How is it possible that Tolkien did everything so right? Reading his books feels different from all other fantasy...

>Jorge Luis Borges
My brother from another mother!

title is slightly misleading, it's more of an explanation of the storytelling techniques Tolkien used and why they work so well

Is it a bait thread? Tolkien's books were rather badly written with poor plots and their main importance is in breaking fresh ground. Haters gonna hate.

>Haters gonna hate.
You said it.

Oh, I have the first part of Book of the New Sun and was looking forward to reading it because I've seen some enthusiastic recommendations of it. Are sex scenes common? If so are they easily skipped, I'm not a fan of even "good" ones.

The sex is mostly implied.

To be fair I think people, nerds at least, read JRRT but he's.. something of a dual-layer writer.

On the basic, ye olde fantasy tropes (at least old for us nerds), done better or at least more timeless. (at least if you can manage his prose)

On the deeper side, shit needs to be reread just to catch it a little better. No, JRRT isn't at all a "deep" writer in the modern sense, at the emotional level, but the conceptual and thematic links are ciclopean. The historical aspect isn't even to worst part, I mean shit like Eowyn and his view of warfare (both in the old epics and in our time). Or Galadriel and her religious (yes, religious) story.

tl;dr you'll love tolkien as a 14 yo but you won't catch it up for real

Because Tolkien didn't write contemporary stories. He worked hard at recreating the style of an ancient text that had been translated, lost, and added to several times over hundreds of years.

>at least if you can manage his prose
Tolkien didn't have much of a prose. He mimicked the style of Ango-Saxon tales and Norse sagas which were very to the point. In fact, the only people I know who think that Tolkien wrote in prose are those that have only read the Swedish translation by Ohlmarks, as Ohlmarks was not only very bad at English, but also had the idea that a translatoor's job wasn't merely to translate the text but to rewrite it in his own style. The dude would later go on to claim that Tolkien was a cult leader and his fans practiocioners of black magic.

That's bullshit. The Hobbit is pretty much in line with fairytales' tones, for starters.

Wow. That's actually worse than that American asshole "correcting" his spelling.

I always found the world he created very "sterile", middle earth feels empty in a bad way.

The Hobbit also wasn't intended to be a serious work. It was only later written into the legendarium, and had paragraphs rewritten after publication to better fit into the larger world Tolkien had already created.

It was very big and at the same time filled very sparsely.

Ohlmark's translation was what prompted to write a translator guide for his books. When The Silmarillion was to be published in Sweden, the Tolkien estate agreed on the only condition that Ohlmarks wasn't to be allowed near it.

The "legendarium" and consequently the "canon" is a myth, ironically enough. We have finished or half-finished works, not a coherent history.

We should judge JRRT on the basis of what he meant to publish: besides The Hobbit isn't really any sillier than LOTR befor Tom Bombadil's and the Barrows.

>On the deeper side, shit needs to be reread just to catch it a little better.
Right, but that post mentioned Book of the New Sun.

Yeah. That's oddly enough what almost no one copies from him: that wasteland feeling. ME's map seems more of a collection of scenographic locations than a map of a complex world. We gamers actually copy REH regarding maps.

>tfw you realized Miyazaki of all people did something like that with Nausicaa's first locations

Actually not really that odd, but still. What we will never know, probably if it's what he meant to. Does Eriador REALLY feel as empty as in LOTR, with almost no one around? Or maybe it's because the Fellowship went on far from the roads? How much empty were Gondor and Rohan when there was no war at the gates?

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. I haven't said anything that contradict that.

>complex world

Let's say "living" world. The world actually is complex as fuck, but it feels like ruins of an older world.

Which was probably what he wanted, sure, but at the same time it's just too much empty, even ecologically speaking (seriously. Who the fuck decided that in Eriador trees basically don't grow spontaneously? Does Sauron use spells for that?).

