[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 24 KB, 308x400, borges.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8411283 No.8411283 [Reply] [Original]

>The problem with The Lord of the Rings is you're left outside the book, no? That has happened to most of us. In that case, that book is not meant for us…

>I wish somebody would explain it to me or somehow convey what the book's good for. Those people say if I like Lewis Carroll, I should like Tolkien. I am very fond of Lewis Carroll, but I am disconcerted by Tolkien.

>Maybe I'm being unjust to Tolkien but, yes, I think of him as rambling on and on.

Was he right?

>> No.8411306

No. I get lost in Middle Earth when I'm reading Tolkien. His prose is above average and everything he writes helps to create his world. The only thing he rambles on about is directional and environmental details during The Two Towers (the part in Rohan excluding Helm's Deep was boring as fuck)

>> No.8411320

>>8411283
>Those people say if I like Lewis Carroll, I should like Tolkien.
Is he mixing up CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll? Or the other people?

A better case can be made for if you like CS Lewis then you'll enjoy Tolkien however it is. Lewis Carroll isn't all that comparable to Tolkien.

>> No.8411328

I don't think so, the authors just had a different goal in mind. I'll compare the ones I know. The Narnia Chronicles were created to tell a story, and the emphasis is on telling that story. The Lord of the Rings was made to tell a story and build a world, with the emphasis on the building of the world. The Lord of the Rings was written for people who were already fans of the universe Tolkien had already created in The Silmarillion.

The Hobbit is a good example of a book written by Tolkien with very little snippets of lore and an emphasis on story. He could've written the entire LotR series exactly like that, if he wanted, and it'd probably be read by a lot more people, but then his world wouldn't be nearly so developed and vibrant and alive.

I enjoyed the audiobook versions of LotR far better, it's a lot easier to slip in and out of the narrative if it falls into a patch of lore.

>> No.8411332

Shit, I just made that exact same mix-up.

>> No.8411336

>>8411283
you have to be a stupid nerd to like lotr

>> No.8411342

>>8411328
>it'd probably be read by a lot more people
>not already the best selling novel in the history of the world

>> No.8411346

Borges feels to me like that squishy magical realism type who likes extreme depth and "thickness," and often discards structure and perspective for it. In Borges' mind, the best way to explore a bizarre crazy-ass magical society where everyone has two heads is to be plopped down on a random bazaar street and just wander around being amazed.

Tolkien's depth comes from the elaborateness of the overall structure, and the thickness comes from how thickness is implied to be everywhere. It's a thin perspective on a thick world. Borges confuses that for thinness altogether, maybe because he's not familiar with the same basic things about Tolkien's world that stirred Anglos on an instinctive level.

>> No.8411348

>>8411328
CS Lewis famously said to Tolkien while they swapped notes and drafts down the pub "not another bloody elf".

I have to agree. If only because the Tolkien elf trope has infected almost everything since.

>> No.8411363

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ZNiJewvAE

He didn't like Wagner either.
He probably didn't like Northern/Germanic romanticism. It was an anti-intellectual thought and he was an intellectual.

>> No.8411396

>>8411320
No, he isn't. He was told that because people who like Tolkien are, and were especially at the time, at heart the very sorts of dumb nerds who would assume that anything with fantastical elements is enjoyable, alike

>> No.8411410

>>8411396
They both were Oxford dons and that Oxford countryside features heavily in both. That's where there's the overlap.

I should know but can't remember if Tolkien was also Christ Church. I don't think he was.

>> No.8411424

>>8411342

Best selling, not most-read.