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Not a retraction.
Mar. 25th, 2011 01:53 pmJust like Joe Abercrombie, I have an immense respect for the works of JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are much of the reason I am so interested in and even immersed in fantasy, and Tolkien is probably why I write dark fantasy. I think, in my vehemence to make my point about fantastic history, that I failed to convey my appreciation of that same history. I don't find the two views contradictory. The pacing of history in Tolkien is glacial and largely uneventful, not to mention entirely too well documented and chronicled over a span of that length for any sort of plausibility. And I disagree with the worldview I see as inherent in the agenda of that history -- as I discuss in my post on Tolkien as the forefather of dark fantasy, I reject the progress-negative view that we are on the end of a golden age and are now sliding into decay, with light and goodness fleeing or driven away by immortal melancholy and malaise.
But the substance of that history -- the detail, the depth, the richness, the texture, the deliberation -- it is a masterpiece, and no mistake.* Decades after reading the appendices I still remember the story of Helm of Rohan in all its chilling detail. The genealogies of the Shire give insight not only into the families of hobbits, but the psychology of the culture, which is brilliantly constructed and could not be so without the obsessive attention to folk history. Every event he describes breathes life into the books, amd even those he does not describe can be felt, the portion of the iceberg left underwater but unmistakeably present. Every tale, every family tree, every timeline with detail lavished over it builds Middle-Earth into a beautifully realized place in many ways.
But in the space in between those described events, everything seems to freeze, and those spaces are implausibly long. Hence my objection. It is also true that those who followed Tolkien seemed to learn the wrong lessons from him -- they saw the grandeur, the epic sweep of time, and filled their own books with empty years, not able to imitate the careful working of every leaf of the tree he painted**.
(Comic book creators in the 80s likewise learned the wrong lessons in gritty verisimilitude from Alan Moore, I think, but that is a whole 'nother post).
*Yes, that was deliberate.
** That too.
But the substance of that history -- the detail, the depth, the richness, the texture, the deliberation -- it is a masterpiece, and no mistake.* Decades after reading the appendices I still remember the story of Helm of Rohan in all its chilling detail. The genealogies of the Shire give insight not only into the families of hobbits, but the psychology of the culture, which is brilliantly constructed and could not be so without the obsessive attention to folk history. Every event he describes breathes life into the books, amd even those he does not describe can be felt, the portion of the iceberg left underwater but unmistakeably present. Every tale, every family tree, every timeline with detail lavished over it builds Middle-Earth into a beautifully realized place in many ways.
But in the space in between those described events, everything seems to freeze, and those spaces are implausibly long. Hence my objection. It is also true that those who followed Tolkien seemed to learn the wrong lessons from him -- they saw the grandeur, the epic sweep of time, and filled their own books with empty years, not able to imitate the careful working of every leaf of the tree he painted**.
(Comic book creators in the 80s likewise learned the wrong lessons in gritty verisimilitude from Alan Moore, I think, but that is a whole 'nother post).
*Yes, that was deliberate.
** That too.
