all of whom are asses -- have left hard-core realism behind.

I agree that the modern realism field is not homogenous. At least here in the USA, there's a whole body of college-educated people who might dabble with modern realism a bit, but typically want a much more watered-down version -- or not at all. They listen to Aaron Copeland, not Henze or Ligeti. They watch Cary Fukunaga's "Jane Eyre," but not Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights." They like Ansel Adams, not Robert Mapplethorpe. They like Tommy Hilfiger, but not Alexander McQueen. Robert Frost, not Allen Ginsberg. James Taylor, not Lou Reed. But most of them don't like Tolkien, because, amazingly, they still see themselves as modern realists.

I see hard-core Tolkien fans as a strange group that defies definitions and labels. Hercynian likes to talk about a rejuvination of a sort of European nature mysticism, but he says he got no buy-in with that theory on forums like this. No, Tolkien grabs us in some way that doesn't lend itself to easy social-psychological analysis.
cirdaneth
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on: May 07, 2014 12:47
Good to see Books Forum dealing with something meaty, though the sneering at 'teacher marms' is rather unkind and unjustified (do NOT discuss!).And where IS Hercynian and why is he not speaking for himself? That would be good. Anyway ... carry on chaps.
parluggla
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on: May 07, 2014 07:42
Oh cirdaneth, please forgive facetious use of "marm". I love all my marms. They were all very dear. Without them I'd know nothing of the 19th century poets and authors.

As far as Hercynian is concerned, he told me he feels a bit embarrassed at being such an insistent nuisance so often.

[Edited on 05/07/2014 by parluggla]
Gandolorin
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on: May 07, 2014 02:02
parluggla said:Gosh, Gandolorin, you sound just like my neighbor Hercynian. He's a crusader against all things modern realism too. ...

Whoa, I could not claim to crusade against "modern realism" because someone needs to give me a definition of what that is supposed to be, I have no inkling.
I do have a very low opinion of critics hostile to LotR whose arguments reveal an inability to comprehend anything outside their narrow preferences.
Just a point, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) was also greeted with snide comments by a part of the (then) "literati", but by now has become "canon". It even beat LotR for first place in the Waterstone's poll - in Wales. But other than that special case in Wales, the books following LotR in that and other polls are those massively pushed by both high school teachers and college (university) reading lists, so there LotR is at a distinct disadvantage.
Another way to put it: the literary establishment is trying to push the readers towards other books, and implicitly away from LotR by simply ignoring it.
Their efforts seem to be pathetically ineffective.
We will not know what the latter parts of our century or the 22nd century will consider classics and canon. But I am definitely betting that Tolkien's works will be among them (and a whole lot of works pushed by the "modernist" "critics" dumped as an odd short-lived fashion craze).
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parluggla
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on: May 07, 2014 05:03
and a whole lot of works pushed by the "modernist" "critics" dumped as an odd short-lived fashion craze


Couldn't agree more. Our little reading circle up here on the Lake Superior North Shore has unanimously concluded that this era will be looked at with pity and amusement some day. Somebody will play the role of the little boy in the H.C. Andersen tale of the naked emperor and poof! gone will go the whole modern-realist era. The ice is breaking up, but I can't say when the definitive "ice out" day will come.
cirdaneth
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on: May 08, 2014 01:51
... and so do all who see such times. Oops! Sorry. I suffer from chronic quotitis which flares up without warning.

Meanwhile look for Realism on Google and choose Wikipedia. Follow some of the links and you will be talked round in circles until your brain hurts, ending up just a little wiser, but not much. Most of the 'isms' of this world exist so that the 'ists' can feel comfortable in the belief that they are intellectuals. When they cease to feel comfortable they add an adjective to their 'ism' and form another movement. So 'realism' becomes 'modern' or 'romantic' or 'magic' etc etc. while all we have to decide is what to read in the time that is given to us. Oh dear, there I go again.
Gandolorin
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on: May 08, 2014 12:26
Well, one of our leading book critics on TV in Germany is a huge Tolkien fan. He has a show appearing about on a monthly basis where he, among other things, comments on the top ten books on one of the respected bestseller lists here. And occasionally, his critique of a book I had read (meaning close to 100% that I own it) left me in disagreement with him.
But then, I could care less if a book is supposed to be representative of any ism. Either I like it, or I don't. Occasionally, when I find something, like Douglas Adams of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame (through the books of ethologist and premier writer on Evolution Richard Dawkins - the two were close friends), I can go into a "feeding frenzy", meaning I try to get my hands on anything by or about an author. Went from zero to fourteen books in a very short time, not counting the German translations of the first three "Hitchhiker's" books.
Bookworm is the applicable English term, I believe. The German term puzzles me a bit, because "Leseratte" translates into reading rat! In real life, both creatures do damage to books in libraries and elsewhere. In both cases a very odd description for people who are the least likely to want to do damage to books! Weird.
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parluggla
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on: May 08, 2014 12:48
One of the members of our little readers club is writing a vampire book. Here's a great section:

And if I am allowed one more criticism of Americans, then I must call them a most un-poetic folk. To listen to their so-called literati is to hear the incessant honking of geese. During one unfortunate exchange, my Romanticist views and sentiments were called “cheap sentimentality.” Cheap? Alas, I must admit they were correct; for I am on a very tight emotional budget and cannot afford their deathly expensive nihilist realism.


