JRR Tolkien Denied Nobel Due To Low Quality Prose 505
Morty writes "In 1961, C.S. Lewis nominated JRR Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tolkien did not receive the prize. 50 years later, the archives for that year have been made available, so now we know why. Tolkien's prose was viewed as low quality."
Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
I can understand that criticism, actually. As the story progresses beyond the hobbit-focused beginning and begins to link with the Silmarillion, the style of writing and characterization becomes more archaic, in the vein of the kind of ancient heroic epics that Tolkien studied, like Beowulf. There's also an enormous focus on the description of landscapes, which can become repetitive, and the constant unexplained references in foreign languages can feel wearisome and arbitrary if you're not already familiar with any of it.
The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England, starting with the fall of Númenor, analogous to the myth of Atlantis, and growing from there as Tolkien kept adding to it. The Hobbit, however, was an unrelated story that was later linked to the existing mythology, and if I had to decide, I'd say I'm a bigger fan of the Hobbit because of its lighter tone and sense of adventure. It feels more fun and relatable to me. Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
I can believe that (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who's never managed to get more than a few chapters into the Lord of the Rings books, I can see why they wouldn't want to give him a prize. It's a good story, but there are only so many thirty-page digressions on Elvish folk dancing that I can stand before my brain turns to mush.
Tolkien appeals to nerds... (Score:2, Insightful)
...because his storylines fit in with the sort of thing nerds stereotypically like. And he really did write compelling stories.
But his prose, as the archives note, is not that great. He doesn't display a technical mastery of the language.
I see no problem with this judgment.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that JRR Tolkien used probably the least efficient method of writing ever devised. He would start writing until he hit a brick wall and then he would start over from scratch. It's not necessarily wrong to do it like that, but it does take a lot longer than doing it the more standard way.
That being said, he did write more than just the LOTR trilogy and in recent times we've had much stronger writers being passed over for what will almost certainly be even more trivial crimes against literature.
Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
He is the dictionary definition of "purple prose". Pages upon pages of superflouous descriptions of every blade of grass in the Shire.
His poetry is even worse.
The books can be really hard to read in places, though the underlying story is compelling. If you can't see this, you aren't being honest.
A great storyteller, and a great author, aren't always the same thing.
Re:I can believe that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:3, Insightful)
I have always found Tolkien's books hard to read. (Not enjoyable reading)
The only one I have actually finished was The Hobbit, as it was a relatively short one and seemed a bit lighter than the others. Others I have started but never completed.
That's when I was younger though, maybe I should try those books again now that I'm a middle aged geezer.
I can understand that criticism (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh. I think we know who had the last laugh there.
I believe Nobel prize is of low quality.... (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO Nobel prize in literature is of low quality...
Come on, Dario Fo ? Doris Lessing? Elfriede Jelinek ? Jose Saramango ? and many others...
Nobel Prize in literature is mainly 'crystal tower' thing - no one reads them, no one cares.
On the other hand Tolkien changed imagination of billions - inspired books, movies, games....
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:3, Insightful)
Guys, I read the whole trilogy at age 9. Then again at 10. 11. 12. I read it once a year for a decade, more or less.
It's really a good book. I've read thousands. Very few works of literature compare to it at all. Depth, intensity . . . it's some gerat stuff.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it disturbing that you critique LOTR the way you have, yet admit you've not read them. My 10 year old children have read and loved both the Hobbit and LOTR.
Tolkien's prose does assume a higher level of reading comprehension than is common today, this is very clear. Compare any Tolkien to JK Rowling. She tells nice stories, but with such stark simplicity that I find them painfully droll.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
I've found after reading a lot of ancient Greek and Roman authors that his prose style starts to make a lot more sense. As the OP said, he really wrote more in the style of the ancient epic writers, which makes it a bit... dry, I suppose, at times. The Silmarillion shows this quite strongly, as it basically was a Greek-style mythic tale, while on the other side the Hobbit was basically a kids book. I wouldn't call Tolkien's writing "low quality", exactly, it just doesn't have the kind of flow you expect from a novel.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, has amazingly easy to read prose, but none of his works have nearly the epicness of Tolkien's. A trade-off, I suppose.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England
Have you ever stopped to think how weird it would be if Tolkien had tried to pull a L Ron Hubbard Scientology move and turn the LOTR into a "real religion"?
