----- Original Message -----
From: Leo Grin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 1:56 PM
Subject: RE: [rehfans] Thud and Blunder revisited
> 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.
We all have personal tastes that delineate what will bore us and what will
not. That's the nature of the beast but the author is the other 50% of the
equation. The only complaint I've ever seen about Howard is that he is too
bloody. Nobody to my knowledge ever said he was boring, illiterate, or
couldn't write. Tolkien is certainly not of the latter two schools but one
might debate whether he is boring. I've read plenty of authors who went into
detail but never found it boring. Many others, were OK at first but became
boring when they repeatedly went into sidebars, effectively sidestepping the
storyline.Too much of a good thing can become boring. I found this with John
Norman years back. During that time I also tried to get into Tolkien but
repeatedly failed. LOTR starts with a stupendous introduction which I think
I finally managed to get half way through before choking. I haven't bothered
since. Maybe if I had read Tolkien before REH it would have been better, but
I doubt it. Detail can be fine when it doesn't take away from the story at
large, and offers a breather from action, but there is always going to be a
fine line between where the detail must stop and the action resume. With
LOTR because it is an established classic now, it must offer something of
value, but for some of us that offering will forever remain behind the Veil.
Scotty Henderson
