Post #5,794
8/18/01 10:39:26 PM
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short list, who HASN'T read lord of the rings
since most confuser folks and other ilk kinda grew up on it, do the yonkers read it also? Found that the hobbit and the 3 volume of the trilogy didnt make it from Alaska and was going to read it to my little one. :(
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #5,812
8/19/01 4:00:07 AM
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Me.
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #5,817
8/19/01 9:40:41 AM
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You must!
It is one of the great set of books of the last century!
Imric's Tips for Living- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
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Post #5,820
8/19/01 9:51:22 AM
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Me too. I found "The Hobbit" tedious in HS when I tried to
read it. I never finished it. (Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind at the time.) I never started TLoTR. It didn't help that I was taking a "humanities" class at the time and one of the teachers really didn't like Tolkein. She said that he stole most of his ideas from earlier works and wasn't as original as many supporters claimed, etc., etc.
A couple of years ago my father said he loved TLoTR after reading it recently. Rather surprised me as I never recalled him reading fantasy novels.
I was at a 50th birthday party last night and one of the gifts was TLoTR trilogy.
The trailers for the upcoming TLoTR movie looked interesting.
I guess I'll put it on the list...
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #5,825
8/19/01 10:09:19 AM
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The Hobbit
Is not quite the same as The Lord of the Rings - it is more geared toward children... I know my father read it to my sister and I when I was quite young (one of the happiest memories I have of the time!); I read TLOTR myself, much later.
Imric's Tips for Living- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
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Post #5,826
8/19/01 11:05:10 AM
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Hobbit is very different from LotR.
It was intended to be a children's book.
On Tolkien's originality: yes, elves and halflings and goblins and such all came from earlier works. I sincerely doubt that anyone gave them the thorough treatment that Tolkien did (read the Silmarillion if you doubt me on this). And Tolkien was a true poet when it came to his prose. It's one thing to write about elves; it's quite another to generate the sense of wonder that Tolkien could with a few choice phrases.
I've been reading LotR to my son for the past year or so (a few pages a night before bed), and he loves it. He read the Tolkien Biography to himself as well, and he really enjoyed it.
I'm finding that reading the books as an adult I'm finding a good many things that I didn't notice as a child or teenager.
Regards,
-scott anderson
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Post #5,833
8/19/01 12:27:25 PM
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The Hobbit is a set up...
Even though the Hobbit is a different style, I think you really need to read it first in order to appreciate the trilogy.
I read all four books, for the first time, in my freshman year of college during a week long jag. I had a bad habit of going on such jags during that period of my life, skipping innumerable classes. Wish I still had that level of energy and concentration I did back then.
I started on The Silmarillion several times, but have never really gotten much into it. It's still staring me in the face all these years later - reminding me that I have to get around to it one of these years.
As for originality, Tolkien did a lot of research in Nordic mythology, so I think a lot of what he writes is borrowed - with Hobbits being his main edition to the lore.
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Post #5,842
8/19/01 3:08:29 PM
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Yeah.. seems to have become fashionable of late,
to add JRR to the deconstruction list. Razing edifices is ever so much easier than erecting; and the timed explosives give us a new form of explotainment too :-)
Maybe it's the EngLit equivalent of DieHard XXII, or the attempt to remake Sabrina - without an Audrey Hepburn, a Bogie or a William Holden (!) all for the relative absence of much resembling Original talent, amidst today's noises.
Above all.. JRR was a Master story teller! Should he have had to also invent a completely Original mythology with names never heard before? ('Course he sorta Did do some of that, though our friend the Gollum can conjure ideas of a Golem? Yesssss indeed.)
OTOH for those lookin fer egalitarian philosophies executed flawlessly.. well, wouldn't that just be (a rather more entertaining presentation of) Agit-Prop? and soon devolve to preaching: to unrecalcitrant humanity..which Likes behavin like assholes and rationalizin that behavior - Often (?)
And yes - reading JRR at different stages in your life - Is a different appreciation (or not, as the case may be). Hmmm might be time for me to haul out the Rings again.. My Precioussssss.
Ashton the Unbiased
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Post #5,843
8/19/01 3:17:00 PM
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"of late"?!? This was in 1978! :-) Good points though.
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Post #5,847
8/19/01 3:47:08 PM
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You mean.. they was a pickin at it way back then, too?
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Post #5,853
8/19/01 4:20:03 PM
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Heck yeah -- the translator who rendered it into Swedish,...
...Åke Ohlmarks, became thoroughly disillusioned and warned against its power to seduce youngsters into believing all that fantasy crap was real.
