/lit/ - Literature

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I've read some of Mieville's stuff and liked it, but honestly, I think the man may be a bit of a tool.

Tolkien is to blame that most fantasy writers that came after him had no originality? Please.

>>680871

Does Miéville rag on Tolkien specifically or on the legion hacks who attempted and failed to do what Tolkien did?

>>680907
Warning: incoming thesaurus!

> Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious - you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike - his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés - elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings - have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

>>680912
sauce

>>680916
Back from 2003

http://www.panmacmillan.com/displayPage.asp?PageID=3395

who the fuck is China Miéville and why should i give a fuck what some nobody thinks about tolkien?

>>680912
>Tolkien's clichés

something oxymoronic about that turn of phrase...

>>680931
Because the verbosity of his loquaciousness undermines the threshold of your apathetic zeal?

>>680931

award winning fantasy writer

>>680940
of what....?

>>680912

Phew... our boy China certainly has a hair across his ass about poor old JRR, doesn't he?

Thanks for the quote.

Moorcock also expressed dislike for Tolkien's work.

You'd think neither of the two ever gave their own a hard, honest look.

>>680912
Yeah, but keep in mind

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/06/there-and-back-again-five-reasons-tolkien-rocks.html

that he wrote this just last year.

I honestly think he's just trolling for attention.

>>680912

>I'm edgy and cool I dislike a historically important author ^____^

>>680940
what awards? the golden pocket protector?

>>680944
For those interested:
http://www.thecimmerian.com/?p=7735

>>680954
what if i'm not interested?

>>680956

http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

Ignorance knows no bounds.

>>680970
I remember first learning about Michael Moorcock and hearing about what a dark and edgy writer he was and how his stories completely revolutionized fantasy. So I find his section in my local bookstore and I think... "Wow. That is one retarded looking cover."

(Actually it was the best looking cover of them all. The rest of the books were older and had a white-haired barbarian in little red panties prancing about on them.)

But okay, bad cover. Whatever, surely the writing must be some grade-A shit to warrant such praise!

> Smiorgan said thickly, "He has no love for his cousin. He has become bitter. Yrkoon sits on the Ruby Throne in his place and has proclaimed him an outlaw and a traitor. Elric needs us if we would take his throne and his bride back. We can trust him."

.... are you fucking kidding me

>>680912

...people think this is over-verbose? Really? It's perfectly readable (and also right).

I no like him cause he better than me

Moorcock did say he disliked Tolkien's work, but he later explained it was because people were always comparing his work to Tolkien's. I suspect Miéville's hissy fit is for much the same reason.

Artists don't like being compared to each other, even artists working in the same mileau. Painters are notorious for denying they belong to one "school" or another, ask Picasso about his Cubist period and he'd kick you in the balls.

Miéville is most likely just sick of being repeatedly compared to Tolkien by clueless reviewers so he puts old JRR down at every opportunity. Miéville might be writing fantasy but his fantasy has as much to do with Tolkien's legacy as King's horror does with Lovecraft.

There's likely a bit of PR involved in this too. That increasingly pathetic assclown Harlan Ellison has gotten lots of mileage out of his "terrible baby" act decades after he wrote anything of note. Miéville might just be stirring up some shit in order to stir up some interest.

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I've met him, the guy is a massive dick. He thinks he's God's gift to literature.

No one is denying that the high fantasy genre after Tolkien suffered, but that's because Tolkien did such a complete and well rounded job of it the first time, and inferior writers have been able to get away with publishing dumbed down versions ever since.

I intensely dislike authors like Miéville who focus on being weird, wacky and alternative as of primary importance often at the cost of the writing actually being any good.

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>>681109
>>681108
>>681107
>>681106
>>681105
>>681104
>>681103
>>681100
This is getting silly.

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>>680912

What's truly sad about that quote is Miéville dissing Tolkien for being a product of his times when Miéville himself is nothing more than a product of his own.

Tolkien was born when Queen Victoria was still alive, grew to manhood in the Edwardian age, fought for King and Empire in WW1, and lived quietly as an Oxford don for the next 50 years. He was staid, conforming, placid, and intensely religious in an introverted way.

Miéville on the other hand, was born after the 1960s, is the product of a broken home, grew to manhood during the leftist reaction Thatcher, is a Marxist because it is chic in his circle just Tolkien's quiet Catholicism was chic is his, is overly politicized, and sincerely believes the deconstructionist, cultural studies horseshit taught him in school.

