I have - to my eternal regret.

Post #5,855 by CRConrad 8/19/01 4:30:05 PM Reply	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
Post #5,860 by ChrisR 8/19/01 4:52:04 PM Reply	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). :-)
Post #5,869 by CRConrad 8/19/01 6:33:38 PM Reply	Make a statement - make an exception.
Post #5,863 by pwhysall 8/19/01 5:30:48 PM Reply	Concur If ever a book needed a good, ruthless editor, it's LOTR. -- Peter Shill For Hire
Post #5,870 by Ashton 8/19/01 6:53:00 PM Reply	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
Post #5,872 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:19:59 PM Reply	Or maybe he was just a senile blabbermouth.
Post #5,873 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:21:02 PM Reply	Since the effect was exactly the same as if he were...
Post #5,874 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:22:45 PM Reply	That is, in effect, what he was being. Wanna bet...
Post #5,875 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:23:58 PM Reply	... he didn't ASK for his salary to be lowered, by an...
Post #5,876 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:26:55 PM Reply	...amount correponding to the time (work time, no doubt --
Post #5,877 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:28:21 PM Reply	-- they always do this shit on work hours) he wasn't...
Post #5,878 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:30:04 PM Reply	...teaching ancient languages? Bet he didn't -- they...
Post #5,880 by CRConrad 8/19/01 7:35:08 PM Reply	...never do. So he was a senile old blabberer and fraud.
Post #5,883 by pwhysall 8/19/01 8:13:06 PM Reply	...all together now: lovely spam, spam, spam.... -- Peter Shill For Hire
Post #5,910 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:22:42 PM Reply	Yeah.. but I'll bet he had more class
Post #5,911 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:24:06 PM Reply	...than to try to defend the quality of his prose
Post #5,912 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:25:25 PM Reply	...with quantity over
Post #5,913 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:34:05 PM Reply	...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 !!!
Post #5,915 by ben_tilly 8/19/01 10:37:28 PM Reply	Um, Ash... If you fuck all of the twits, then there will just be more of them... Cheers, Ben
Post #5,919 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:42:26 PM Reply	Damn.. another good Plan ruinted by a Fact____:[
Post #5,916 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:37:53 PM Reply	He's fucking \ufffdEARNED\ufffd that senility fair & square so \ufffd-off !
Post #5,886 by boxley 8/19/01 8:21:35 PM Reply	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
Post #5,887 by ben_tilly 8/19/01 8:31:48 PM Reply	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
Post #5,920 by Ashton 8/19/01 10:55:19 PM Reply	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
Post #5,926 by Fearless Freep 8/19/01 11:30:32 PM Reply	Agreed. well put, nothing to add Jay O'Connor "Going places unmapped to do things unplanned to people unsuspecting"
Post #5,960 by Another Scott 8/20/01 9:17:34 AM Reply	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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