This Turned Into A Tolkien Rant

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I have finally read through the entire Silmarillion.

Good GOD, that was boring.

It shouldn't be. There was a goddamn fistfight between the Dark Lord and a giant light-eating darkness-spinning spider, which ended when the Dark Lord tag-teamed 75 Balrogs with their flaming whips and swords to drive the monster off. That should be interesting to read. But Tolkien's need to be all high saga narrative style whenever he's writing about Elves makes it mind-numbing.*

Also, his total Mary-Sueing of the entire species of Elves still bugs me. He keeps insisting that they're the fairest and wisest and noblest of races and they could totally beat you at everything and they're the best times infinity, and yet the entire Silmarillion consists of them bashing each other with swords because they have FEELINGS. And they seem to be rather forgetful. Rather than improving their skills, they made all the nicest stuff right at the beginning of time, and then it all got destroyed and they forgot how they did it and so they just sat around making less-awesome things and stabbing each other with complexly-named swords. Tolkien's contention that The Old Ways Are The Best Ways leaves his world unnervingly stagnant.

I do like to entertain myself, though, with the idea that Elves (or at least some of them) are color-blind. This is my explanation for their obsession with white and grey and silver. It's a stupid thing to complain about, but I really do get bugged with the lack of color in their world, so it's fun to think that all the soft grey EVERYTHING is actually riotously colorful. And yes, I know I am full of shit, but dammit I had to do something to get through this thing.

It makes me wonder why the hell The Hobbit is one of my favorite books, when The Silmarillion bores the hell out of me and LotR annoys me with its terrible dialogue, incessant musical numbers, and long bookends of hobbit fuck-aroundery. Maybe Tolkien's just a better writer when he gives up trying to sound magnificent. Or maybe the visions in his head are far cooler than the words he can put to them. But they are impressive visions, so even after all my ranting, I gotta give it to him--the guy's imagination had STYLE.


*Makes me want to reread David Eddings' books, because of his contrasts between the High Fancy Narrative Style and What Our Heroes Really Said--the latter of which is a lot less forsoothy and a lot more grumbly.

Comments

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Eddings for the win!!!

Maybe the Elves see colour like the Crystal Singers in that Anne McCaffrey trilogy ;)

[beccastareyes]

Well, if elves are color-blind, then maybe they focus more on textures and stuff. (And now I'm picturing elvish lace-makers and knitters who churn out awesome things, but it's mostly in white and gray.)

I always thought the Silmarillion was more of 'Tolkien publishes his history of Middle Earth because he knows he'll never have time to turn it all into novels'.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

A lot of the sagas are all "it was better in the old days" and "we had better stuff in the old days" because they weren't written down until long after the fact, and by then people HAD forgotten how to make the really spiffy stuff. There are stories in the end days of the Viking Age of people raiding tombs because the older swords were made better.

And Tolkien was very influenced by the sagas.

[willowistari.livejournal.com]

I loved the hobbit and the lord of the rings, had to fight to get through the silmarillion though, and honestly I don't remember much from it. :x

[shadesofmauve]

I don't mind the occasional saga-like "It was better in the old days" world, but it does give that feeling of extreme stagnancy, and it's almost obligatory in high fantasy -- possibly because so many people emulate Tolkien. It gets old -- dual meaning intended. "Oh, ho hum, let's see what you call your long-extinct wonder civilization. That you've never bothered to study. With technology you never even tried to emulate or reverse engineer."

[redbird]

To be fair, J. R. R. Tolkien knew that the Silmarillion wasn't a novel, and never tried to publish it.

I don't know whether he expected his son not only to live off his inheritance, but to do so by publishing things that Professor Tolkien chose not to publish in his lifetime, and in some cases left incomplete. (What novelist would publish Unfinished Tales with the title being an actual description of the contents, rather than, say, a story about someone who was never satisfied enough to send their work to an editor?)

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

This is why I'd like there to be a Silmarillion film (or several). Jackson would alter the hell out of it, but he'd at least make it interesting.

I think the Elven colourblindness might be a result of their early years and the story cosmology. They woke up under starlight, the only greater light source being the Two Trees which were way the hell over in Valinor and which, from the description, seem to have washed everything in gold or silver during the apex of their brightness. After the Trees were destroyed, everything was in a sort of eternal twilight until the Sun and Moon were made. So it could be that for the first 5000-odd years of their existence, there weren't a lot of colours for them to use. And of course those that came later would pay homage to this period.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

I have never managed to get more than 1/4 way through the Silmarillon. Boring. As. Fuck.

I love the elves, but at times they can act like total assholes. Like the ones in Mirkwood. And the ones who refused to help the dwarves.

I find the color blindness (lol) of the elves an interesting contrast to the rest of the world they exist in. I see it as them being so 'refined' that they are above color, vibrating at a higher plane of existence as it were. I thought the elven city in LOTR was incredibly beautiful, but I'd get tired of it after awhile. Like you, I'd need color. Those patios that extend out over the cliffs would be covered in begonias and the archy buildings would all have wisterias growing on them.

[allamistako.livejournal.com]

I find Eddings supremely tedious and boring...

[hrhleia.livejournal.com]

I have never read the Silmarillion, but I think I did start and couldn't get into it. But I loved The Hobbit and LOTR even when I first read them. Two Towers seemed to take forever, as if they spent months in the grassland chasing orcs and walking towards Mordor, but the story overall was great. I wonder if because I read so fast, the dragging/high narrative doesn't take as long, so I didn't notice it as much? And everything goes faster if I've already read it. But I love Eddings' works because they're so much more fun, with snark and candid characterizations everywhere. The repetition didn't bother me, because even the characters noticed it, so it seemed like something Decreed By Fate and deliberate, not that he couldn't come up with anything else so wrote the same story twice.

I think the colorblind elves theory is intriguing, though.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Okay, you've done better than me. I could never make it through The Silmarillion. It is nigh unreadable. I loved LOTR though.

With The Silmarillion there is at least the excuse that it wasn't really written (in its current form) by JRRT. It was cobbled together by Christopher from various drafts and such, none of which could be said to be in any way "final". Also, it covers a ridiculously long period of Middle Earth history. The Quenta Silmarillion is not a story. It has summaries of stories in it.