Tolkien wasn't an entomologist.
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very good.
nabokov was: read any of him? somehow i doubt it. and we all know which one would have appealed to you, if you have done.
nabokov was: read any of him? somehow i doubt it. and we all know which one would have appealed to you, if you have done.
Last edited by uziq (2020-01-18 01:19:02)
I don't really know what he means by "no experience." I read the stuff, know the premise, and saw the 1999 version. Followed the development of the new one with cg hobbyist's interest. The clips, trailers, screencaps, tweaks, etc. It's not something that screams "GO SEE THIS" to me. Yet somehow I guess I have to actually watch the weird movie with "sexy cockroaches" in full in order to express a qualified opinion on the subject? Yuck.
It's Cats. I get that people were overreacting on rottentomatoes or whatever for the memes, but it really doesn't look very enticing.
Nothing at all to do with "anti-fandoms."
It's Cats. I get that people were overreacting on rottentomatoes or whatever for the memes, but it really doesn't look very enticing.
Nothing at all to do with "anti-fandoms."
The Silmarillion was dreary and ultimately pointless, just like Dickens. If the same people who like Dickens like Joyce then I'm fine with dismissing it without reading it.
LOTR was a great and engaging read with some interesting themes and undercurrents (and some weird poetry and songs which it would have been fine without), doesn't mean I devote all my larping time to that - life is too short.
LOTR was a great and engaging read with some interesting themes and undercurrents (and some weird poetry and songs which it would have been fine without), doesn't mean I devote all my larping time to that - life is too short.
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the same people who like dickens absolutely do not like joyce. a victorian sentimentalist and an avant-garde european modernist. do you read books at all? they are opposite ends of the spectrum. i said both of them had tricky estate executors, not they are peas in a pod. it was your blanket dismissal of anything 'culture' that yoked them together, hence my remarks about you being a giant hypocrit (and an over-defensive loser over your own pet passions, to whit) when whining about 'anti-fandoms'. do keep up.
LOTR is monotonous and a slog. the writing is functional but dry. it's literally an oxford professor spinning his course notes into a hobby. 'some interesting themes and undercurrents', O K. bad people are bad, the modern world is bad, industrialism is bad; medieval notions of heroism and virtue good; love will triumph in the end and the world will be redeemed, etc. it's all very sophisticated. and i say this as someone who actually took an old/middle-english course under a renowned medievalist professor who was taught by one of tolkien's main disciples at oxford, a certified second-generation middle earth twonk. i've read the whole lot and the underlying background lit like the dream of the rood and gawain and the green knight, and written on it, much to my misfortune.
perhaps what joyce and all those culture-bores lack is liv tyler thrashing about on a horse? strangely asexual or pre-pubescent feline/elfin women seem to be your thing.
LOTR is monotonous and a slog. the writing is functional but dry. it's literally an oxford professor spinning his course notes into a hobby. 'some interesting themes and undercurrents', O K. bad people are bad, the modern world is bad, industrialism is bad; medieval notions of heroism and virtue good; love will triumph in the end and the world will be redeemed, etc. it's all very sophisticated. and i say this as someone who actually took an old/middle-english course under a renowned medievalist professor who was taught by one of tolkien's main disciples at oxford, a certified second-generation middle earth twonk. i've read the whole lot and the underlying background lit like the dream of the rood and gawain and the green knight, and written on it, much to my misfortune.
perhaps what joyce and all those culture-bores lack is liv tyler thrashing about on a horse? strangely asexual or pre-pubescent feline/elfin women seem to be your thing.
Last edited by uziq (2020-01-18 04:47:34)
Liv Tyler wasn't in the book though.
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yes, there are absolutely no really 'human' relations between men and women in the entirety of the book. bloodless high-fantasy guff that set the tone for a lot of very poor genre writing. him and c.s. lewis have a lot to answer for when it comes to the moronic peter pan aspect of fantasy. a lot of christian prudery for you.
Last edited by uziq (2020-01-18 06:20:35)
I quite like The Silmarillion. It was my favorite of his books. But I also enjoy reading mythology and history, do it's rather taylor made for my tastes.uziq wrote:
those are not controversial opinions. tolkien's writing is very dry, flat, and endlessly descriptive. he was not a novelist by trade, he was an etymologist/linguist of old english/norse, what in the 19th century would have been termed grandly a 'philologist'. his world building is done with a metric tonnage of words, words, words. his sentences do not vary. his characters all talk in the same voice. his plots/arcs and dramatic conceits are all just taken from old norse sagas or epics. the only difference being, of course, the technical differences of the many imagined languages he came up with. but putting 4 new languages and alphabets, alien to the reader, into a book isn't literature, it's an autistic brain dump, a tweedy oxford don depositing the contents of his study or writing desk's top-right drawer onto the page.Dilbert_X wrote:
Why was Tolkien a 'bad writer'?