I stopped to think about it, and it was weird, let me tell you.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Low quality plot too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't win - so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at all the writers who never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd say Tolkien is in very good company.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet strangely enough, the post you reply to is at 5, Insightful
That, despite mostly being a discussion of writing that was not available for the Nobel Committee to consider in 1961 since The Silmarillion was not published until 1977, well after Tolkien's death in 1973. And despite the poster admitting that he had not read the books that were published and available for the committee to judge at the time JRR was nominated for the Nobel.
So, I would say instead that when a commentator that has not read the relevant books and talks instead about material that was not yet published is modded as insightful, then you know that slashdot is dead.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds... (Score:5, Insightful)
DIDNT DISPLAY TECHNICAL MASTERY?????
The man was not just a writer but the Don of English at Oxford, in other words he was THE authority on how the language worked, its history and how words are used. And in LOTR, it showed, not just in English but in the other languages he invented. The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision
There's a huge difference between being able to do detailed analysis as a theorist and produce academic monographs and being able to write good prose fiction. In fact, they tend to be mutually exclusive.
Re:I can believe that (Score:4, Insightful)
Tolkien had a lot of beautiful imagery and ideas, and that invited the reader to make up their own fascinating thoughts of what the world looked like, simply because the prose was really difficult to read. As a trilogy that forces the reader to envision Middle Earth in their mind, it succeeds brilliantly beyond the bad prose.
Huh? Sorry, but after the third exquisite description of a cloud, his beautiful imagery made me learn how to scan paragraphs to skip to extraneous bits. Kind of like porn in a way. The first thrust is arousing to watch. The second through tenth are titillating. The eleventh through ninetieth are increasingly routine. Eventually you may find yourself desperately bored, hoping the actors change position or fall in a vat of boiling lead, or something interesting.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind of like H.P. Lovecraft, really. Imaginative world, writing is meh.
It's amusing that Tolkien was nominated by CS Lewis, another person whose religious commitments made his work far more shallow and one-dimensional than it could've been.
Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
And let us never forget that sterling writer who snatched the Prize from Tolkien's grasp - Ivo Andric.
Yes, that Ivo Andric, that basically noone has ever heard of, 50 years after the fact....
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Low quality plot too (Score:3, Insightful)
Gandalf was afraid to take the ring because the promise of such power was too alluring. In the right hands (i.e. my hands) it could be used to right all the wrongs of the world. Would the Eagle chief be less susceptible? Would *you* trust him to destroy the ring?
Hobbits were resistant to the allure of power because of their live-and-let live ethics, even Gollum showing strength against the ring. The redolent Bombadil episode probably was left in solely to make the pont that the ring had no use for him, nor he for it. It would have been fascinating had Tolkien developed the potential of the ring to other groups like the treelike Ents. But maybe he thought the story was getting overlong.
Not at all a low quality plot!
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, yes, Moby-Dick.
Damned if I can remember *anything* about the plot of that story, but if I somehow get thrown in a time warp back to the 1800s on a whaler, by God I'll be able to strip a whale and bubble the fat off like a BOSS.
He was good at making perfect squares (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a neurologist doesn't mean you'll have a lot of creative ideas. Being a linguist doesn't make you a stylish writer.
I read LotR three times (first time when I was 9 or 10) and I loved the epic story and the consistent universe, but the language is rather bland. Tolkien was certainly very meticulous, but anyone who praises him for writing style probably hasn't read anything else. Terry Pratchett or Will Self (to name only two) can often get more out of a sentence than Tolkien managed to get out of a whole chapter.
Re:I believe Nobel prize is of low quality.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if you've even read any of the authors you mention in that post. Or maybe you tried reading one, found it too complex, and went back to Harry Potter and Dan Brown...?
Re:Tolkien appeals to nerds... (Score:5, Insightful)
DIDNT DISPLAY TECHNICAL MASTERY?????
