Has Tolkien lost his crown?

[SiberianSamurai]

Ok, first off, people in literary circles do hold fantasy in high esteem. There are numerous SFF writers being studied in university courses, having dissertations and masters thesis written about them, etc. Apparently, Ursula LeGuin is still the current queen, because she doubles in literature and women's studies. There are quite a few pundits as well, award winning authors, and the like who are strong advocates for fantasy fiction.

Of the people in literary circles who don't hold fantasy in high esteem, they don't really have a problem with fantasy fiction. Have Knopf bring it out and they're thrilled. They have a problem with category SFF, which they see as a different animal and a pop culture product. Category SFF is the stuff they figure must have spaceships and elves. The reasons they feel this way generally have nothing to do with what's in the books, but more image factors such as that SFFs published in mass market paperback chiefly, by specialty publishers, that it's sold in a special section of the bookstore, that there are SFF fan conventions, that category fantasy developed from category SF which developed from pulp magazines in the 1930's, SFF's long association with comics and gaming markets, that they think SFF readers are only young white males who live with their parents because they're told that's who reads the stuff -- that there is a category market: a large group of fans who don't gather just around one author whose work they like but will read a large group of authors doing a type of story they like.

To many self-proclaimed literati, this means that it's not the authors' writing that readers care about, but what the authors are writing about that's important. Which means that category SFF, QED, can't be literary, to their minds. This is also an attitude that some SFF fans have about deciding who in SFF is literary and who is not, unfortunately. Which leads many to say that we should dissolve the category market and solve the problem. However, it's too late -- doing that will not change the prejudices already in place. We can only go forward, encouraging people to take a closer look at history and open their minds.

When Tolkein wrote LOTR, a sequel to The Hobbit that morphed, there was no category fantasy market, just some authors doing fantasy in general fiction, like Tolkein, a bunch of writers doing children's fantasy fiction, and some SF authors doing fantasy as well as SF, horror and mystery fiction. So even though it was the category specialty publishers who put out the very successful paperback editions in the U.S., and even though LOTR's sales record is largely due to category SFF fans, he is not seen as a fantasy author -- a category author. He's seen as a fiction writer who, as he was also a scholar, certainly wasn't writing just for a bunch of D&D players, don't you know. No matter how much the SFF fans embrace Tolkein, we don't get to knock him up in our column, elves or no.

To many, non-fans or fans, the category authors are just ripping off Tolkein, copying him for a pop sensibility, and that includes Martin. It includes China Mievielle if it comes to that. It's not a fair assessment. It will change over time. Whether Martin or any other author, even Rowling, will have as big an image as Tolkein on the fantasy landscape is something we can't predict yet. It's worth remembering that on the overall fiction landscape, Tolkein's shadow is a lot smaller. In our genre world, however, Tolkein still clearly looms very large.

I agree that many fantasy elements can be found in mainstream literature, and that some of these examples are lauded as masterpieces of world fiction. But fantasy held in high esteem in literary circles? No, not so much.

It depends of course, as you've said, on what kind/category/genre/type (insert your favorite word here) of fantasy is being considered. On issues like this, I think speaking in generalities seems to help. Generally speaking, the number of people writing dissertations on fantasy fiction relative to other topics in the literary world is very low. Generally speaking, academic circles do hold there nose up to formulaic, genre/category (these terms are interchangeable, please do not act as if they are not) fiction. Generally speaking, literature classes in universities have nothing to do with fantasy or the speculative market.

In any case, I'll bet you're right- in all liklihood there are people writing dissertations on various fantasy works. But really, you can find people writing dissertations on all sorts of topics. I once knew of someone who wrote his whole dissertation on what constitutes a bottle. He asked all kinds of questions. Does a bottle have a specific shape. Does it have a specific function? In the end, he came to no definite conclusion. His argument was an epistemological one, which essentially stated that if humanity cannot agree on what constitutes a bottle, how will we ever agree on larger issues like race, religion, and politics? Anyway, you see my point. Just because some schmo is writing his dissertation on Leguin doesn't really change the fact that the fantasy fiction market is not looked highly upon in academia, nor is it ever likely to be.

And still I say that is one of the main aspects that makes Tolkien so great. He is able to get past all the upturned noses (to a degree) as well as appeal to the masses. He, in effect, transcends genre. Or if you prefer it said another way: his work eschews the traditional boundaries that frequently exist between genres. These two statements mean the same thing. They just mean that people who tend to gravitate toward genres which have nothing to do with fantasy can read him just as easily as genre fantasy readers. That is all it means. It is simple but it is rare when this phenemenon occurs.

