Me too. I found "The Hobbit" tedious in HS when I tried to

Post #5,820 by Another Scott 8/19/01 9:51:22 AM Reply	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.
Post #5,825 by imric 8/19/01 10:09:19 AM Reply	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...
Post #5,826 by admin 8/19/01 11:05:10 AM Reply	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
Post #5,833 by ChrisR 8/19/01 12:27:25 PM Reply	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.
Post #5,842 by Ashton 8/19/01 3:08:29 PM Reply	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
Post #5,843 by Another Scott 8/19/01 3:17:00 PM Reply	"of late"?!? This was in 1978! :-) Good points though.
Post #5,847 by Ashton 8/19/01 3:47:08 PM Reply	You mean.. they was a pickin at it way back then, too?
Post #5,853 by CRConrad 8/19/01 4:20:03 PM Reply	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
Post #5,868 by Ashton 8/19/01 6:27:37 PM Reply	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.
Post #5,892 by ben_tilly 8/19/01 8:44:12 PM Reply	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
Post #5,897 by ben_tilly 8/19/01 9:01:50 PM Reply	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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