A TNT Topic, maybe

[walker]

I am a rebel. I hold a viewpoint that could prove leperous to my incorporation into writer-who-is-Catholic status quo. It involves "The Lord of the Rings," and I can see some of your hobbit swords are already glowing blue.

Let me begin, for safety's sake, by saying that I have a great personal affection for "The Lord of the Rings." I love it in and of itself for what it is, and my vocabulary is littered with phrases like "How Gollumesque." It is a magnum opus in itself.

However, I think "The Lord of the Rings" is not a good paradigm for young writers who are Catholic to follow chiefly.

Why? Because it is a singularity. In modern literature it has no precedent. This is why prestigous critics initially wouldn't and eternally will never validate any worth in "The Lord of the Rings." They are the keepers of literature, they wish to see the flowering and progression of books. LOTR is a retrogression. You have Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Keroac, whoever, more or less realists, and suddenly out come the pointy medieval swords of a child-like fairy world.

Do you see what I'm saying? It goes against the current. The Catholic literary revival fertilized a legion of strong writers who wrote brilliant works within their time periods and respected a diversity of non-Catholic colleagues. The decadent poets like Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson (converts, and late, though they were) worked alongside the controversial Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and others in a common diverse struggle. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Writers who are ahead of their time, but rooted in precedent and the common progress of letters. Novelists like Graham Greene, Walker Percy, T.S. ELIOT to reach WAY up there... groundbreaking and pathfinding, inviting imitation.

LOTR is sort of like pre-Raphaelite painting. It springs up, it will win fierce devotees, but ultimately it's trying to go upriver. Not that you can't be unique, but be unique within the framework of your time. LOTR is written in a vacuum. Amazing things can be written there and it says nothing to LOTR in itself or how we judge it on its own.

But if you stir up a generation of writers trained on nothing but Lord of the Rings, one brand of food, unable or unwilling to see or acknowledge the true advances of their peers, you might end up writing splinter stories, very self-contained pieces, especially as none of us is quite as brilliant or epic-minded in vision as Tolkien. I think, and Cardinal Newman concurs, you've got to be trained on a larger diversity of literature, especially things not specifically Catholic.

So my thoughts are somewhat confused and I offer my body to the common raven peck, but maybe you can convert me or concur with a little of what I'm saying. I'm sure there's no paucity of opinions on the subject.

[katycarl]

Walker,

Having started out as a very young writer by trying to imitate Tolkien, I agree with you wholeheartedly. The man is inimitable, partially because of the linguistic roots of his work (no one today has the kind of education necessary to do anything comparable in that area), partially because it is the kind of work -- like the Silmarils -- that can only be done once.

I think this has also been touched on in one of the other topics on this board at present. We've seen ample failure in contemporary fantasy from writers who wanted nothing more than to live in Tolkien's imaginative world and who ended up watering down the strong wine of his legacy -- when they didn't ruin it by introducing strange flavors of their own.

That's the short version of my equally long opinion. I stand up with you in requesting others to challenge or concur -- I'm very interested in hearing what people think.

[cristina]

Some thoughts:

1. I agree that aspiring writers should not limit their models to LOTR. However, there's a difference between trying to write another LOTR and adopting as one's own the techniques JRRT used in terms of plot structure, characterization, setting construction, story development, and use of language. The techniques in writing that work, work in whatever genre. And while I agree that it's almost impossible to replicate LOTR, I believe that just because I'm not a genius does not mean that geniuses don't exist!

2. Realism, gravity, and "canonization" by serious literary critics (or rather, by those considered serious literary critics) do not, by themselves, define a great literary work. Besides, I think that for every serious literary critic who "canonized" a particular work, there is another who rejected it and vice versa. In addition, while mass appeal is no guarantee of quality, it is not, by itself, a badge of mediocrity.

3. Beneath the surface, there are often more similarities than differences between LOTR and more realistic fiction. (In fact, although it ends happily, LOTR is actually serious and sad in tone.)

[pierregambotsky]

Well, I for one don't think you are entirely wrong, but I'd like to disagree on a couple of points. First, I take it as a given that no serious aspiring writer should take Tolkien as his only teacher and model. In fact, that would amount almost to making an idol out of Tolkien in detriment of the greater tradition that exists within Catholic (and non-Catholic) literature. However, I think it is also an error to say LOTR arose in a vacuum. That is simply not true. Rather, Tolkien disapproved of the the way modern literature was developing, and drew on varied and older traditions to present an alternative. Though the "feel" is older (timeless, I might say), it is still very different from those older epics on which it is built. It took things that were forgotten and made them relevant to the modern world.