Not without reason: He was being stalked for years by some whacko who called himself "Gandalf" or "Aragorn" or something, and apparently sincerely believed he *was* that character (whichever one it was) from the books.
And this wasn't a case of an isolated nut-job, either -- "Aragalf" was only the leader of a whole "cult" of similar weirdoes. Ohlmarks had to get police protection, IIRC.
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #5,868
8/19/01 6:27:37 PM
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Wow!.. heh, do we need any further proof then,
that the *rest* of our er daily experience is ~ the same ..stuff that dreams are made on
??
or to revert to '50s Muricanadmania:
Which twin has the Toni ???
(a brand of hair 'permanent wave' nostrum; ad showed ident. twins and, well-)
:-\ufffd
Now as to The Mac Jihad umm - how different is that actually, from..
never mind.
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Post #5,892
8/19/01 8:44:12 PM
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Who cares if he borrowed?
His stories speak for themselves. Want to know where he got his names from? Try the following list of Dwarfs in the Norse world given by Snorri Sturluson a few hundred years ago:
Nyi, Nidi, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, Vestri, Althjof, Dvalin, Bifur, Bombor, Nori, Oinn, Mjodvitnir, Vig, Gandalf, Vindalf, Thorin, Fili, Kili, Fundin, Vali, Thror, Thrain, Thekk, Lit, Vit, Nyr, Nyrad, Rekk, Radsvid, Draupnir, Dolgthvari, Haur, Hugstari, Hledjolf, Gloin, Dori, Ori, Duf, Andvari, Heptifili, Har, Sviar, Skirfir, Virfir, Skavid, Ai, Alf, Ingi, Eikinskjaldi, Fal, Frosti, Fid, and Ginnar
Any of those look familiar?
But names are nothing. Their personalities are all Tolkien, the story-telling is all Tolkien, and if he learned from those who came before, it just shows that he knew that it is better to build on what is already known. In fact several of his official papers dove-tail very well with his popular fiction. The work he did as an academic told him better how to tell stories and vice versa.
Speaking of which some day I will get off my lazy ass and buy my own copy of, "The Monsters and the Critics". But I still remember having read it in College, finally understanding why I liked Tolkien, Norse mythology, etc, and why I had been left utterly cold by the Greek myths.
Cheers,
Ben
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Post #5,897
8/19/01 9:01:50 PM
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Tolkien's writings predict that movie will fail
A fair section of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Stories" is devoted to this question. His position is that it was unfortunate that literature and drama were so often studied together. The two lend themselves to very different kinds of stories, and in a language that gave us Shakespeare, the balance was towards stories that work as plays. Now many of his specific examples reflected technical limitations that movies have now surpassed. However much of what he said still applies in spades. For instance it is still true that, Very little about trees as trees can be gotten into a play. Hollywood finds it easier to produce fantastic effects than they do to surpass the limit that, In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it. Their task is not made any easier by the fact that different minds have different limits. (See discussion here not that long ago about how many people find it impossible to follow any plot lines that involve time travel.) As a final example I would ask how the following defence of fantasy that appeared in one of his letters could be translated to the screen. His writings are full of gems like this...
Dear Sir, Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many huges, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons -- 'twas our right
(used or misused)). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.
Cheers, Ben
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Post #5,855
8/19/01 4:30:05 PM
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I have - to my eternal regret.
Sheesh, *talk* about tedium!
_The Hobbit_, now, that was OK... But _LOTR_ was -- and I *don't care* if this pisses off all JRRT-worshippers world-wide -- just plain *boring*.
Yes, BORING!
In stead of doing an Eddings and telling the same story in four "different" trilogies... He tells his story only once, but so drawn-out it's just as long as all Eddings' four versions of his, together.
Fuck knows which is worse.
And as for the _Silmarillion_ (and whatever other interminable tomes made out of scraps of Daddy's notes that Christopher Tolkien has swept up off the floor and published as "books") -- well, don't get me started.
Suffice it to say, Another Scott, that _The Hobbit_ is NOT "tedious". Compared to Eddings, perhaps; and for a sub- or lower-teenager, perhaps... But not for an upper-teen or adult, and REALLY not compared to anything else Tolkien ever wrote.
And Chris R, if you can't stand the idea of throwing your copy of _Silmarillion_ in the trash, then just sell it -- or, heck, give it away! -- to some poor schmuck who says they want it.
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #5,860
8/19/01 4:52:04 PM
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No takers
I make it a general rule to keep practically every book I've ever purchased, whether I get around to reading it or not. About the only way I ever get rid of books is when someone borrows but never returns it. Heck, I still have my 6809 Assembly books from that same time period (not to mention all my 8-tracks as well). :-)
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Post #5,869
8/19/01 6:33:38 PM
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Make a statement - make an exception.