 

[KatG]

Man, come on, I’m going to have to multi-post.

Okay, but part of the urge for forming small presses stemmed from the perception of big publishers as too conservative to publish the kind of stuff these folks wanted to see in print. In horror it was because the big publishers ran away after glutting the market. In fantasy, it was because of the perception that the wall-to-wall heroic fantasy of the '80s and '90s was pretty bland, insipid fare, and so you get The Ministry of Whimsey, among others, trying to give outlets to non-heroic, non-epic fantasy. In essense, the small presses were the bush leagues (baseball reference, there) for the big presses, trying out new authors, giving a gage as to their potential popularity.

The small presses, and yes, the big presses love them as a free fishing fleet, have been able to do shorter forms as books more often than the big presses – novellas, chap books, anthologies. But the idea that big publishers weren’t doing lots of horror, contemporary fantasy, and dark fantasy over the past twenty-five years – non-epic, non-heroic -- is highly inaccurate. And I think it undervalues the contribution of small presses to the field now. They have more to offer than that they just publish some more Gothic and New Weird fantasy titles. They are more diversified than that and some of them will become the big publishers of tomorrow, just like DAW and Del Rey.

Horror dominated the 1980’s and was one of the most successful fields (their bestsellers still make more money and get more film deals than fantasy bestsellers today.) But while horror could sell millions in general fiction, its core fan base was too small for a separate category market. People would buy Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but they weren’t fans and wouldn’t try other horror writers, and the SFF fans weren’t interested enough to boost the horror audience either. Publishers did push it as much as they could, with some bloat, and then horror got hit like everybody else in the paperback/wholesale collapse in the 1990’s that lowered sales and changed how books were sold. But they continued to be able to sell horror and in the late nineties, got that echo boost from Hollywood’s renewed interest.

Horror was often given in-house to SFF editors to manage, even though it was published in general fiction. In the 1990’s, they started to consolidate horror titles more in with SFF and market them to SFF fans. Still, I wasn’t expecting them to launch an actual horror category market, but they were gearing up for it and about three years ago, you started seeing the horror sections in the bookstores next to SFF. This was not something generated from the efforts of the small presses, but the big, though small presses contributed, and from the interest of booksellers to expand titles and have other ways to market those works.

There were tons of contemporary fantasy writers in the 80’s and 90’s who were bestsellers and acclaimed. In the 1980’s, comic fantasy had a big run and in the 1990’s, dark fantasy also had a run. It must be really hard on these authors to be routinely told that they didn’t exist or weren’t important. It’s also, again, inaccurate. As for secondary world fantasy, numerous, bestselling authors in the 80’s and 90’s who did and often still do secondary world -- like Stephen Donaldson, Guy Gavriel Kay, C.J. Cherryh, Peter S. Beagle, George Martin, J. Gregory Keyes, Stephen Brust, Fred Saberhagen, Glen Cook, Katherine Kurtz, Robin Hobb, Lisa Goldstein, Barbara Hambly, Tanith Lee, Gene Wolfe, Ellen Kushner, Patricia McKillip, Robert Silverberg, and Terri Windling – might be a wee bit miffed to hear that they are bland and insipid.

When I first came on these forums – 2003, 2004, man, I don’t quite remember -- I wanted to talk about contemporary fantasy authors I’d known and read for years, about how Neil Gaiman and Laurell K. Hamilton’s audiences were growing huge and about the new and very successful group of contemporary fantasy writers coming out of the pipeline. It was repeatedly argued to me that contemporary fantasy was barely existant and would never be important, that the only thing in the world was secondary fantasy and that’s all fantasy had, even though contemporary titles were all over the bookstore shelves.

Several people told me in all seriousness that Guy Gavriel Kay -- a category bestseller who was writing dark, gritty fantasy possibly before Scott Lynch was born, and whose book got a sales display I once saw in a Barnes & Noble that took up nearly half an aisle -- was a little known writer apparently scrabbling from the gutter. I was also told that China Mieville -- who was published by large presses, whose Perdido Street Station I kept seeing in front store displays and who I first heard of when he was written up in the Washington Post newspaper as, not an SFF author to watch, but simply an author to watch in the future – was hard to find.

