I'm not sure if he's worthy of one

I have something of a reply- that I found no paucity of imagination, variation, literary mastery, characterisation, or ordeals in the story. Mr. Wilson apparently was not captured by the story, which is OK. That he felt it pertinent to blatantly insult both Tolkien and the very large number of people who enjoyed the books (he is directly insulting every member of the Plaza) just shows that he is not satisfied with simply not liking something, but must both be Right in his tastes and understand the Truth about literature and what makes it good. Taking some of his points:

His assertion that Fairy Stories (which TLotR is) are for children is completely without foundation. He asserts it with no evidence or argumentation. I think Tolkien addressed this matter in his essay On Fairy Stories than I can here.

He says there are no serious temptations to Frodo. I wonder if he missed the parts with the Ring, especially at the end where Frodo can no longer resist the temptation. Or of the temptations, resisted or otherwise, of Galadriel, Boromir, and Gollum.

He seems to feel that 'insidious enchantments' are a necessary part of the story, which to me seems a perfectly bizarre idea. Surely many stories have gotten along quite well without them?

Apparently Frodo was 'perplexed by few problems'. I can only think on 'The Land of Shadow' and 'Mt. Doom', which contain some of the most harrowing ordeals I have ever read. Not to mention the many problems, psychological and physical, confronted by so many characters in the course of the story (Theoden, Boromir, Pippin, Aragorn...).

There are elements of dualism in TLotR- Sauron is really bad, and Gandalf and Aragorn are actually good. But for the most part, the conflicts are not oriented directly towards Sauron. The betrayal of Saruman, the treachery of Wormtongue, the temptation of Boromir, and the pride of Denethor break the simplistic picture Mr. Wilson would like to paint.

Dismissing Frodo as a 'plucky little home-grown hero' misses the mark incredibly. 'Little' is in fact the only one of those descriptors that applies unproblematically. I dare Mr. Wilson to find any textual descriptions of Frodo which show him as 'plucky'- he strikes me rather as variously melancholy, determined, and wise. 'Home-grown' implies that Mr. Wilson going to oft-tread route of equating the Hobbits with little Englishmen. However true or not this equation is, Frodo strikes me as rather too eccentric and individualistic (not to mention multi-faceted) for a characterisation of 'home-grown' to carry any weight. As for 'hero', not in the traditional sense.

He claims certain elements are not well enough developed- that is a matter of taste for Mr. Wilson, as is the assertion that they are clumsily handled. I would appreciate it he had elaborated a bit more to give us a picture on what a 'better' handling would have been like (I fully anticipate that any such 'improvement' would fall far short of the original). As for 'more of the same', the range in stylistic and topical variation across TLotR is, I would argue, significantly greater than what is found in most books. Also, how does the claim that there aren't enough Elves/Ents mesh with the claim that the books are too homogeneous?

As for little instinct for narration or literary form, I see in the books a carefully crafted and considered variation of style, pacing, word choice, and 'mimesis', executed with a mastery far beyond what is usually found in much that is called 'literature' (not to dismiss all 'literature'- some of it is quite good; just the boundary of what makes literature is rather arbitrary, and is not universal). Based on Mr. Wilson's claims, we should expect clashes of style and content, numerous awkward phrases begging to be fixed, and words obviously chosen without regard to their place in the story, as well as a flat and unvarying mode of writing. These are all either purely matters of taste, or not found.

I don't think I can address his comments on characterisation and remain civil. I feel that only one who paid a shockingly little amount of attention to the story could have missed Frodo's complex character and even more complex evolution over the course of the story (not to mention everyone else).

The most lamentable thing about this review is Mr. Wilson's inability to objectively review a story without deeply insulting those who enjoyed the story. A good reviewer's job is to analyse a book and give as accurate a recommendation as possible as to who might enjoy it and who should stay away from it. Mr. Wilson would have only children read TLotR- the massive number of non-children who have enjoyed TLotR indicate clearly that Mr. Wilson failed at his job as a reviewer.

Dear Mr. Wilson,

Enclosed you will find a copy of your review in The Nation, dated April 14th 1956, along with a disposable knife and fork. Please enjoy eating your words.

Signed,
A person with an appetite for juvenile trash

An impotence of imagination seems to me to sap the whole story. The wars are never dynamic; the ordeals give no sense of strain; the fair ladies would not stir a heartbeat; the horrors would not hurt a fly. - Hmmph!  What an outrageous piece of nonsense that statement is.