Eriador is probably the biggest example (aside from the extinction of Arnor AND Angmar, seems the only thing that happened were hobbits and Elrond) but you get my point.

He also has a weird way of writing locations. You get a room described in exact dimensions down to the size of the rafters and then the things actually filling it added as afterthoughts. Creates this two characters are talking in a 10ftx20ft room situation.

He never really described making detours to avoid a village or hiding from a stray yeoman either. And you never really feel the presence of the common people even in the cities.

Nausicaä is much more lively, even if it could describe a world with comparative population density. Nausicaä actually interacts with the population frequently.

>complex as fuck
Well there is great detail to be found in things following along the lineages of the scare few people that actually are in this empty world. It is detailed in that regard but not that complex as the world doesn't hold that much elements to intertwine.

>Nausicaä is much more lively, even if it could describe a world with comparative population density. Nausicaä actually interacts with the population frequently.

Was thinking about the actual maps. The Valley of the wind and the locations you see in the movie have this "scenography is the key" feeling that you get with Nan Curunir.

Note that in the manga it's more "naturalistic". Well, execpt Shuwa.

tolkien was channeling another dimension

Some of my favorite Ohlmarks blunders include

>Shelob's lair
Which he managed to translate into
The female monster's thigh (Honmonstrets lår)
As said, he was really bad at English and supposedly thought that "lair" meant "lår" (thigh) simply because they sound similar.

>"In which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept"
Which he managed to translate into
Where the Firtstborn One mooed while mankind still slept (Där den Förstfödde bölade medan människosläktet ännu låg i sömn)
This seems to again be a case where homophones confused poor Ohlamrks. The English word "roamed" and the Swedish word "råmade" sound very similar, but have very different meanings.

>Translating Isengard three different ways in the same chapter
As Gandalf talks about his meeting with Saruman he mentions both Isengard, Isendor, and Isendal. In The Two Towers, Ohlmarks eventually settles for Isengård. It's well-known that Ohlmarks didn't read ahead when translating Tolkien's book (and apparently refused to go back and rewrite what he had already translated if he changed his mind on something later) which often led him translate names one way in the first book, and then a completely different way in the latter ones when he had more context. In this case, however, it seems he just couldn't decide at all. To make it even worse, Isengard isn't even an English name, but a Sindarin one and thus wasn't supposed to be translated at all.

Good for reading on the crapper, because if you run out of tp you can rip out pages and pages of scenery to take care of business without really missing anything

LOTR is an way the mosf famous post-apocalyptic novel ever. Seriously, you could basically reskin it without a second tought.

>at first the AI-Valar came and settled on the moon, united with a space elevator to the planet
>then a very bad AI came out, when they were terraforming the planet, and settled on that
>immortal and not immortal races were released, with varying degrees of success.
>magic is "good" tech of course. Some of the immortals went to the moon and back because shit wasn't perfect even there. Others started to thrive, like the dwarfs (genetically engeneered for caves)
>shit went on, in the end the bad AI was terminated, but that needed a whole lot of war and counter-terraforming.
>The immortal race mostly went up to the moon, the best mortal was given an island-continent around the space elevator
>execpt well, you know how numenor went. Here they colony drop on them and there is no more connection to the moon
>the rest, you can imagine it. I'll just add that maybe Sauron is your hardcore industrialist and Saruman tries to cheat by using computers and becoming some sort of uber-intellect
>The Shire: a long lost vault opened and smaller, preindustrial people came out and settled in remote land
>rest of the world should be more or less imaginable already, Lorien might be a satellite-illuminated land in an otherwise waste with good terraforming, Moria is your million+ abandoned vault, Rohan is mobile warfare

That idiot Ohlmarks probably made the cult claim because he got offended that Tolkien and his estate were so ungrateful for his "improvements" to the work.

This is what happens when passion, skill, experience in a field and general life experience intersect

what a joke

>To me it seems like nobody reads fucking anything.
>Or people read a blurb/summary and dismiss, or read an article and pretend they've read it. Shit's depressing.