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Post #5,863
8/19/01 5:30:48 PM
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Concur
If ever a book needed a good, ruthless editor, it's LOTR.
--
Peter
Shill For Hire
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Post #5,870
8/19/01 6:53:00 PM
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Concur with the criticisms, nevertheless
I tended to think it went on and on and on ObMeerkat
Simply...
because -really!- the readers, many of them, Wanted it just
Not
Quite
To
Akshully
{sniff}
[ugh] End!
yet..
(Naturally I have *no idea* of what was in JRR's mind .. nor would I credit much, 'as told to') And The Hobbit is different and.. maybe JRR got so much histrionic feedback that More was *fucking well* Wanted.. [Or Else!] and..
Maybe was afraid to er disappoint *These* guys.?.
Like the Swede? :-\ufffd
I mean.. when yer umm, *living in Middle Earth* daily.. and yer 7-11 job sucks by comparison and do does Bizness 101alpha -
OK OK OK O
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Post #5,872
8/19/01 7:19:59 PM
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Or maybe he was just a senile blabbermouth.
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Post #5,873
8/19/01 7:21:02 PM
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Since the *effect* was exactly the same as if he were...
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Post #5,874
8/19/01 7:22:45 PM
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That is, *in effect*, what he *was* being. Wanna bet...
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Post #5,875
8/19/01 7:23:58 PM
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... he *didn't* ASK for his salary to be *lowered*, by an...
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Post #5,876
8/19/01 7:26:55 PM
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...amount correponding to the time (*work* time, no doubt --
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Post #5,877
8/19/01 7:28:21 PM
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-- they always do this shit on work hours) he *wasn't*...
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Post #5,878
8/19/01 7:30:04 PM
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...teaching ancient languages? Bet he didn't -- they...
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Post #5,880
8/19/01 7:35:08 PM
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...*never* do. So he was a senile old blabberer and *fraud*.
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Post #5,883
8/19/01 8:13:06 PM
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...all together now: lovely spam, spam, spam....
--
Peter
Shill For Hire
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Post #5,910
8/19/01 10:22:42 PM
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Yeah.. but I'll bet he had more class
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Post #5,911
8/19/01 10:24:06 PM
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...than to try to defend the quality of his prose
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Post #5,912
8/19/01 10:25:25 PM
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...with quantity over
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Post #5,913
8/19/01 10:34:05 PM
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...umm well, you know________________________:-\ufffd
I said...
it's just a theory.. and you whippersnappers have no idea how much BS ya gotta process before...
after
a
while
you
filter
out
most of the doggerel du jour, reduce a few ninnies to tears
(take pity on the weaker ones.. if in the mood)
and
finally
decide:
fuck all the twits; there'll always be too many of them per capita [sic]
at about the same time
you
also
realize
Bloody Hell !!!
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Post #5,915
8/19/01 10:37:28 PM
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Um, Ash...
If you fuck all of the twits, then there will just be more of them...
Cheers,
Ben
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Post #5,919
8/19/01 10:42:26 PM
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Damn.. another good Plan ruinted by a Fact____:[
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Post #5,916
8/19/01 10:37:53 PM
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He's fucking \ufffdEARNED\ufffd that senility fair & square so \ufffd-off !
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Post #5,886
8/19/01 8:21:35 PM
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hobbit great tlor the first OK rest went on an on
until yer were going give him the fscking ring and end it!
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #5,887
8/19/01 8:31:48 PM
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TV attention span?
When I read it again last year I was amazed at how easy it was to put down at any point. There were two basic causes.
The first is that - in accord with accepted literary practice of the day - Tolkien uses the passive voice. Today people are told to use the active voice. This difference in sentence construction changes the verbal pacing and immediacy of the entire series.
The secod, and related, cause is that he told it as a series of small self-contained stories. Modern novels use the cheap trick of always having hanging story lines. Whenever you switch from one scene to another, you always have some sort of cliff-hanger.
Neither goes over well with people whose attention span has been trained by flipping channels on TV. However fast paced action will simply never touch Tolkien for the richness of mood and story. His is a world you need to visit, sit back, and enjoy for a while.
Cheers,
Ben
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Post #5,920
8/19/01 10:55:19 PM
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Bingo: root cause with er 'prooves'! as our *ami would say..
* kinda miss Michel's passionate defenses of the indefensible - especially the Merkin brohaha :-)
Brilliant observation IMhO. It IS about the passive voice and each tale's completeness. Thus without the
remaining
.
.
.
hanging
.
.
.
mnemonic or other
.
.