I get a little tired of these romantic myths – that nobody did noir till Mieville sprang from the head of Zeus, that only a handful of creative, literate fantasy authors existed before the late 1990’s, that the new guys are geniuses doing stuff that has nothing to do with what authors did in the past. I appreciate the enthusiasm and energy behind it, but the wild claims get to be a bit much.

Yet, every few years, an author or group of authors are named the anti-Tolkien. Donaldson, Kay, Martin, Brust, Terry Goodkind, Mieville, Erikson, etc., all have been called this in their turn. Perhaps it is a necessary rite of passage, and it’s interesting that it’s built around Tolkien still. If that’s the case, though, maybe we should be looking more at Jordan, because proclaiming that an author is the anti-Jordan seems to have also become popular.

 

[KatG]

Tolkien's work grew the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.

That’s still how the books are sold today. Word of mouth is still the main publicity aspect for fiction, and the Internet stuff is an extension of word of mouth. Online sales are a growing, but still relatively small slice of the book sales pie. And while Martin does pretty well, category bestsellers – middle-rung bestsellers – are becoming bestsellers by moving fewer units than their predecessors because of the depletion of the wholesale market and the concentration of the market on bookstores – and this is the case throughout fiction publishing. In essence, Tolkien sold better in paperback in the 1960’s than many of the big names do today, not just because he was Tolkien but because of distribution channels and retail structures. If Tolkien’s books were now out of print, like Brown retiring, I might go with your analogy more, Wayne, but I don’t think it quite works for fiction authors.

But fantasy held in high esteem in literary circles? No, not so much.

The Tolkien scholar whose talk I attended who’s been studying fantasy since the 1970’s and whose university teaches seven different courses in SFF literature might disagree with you a bit. Also the academics who consider LeGuin a major author and invite her to speak at their colleges, Pulitizer winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez who pronounced category SF as the literature of the future, writers like Michael Chabon who have been chastising the media for refusing to call “genre” fiction literature, and quite a few SFF writers who are college professors, among others.

Those authors would tell you that they get a lot of flack from many fellow academics for writing SFF, though, agreed. There are lots of academics, critics and students who study and praise SFFH, and more of them as time goes on. But there are lots of the scholarly and extentant, ill-informed and poor researchers, who view most SFF as formulaic trash on the basis of it being a paperback specialty category for fans who read magazines and go to conventions. And there are a lot of clueless media people. We need to help these people learn, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the folk on our side.

genre/category (these terms are interchangeable, please do not act as if they are not) fiction.

Well there are numerous reasons why I make the distinction now – though I do not insist that others do it too. Primarily, it’s because using the word genre confuses the hell out of people. We have genre the academic term, as in the genre of magic realism, and then we have genre as the market term, which can mean both a work of fantasy fiction in general, published by a general fiction imprint or a SFF imprint, or refer only to those works of fantasy fiction that are sold in the category market/SFF section of the bookstore from primarily SFF speciality publishers. So if you use genre or non-genre, it’s not always clear what you mean.

Whereas if I use category and non-category, it’s usually clear to people what I’m talking about. That way I can say that Jonathan Lethem’s SF novel Gun, With Occasional Music was published as a category SF title, from a SF publisher and sold in that market, but his fantasy novel Fortress of Solitude was published under a general imprint and sold as a non-category fiction title, not in the category market. And they understand what I mean. Whereas if I use genre instead, they get confused.

And for the record, I do not think that Wayne, Drew and other fantasy writers in this forum are automatically formulaic hacks because they are published by SFF imprints or sold in the category/genre market. If that’s what the word genre is supposed to mean, I don’t have much impetus to use it. I do still use it occasionally, usually to mean all fantasy fiction, but I find that category works better for category titles and is a better way of making the distinction between markets -- markets which have nothing to do with whether an individual title is a worthy and quality story or not.

 

[Randy M.]

[...]The small presses, and yes, the big presses love them as a free fishing fleet, have been able to do shorter forms as books more often than the big presses – novellas, chap books, anthologies. But the idea that big publishers weren’t doing lots of horror, contemporary fantasy, and dark fantasy over the past twenty-five years – non-epic, non-heroic -- is highly inaccurate.

So, in short, you agree with what I said while assigning a belief to me that I didn't express?

Well, it’s an election year here, after all, so let's run for office, Kat!