[Edited on 05/08/2014 by parluggla]
cirdaneth
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on: May 09, 2014 02:18
Gosh! 'Nihilist realism' now. Anyway, the point about Councilofelrond is that it is not here to bash anybody even the bashers, poor souls though they be, so I am not going to elevate my blood-pressure on their account. Tolkien is here to enjoy. Like Gandolorin I can get hooked into an author big-time. Terry Pratchett for instance, Robert Goddard, P D James, Margaret Attwood, Kate Atkinson. Bliss! but at the end of every day it's always a little Tolkien for me.
Gandolorin
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on: May 09, 2014 01:15
Besides JRRT and Douglas Adams ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" etc.), two other favorite authors of mine are Arthur C. Clarke and Paul Harding. Clarke is the sci-fi author of the space odyssey quadrilogy (2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001) and the Rama quadrilogy, plus other books. I do take a slight issue with his rather overdone optimism of what science and technology are going to be able to do for us, but he writes well.
Harding (the name is a pseudonym for a British professor of history specializing in the historical times in England he writes about) may not be similarly well-known.
I have (all?) 14 books by him, which divide into six playing between 1301 and 1303, the time of King Edward I of England, and eight playing between 1377 and 1380. 1377 was the year Edward I's grandson Edward III died, his oldest son Edward the Black Prince having unfortunately died before him. This left Edward III's second son John of Gaunt as regent for his deceased older brother's ten-year-old son Richard II. What fascinates me about Harding is that LotR is supposed to be something of a medieval place. And Harding just makes the early to late 14th century come alive with his descriptions.
Just one thing. Be happy that books cannot convey smells. London of that time may easily have out-stunk - umm - Kolkata (formerly Calcutta in India). No one living in the modern west would be able to take more than an hour or so of that stench (so let us value the heroes of these books all the more for having endured there!)
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parluggla
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on: May 11, 2014 10:50
Interesting you mention Clarke, Gandolorin. Our reading circle has Clarke and scifi fans too. We can't decide who is right, though. Is Tolkien and his apparent Ludditism "The Way For Humanity," or is Clarke and his "Childhood's End" philosophy The Way. Or can we do both? Can we graduate with more and more technology into Utopia, or do we use a sort of Shire-Rivendell-Lothlorien tech-minimal, Elven New Age, permanent Medieval Age approach? One obvious tenant of realism is that any talk of Utopia is nonsense, that wherever we go, it will be necessarily messy, possibly, often tragic. In any event, I believe fiction attempts to create The Narrative, to capture and bottle the Zeitgeist, and, apparently, lots of us need The Narrative to make sense of what the human race is doing and where it's going. And as we've discussed, when does The Narrative become a quasi-belief system?
LadyBeruthiel
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on: May 14, 2014 07:35
Not to change the subject, but personally I find LOTR very modern. It was written in the shadow of two world wars, and deals very much with the same sense of cultural anxiety and loss that haunted, say, Joyce, Pound and Eliot. The difference between Tolkien and the "high" modernists, I think, is that Tolkien is not elitist. All his vast linguistic and folkloric erudition is behind his stories, but you don't have to have read everything he has read to understand them, unlike, say, Pound's Cantos or Eliot's Waste Land. So while Pound (e.g.) was showing off his knowledge of Confucius and the troubadours, and Eliot was kicking around a heap of broken images and shoring up fragments against his ruin, Tolkien was writing an epic tale that ordinary people could read, acknowledge sadness and loss, and feel hopeful again. That's why it's the greatest book of the 20th century. It heals in a way the modernist elite could hardly believe in.

[Edited on 05/15/2014 by LadyBeruthiel]
parluggla
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on: May 14, 2014 10:26
Interesting insights, LadyBeruthiel. It's easy to see modernists as just bad-boy rule-breakers, and miss that they might have been highly conscientious too. But then when you stray from the path of beauty and feeling, it's hard to always give credit for art when it's really there after all. Tolkien injected a reverence and piety to his work that modernists found too old-fashioned and petty bourgeois.
Gandolorin
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on: May 21, 2014 11:51
parluggla said:... modernists found too old-fashioned and petty bourgeois.

