When I was in graduate school, I met a very nice guy, Dan McCracken, author of the first top-selling computer-software book (on FORTRAN), who gave me one of the most valuable insights I have received on writing: that there almost always comes a time when you can’t fit your material into a neat, tidy, logical framework and you just have to start quoting from the manual. That there is always an “other” category.
So the first part of this piece is that “other” category.
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Looking back on this series, one thing that I regret is that I didn’t say clearly that I feel the character Sauron is extraordinary in fiction, or at least in fantasy and fantastical science fiction. The reason I feel that way, I think, is because Sauron is as far as I can tell always profound in his evil. His tortures and his malice always seem to me to be global, earth-shaking, and not really petty in their motivation or ascribable to petty personal flaws or grievances. The mystery that Tolkien surrounds him with, and Tolkien’s description of his effects on Middle-Earth, rise above all that. And in the fantasy fiction of anyone you care to name, from the Lord Foul of Donaldson to the antiGod of Robert Jordan to the ambiguous, psychologically crippled evil-doers of David Weber, I just don’t get quite that same sensation of darkness untinged by dross.
Somewhere in this series, I promised a look at Tolkien’s extraordinary use of colors in his writing, and I’m going to chicken out. The piece should have gone after Lothlorien, and I missed the opportunity, and inserted now it just feels like I’m stretching the series out too long. So let me very briefly here sketch out what I was going to say.
I decided to take a sample of three great authors and compare them to Tolkien. Proust Recherche, Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hardy Far From the Madding Crowd. French, American, English.
Tolkien: I found that he uses bright primary or kingly colors: Green, blue, sometimes yellow, silver, gold. And he uses them sometimes as “themes” to express someone or something: silver for Galadriel and the night of Lothlorien, green for Tom Bombadil’s house. But behind that is “semi-colors”: light, dark, white, black, shadowed, aflame. The primary and kingly colors stand out from a background of these, usually in the context of Nature. And that is why I always feel Tolkien is bathed in color, especially the colors of Nature.
Proust uses colors sparingly, subtly, in a sophisticated way. Mauve, chartreuse. To describe the frail elegance of his aunts, iirc. It gives a visual equivalent of the smell of a madeleine, the last subtle seasoning of basil, to complete his word-picture of feelings and memories.
Hemingway uses colors in a way surprising to me. It is as if he takes a still photo of the scene behind the character. This shirt is khaki. This field is brown. And the effect is to heighten our attention to the one thing in the scene that is extraordinary: The extraordinary individuality of the conversation of his characters in the scene.
Hardy uses absolutely no color at all, in all of three samples I took of characters interacting in the countryside. That’s surprising from an author who has shown he is well aware of tangled bine-stems and darkling thrushes. I think he thinks of Nature as a painter does: either a still-life, or else meaningless background, but never both Nature and the individual integrated and expressing each other. And that raises the question in my mind, is there a painter who fully integrates Nature and the individual? Maybe Gauguin?
I conclude that none of these three achieves the integration of Nature and ourselves in glorious color and luminous semi-color that Tolkien does. Their use of color has other virtues. Not that one. And I suspect that’s true of most of the other writing of their cultures, as well.
Some readers may have gotten the impression that I idolize Tolkien. That is not true. I think that Tolkien:
· Was a sexist. Was of his time, but should have been better. Wrestled with his stereotypes and his not so empathic adoration, but should have gone out of his comfort zone.
· Was too much the conservative, parochial Oxford don in his attitudes towards kingship. His love of fantasy lords did not serve him well in this connection.
· Shared to too great a degree C.S. Lewis’ distrust of science and the social sciences, lumped unfairly together, in relation to technology and government. I think he would have been too unempathic of environmental scientists because they were (a) scientists and (b) often employed by government.
· Failed to make his Orcs “work” in the story, and failed to resolve completely the contrast between funny and exotic names and speech and the profundity of the issues, places, and people.
The one thing I think I can say of him is this: that he took a gift for language and a glorious imagination, and the simple hobbit-virtues of laughter, and caring, and stubbornness, and clambered and oozed and clawed his way upward through the course of his long life to the stark raw edge of writing greatness.
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The second half of this final piece. First a user poll, and then my thanks to the readers who have stuck with me so far – and a question.
The user poll. Two questions. First, I promised one thing at the beginning of this series – remember? I want to see if you feel I accomplished my goal. One note: there is a theorem in Artificial Intelligence math that says that in a world like ours where areas of uncertainty far outweigh areas of certainty, the quickest way to doing better in that world is to learn from failure, not success. So please, if you have a significant concern, be honest, and share it in the comments. I won’t do what you ask, if you ask; but I will listen carefully, and I will in most cases do something.
Second question. I have some plans about what to do next. I am going to ask you to vote on a very skimpy description of them, in the comments. For the most part, they really have nothing to do with Daily Kos, or Tolkien, unless you think they might be of worth to you readers of Tolkien and Daily Kos. And I won’t promise to do anything about your opinions at all. It is just that over the course of the last two months, I have come to appreciate and value many of your thoughts, in general and not just about Tolkien.
These are the possibilities:
(1) A Very Brief Capsule History of Information and its Effects on History
(2) Of Fantastical Matters Indifferent: Being the Adventures of Davie and her boyfriend Jennifer Beginning in the Year of Our Nutter 1638
(3) Jeffrey Sachs “Age of Sustainability”: How We Have Far-Underestimated the Role of the UN in Making the World Better
(4) The Occasional Diary of Gaffer Gamgee: Concerning Mayor Two-Timin’ Trump, Lotho Pimple, Mitch the B O’Connell and his wife Elaine the Pain, Ted Sandyman, Perfect Pelosi, “Bee’s-Knees” Ocasio-Cortez, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and others in the last year of the Third Age.
One note before the thanks. Quoting Jacques Brel in a couple of places in this series has given me the thought that it might be of use to the Daily Kos community (or, at least, those of us who aren’t French) for me to do the same thing for Brel as I have just done for Tolkien, for some of his songs, some day. I think that in some ways, Brel is as profound and heart-breaking as Tolkien, in his own way. He may not be very accessible to women, at first; but if you come to understand the meaning of his pronouncement “Je n’ai jamais ecrit un chanson d’amour” (I have never written a song of love), you may find him almost as profound as I do. Let me know if that’s of interest. And yes, I will make as many mistakes as I did in this series, and more.
The last, last, last, last thing. Thank you. You may not realize it, but I believe that the depth and insight and caring of your comments have created something special here, something I cannot say I have ever seen in a comment section before. Something totally independent of me. And so, instead of rewarding you or thanking you further, I would like to ask something further of you.
A piece of your own. Doing two things. One, sharing a story of Tolkien in your lives, or of you sharing Tolkien with others, or of what Tolkien has meant to you in your life. It can be one that you have already posted as a comment. Two, if you could only make one point about Tolkien to me, to other readers, to the world, what would it be? What is the most important thing that you think we should know? Again, it could be some comment from before. I think the comment by Celestial Roots a few pieces ago is an excellent example.
Send it to me at wkernochan@gmail.com. I will publish it as part of this series, LOTR like you never heard it: xxx on Tolkien, when I get the time, if I get the time, with minimal editing, because I just don’t have the time. And in your comments on those pieces, please start with the two simple words I am going to start my comments with:
Thank you.
What say you, my friends (and my enemies!)? Shall we dare?
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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