Tolkien wrote as a philologist and Miéville writes as a poli-sci major. It's a shame that Miéville can't see he's Tolkien raised in a different time and place.

>>680912
>pomposity
Yes Miéville, Tolkiens the pompous one....

>Tolkien's clichés

Seems like you can't even invent successful stuff anymore.

>>681337
For someone who's able to quite happily eat a dictionary he seems incredibly stupid.

>>680947

He's definitely trolling.

Consider this quote from the link you posted...

>> Tolkien refuses the notion that a work of fiction is, in some reductive way, primarily, solely, or really 'about' something else, narrowly and precisely.

... and then remember that Miéville is a fucking deconstructionist at his heart! He lives on marxist, feminist, fill-in-the-blank-ist "readings" of works and here he is saying that fiction isn't reductive!

What a fucking tool.

i heard a lot about how omg original and inventive and radical mieville's works were. ugh i was disappointed. he creates fantastic worlds and creatures like someone who clearly doesn't respect them or take them seriously on their own tems, they're shitty stand-ins for political screeds. his works are transparently pedantic, it's like he almost resents having to write fantasy and wishes he could just make every book "this is how you should think" -- of course some people do that, so why doesn't he? also, they guy spends WAY too much time on his appearence. i know it's not fair to judge him just based on his looks, but jesus the piercings and shaved head and shit just make him look like some just-out-of-highschool douchebag.

this is mieville: "lol that old fart tolkien was a racist old hack!!!!! just like my dad!!!! old white fuckers are racist and old and boring and old !!!

lolol check out my sweet piercings dude I BET THEYRE BLOWING YOUR MIND how many more rings do i need in my ear before i become the most creative person ever. fuck you dad!"

>>681627

>also, they guy spends WAY too much time on his appearence

I...what? A shaved head is the easiest hairstyle to maintain, and piercings aren't too much work either.

I'm no huge fan of Meiville, but fuck a duck are some of you committed to weird reasons for ripping on him.

LotR sucks
all of Michael Moorcocks complaints are legitimate
Howard is better, Leiber is better, Anderson is better, Le Guin is better, etc

>>681663
i know it's petty but c'mon, he looks like a twat. am i supposed to be impressed by how many piercings you have? why would you do that you're a grown man? it goes along with his "hit the road grandpa HERE COMES SOME HOT NEW SHIT RADICAL I AM BLOWING YOUR MIND" voice you see in this writing, esp. that qoute about tolkien earlier.

You can not honestly say that Lord of the Rings is better than the Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories, or better than The Broken Sword, or better than Three Hearts and Three Lions

>>681696
way better. honestly.

>>681708
pfft, you haven't even read them
Thats another problem, most people proclaiming LotR is so great haven't even read any other fantasy - making the claim it INVENTED fantasy even more infuriating

>>681715
well it kind of did INVENT fantasy because nobody ever wrote fantasy like it before. HURR.....

IMO fantasy kinda got invented and died with it, i'm sorry but you virgin assholes who think "The Watchmen" was the greatest cinematic experience of all time are the same queers who come on here arguing about which third world, mediocre fantasy writer is better are the same people who need to be shot, dragged out into the street and urinated on by cool people.

>>681729
>well it kind of did INVENT fantasy because nobody ever wrote fantasy like it before.
King of Elflands Daughter and a shitton of other work

>>681715
durr.....i couldnt read all of the lord or necklaces because the words got really hard and pages were too heavy. Derp.......but i pretend like i read it!!!

>>681740
Not with the same respect Tolkien had to the linguistic history, and more a focus on Celtic mythology than Norse.

>>681740
except that was written AFTER most of lodr was written, and it sucked. so just stuff that down your dickhole.

>>681750
>The King of Elflands Daughter
>published in 1924
>written after LotR

>>681760
you realize lodr and the hobbit was written in the 1910s right? wasnt published until much later, because tolkien thought it was kinda silly.

>>681766
>It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II.

>>681766
I'd be surprised if Tolkien spent his time in WWI thinking about elves all day.

>>681775
totally resonable he'd spend WWII thinking about them though.

>>681779
He wasn't fighting in WWII. He could afford to think about elves as much as he wanted.