I agree with LotR when he says -
The most lamentable thing about this review is Mr. Wilson's inability to objectively review a story without deeply insulting those who enjoyed the story. A good reviewer's job is to analyse a book and give as accurate a recommendation as possible as to who might enjoy it and who should stay away from it.

Fine if Wilson didn't like the books. But as a reviewer he had an obligation to give the facts about the book, his objective opinion and as LotR said a recommendation to those he thought would like it, and those he thought wouldn't. A critic or reviewer who cannot remain objective is in the wrong job. He can't of known at that moment how big the books would become, and how respected Prof. Tolkien has become. I wonder if since then he has changed his opinion. T'would be interesting to know. And more interesting to know if he still believes his own twaddle, and how he feels about how loved Tolkien's world is.

T'would be interesting to know. And more interesting to know if he still believes his own twaddle, and how he feels about how loved Tolkien's world is.


It would be great if we found out that he had become a Plaza lurker!

Wilson spends the first paragraph or so of his review in disparaging the quotes from the likes of CS Lewis and Namoi Mitchison, used as 'blurbs' on the flap of the books' dustjackets(!) - he also takes WH Auden to task for writing positive reviews of FR and RK in the New York Times. Wilson seems to approve of Auden, except for what he evidently sees as Auden's lacuna in this case.

-for a (quite legitimate) view of these, and other NYT reviews of Tolkien's books, google 'New York Times' and 'Tolkien'.

Going back to an earlier post, Estel comments:

He can't of known at that moment how big the books would become, and how respected Prof. Tolkien has become. I wonder if since then he has changed his opinion. T'would be interesting to know.

No, Wilson didn't come to view either LotR, nor indeed Tolkien, more favourably as time went on. In 1967, both he and Tolkien contributed poems to a festschrift for Auden, on the occassion of his 60th birthday. This was published in _Shenandoah_, The Washington and Lee University review. Tolkien's poem is called 'For W.H.A', and is written in Old English, with a modern English translation on the opposite page. (Auden had attended Tolkien's lectures on Beowulf in the 1930s, and was enchanted).

Wilson's poem ('To Wystan Auden on his Birthday) is actually a collaboration between him and a poet called Louise Bogan. They each wrote alternate lines in this two-verse poem, beginning with Wilson's (rather pretentious) opening:

Auden, that thou art living at this hour
Delights us. How much duller wert thou not!
And we have need of thee. A drear dry-rot
Spreads its dank mould throughout the Muse's bower;
The orc Tolkien usurps Aladdin's tower;
The Groves of Academe are sold and bought;
And countless other things have gone to pot.
O Wystan, hear us! Implement our power.
(page 43)

Clearly, the line 'The orc Tolkien...' was written by Wilson. Now, while the poem was written in 1956 (according to a note at the bottom of the page), clearly Wilson still felt it appropriate to offer it for publication in a tribute to Tolkien's friend, Auden, in 1967 - at the height of what has been called the Tolkien 'campus cult'. There is no other mention of Tolkien nor LotR anywhere else in that issue of this journal, which was meant to be a mark of affection and respect for WH Auden. That Wilson should have put it in suggests, to me at least, that he did it purely for mischief.

I'm thinking now of an imaginary letter to the editor of _Shenandoah_ , written as if in the year 1967 - how might that go, I wonder?

halfir: I believe that the correct form of that expression is "de mortuis nili nisi bunkum".

Hm. The premises of Wilson's rant seem more like those of a modern teenager, too lazy to dig deeper and bored stiff because the pages don't go "Boom".

When he says things like "the hero has no serious temptations", it makes me wonder whether he bothered to fully read the book himself.

Just to stir the pot a bit - here is more from that review, taking in he middle bit between two quotes which I gave above: (I make no apology for quoting the passage at length) -