.
clue (diagrammed in brain just like ^this^)
.
.
Making the above an actual!
recursive
er
meta
Magical
Thema
.
.
(he says, full of self..)
another!
recursion
into
.
.
the soon to become mere doggerel.
Anyway - I think you Nailed It!
:-\ufffd
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Post #5,926
8/19/01 11:30:32 PM
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Agreed. well put, nothing to add
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #5,960
8/20/01 9:17:34 AM
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Counterpoint - Crime and Punishment.
A wonderful pre-TV novel.
Of course, C&P was a serial which later appeared as a novel, so it's not really a fair comparison.
I don't think that TV had much to do with my lack of appreciation for The Hobbit. I enjoyed War and Peace during my HS years. One can't accuse Tolstoy of being too brief! (Trivia - According to my college Russian Lit. professor, he rewrote it something like 6 times. Voracious writer...)
But it's very likely that his writing style and my mood at the time had a lot to do with it.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #5,895
8/19/01 8:56:34 PM
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Me!
I've read the Hobbit. Don't ask me to read it now, I barely have time to read my degree course books. I prefer sci fi anyway.
Microsoft Outlook - one, big, macro virus portal.
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Post #5,924
8/19/01 11:21:51 PM
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and Hobbit, Silmarillion, Bored Of The Rings...
...and leafed through some of Christopher Tolkein's compilations of unpublished materials
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #6,145
8/21/01 5:12:37 PM
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There actually was a book of that title
Bored of the Rings, that is. I don't remember who wrote it but it was a parody that was OK at first but degenerated from there.
French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
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Post #6,150
8/21/01 5:21:51 PM
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Harvard Lampoon, IIRC
I've got it somewhere (didn't buy it, honest...); the acid paper's probably corroded to illegibility by now. I managed to get through a couple chapters, and vaguely remember names like Arrowroot of Arrowshirt, Goodgulf, Dildo.
Giovanni
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Post #6,153
8/21/01 5:32:43 PM
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I know..
I'm not Bored of Lord Of the Rings, I've read "Bored Of The Rings" several times. "'Indeed' and if looks could main, they'd be carrying the old elf out in a basket"
They asked each other countless riddles, such as who played the Cisco Kid and what was Krypton. In the end Dildo won the game. Stumped at last for a riddle to ask, he cried out, as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, "What have I got in my pocket?" This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient, he paddled up to Dildo, whining, "Let me see, let me see." Dildo obliged by pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam's direction. The dark spoiled his aim, and he managed only to de- flate the rubber float, leaving Goddam to flounder. Goddam, who couldn't swim, reached his hand out to Dildo and begged him to pull him out, and as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting-looking ring on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand.
It's a pity I have run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the
tunnel, pursued by Goddam's cries of rage.
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #5,961
8/20/01 9:36:34 AM
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Not this week
My grandfather got me started on LOTR when I was about 8/9. One of the many things I wish I had thanked him for. It's a fairy tale, it's an epic. It's both. It's escapist story telling drawn liberally from his researches into ancient languages. I have come to see it over my many re-readings over the years as a paean to the English country life and an indictment of industrialization and urban blight. Much more than this though is the history of the growth of Frodo and unyielding strength of Samwise.
You can still find the occasional sticker on a subway car-----
"Frodo Lives!"
"When it crosses my mind to do something, I don't ask why, I ask why not. And usually there's no reason not to, so I just go ahead. It's given me the strangest collection of hats"
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Post #6,068
8/21/01 11:59:48 AM
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Yo.
Nor, even, the Hobbit.
Tho I *did* buy that last year, just haven't gotten around to reading it.
(Ben K was forever on my case about it, too)
Addison
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Post #6,085
8/21/01 1:23:04 PM
8/21/01 1:23:35 PM
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Quiero Gilthoniel? ;-)
Regards,
-scott anderson
Edited by admin
Aug. 21, 2001, 01:23:35 PM EDT
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Post #6,126
8/21/01 3:50:19 PM
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Huh?
"Quiero" is "I want"
... how can you have a question staring "I want... ?" ?
maybe I'm missing the question..or the joke...
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #6,127
8/21/01 3:54:36 PM
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remember "our" spanish is taught by
lttle dogs from taco bell,
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #6,167
8/21/01 7:09:20 PM
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*sigh*
It was questioning the previous subject line, ie. is "Yo quiero Gilthoniel" what it meant.
Not meant to be grammatically correct. And as Bill pointed out, I was just trying to play off the Chihuahua joke from Taco Bell, the joke being that "Gilthoniel" rhymes with "Taco Bell".
Never mind. The frog is dead.
Regards,
-scott anderson
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