>>681784
he wasnt fighting, just his entire country was bombed into dust. plenty of time really.

>>681790
Sitting underground in a shelter or living somewhere out of the way in the country (not sure which Tolkien did) would offer lots of down time for writing.

who in the fuck is China Miéville? srsly?

Is he like supposed to be the new geek Stephenie Meyer or some shit?

>>681790

>entire country was bombed into dust
>The (fairly limited) London Blitz

Keep calm and carry on, old chap.

>>681799
No, he's supposed to be an award-winning author. Srsly.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=China+Mi%C3%A9ville

>>681809
I won an award for best woodshop project in 9th grade. Also won pinewood derby when i was in 5th grade. I wrote a short story once about a space pirate that pirates in space and stuff. does that make me an award winning writer?

Lud-in-the Mist 1926
The Worm Ouroboros 1922
Figures of Earth 1921
Lilith 1895
The Wood Beyond the World 1894
The Shaving of Shagpat 1856
I cant be fucked going on, just look at all the old works republished by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy and Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library imprints

>>681824
Unless you won a Hugo or a Nebula or an Arthur C Clarke or a Locus award for that story, then no.

Also, u trolling. I bit.

>>681842
>doesn't mention Locus

man, i can almost feel Kevin Anderson's jealousy in this thread.

>>681847
>Are you sure? Look again.

lol i'm thinking of applying for philosophy & literature at warwick in 2010, i will find this man and be like OMG I LOVE UR WORK ESPECIALLY THE TOLKIENESQUE FEEL IT HAS

ecks dee

so randum

I'm a fucking cock.

>>681852
why? he's a hack

>>681875
yeah, ANDERSON is a hack, but quabilllia miaville, he's totally on it. right?

>>681799

I lol'd.

>>681922
you samfagged.

So, Tolkien wasn't the best, but I wouldn't say he's as bad as Mieville makes him out to be. I would say that out of Tollers and C.S Lewis, Lewis is certainly the better writer, or at least, has contributed far more to literature than Tolkien. It really isn't fair to blame Tolkien for the cliches in fantasy-literature. The blame lies with Forgotten Realms.

>>681935

Samfag Gamgee?

cant we all just get along?

+1 never heard of china myspace or whatever

Tolkien is one of the very few tolerable fantasy writers to those who aren't a fan of the genre.

>>681966
and the ironic thing is his writing is so trite

>>681968

It's only trite because it's viewed through the lens of today. At the time, it was not.

That is a testament to his writing - his originality.

>It's only trite because it's viewed through the lens of today. At the time, it was not.
Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber and Clarke Ashton Smith and Poul Anderson and plenty of others were writing then, much more vibrant
especially Leiber and Anderson.

>>682024
just think about the fact that The Broken Sword and LotR were published in America in the same year, they are worlds apart in their style

>>682004
>That is a testament to his writing - his originality.

>>682024

I love Poul Anderson.

But, lol. He and Tolkien are nothing similar, and Poul Anderson had nothing remotely as immersive as LoTR.

>>682032
better written

>>682040

When I think of "good writing" Poul Anderson is not foremost in my mind.

>>682047
read Broken Sword + Three Hearts and Three Lions
compare to LotR
Anderson wins

>>682054

Wins?

Welcome to officially being a faggot.

Honestly, judge people on their own accord, not through the lens of the limited amount of shit you've read and taken to.

Hurr durr tolkien is bad because I suck Poul Anderson's cock.

Fuck off.

>>682054
yeah.....he wins in the sense that he totally gets a telephone poll up his ass, and then gets smacked around by a couple of girls and then kicked out of the back of a truck into a wendy's parking lot, naked.

>>682070
Fritz Leiber rocks too

>>682072
he'd cleave Tolkien in two with his broadsword

>>682079
you went to the midnight premiers of lodr and held up different author's books and proclaimed how much better they were, until someone threw a shoe and you and broke your glasses, huh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSOSxwEWFA4

>>682088
why would I see that shit, Jackson is worse than Tolkien

>>682004
Tolkien's writing was in no way a product of his age--he intentionally tried to go for an "epic" feel reminiscent of ancient poems. Compare the writing in LotR to that of The Hobbit, which is much less stuffy.

>>682079
Not likely. Tolkien would blow smoke rings at him. Anderson would get cancer and die.