Anyway, in case my point didn't come across, what I was trying to say is that big publishers don't take the kind of risks with edgier fiction that challenges established forms that small publishers do: The reasons for this usually come down to numbers of books printed and profit -- the small press can take years to sell out a slow selling item (within the last few years Arkham House was still selling copies of books they had originally had printed 20+ years before), but the need for an immediate turnover and profit inhibits big publishers from doing so. Not that they never take risks -- my impression is that Perdido Street Station was a risk -- just that they tend to be even more calculated risks than small presses take.

The plus side of this is that certain fantasy readers get more and more product along the lines of what they already like.

The negative consequence is that other fantasy readers get more and more product along the lines of what they already read. Big publishers, for legit economic reasons, frequently publish more of the same -- this product made money for us, which of these new products are similar enough to tap into the same market? This isn't just true of publishing. Check the movies coming out in any given year and, geez, don't they look an awful lot like what was popular the year before or the year before that? More relevant, perhaps, Ballantine/Del Rey, for all their success at pushing the popularity of fantasy, put out a lot of Tolkeinesque fantasy post-Donaldson and Brooks. And then other publishers jumped in.

I wasn't reading epic/heroic/Tolkeinesque fantasy from the mid-‘80s to … well, today, but the reviews and the comments by the readers I was in contact with did not indicate originality or innovation as something one need worry about tripping over. THERE WERE EXCEPTIONS. I put this in caps 'cause when I don't, Kat, you seem to assume I don’t recognize that there are any. For instance, for every Peter Straub or Ramsey Campbell who caught a ride on King's coat-tails (and I realize Campbell was publishing before King, but he got his big breaks after King caught fire) there were at least a half-dozen King-wannabes without a shred of originality or skill. Ditto Donaldson and maybe moreso, ditto Brooks.

Net results were lots of shelves filled with what some discussion groups called EFP -- Extruded Fantasy Product (and you thought 'insipid' was bad), as though fantasy publishing had an equivalent to Pringles Potato Chip factories. This perception (I think you missed my use of that word in my previous post, Kat) of scads of product imitating imitation Tolkein, correct or not, while other forms of fantasy were not getting published by the big boys or not getting any kind of advertising support when they did slip through, was part of the impetus for those who started the small presses.

[...] [Small publishers] are more diversified than that and some of them will become the big publishers of tomorrow, just like DAW and Del Rey.

See also Night Shade. I understand this. This was essentially the route DAW took in the '70s.

Horror dominated the 1980’s and was one of the most successful fields (their bestsellers still make more money and get more film deals than fantasy bestsellers today.) But while horror could sell millions in general fiction, its core fan base was too small for a separate category market.

People would buy Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but they weren’t fans and wouldn’t try other horror writers, and the SFF fans weren’t interested enough to boost the horror audience either. Publishers did push it as much as they could, with some bloat, and then horror got hit like everybody else in the paperback/wholesale collapse in the 1990’s that lowered sales and changed how books were sold. But they continued to be able to sell horror and in the late nineties, got that echo boost from Hollywood’s renewed interest.

That's one way of looking at it, and probably true as far as it goes. But there was a glut of horror or horror-like novels, particularly in paperback, that began shortly after King became so wildly and widely popular. You can still see traces of the glut in the used bookstores with their aluminium foil covers and cheesy designs. The glut was largely caused by publishers who believed thar was gold in them thar Mountains of Madness, while unaware of and probably uninterested in the nature of what they were publishing. They cranked out imitations of King, they found certain tropes they pushed relentlessly (if we check those covers it would be easy to assume some wide social fear of children with glowing eyes), and they mined whatever money could be gotten without taking guardianship of what might have been a lucrative field over the long-term if they had practiced some discretion.

Really, Kat, I know you think some of us are naive for chastizing publishers, but it's equally naive to write as though all publishers all the time are honorable and knowledgable of their product and at heart have the souls of artists and are not just scrabbling for a buck in genre to finance their other projects. (Lit. history: Look into the genesis Black Mask magazine.)

(About Hollywood: Horror and Hollywood are old friends. Well before the film historians noted it, Hollywood execs seem to have been aware that in times of social, cultural and political disruption and stress, horror becomes popular. At the start of the Great Depression and again early in WWII, there were horror boomlets, and again at the beginning of the Cold War. Horror revived somewhat yet again post-9/11. So, yeah, I agree with you that Hollywood helped literary horror. There's just a bit more to it than that, though.)

[...]There were tons of contemporary fantasy writers in the 80’s and 90’s who were bestsellers and acclaimed.

