tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post5133701287556474819..comments2024-03-14T06:20:59.015+00:00Comments on The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog: Quality of prose - Lost Road better than early drafts of Lord of the RingsBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-90362822516325793652012-12-31T05:31:03.161+00:002012-12-31T05:31:03.161+00:00@Troels - It seems we both agree on the quality of...@Troels - It seems we both agree on the quality of the prose; and I agree with you as to the cause: that in LR and NCP Tolkien was doing the best he could, whereas he was not writing at 'full pressure' in the early drafts of LotR - as you say he was initially writing LotR partly to oblige others, and partly in hope of making money. <br /><br />When I suggest that LR is more ambitious than the Silmarillion Legendarium to date, I mean ambition in a 'literary' or technical sense.<br /><br />Obviously in terms of scope of imagination and invention, the S. legends were Tolkien working on the biggest canvas he could conceive. <br /><br />But in literary terms, Tolkien was setting himself a very difficult challenge with LR and its rewrite - because he needed to link ancient and modern in a way that would need a 'philosophical' treatment of the nature of time; accomplish and bridge between two very different styles of writing (the 'annals' style and modern novelistic style); he needed to handle the multiple layers of semi-repeating history through which LR was intended to go back towards Numenor - and somehow to make all this sufficiently entertaining and enjoyable that the book would be published and read. <br /><br />This is, or would have been, an extraordinarily difficult matter to accomplish - in a literary technical sense.<br /><br />It is the kind of thing, the scale of thing, which James Joyce attempted in Ulysses (attempting to include the modern and many styles of ancient, the trivial and the legendary, the obscene and the elevated etc) - but it couldn't be said Joyce really succeeded, since Ulysses is dull and incomprehensible to most people (speaking as someone who read it, without compulsion, at least four times!)<br /><br />At any rate, Tolkien was setting himself a similarly complex and difficult task - as I think is reflected in the comments of the Reader who reviewed the draft at the publisher - who said she predicted that a completed Lost Road was: 'a hopeless proposition'; 'immensely interesting' yet unlikely to receive 'any sort of recognition except in academic circles' - 'one could not hold out to the author a promise of poplar success or large sales'.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-37344470901442433382012-12-31T03:09:22.619+00:002012-12-31T03:09:22.619+00:00I am afraid that I've been doing it again . . ...I am afraid that I've been doing it again . . . <br /><br />It is a part of Danish culture to be quite blunt and directly to the point, and though I do know that what is normal in Denmark will often be perceived as rude by others, I tend to forget this when I become eager. My apologies! <br /><br />The implied background for my first comment is of course that I agree that there is a difference in the quality of the prose. It is just that I think that Tolkien's special motivations for embarking on <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> (purely financial rather than artistic) is a sufficient explanation for this difference. <br /><br />Also, I should have asked in what way you mean that <i>The Lost Road</i> and <i>The Notion Club Papers</i> are the more ambitious of Tolkien's literary projects? When I would put the <i>Quenta Silmarillion</i> before these projects, it is because I perceive that story to be more ambitious both in terms of scope and complexity, but you may have some other measure of ambition in mind? Troelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07515711722551393026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-66555341652832829272012-12-31T00:55:46.584+00:002012-12-31T00:55:46.584+00:00When Tolkien started out on The Lord of the Rings ...When Tolkien started out on <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> he was essentially giving in to pressure from his publisher for a sequel to <i>The Hobbit</i>. That is, Tolkien was setting out to write a story that he did not wish to write, and I think it shows. Only when he found a way to make <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> a story that he actually wanted to tell did his prose improve significantly. <br /><br />Personally I think that this is ample reason for the difference in quality. <br /><br />Also, I do not agree that <i>The Lost Road</i> or <i>The Notion Club Papers</i> even in their initial conception were Tolkien's most ambitious works — both of these were but offshoots from the Silmarillion mythology, and in the end that honour should, in my opinion, go to his Silmarillion mythology as a whole — the tree itself and not one or two of the leaves of the tree. <br /><br />And if you wish to break it down, the <i>Quenta Silmarillion</i> was, in my opinion, the most ambitious work, with every incarnation being more ambitious (and unfortunately also less complete) that the previous . . . actually that may be a slight exaggeration, but the trend is clearly that the envisioned scope increased as the degree of accomplishment decreased. Troelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07515711722551393026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-51428322841673070102012-12-16T19:44:05.362+00:002012-12-16T19:44:05.362+00:00@DB - Same here. But we may be in a rather small m...@DB - Same here. But we may be in a rather small minority!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-83528765323465408532012-12-16T15:48:39.121+00:002012-12-16T15:48:39.121+00:00I love the Lost Road. I wish Christopher Tolkien w...I love the Lost Road. I wish Christopher Tolkien would find lots more of the Notion Club Papers and publish them all as one volume!Deniz Bevanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17134553551048836979noreply@blogger.com