And the "modernists" never realized that JRRT had leapfrogged them. That they were actually the Old Hat. But that is something that a former avant-garde have the most massive problems coming to grips with: that they are now outdated (I refrain from using the term "post-modernism" because it originates in architecture and never has made any real sense outside that subject).
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parluggla
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on: May 22, 2014 10:23
Good, Gandolorin, but if only a few people have "leapfrogged" modernism, it probably isn't enough to truly lead the Western world in a new direction. If you're in Germany, I see people in the Medievalist (Faun, Omnia et al) and Neofolk (Werkraum, Tenhi et al) movements that are trying to reestablish some sort of nature-romanticism perhaps . . . it doesn't really allow a good description. But here in America: zilch, nichts, nada. Yes, we talk about this in my reading club, the whole "what's next" question. I feel "fantasy" is losing steam here, mainly because it was always kept under the thumb of corporate media. There has/have been no generation-leading book(s) to rally around. Tolkien is one bright banner raised high, but I do not see his words alone starting the new trend. We need more like him!
cirdaneth
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on: May 23, 2014 01:33
I say chaps! Steady on! Keep those bullets away from your pedal extremities (as Tollers might say.)

'What next?' shouldn't be a question. It should be an action. The Inklings' bottom line was to write the books they wanted to read, because nobody else was doing it. They did. So get writing !
parluggla
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on: May 23, 2014 08:34
Ha ha! cirdaneth! It's a bit like Pippin in the movie: "You need persons of intelligence . . . where are we going?" But yes, write. Again I suggest Hercynian's "Marenmark" at http://runenberg.com

[Edited on 05/23/2014 by parluggla]
Gandolorin
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on: May 23, 2014 12:32
I would guess it has to do with the splintering of the markets (TV, books, magazines, films, radio, music, others arts). As the "tribes" (especially of younger people) get smaller and more particular in their tastes, the marketing nerds are trying to keep up (often with their tongues hanging out from the effort) and follow them into every niche. When blockbusters are hoped for, this means they have to go for pretty low common denominators, and the stuff gets pretty formulaic.
In Germany, we only had public television until the mid 1980s. Channels 1, 2 and 3 in short, with three being the regional units of the federally structured Channel 1. After a slow start of the at first only two private channels, proliferation of satellite and cable TV (and digital terrestrial) has led to the 50 channels we receive (via cable in our case) on our TV (including 10 more specialist, definitely up-market public channels).
Channels 1, 2 and 3 remain heavyweights, the original two private channels too, with a third more like a middleweight. They combine 65 to 70% market share, leaving 30 to 35% for the remaining 44 channels (who are out of necessity specialist and niche providers). That is one splintered market, and I don't think it is going away, nor other splintered markets.

[Edited on 05/23/2014 by Gandolorin]
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tarcolan
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on: May 23, 2014 12:42
Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered; and this springtide of current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song.
'The Book Of Wonder' - Lord Dunsany 1917, thanks to gutenberg.org
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cirdaneth
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on: May 24, 2014 04:10
... and of course we know that a "tide in the affairs of men, when taken at the flood, leads on to victory" ... or something like that.
Hercynian
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on: May 24, 2014 09:57
Hello everyone. Parluggla, our little Swedish boreal owl, told me "the game's afoot," over on the CoE boards, so I thought I'd drop in. Well, we didn't really have a spring up here in the borderlands of Lothlorien. It went from 30s and 40s to a few days of 50s, then 70s: high summer! Yesterday, a hummingbird nearly flew in my window. Obviously, she had heard from the chickadees and warblers how I had kept a sunflower seed snackbar open all the long winter for them, so she gave me that sad look -- and yes, I went out and bought a hummingbird feeder. And, by Jove! I just got my first customer as I am writing this!

We try to stay cordial in our little reading-discussion group that meets at our only cafe, but there are basically two groups: those who dabble in philosophies of a mystical nature -- and those who are having none of it. The none-of-it group are mainly folks who "got burnt" as children by parents et al trying to force their square pegs into Christian round holes. And so, they're having nothing of anything that smacks of "belief." Alas, but I always considered mysticism loose enough to take any square peg.

BTW, that's a marvelous quote from LD, tarcolan. But it's the kind of thing that drives "realists" mad. My government is deep in "realism," mixing itself up in the Ukraine, for example. I see the whole Ukraine thing as a fight between those who want to follow the American-led "New West" with its bright, fancy consumerism, and those who want to follow Russia's (true or false) hinting at traditionalism.

By another way, Gandolorin, TV in all its forms rots the brain. Also on the topic of Big Media, there was a news story of how Amazon is punishing a publisher, Hachette Publishing Company, for not agreeing to a larger chunk of the sales profits going to Amazon. Amazon still lists Hachette's books, but penalizes it by making their books more expensive and in shorter supply. The reporter said this action is no doubt related to the fact that "investors" are displeased with Amazon's quarterly profits. Riiight. So a despicable industry just got a bit more despicable.

By yet another way, I have a new piece called "Legolas for Sheriff" up at runenberg.com Have a look, if you please. Yes, I've long since given up on trying to get anything "published." Everything I've written will be available as pdf on runenberg.com
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