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Why Michael Moorcock Despises Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
- viburnum 3y agoWell, yeah, they’re books for children, of course they sound like fairy tales. Maybe Moorcock doesn’t understand his genre.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoThe Hobbit was definitely written for children. The Lord of the Rings definitely was not.
- nottorp 3y agoHmm looks like the essay-on-essay author has only read the Elric part of the Eternal Champion.
- coldtea 3y agoBecause he is "edgy", those old people couldn't appeal to his emo punk sensibilities /s >Like Chesterton, and other orthodox Christian writers who substituted faith for artistic rigour [Tolkien] sees the petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. This is the crux of his argument, and its an ideological one. He conflates his ideology (which is opposite to that of Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton and co) for artistic rigour (sic). The rest, about the language and such, are mere dressing. >But there’s nothing wrong with a religious person writing religious books, even if that religion is privileged, as Christianity is. How was Christianity privileged exactly? Should Tolkien's and Lewis's 1950s Britain, a 99% Christian nation, nerf its faith for some reason? (especially since, knowing the Church of England, it wasn't that strong to begin with). Christianity is (or rather was) as privileged in Christian countries, as other religions were/are privileged in countries following them.
- optimalsolver 3y agoSo does David Brin: J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress (2002): https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/
- oyster143 3y agoEvery time i re-read 'The Lord of the Rings' I'm amazed at how 'racist' it is in the literal sense of the word. Everything is built around races: the good characters are from the north/west, while the bad ones come from the south/east, etc.
- protomolecule 3y agoBecause the whole book is elvish propaganda.
- 082349872349872 3y agoMordor: "[that] amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic"
- protomolecule 3y agoYeah, I was thinking about that book[0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
- 082349872349872 3y agoHere are similar works, anyone have potential additions? Grendel The Persian Version Snow, Glass, Apples (I have half a mind to write an epistolary short story from the point of view of one of Winston Smith's coworkers at the Ministry of Truth, dismayed about Smith's paranoiac reactions to normal office routine —colleagues transferring, etc.—, his labile personality[0] in general, and his conspiratorial mindset[1] in particular. All the objective events of Parts 1 and 2 can easily be explained much more rationally than in Smith's interpretations, but Part 3, being so explicit, has thus far resisted such treatment) Lagniappe: "there can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God" https://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/141201_a18662-600.jpg https://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/141201_... EDIT: also, Bulgakov's hard-boiled detective version of the gospel (his who-dun-it has a pragmatic advantage in that although christians and jews both still exist, no extant groups claim to belong to the Senatus PopulusQue Romanus) [0] consider how quickly he hooked up with somone who merely dropped papers in front of him? [1] want someone to kill people in a random pizzeria for conspiracy reasons? Smith's your man.
- skissane 3y agoA hundred years from now, people will still be reading Tolkien and Lewis, and almost nobody will remember who Moorcock was.
- mrweasel 3y agoAnd we'll still be debating whether or not Tolkien was actually any good at writing.
- brudgers 3y agoThe Hobbit is written well enough to read aloud. Breaking the fourth wall helps. The Lord of the Rings isn't. CS Lewis was a much better writer. Tolkien made a franchise because his ideas were novel (non of Lewis's bible stories) and we've been seeing new products since he died.
- james-bcn 3y agoOrc lives matter.
- beardyw 3y agoI don't even know who he is!
- beardyw 3y agoDownvoted for not knowing who someone is. That's a first for me.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoA hundred years from now? I'll bet if you took a survey even today, vastly more people would recognize Tolkien and Lewis than Moorcock. That was probably true even before the LOTR and CON movies. Tolkien and Lewis sold a helluva lot of books. I think the Ballantine Tolkien paperbacks I had when I was a kid were something like the 40th edition, and that was (cough) a long time ago.
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- chrisan 3y agoI enjoy scifi/fantasy but had no clue who Michael Moorcock is. Are his books good or this just a jealous ranty guy?
- bellgrove 3y agoI thought he was rather well known in fantasy circles. He definitely does not have the same pop-cult status as Tolkien but his Elric series as well as Gloriana are worth reading, IMO.
- vintermann 3y agoDidn't know he was still alive. Well, he has that going for him at least.
- DrBazza 3y agoI didn't see any mention of the fact that both Lewis + Tolkien lived through World Wars. Nor the fact that those books were also written in an "era". I can't say that I'm surprised at the tone, or 'verbose' writing style of either book (think HG Wells, or Dickens for example). Compared to, say, Pratchett, post-war, humorous, short punchy sentences. Or Douglas Adams. They're literally (pun intended) of their era.
- wrp 3y agoIf you are interested in the history of Tolkien criticism, The Power of Tolkien's Prose: Middle-Earth's Magical Style, by Steve Walker (2009) is good reading.
- bellgrove 3y agoI wonder if some (or all?) of this scorn is due to LotR's pop status - many probably consider it the pinnacle of fantasy without having read through much else in the genre of that era; for many more it probably is everything they know of fantasy. His works are indeed special but there are some really great authors like Eddison, Peake, and Leiber (and Moorcock, I suppose) who don't seem to get much recognition.
- 082349872349872 3y agooh bother, here's the original article: "epic pooh" (1978) https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/en361fantastika/bibliography/2.7moorcock_m.1978epic_pooh.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/under... I don't know how closely Moorcock read his rabbits: in the Watership Down I read, Le Guin's Omelas existed as a warren, a little more realistic and a little less difficult to map to our own circumstances, and Adams had the honesty to explore the ambiguity, the decency to point out the economic and cultural benefits that Cowslip et.al. got from their arrangement. Milne, on the other hand, doesn't ever delve into the explicit delapinisation of the less fortunate.
- tmaly 3y agoIs it because of their last names and great books?