Its easier to shit on things than put in time to depthfully engage with material on its own terms. Even then, a majority of reading is done in a very light way, primarily to feel good.

Academics isn't even a good hiding place, most of the people there do shallow readings for grades, get caught up in the production of knowledge and read whatever is fashionable.

Shit is depressing. I'm sorry.

Tolkien was writing an Arthurian Romance. There are plenty of other Arthurian Romances out there. Stop reading "fantasy." Start reading literature. That's really all the difference that there is between the two.

There are some works of literature that get tossed into the "fantasy" dustbin. But not very many. Go read good writing.

>Tolkien was writing an Arthurian Romance
Tolkien was most certainly not. He based his style primarily on Anglo-Saxon epics such as Beowulf, and gave no small critique to post-Norman literature such as the Arthurian romances or Shakespeare's plays. In fact, he went as far as to say that he regretted naming the Eldarin "Elves" because of the associations it created to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream which he detested.

not trying to defend him and a translator shouldn't ever do his mistakes, but falling for a false friend can be just a mistake, doesn't necessarily mean being bad at a language.

You are incorrect, and the pretty-vast scholarship on the subject agrees.

The last part makes me incredibly nostalgic.

No, Ohlmark's was bad at English. These are far from the only mistakes he made in his translation. He made so many, in fact, that a couple of fans compiled a list of them, which can be found in a three article long series called Sagan om Felen ("The Tale of the Faults", a play on Ohlmarks', much disliked by Tolkien, translation of the title) which can be found here:

tolkiensarda.se/new/nummer/magsidor/arfett14.htm
tolkiensarda.se/new/nummer/magsidor/art1_16.php
tolkiensarda.se/new/nummer/magsidor/art19_1.php

>To make it even worse, Isengard isn't even an English name, but a Sindarin one

Sorry for the pedantry, but 'Isengard' is Anglo-Saxon for 'Iron Fortress' -- Tolkien uses Anglo-Saxon when 'translating' older Common Tongue. The Sindarin name is Angrenost.

Tolkien is a very classical case in he loved his job and transferred that in such a way that everyone around it could get into his subject and enjoy it talk about it and remember it. if you want a modern day equivalent, then think David Attenborough through the use of tv.

...

>le comfy meme
Stopped reading there

Then why are you here?

Oh wait, hang on, I know why. Let me check my pockets... Ah, here's one!

(You)

Would you rather have it in written form? A book on how to read books?

Well, people do presentation on how to do presentations all the time.

But do they do presentations on how to listen to presentations?

It's something about a feeling of age.

Tolkien's world doesn't feel like something that is actually just made up. It feels old, even authentic. And there is something mysterious and grand about it all.

yah dude tolkien was a gamer girl sjw tumblr poster. such a nerd lol hahahaha.

Fuck off.

Pardon?

Tolkien actually was a legitimate nerd, in any meaning of the word.

Yes, it is a comfy read, because most of the places(except Mordor and such) are described as comfy places. The Shire, Rivendell, Lorien.. They're all comfy. Also, because it's a story about simple people doing great things.

Am I the only one who remembers the time when nerd was an insult and not a badge of honor people wore without doing shit for it? Take your "geek chic" bullshit to reddit or 9fag or tumblr or wherever, not here.

There's one sex scene in the first book IIRC. The PoV of the series is from an extremely unreliable narrator so a lot of what you read on the page the first time needs to be reconsidered in light of later information. It's a dense book and people have spend years and years unpicking it.

You are correct. I confused it with some other Elven name which Ohlmarks mistook for Old English and translated into Swedish.

Somehow I feel like you're an autistic virgin.

The guy made up language with friends in his free time. He made up a secret code to communicate his location to his wife while he was in the war. He fell so much in love with some of his languages that he was compelled to make an entire setting for them because, in his words, "no language without a myth is a worthwhile language". That's it. That's the whole reason middle earth exists, to satisfy his borderline autistic desire for perfection.