The hero is the Hobbit called Frodo who has become possessed of a ring that Sauron, the King of the Enemy, wants (that learned reptilian suggestion – doesn't it give you a goosefleshy feeling?). In spite of the author's disclaimer, the struggle for the ring does seem to have some larger significance. This ring, if one continues to carry it, confers upon one special powers, but it is felt to become heavier and heavier; it exerts on one a sinister influence that one has to brace oneself to resist. The problem is for Frodo to get rid of it before he can succumb to this influence.
            NOW, this situation does create interest; it does seem to have possibilities. One looks forward to a queer dilemma, a new kind of hair-breadth escape, in which Frodo, in the Enemy's kingdom, will find himself half-seduced into taking over the enemy's point of view, so that the realm of shadows and horrors will come to seem to him, once he is in it, once he is strong in the power of the ring, a plausible and pleasant place, and he will narrowly escape the danger of becoming a monster himself. But these bugaboos are not magnetic; they are feeble and rather blank; one does not feel they have any real power. The Good People simply say Boo to them. There are Black Riders, of whom everyone is terrified but who never seem anything but specters. There are dreadful hovering birds-think of it, horrible birds of prey! There are ogreish disgusting Orcs, who, however, rarely get to the point of committing any overt acts. There is a giant female spider – a dreadful creepy-crawly spider! – who lives in a dark cave and eats people. What one misses in all these terrors is any trace of concrete reality. The preternatural, to be effective, should be given some sort of solidity, a real presence, recognizable features – like Gulliver, like Gogol, like Poe; not like those phantom horrors of Algernon Blackwood which prove so disappointing after the travel-book substantiality of the landscapes in which he evokes them. Tolkien's horrors resemble these in their lack of real contact with their victims, who dispose of them as we do of the horrors in dreams by simply pushing them or puffing them away. As for Sauron, the ruler of Mordor (doesn't the very name have a shuddery sound.) who concentrates in his person everything that is threatening the Shire, the build-up for him goes on through three volumes. He makes his first, rather promising, appearance as a terrible fire-rimmed yellow eye seen in a water-mirror. But this is as far as we ever get. Once Sauron's realm is invaded, we think we are going to meet him; but he still remains nothing but a burning eye scrutinizing all that occurs from the window of a remote dark tower. This might, of course, be made effective; but actually it is not; we never feel Sauron's power. And the climax, to which we have been working up through exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine large close-printed pages, when it comes, proves extremely flat. The ring is at last got rid of by being dropped into a fiery crater, and the kingdom of Sauron topples in a brief and banal earthquake that sets fire to everything and burns it up, and so releases the author from the necessity of telling the reader what exactly was so terrible there. Frodo has come to the end of his Quest, but the reader has remained untouched by the wounds and fatigues of his journey. An impotence of imagination seems to me to sap the whole story. The wars are never dynamic; the ordeals give no sense of strain; the fair ladies would not stir a heartbeat; the horrors would not hurt a fly.

- and, to amplify another passage which I quotes above; here is that paragraph in full.

           Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes as those above? The answer is, I believe, that certain people – especially, perhaps, in Britain – have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted in Elsie Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy and which seems to have made of Billy Bunter, in England, almost a national figure. You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched.

- to take this bit in particular -

You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched.

- which is a direct dig, not at Tolkien, but at Lewis and Mitchison, who wrote the blurbs. Here, the reviewer is continuing the decidedly sarcastic tone which he uses above - 'a dreadful creepy-crawly spider! - How on earth the editor at _The Nation_ could have considered this to be an impartial review is beyond me.

Falvlun, whether or not Mr Wilson was in a position to write an objective review or not, he didn't. He wrote a rather heated review insulting anyone who did like the books, making claims that were either matters of taste represented as truths, or simply empirically false claims about elements of the books. And he published it. That may be foolish, but when says something publically, one opens it up to response. And when one has already insulted the responders... well, I don't see much that could be called jeering here, beyond a bit of irony, but of course our responses aren't filled with glowing praise.

As I said, the job of a good reviewer is to objectively review a book. If one can't do that, one shouldn't write reviews.

Even with a book like Eregon, which I find to be exceptionally poorly written, I can recognise qualities of worth, and understand why other people enjoy the books. I could also provide specific quotes of representative passages in Eregon and explain why I didn't like certain features in those passages. I like some of the aspects geordie has just posted, in that he explains his reasoning a bit (although Shelob wasn't exactly said boo to, and of course there was a bit more going on at the end than the Ring simply being dropped into the chasm- again, factually wrong). But he remains sarcastic and, more importantly, arrogant and demeaning to Tolkien, the readers, and other reviewers. There is such a thing as objective criticism, and this isn't it- this is the kind of language one uses when ranting to friends, not publishing as a supposedly useful review.

Extract from an impartial review of another long work:

Mr. Wilson has a point, not everyone likes JRR Tolkien. I myself didn't think he was all that great an author until one summer when i really got into the books. But i would have to say he has probably been forced to eat his words many many times because LotR has become and extremely popular trilogy that millions of people are in love with. It is a great series and it is very well written. The genius behind all of it is Tolkien of course and therefore he is very well liked. The plaza is one example

Nenuphar, First, I would like to thank you for your consideration of what I was trying to say. Your analysis separating the rant from the review is rather satisfying.