The man was not just a writer but the Don of English at Oxford, in other words he was THE authority on how the language worked, its history and how words are used. And in LOTR, it showed, not just in English but in the other languages he invented. The Nobel judges were rank amateur hacks in comparision
I think the original statement that Tolkien "didn't display technical mastery" isn't correct. However, just because he had as much knowledge of the functioning and (especially) history of the English language as anyone on the planet doesn't mean that he was going to be a technically proficient writer. My partner is getting a PhD studying English Renaissance literature and I spend almost all of my time hanging out with literature students and professors. These people know an incredible amount about language, far more than I ever will, and some of them couldn't write their way out of a paper bag (and some of them are brilliant stylists). The writing is always "technically masterful" in the minimal sense that it has proper grammar and so on, but demonstrating an ability to write correctly is much different from true technical mastery. True technical mastery is the ability to deploy the elements of language in ways that are incisive and surprising and exactly correct for whatever purpose the writer has in mind. This requires knowledge, but it also requires talent.
So, in this case, you can't merely appeal to Tolkien as literary authority, you have to give examples in his writing. Fortunately, this is trivial to do. He wasn't a constantly great stylist, but he has moments of real greatness. A simple one is the bit of Rhyme of Lore that Gandalf recites to Pippin:
Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing Sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.
(The 2nd, 4th, and 6th lines should be indented, but I can't figure out how to do that.)
This is a very simple little poemlet, and yet it does a good job of evoking the Old and Middle English remnants in our language and literature that Tolkien is always interested in bringing up. It has two fine alliterative lines ("Three times three" and "Seven stars and seven stones"), reminding us of Old and some Middle English poetry. We read the indented line breaks almost like a caesura [wikipedia.org], making this more of a three line poem with a break in the middle of each long line, the second half of each long line modifying the first half, just like Old and some Middle English verse.
The second and sixth lines are very short and staccato. If we again look at the poem as three double lines, we have pretty staccato first and last lines -- in my reading, 7 of the 8 syllables in the first double line are accented, and 7 of the 11 in the last double line are. There are precious few places for the tongue to rest, to easily tumble into the next syllable. In the middle is a wonderfully flowing double line. "What brought they from the foundered land" is straight iambic tetrameter, a verse form that just hurtles off of the English tongue. "Over the flowing Sea?" is an iambic trimeter (with a trochaic [wikipedia.org] inversion at the beginning). Put the two lines together and you have a line of ballad verse [wikipedia.org], a "fourteener", which was the great English verse line before they took up the iambic pentameter in the 16th century. The contrast of this flowing central part with the first and last double lines is startling and works to emphasize especially the last double line
Also, and most importantly, the little poem just sounds good.
This is how you argue that Tolkien was a technical master. This is just a tiny little poem, six lines only, but it evokes the whole of English poetry before it fell completely under Frenc
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not confuse popularity with quality. After all, Twilight probably gets read more than Solzhenitsyn's works.
To quote Taleb [fooledbyrandomness.com]:
Now, that is not to say that Tolkien's work was not good. But from a literary perspective, it was (and is) indeed quite mediocre.
Re:Nobel prize for literature is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very anglo-centric comment.
Ivo Andric was, and continues to be, quite popular. In fact, his work influenced both Serbian nationalism to a great extent (and unfortunately, even played a role in the Bosnian conflict and in heightening anti-muslim sentiments in the region).
I'd strongly recommend that you read his The Bridge on the Drina [amazon.com]. Amazing masterpiece.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay; outside of academic circles, which one had a bigger impact on cultural works? Consider that Tolkein's vision of dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs, humans, and their relations have had immense impact on our cultural view of what they're supposed to be like. A huge swath of nerd-dom has been heavily influenced by it (D&D nerds, gaming nerds) and the things derived from it. (Would Starcraft exist if Blizzard had not first made Warcraft, based on Warhammer?)
It's possible that that isn't the basis or purpose of the Nobel Price; but I would argue that people nearly a century later considering your work valuable is a pretty good measure of someone's work being good. In contrast, I have never heard the names of several others on the list, and likely would not unless I were specifically in a course studying literature.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, you wanna do that, you need to read Two Years Before the Mast.
If I hadn't read the book for a college class with a fantastic professor, I probably would have thought the same thing.
As I learned, though, Moby Dick isn't about the story of the Pequod - it's about the inadequacy of language to convey the awe and terror that [the whale|nature|god|death] embody. Melville tries to examine the whale from every angle - biological descriptions, literary narrative, discussion of the economic system whaling sits within, etc. and they all fall short. The only glimmer of hope he holds forth is in the human companionship and camaraderie seen in the chapter "The Squeeze of the Hand," and more narrowly, in Queequeg's cheerful [defiance of death|acceptance of fate] in the business with the floating coffin at the end.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not really a "formula", more along the lines of evolving stories based on their discarded predecessors. It was also a time when there were unexplored places Lovecraft could use for his settings which is hard to do now.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only does it take a lot less time, it's actually a reasonably entertaining story.