Tolkien was a nerd of the highest tier.

Tolkien's books, while vastly important for the genre of fantasy are, over-all, superseded by superior writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard.

Literally all we know or care about Tolkien for is Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the latter of which was a mediocre kids book.

That sense of "grounded realism" you talk about? Yea, Robert E Howard did that years before him.

>made up language with friends
Not really.Tolkien had a single friend in his life that shared his interest in constructing languages; a fellow soldier during the war. Tolkien noted that the first time they talked to each other it was because he overheard the guy say to himself "Of course, I'll mark the genitive case with a prefix!"

>"The past is everywhere and yet at the same time out of reach, overlaid permanently by the present, worn away by time and change and even fallible memory. Pain for the lost home is common to every human as we are separated from our childhoods, from our youths, from our first experiences."

this
>mfw he learned languages for the sole purpose of reading one or two old folklore books only written in them
>mfw he made his own fully functional languages up when he was still a child

ah, tripfags show their usual retardation. i swear it must be a symptom of being so desperate for attention

>mfw he made his own fully functional languages up when he was still a child

Kids did that all the time.

In fact a couple students at my middle school did that in their spare time.

>Y-Y-You're retarded!

Ahaaaaa, Loving Every Laugh

>a mediocre kids book.
Not enough sex or drama for you or what?
I hope one day, years from now, you remember what you've said here and remember what a fool you've been.

>he thinks Tolkien is better than Edgar Rice Burroughs

Sshh.

>Not enough sex or drama for you or what?
>sex
>implying that's hardcore

Kek, old childrens fairy tales were littered with sex, violence, gore, and pure horror.

Who do you think were reading those pulp magazines that Robert E. Howard was writing for back in the 20's/30's? Kids and young adults.

>He thinks Burroughs is even read these days.

>Not enough sex or drama for you or what?

Are you retarded, or have you never read an old childrens fairy tale?

truth hurts, don't it? nothing like being so attention starved you have to tripfag on Veeky Forums

>Who do you think were reading those pulp magazines that Robert E. Howard was writing for back in the 20's/30's? Kids and young adults.
lol, sorry, I think you'll find that fantasy was invented by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1955

get some knowledge, kid

>he thinks burroughs is even read these days

Didn't they JUST make a movie based on Tarzan like last year? And didn't Disney spend over 200 million dollars on a movie that was supposed to kick-start a franchise based on his Barsoom series?

Aren't you a raging retard who has no literary knowledge or understanding and goes off memes because you don't actually read books?

Yes.

I bought a full set of the John Carter of Mars books with the Frank Frazetta covers when I was 8, 9? They were 50p each in the second hand bookshop I used to buy Commando comics from.

>truth hurts don't it
>he has to pat himself on the back in order to feel accomplished

Please, stahp

>this is what happens when you poke the autistic Tolkien fan nest

>"grounded realism"
Yes, when I think of grounded realism I think of Conan tapping into autism powers to resist the magic of evil wizards.

kek. this was way funnier than it had any right to be.

Do you suppose we could agree that Howard, Burroughs, and Tolkien were all good writers in their own way?

Or do we absolutely need to have a winner? If that's the case, why not instead explain how Howard or Burroughs did everything right, rather than how much Tolkien sucks or whatever: maybe that way we could get a bit of a positive bent to the conversation.

No, you're the one who's incorrect. LotR has nothing to do with Arthurian romances, but it has a whole lot to do with Beowulf and the Eddas.

>Reading his books feels different from all other fantasy
That is because Tolkien write the way most other authors did. His main concern wasn't to write literature, it was a hobby closer to building a model railway in one's own home. It was something intensely private to him. A personal project where the goal, rather than telling a story, was to create a story that one readily could believe to have existed for hundreds of years before he penned it.