"objective review":
You say it can't be objective in the absolute sense of the word. Could you elaborate on what sense it can be objective? The removal of the insults and sarcasm would make it less, well, insulting, but it wouldn't change the objectivity. As you said, the function of a review is to impart the opinion of the reviewer- whether it be how good he thought the book was or who he thought would or would not enjoy it. Reading a review with the expectation of objectivity will be a disappointing endeavor; opinion is always subjective. Readers do have the expectation of fairness; as mentioned before, if there was a personal fued between author and reviewer, it would be unethical to let it affect the review.

 

http://www.lotrplaza.com/archive/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=46&TopicID=47142

http://www.lotrplaza.com/archive/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=46&TopicID=53437&PagePosition=7

Dorwiniondil, was the subject of that review Les Miserables?

Dorwiniondil, Dang! I thought I had the book...

um, War and Peace? or if not, perhaps Madame Bovary?  I seriously tried to read W&P, but gave after about 5 or so pages, I just could not keep all the names separated and I had to ask why?

Actually Wilson is condemned from out of his own mouth as Shippey points out in Author of the Century, by his comments on criticism in  Axel's Castle - a point I have referred to in geordie's thread on Sam in People and Races.

This is one of the reasons why I dislike Phillip Pullman, as a man not as a writer.

'unlike Tolkien who doesn’t touch it at all. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is essentially trivial. Narnia is essentially serious'

'Tolkien is not worth arguing with'

What Pullman really means by this is that Tolkien looks at things from a religious viewpoint rather than an agnostic/atheistic one. When Phillip Pullman calls another work trivial, what he really means is that it doesn't agree with his views.

Gaurlukh, I'm not a fan of Pullman's statement there either, but I think you've mischaracterised it. And I think the way Pullman really meant it is actually even more off base.

Pullman can't have been disregarding Tolkien simply because it was 'religious' (whatever that would mean exactly), or because he disagreed with it--he found Narnia 'essentially serious' despite being both religious and nearly completely opposite of Pullman's views!

Pullman's problem with Tolkien seems, rather, to stem from his perception that Tolkien's work is non-ideological. He thinks Lewis is worth worrying about because his works try to convert people (I'm not in a position to say if that's what Lewis was trying to do or not, but it's at least what Pullman says Lewis was doing), so Pullman decided to write a series of books to 'answer' that challenge and try to persuade people of an alternative viewpoint*. He thinks that since Tolkien didn't engage is this kind of explicit intellectual warfare, his work is 'essentially trivial'.

If Tolkien _had_ decided to write an extended Christian allegory, or 'supposition' (which is, I think, the word Lewis used of the Narnia books), Pullman would probably disagree vehemently with Tolkien, but consider him a more 'relevant' writer. So it's kind of a strange situation: it's not that Pullman 'doesn't like' Tolkien, it's that Tolkien isn't on his list of major foes . At least, that's how I've always understood Pullman from various interviews I've read.

*I might point out that while this was his express purpose, at least in some places the needs of art and storytelling did trump ideology. The parts where the ideology dominates are generally fairly poor story, but I found plenty of enjoyable story mixed in. Not everyone agrees about this, of course.

Well thank goodness did write a story -ideological or not- unlike the appalling  drivel Pullman has written.

John Carey-The Intellectuals and the Masses give a sound thrashing to the self-indulgence of the English intellectual  literarary establishment, the  self- appointed 'literary sonnenkinder' that you refer to. Their hubris is unbelievable - and their waspishness no doubt augmented by the fact that whereas what they write sells in the low thousands those that they criticize sell in the hundreds of thousands if not millions!

There yet remain those who look down their noses at fantasy, science fiction and even mythology.

This is so not only in literature, but also in cinema (note that Alfred Hitchcock never received an Oscar, for example, and if my memory serves was not ever nominated!).
And as much as some of our members dislike the films, Peter Jackson did a great deal to blow that bias out of the water in Hollywood.

At any rate, at that point in time even more so was there such a bias, and The Nation's editorial board probably did look at the genre as "escapist" and therefore of no worth to them. It may be that their editorial policy has changed since then in some fifty plus years, or we might hope so.

Ah, too late for that, Tinny! Wilson is long dead and gone.

Ankala Teaweed,, I'm not Tinny. She has no accents in her name.
Next time that happens I think I'll move to Rivendell, to avoid confusion and make my family happy as most of them live there.
halfir-Winnie the Pooh? lol!!!!