I agree that the pages Paul mentions in MEN OF THE SHADOWS are boring, very
uncharacteristic REH.
Now back to Tolkien. I think the failure of some people to "get through" LOTR has
more to do with
their personal tastes than any deficiencies in the story. They are either immediately
turned off by
the "hobbit-cuteness" of the first few chapters, which goes against the grain of their
blood-and-thunder leanings, or they have been raised on soap-opera fantasy dreck and
prefer
plot-telling to story-telling.
These people don't want to read (an act which requires a certain contract with the
author, an
agreement to fill in the space between each line with further imaginings of your own),
they instead
want to be TOLD. And lacking imaginations, they fail to grasp the joy in the
unknowable or the
mysterious, or what they are missing by being spoon-fed. They don't see that they are
grown-ups
now, and that instead of baby-food or Fruity Pebbles they could be having steak.
Taking this analogy further, I would categorize authors who severely challenge (like
Clark Ashton
Smith, Franz Kafka, James Joyce) as going too far, or as being akin to the wild
cuisine of the Third
World, like monkey brains or bull-dick or whatever. You're going to have some people
who enjoy
going out on a limb and eating (or reading) stuff that isn't entirely comprehensible
or palatable,
but which gives them the feeling of having stretched their horizons. But most will
take a pass.
But Tolkien is a good steak, which means his dark secret is that his books are adult
fare that some
lucky kids manage to get to know early on. Jordan is hamburger, representing those
endless
fast-food excursions, the supremacy of the expected and the speedy.
The people who really adore Tolkien are the kids who spent their youth absorbing books
on Arthurian
and Nordic mythology, and who reveled in the peculiar verbal mannerisms and stylings
of those
stories. Those stories, like LOTR, felt OLD. They sounded OLD, and one feels like
they are reading
a long-hidden manuscript that is almost crumbling under one's fingertips. I always
have the urge to
"blow the dust" off of LOTR when I pick it up, the way I would an old family Bible.
The biggest problem with people who imitate Tolkien is that they write epics
concerning non-epic
events and characters. If I see another farmboy suddenly become a "chosen one" I'll
throw up.
Hobbits were not farm boys, nor was their story presented by Tolkien as epic..at least
until LOTR.
But by then it wasn't their story anymore, just a story told from their POV. The
story, the true
STORY (not the plot, mind you) of LOTR actually concerned Tolkien's greatest creation
(or
reinvention, if you will), the elves. Not the standard fairy-elfs of other stories,
but the grand,
majestic, tragic elves that haunt immortality with their sadness. The Hobbits provide
an integral
thread in the tapestry, but they are far smaller than said tapestry. The elves
dominate the
tapestry. Everything that is ancient or epic or interesting inevitably leads back to
them. They
have a hand in everything. They are worthy of their "epic-ness" in every sense of the
word. A far
cry from the heroes of Jordan's "Dawson's Creek" characters who romp around affecting
the whole
course of the world.
LOTR isn't a book to "get through" on your way to the next MacDonald's. Like an old
copy of Nordic
Myths, Beowulf, or the legend of King Arthur, it is to be savored, imagined, and
unearthed (likely
with multiple readings). It only gets boring if you turn off your imagination, and
then start
subliminally screaming for the next, expected, breathless plot point, which your
subconscious has
been trained to demand like a Pavlovian crack addict, having been weaned on far too
many books which
do all of the work for you while simultaneously sucking all of the DELIGHT out of it
for you as
well. Delight denotes pleasant SURPRISE, and surprise is something in short supply in
bad fantasy.
"Where are the gaudy fruity colors, where is the sugar-kick, where is the
snap-crackle-pop?" some
brains wail, and all the while the soft, silky scent of a good steak wafts under their
nose, quietly
beckoning....
I think I better get lunch...probably gonna be MacDonald's....
Leo
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Scotty Henderson
> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 12:14 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [rehfans] Thud and Blunder revisited
>
>
> From: Paul Herman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 11:06 AM
> Subject: RE: [rehfans] Thud and Blunder revisited
>
>
> > [Paul Herman] Well now, I can still remember the first time I tried
> > to read Valley of the Worm. I gave up after the fourth page of sweeping
> > historical background about where Niord came from. That was a big sidebar
> > to an otherwise good story. There are some other REH stories that suffer
> > that same problem, to me. What was it, Men of the Shadows, where more
> than
> > half the story is telling the background of the Picts in a dream sequence?
>
> The sweeping story of the trek to new lands I found very much a part of this
> story Part of his drifting peoples concept. For whatever reason I never
> found REH boring in this story whereas I was never able to get through
> Tolkien LOTR. Howard wasn't always perfect but if the number of times this
> story has been reprinted is any gauge then the editors did not have a
> problem with it. I don't recall the other tale but perhaps the background
> and dream sequence was the story.
>
> Scotty
>
>
>