Unlike other fantasy authors, who bore you with meaningless details about their work, or feel the need to explain references to ancient kings or mundane activities, Tolkien left those things out entirely, because those aren't preserved in real stories. Stories that recount real world events don't go into detail on mundane everyday activities because it's assumed that the reader will understand how those work on account of being able to read the story. The fact that Tolkien's narrator, nor his characters, ever bother who mention what exactly is meant by "the Wise" or who Húrin or Túrin actually is makes us feel as if there's a rich cultural history that we aren't familiar with.

But, Tolkien also didn't just make shit up as it suited him. The references mentioned in LotR aren't simple bullshit that any other fantasy author would fill his book with in the hope that it would create a similar feeling. Instead - even though they're fragmented - they all point in a unified direction, and even if you as a reader can't consciously recognize that this is the case; your brain can.

>LotR has nothing to do with Arthurian romances
m8, I'm not even that guy but... Aragorn.

Aragorn has nothing to do with Arthurian romances either. Are you high?

I happen to disagree. He built an amazing world that's incredibly fun to learn through the medium of the wiki, but god help someone who wants to actually read the actual text he wrote.

He's the most boring author I've read, and I'd almost pause to call him an author at all. He's a world builder who occasionally makes a manual to justify his worldbuilding. Like, I'm glad that someone out there is able to make it through any of his works at all, because without it there'd be no wiki to explore the world through, but it's SOOO FUCKUING BORING. It's like reading through a history text-book, but not one of the interresting history text-books, one of the boring history text-books from the 1800's that manages to make even Ancient Rome feel dry and pedantic.

It's like the text itself actively tries to make the world as boring as humanly possible, despite the world itself being downright fascinating.

You're absolutely right.

One of the main ways he accomplishes it is through song. The characters sing about their ancestors, sometimes each other, hell even about monsters (Sam's songs about the troll and the "oliphaunt" are some of my favorites in fact). You may not be told Earendil's whole story in LOTR but you get the broad strokes through the way the characters (especially the Elves) sing about him.

>Bilbo, if you have the balls to sing about Elrond's father in Elrond's own house...

Are you talking about the Silmarillion here because uh, that's kind of the whole point. It's supposed to be like reading a combination of a history book and the Bible.

I'm talking about the body of his work, but the silmarillion is where it's the most exagerated. All of his work suffers from "terrible storytelling, excellent worldbuilding" syndrome to varying degrees (though it makes it unreadable in all cases.) However, I would argue this actually makes the Silmarillion his greatest work, because he doesn't bother trying to do what we already know he sucks at (telling a compelling narrative in a compelling way that's pleasant to read) and puts all his effort into what he's a master at (creating a fascinating world.)

I don't understand, that doesn't sound needlessly shitty or reductionist at all.
How am supposed to get a big, hard superior-taste erection from something like that?

See, people say this shit about LOTR all the time. I even had this one guy get super pissed in a downright autistic way because I described something else as slow and boring and then talked about how much I like Tolkien.

I reread LOTR about every year or so and every time I think "It's going to be nowhere near as good as I remember and it's going to be super slow and bad like everyone says" but it never is and I still love it?

I think what I'm trying to say here is that i'm never going to see eye to eye with you or those who share your opinion so I've given up on trying because it's just nothing but fucking subjectivity, APPARENTLY.

...

The Hobbit is pretty good. The rest read more like history books than a story.

I guess they're kinda comfy just because they're slow and boring while also sprinkling in some pretty language and descriptions.

>tripfag being a retard
Stop the fucking presses

Just look at this thread

You know, I always though there was something wrong with me for not being able to get into LotR, but actually enjoying the Hobbit and Silmarillion, but I saw a post a while ago that made everything click. It was along the lines of 'If Tolkien had been working on Middle-Earth in the 1980s, he wouldn't have written LotR, he'd have written MERP.' Minus the rules content, probably. He's more similar to M.A.R. Barker than any standard fantasy author.