In addition, I think Tolkien has much to teach the modern writer. His "mythopoetic" approach is effective and need not involve medieval themes. If you don't think that's true, just take a look at Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which uses Tolkien's and Lewis's techniques to opposite ends--perhaps not as masterfully but still very effectively. In addition, I think Tolkien was correct when he insisted that stories should not be created so as to make a moral point, but rather that the storyteller should create his tales within a certain moral universe but then tell them for their own sake. I think that is a much more subtle and ultimately more effective approach.

So of course, we cannot become cheap copies of Tolkien. But if we take into account and learn from the more mainstream tradition that is out there, I think paying attention to Tolkien's approach (and to the deeper riches found within the Catholic tradition) can help us give our work a distinctive twist and hopefully transcend (rather than oppose or ignore) the paradigms of contemporary literature.

[katycarl]

Good points, Pierre and Cristina. I think that, to clarify what I was saying, I should differentiate between Tolkien's superficial "imaginative world" -- elves, dwarves, wizards, magic -- which seems to be all that most contemporary fantasy writers have picked up (I say most, not all), and his deep legacy, his philosophy of writing, which is something that I thoroughly embrace and wish more people would appreciate. It would be possible to make a cheap imitation of Tolkien using either, but much harder with the philosophy -- because if one really embraces that, one's work is going to be built on a rock. Even if the construction is rickety, the foundation will be solid.

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On a second glance, Walker, I wonder what you mean by LOTR "going upriver" and being "built in a vacuum" in relation to its time. Are these good things in your estimation? Bad things? Why?

I want you to clarify it -- you said yourself that it needed it -- and then I want to talk more about that generally: what is, and what should be, the relation of the time in which a writer-who-is-Catholic lives to the work he produces?

[cristina]

I also don't agree with LOTR having been "written in a vacuum" in relation to it's time, if what is meant is that LOTR has totally no relation with the times in which it was written. JRRT was heavily affected by World War I and the industrialization of his idyllic hometown. Throughout LOTR, there's a pervading sense of loss, a sense that the world is no longer the way it used to be. JRRT's experience of the war also found itself in the books.

Then, too, there was the influence of his personal life -- like his relationship with Edith Mary, whom he later married. She had to become a Catholic (quite a sacrifice for her), and then she had to be separated from JRRT during the time he was in the war. Hence, you have elves giving up immortality because of their love for mortals and couples getting married after having been separated from each for a long time.

I'd recommend the book "J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth" by Daniel Grotta.

[walker]

I guess I'll just confess. I only acknowledged this to myself as I was trying to justify my original post. I've always been jealous of Tolkien's miraculous success in his goal, his characters, his world, his devotees. He seems to have done everything perfectly right. So I apologize, all my reasons were superficial and on-the-fly.

[katycarl]

Obviously I have no window on your motivations, but maybe that's a little harsh on yourself. I think that you touched on something important, if the way you said it was a bit hasty.

I do want to talk, still, about how it is that Tolkien was "in a vacuum" - in some ways, good ways, I think he was at least somewhat sealed off from his culture. Yet that very sealing-off, in a kind of monastic paradox, was exactly the right place from which to talk to his culture. Why was that? (Any takers?)

[cristina]

katycarl said:

I do want to talk, still, about how it is that Tolkien was "in a vacuum" - in some ways, good ways, I think he was at least somewhat sealed off from his culture. Yet that very sealing-off, in a kind of monastic paradox, was exactly the right place from which to talk to his culture. Why was that? (Any takers?)

From what I've read about JRRT, I think it was because of his temperament. He was melancholic and reclusive by nature. At the same time, he was very perceptive.

[cristina]

walker said:

I guess I'll just confess. I only acknowledged this to myself as I was trying to justify my original post. I've always been jealous of Tolkien's miraculous success in his goal, his characters, his world, his devotees. He seems to have done everything perfectly right. So I apologize, all my reasons were superficial and on-the-fly.

Well, it is hard not to be envious of JRRT. And I've seen worse reasons for not liking LOTR. I've read a review of the movies that criticized LOTR because good and evil are too clear cut (they're not) and because of all the characters, only Gollum has passions and it's for some lifeless ring (huh?).

[katycarl]

You're right, Cristina -- that criticism of the movies is just senseless. One wonders if the reviewer was awake the whole time.

And I think we've all experienced a little Tolkien envy from time to time. It's normal -- nothing to be ashamed of.