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:2, Insightful)
Come on.. This is Slashdot. You know 90% of the users don't look at TFS nor the TFA. You're lucky if they even read the title line before they start spewing nonsensical garbage.
[checking Morty's UID] Damn, you *really* should know by now. They've been like that since I started lurking here, a few years before I got my UID.
How were those years under the rock? :)
Re:Tolkien's prose (Score:5, Insightful)
And you found the other Nobel Price winners much more readable ;-) ?
Ever read Camus? Even in the worst possible translations from the French I find his works to be filled with incredibly beautiful prose. Every one of the man's sentences is a masterpiece. And Camus was a little upset at winning the Nobel, as he saw it as a lifetime achievement award, and he was still young when he received it (ok, well... middleyoungish, 44, and was killed 2 years later in a car crash).
Tolkien's work of course is quite wonderful from the big picture vantage point. He created an entire world (though borrowed much from Finnish mythology), and a world of allegory and metaphor that has such depth to its texture, the interpretations are manifold, unlike Camus who was a very focused and disciplined writer. However, at the molecular level, so to speak, Tolkien is sort of clumbsy with his prose. A few of his poems do stand out as folky perfection, such as the One Ring poem, and the Silmarillion is quite lovely, but, again, its in the broad strokes and metaphorical interpretation of major themes where Tolkien really excelled. You kind of have to live a life or two before you can fully appreciate Tolkien's genius... but even considering this, I'd have to agree with the assessment of low quality prose. Regradless, Tolkien is God.
Writing styles had to be "discovered" (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds a bit silly when you never think about media but just consume it but all the types of story telling, even story telling itself were at one time inventions made by a person and then carried on. The ancient greeks had theather, had comedy, had musical performance but they would be amazed if they were transported to our time, amazed and probably very confused. Same if you put us back in their time. You would be wondering what the fuck is going on on stage. You can see an example of it with black and white silent movies. The story telling, the acting, the presentation, they are alien to a modern audience. The only reason they survive is because some of the actors made the cross-over to talkies and longer movies and they been parodied enough that we think we get it. Except when the exaggerated acting was done back then, it was not meant to be a parody.
Lord of the Rings Online reads like an old novel, older then it even really is but it has managed to lodge itself so firmly in our modern culture that we are willing to make an exception for it. It reads just like most older novels, one were modern pacing has yet to be invented. It is NOT an action novel. It reads closer to a travelogue. A lot of people that like the general setting have never actually read the book because... well... it ain't all that interesting.
The novel of The Princess Bride is a bit different from the movie as in that the writer tells it as if he is rewriting a novel written by an older person whose description doesn't half match that of Tolkien and how he loved the book when his father read it to him but then finds out later that his father edited the book to only have the good bits as the REAL book has a lot of dry passages where the original author describes the currencies used or court procedures.
Gosh, sound familiar? The fans would scream bloody murder but what if the Tolkien books were reworked by a movie novelist into a more condensed, fun version?
I wonder how many Tolkien fans love the books because they don't quite get it and think it must be better then them. No it isn't. The books aren't hard to read because they are so good, they are hard to read because they were written for a different era. That doesn't make them better anymore then classical music is better then modern music. Yes, there is a lot of crap in modern music but so there was in ancient times. just that only the good bits survived.
Tolkien wrote an intresting bit of lore that caught a lot of peoples imagination indirectly (they read other peoples work based on Tolkiens fantasy) but that doesn't mean the books are anything else but not so good writing that goes on far to long and fails the simplest lesson of writing: Less is More.
Some people complain that the movies ruined their imagination... but Tolkien never left any room either. Pratchett is a far greater writer by leaving gaps for your imagination to fill in. If Tolkien ever wrote a one-liner he would next spend three chapters explaining it.
It's almost guaranteed. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . that lots of great writers will never get the Nobel Prize (or Great Scientists, etc). They can only give one per year (in each category), they can't award it to the dead. Which means, that some years (probably most) you'll have a number of nominees who really are "Nobel-material", but who get disqualified in favor of whoever gets chosen. That's the nature of arbitrary, number-limited awards.