" james joyce's and dickens' estate are, or have been, in similarly miserable hands." Good, I haven't read any Joyce but apparently its also shit.
tolkien was criticised for his style then, he was criticised during the 'boom' of popular fantasy writing in the 1970s and 1980s, he was criticised by sci-fi writers and cyberpunks, etc. read a page of william gibson's 'neuromancer' and a page from 'the Silmarillion' and tell me who is the more engaging and exciting stylist (somehow i doubt you've read either). here's how a writer interested in language opens a novel: 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'. here's how tolkien opens: 'There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called lluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought ...' even with the intentionally old testament genesis vibe, this shit continues for about THIRTY pages. all of these entirely made-up names are no doubt interesting for their etymological roots, and i'm sure 'Eru' means something in sanskrit that would warm an erudite oxford prof's cheeks with recognition, but good writing it is emphatically not.
not to mention the fact that he gave to fantasy a cast-iron conservatism, everything determined, like his close associate c.s. lewis, by some predetermined view of the world that was hardly imaginative and more a re-dressing of some very old ideas (pastoral-sentimental pre-ww1 guff about england in tolkien, high-anglican god toss with lewis).
but can you really say you've read 1,100 pages of lord of the rings and enjoyed it? that it jumped off the page? that you sat in an armchair in a state of rapt attention, wondering just what was over that 135th escarpment awaiting your plucky fellowship?
btw joyce's estate was controlled in a different way, in that his grandson controlled strictly what was permissible research and what topics constituted libel. it's certainly never hindered the publication of his books. they are all (justly) celebrated as some of the best works of the 20th century.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Yes, a drunk wandering around a dreary town for a day is so much more enthralling.uziq wrote:
yes, there are absolutely no really 'human' relations between men and women in the entirety of the book. bloodless high-fantasy guff that set the tone for a lot of very poor genre writing. him and c.s. lewis have a lot to answer for when it comes to the moronic peter pan aspect of fantasy. a lot of christian prudery for you.
Fuck Israel
Man, there's a lot of old farts still kicking around from page 1 of this 10 year-old thread. Some hits, though, too.
"so you haven't read the book". ok, great. nice to know you're a member of an anti-fandom, dilderp.Dilbert_X wrote:
Yes, a drunk wandering around a dreary town for a day is so much more enthralling.uziq wrote:
yes, there are absolutely no really 'human' relations between men and women in the entirety of the book. bloodless high-fantasy guff that set the tone for a lot of very poor genre writing. him and c.s. lewis have a lot to answer for when it comes to the moronic peter pan aspect of fantasy. a lot of christian prudery for you.
A lot of people were counting on Clint Eastwood for some reason. Was he having health issues at the time?DesertFox- wrote:
Man, there's a lot of old farts still kicking around from page 1 of this 10 year-old thread. Some hits, though, too.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +641|3964
Trivia Challenge: Can anyone remember why ATG created this thread?
Yes but I once met someone who'd read a review, so that makes it OK.uziq wrote:
"so you haven't read the book". ok, great. nice to know you're a member of an anti-fandom, dilderp.
Fuck Israel
just glad we established that. as the only person whining on this forum about anti-fandoms, which has evidently spilled out of its original topic, such is your butthurt, is you.
people dismissing books they haven’t read is nothing new. its called ignorance and has been the dish of the day for centuries. you’re not exactly adopting a smart counter to people saying Cats is a bad movie.
what’s the consensus of people who have seen cats?
what’s the consensus of people who have read ulysses?
make u think
people dismissing books they haven’t read is nothing new. its called ignorance and has been the dish of the day for centuries. you’re not exactly adopting a smart counter to people saying Cats is a bad movie.
what’s the consensus of people who have seen cats?
what’s the consensus of people who have read ulysses?
make u think
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +641|3964
It was in response to him being upset that people were making fun of Michael Jackson's death.SuperJail Warden wrote:
Trivia Challenge: Can anyone remember why ATG created this thread?
cool!
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +641|3964
Jay was right about you. You are always a sad person.
i'm a bit moody, to be honest. Life is a constant ebb and flow. I'm just a sucker for riding the highs and lows.
Do you still live in Seattle or am I remembering that wrong? Next few days are like 100% rain.
remembering wrong. I live in Southern California. It's kinda sorta drizzling down here.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +641|3964
Kobe Bryant. I don't think anyone had that one down.
This is why I don't like air travel. Man was not meant to fly.
This is why I don't like air travel. Man was not meant to fly.
that's pretty crazy.
i don't think i'm ever going to get into a helicopter in my life.
i don't think i'm ever going to get into a helicopter in my life.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +641|3964
Its always sad when a sadistic rapist dies.
Fuck Israel