Ah, I've had a bad day and I welcome something to be angry about. This is not why the book was torn apart. Hobbit second edition was entirely continuous with LotR. The above, as stated, would not be difficult to do, which is why someone is doing it. "Continuity" and multifarious footnotes etc are not problems. Jackson's individual take on the style and atmosphere is. Don't blame Tolkien for Hollywood-created tripe. Sauron and Aragorn, yes, but I defy the author to point to a single myth involving a character remotely alike to Gollum. Hobbits (Gollum is a sort of Fallen Hobbit) are famously Tolkien's own creation. In addition, bringing myth to life -- popularizing the Kalevala and Beowulf and so on -- was a groundbreaking idea in 1937. That's dumb. And meaningless. If Moorcock is one of the five people I meet in hell I will kill him, and then myself. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone who has written 70 "novels" is not a good novelist. Tolkien wrote four (basically). People are still talking about him. Moorcock's name will die when he does, thankfully. These are two distinct ideas; trope-y scifi and hero's journey fantasy. Trope-y scifi I'll give him, not that he ever wrote anything better, but hero's journey fantasy was simply not a fantasy subgenre at that point. It is now -- though actually it's been destroyed by idiots like Moorcock. The content doesn't matter; the quality does. Zelazny and Delaney could write, or else "New Wave" scifi would've imploded. Almost all modern "political/realist" fantasy sucks, that I've read. Yes, and he's probably stupid enough not to realize that's a compliment. Yeah; I've read this, it's pretty clever at times. Manages to call Tolkien a whatever-the-fuck of middle class conformity and make me laugh, unlike Moorcock, whose name I've been trying to turn into a dirty joke this whole time. I'm about to stoop to the obvious. Aha. Ha. Holy fucking christ. Elric the drug-addicted albino never got a movie, Michael? I'm not sure why. There's a fundamental misunderstanding present in modern fantasy, in Moorcocksucker and in anti-Tolkienites. Yes, Tolkien's stories are (kinda) black and white. So is Narnia, so is Prydain, etc. No, that isn't a valid criticism. Morally-based fantasy was a vital stepping-stone on the way to a more complex genre. Allegories for the Bible or other ancient mythology don't have room for goddamn one-legged albinos with drinking habits, or for moral relativism, for which the albinos are a metaphor. That's not the message of Lord of the Rings or any other foundational example of the genre. Even George RR Martin, the preeminent modern proponent of "realistic fantasy" has perhaps missed the point, regarding his comments in the past about Tolkien. His books are great, but they shouldn't be set up as some antithesis of Tolkien. They wouldn't exist without Tolkien. This article is fucking confused. It started off with half a thesis, decided to involve the Hobbit trilogy to maintain relevance, and let whatever feeble point it did have slip through its fingers in the wash. -- Yes. He was 50th, probably undeservedly, although I didn't read the rest of it, save to ascertain that, lo, behold, Tolkien was in the top ten (and should have been first or second).The latter is the third part of Jackson’s “The Hobbit” sequence, a book once considered a delightful fable that has been torn asunder to make its story fit in with the vast continuity of the earlier films, while also trying to honor every one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s footnotes, appendices, and letters.
Gollum and Sauron and Aragorn were drawn from mythic tropes
Moorcock thinks Tolkien’s vast catalogue of names, places, magic rings, and dwarven kings is, as he told Hari Kunzru in a 2011 piece for The Guardian, “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class.”
Nevertheless, Moorcock might be someone to trust in these matters. From his first job, editing a Tarzan fan magazine at the age of seventeen, to his seventieth novel,
Moorcock and his peers had become tired of the dominant science-fiction landscape: vast fields of time travel, machismo, and spaceships, as well as the beefcake heroes of the fantasy subgenre “Sword and Sorcery.” The Golden Age of Science Fiction, held aloft by authors like Frederik Phol, John W. Campbell, and Robert Heinlein had, by the nineteen-sixties, sputtered out into a recycling of the same ideas.
In 1978, Moorcock did a more thorough takedown in an essay called “Epic Pooh,” in which he compares Tolkien and his hobbits to A. A. Milne and his bear.
Tolkien could be found in songs, Harvard Lampoon parodies
Because Moorcock is a fiction writer, it was only fitting that he would offer a critique of Tolkien through his own work. In the nineteen-seventies, swimming in the shadows like a remora alongside Tolkien’s legacy, was a hero of sorts with a slightly darker nature than that of Bilbo or Gandalf. His name is Elric, a frail, drug-addicted albino and the reluctant ruler of the kingdom of Melniboné, where revenge and hedonism are abiding characteristics, and human beings are enslaved.
In 2008, The Times newspaper named Moorcock in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Far be it to interfere with another's high dudgeon, particularly when it's you on a tear about Tolkien. But a couple quibbles: Allow me to intriduce you to my dear friend John Bauer. He was just an illustrator, true. But all he really illustrated were fairies and trolls. And he was a fuckin' rock star. When he was questioned in Italy about a murder by accident, it caused so much of a press flurry he had to cut his vacation short. And when the boat he was on capsized and killed him and his family, the wreck did a whistle-stop tour all through Sweden so everyone could see the "Ghost ship" where the fairies and trolls had their vengeance on poor mr. Bauer. The anthology he drew for, Among Gnomes and Trolls, was kind of the Saturday Evening Post. And I mean, look at this. It's 1908 and you've got Lord of the Rings, Led Zeppelin and Molly Hatchet in one watercolor. Tolkien was sixteen when this was first published. We'll also mention that Sagas were never particularly underground; for Scandinavia they were Chaucer. Hell, I had to read a few in comparative literature. Finally, Robert Howard had been making bank off of Conan the Barbarian for five years by the time The Hobbit came out. Howard's Conan was a lot more Viggo Mortensen than Schwartzenegger; Tell me this doesn't smell like Middle Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian To be clear - I got no skin in the game. I've been avoiding Moorcock for 30 years now - he was much adored by people whose tastes I distrusted when I was 11. Tolkien's influence is unquestionable and he created a lot of cool shit. But he also wasn't the only game in town. In addition, bringing myth to life -- popularizing the Kalevala and Beowulf and so on -- was a groundbreaking idea in 1937.
According to some scholars, Howard's conception of Conan and the Hyborian Age may have originated in Thomas Bulfinch's The Outline of Mythology (1913) which inspired Howard to "coalesce into a coherent whole his literary aspirations and the strong physical, autobiographical elements underlying the creation of Conan."
You told me last time we had this discussion to look up some John Bauer, so I did. I acknowledge the point. Hobbit was not the only game in town. The game, but not the only game. I avoided bringing up the early sections of The Once and Future King, written almost exactly when the Hobbit was, because it obfuscated by anti-Moorcocksuckerian point. And I'd never really known that about the origins of Conan the Barbarian -- though only in broad themes does that poem evoke Tolkien, not in artistry. Honestly the poem reminds me more of Terry Brooks-style fantasy. Faux high. Equivalent to pulp. No accident. Tolkien was, of course, unique in many more ways than just being the vanguard of the revival of mytho-fantasy. But I'll just remind you that he had more or less written the Fall of Gondolin and probably a good bit of the Hobbit in his head by that age. This last is addressed back to the New Yorker and Moorcocksucker: for Tolkien it was about the languages and the history. It wasn't about denying Occupy Wall Street or whatever the hell they're blathering about. EDIT: ever read this? It was around at roughly the time you would've been getting really into fantasy.Tolkien was sixteen when this was first published.
As an Oxford don, Tolkien was very much an establishment figure. No doubt much of the anti-Tolkien resentment among Moorcock et al derives from the belief, probably justified, that his class background was the ultimate reason for his becoming the main game in fantasy town. Other writers of comparable talent remained in pulp obscurity.This last is addressed back to the New Yorker and Moorcocksucker: for Tolkien it was about the languages and the history. It wasn't about denying Occupy Wall Street or whatever the hell they're blathering about.
Asimov? Dean Koontz? Stephen King? I haven't read Moorcock; but I do think there are authors both prolific and good. (Yes, Koontz and King have a lot of mediocre stuff, but they also have a lot of good.)I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone who has written 70 "novels" is not a good novelist.
Asimov, the exception. But he was a) unique in that he wrote fiction and nonfiction interchangeably and b) ironically one of those old guard authors who based his scifi in hard science, which the article dismisses so quickly. I haven't read much Koontz or King but I've never liked any of it really. Except this.
Moorcock, whose name I've been trying to turn into a dirty joke this whole time. I'm about to stoop to the obvious.
Forgot: should mention Chronicles of Amber specifically, because it manages to be on the vanguard of all that stuff the article blathers on about while also incorporating classic fantasy elements and paying homage to Tolkien, TH White, etc. Best example of so-called realistic fantasy I've ever read.
I read all the Elric stuff when I was a teen and loved it. Few years ago a I picked up the first few novels and reread them, they didn't hold up well. They aren't bad but they do seem a bit silly. They get credit for not holding to any of the most standard fantasy novel structural conventions (boy on a farm realizes he has a secret power or boy walks through portal and is destined to save the world shit). The Cornelius Chronicles blew my mind in high school, they were like nothing I ever read before. Strange book, it has three or four authors if I remembers right, all writing a story on a character framework that Moorcock set up. It just went places I hadn't yet gone at that age, might not hold up well either. You can probably find the Elric books for a buck a piece and read one in an afternoon.