Exaggeration, followed by dubious assertion that bestsellerdom makes fiction in some way good, followed by vague word, 'acclaimed,' acclaimed by whom?

Seriously, Kat, if you believe that I think things form out of a vacuum, please discard that belief. It leads you to rhetorical flourishes that run away from the subject. Of course there was work being produced in the '80s and '90s that has led to the work being produced today. Duh!

In the 1980’s, comic fantasy had a big run and in the 1990’s, dark fantasy also had a run. It must be really hard on these authors to be routinely told that they didn’t exist or weren’t important. It’s also, again, inaccurate. As for secondary world fantasy, numerous, bestselling authors in the 80’s and 90’s who did and often still do secondary world -- like Stephen Donaldson, Guy Gavriel Kay, C.J. Cherryh, Peter S. Beagle, George Martin, J. Gregory Keyes, Stephen Brust, Fred Saberhagen, Glen Cook, Katherine Kurtz, Robin Hobb, Lisa Goldstein, Barbara Hambly, Tanith Lee, Gene Wolfe, Ellen Kushner, Patricia McKillip, Robert Silverberg, and Terri Windling – might be a wee bit miffed to hear that they are bland and insipid.

Well, there might be one or two of those who, by reputation, fit the bill of bland, but it seems to me you're pointing out the exceptional isles in the sea of Salvatore, Goodkind, Eddings, Dragonlance, Realms of Fantasy ...

And, again, whatever you feel about these writers or about the others I've brought up or about the Dragonlance and Realms of Fantasy lines, what I was speaking about was the perception expressed in their interviews and articles and diatribes of the writers for and establishers of small presses that there was a whole lotta schlock goin’ on the shelves and what they were interested in reading was either not there or so poorly supported by publishers or so overrun by the sheer bulk of the other stuff that it might as well not be there at all.

See also, Arkham House. See also, Ash-Tree Press. See also, The Ministry of Whimsy. (I mention Arkham House because it pretty much established the tradition in genre of creating your own publishing house when what you want published isn't being published by the big name publishers.)

When I first came on these forums – 2003, 2004, man, I don’t quite remember -- I wanted to talk about contemporary fantasy authors I’d known and read for years, about how Neil Gaiman and Laurell K. Hamilton’s audiences were growing huge and about the new and very successful group of contemporary fantasy writers coming out of the pipeline.

By that time both were pretty well established. It is possible that these forums attracted readers of epic fantasy moreso than readers of other kinds of fantasy – again, there seems to have been some kind of enormous momentum for Tolkeinesque that put it out front while the Gaiman’s, unless you were really looking hard, seemed to be exceptions. It also seems a bit odd to me at times that the eclecticism of the Internet often breaks down into small sites devoted not to one thing but to subsets of one thing. Anyway, if that's changed here, well it's partly your own darn fault by constantly harping on the range and extent of contemporary fantasy. So there! I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, YOUNG LADY!

It was repeatedly argued to me that contemporary fantasy was barely existant and would never be important, that the only thing in the world was secondary fantasy and that’s all fantasy had, even though contemporary titles were all over the bookstore shelves.

Phffft. (Not at your statement, at those who weren't paying attention to the bookshelves.)

[...]I get a little tired of these romantic myths – that nobody did noir till Mieville sprang from the head of Zeus,

I hope I didn't give you the impression I thought that.

that only a handful of creative, literate fantasy authors existed before the late 1990’s, that the new guys are geniuses doing stuff that has nothing to do with what authors did in the past. I appreciate the enthusiasm and energy behind it, but the wild claims get to be a bit much.

Yet, every few years, an author or group of authors are named the anti-Tolkien. Donaldson, Kay, Martin, Brust, Terry Goodkind, Mieville, Erikson, etc., all have been called this in their turn. Perhaps it is a necessary rite of passage, and it’s interesting that it’s built around Tolkien still. If that’s the case, though, maybe we should be looking more at Jordan, because proclaiming that an author is the anti-Jordan seems to have also become popular.

Um, again with the rhetorical flourishes!

I haven't come across most of these accusations of anti-Tolkeinism. I've seen Donaldson, Martin and others acknowledge their debt. I've seen Mieville, and before him Moorcock, offer fairly cogent though not inarguable critiques of LOTR. What I see more of now, in the so-called New Weird and what lead up to it, is concerted effort to step away from the tropes established by Tolkein and this seems to be done by using Mervyn Peake's work (and Moorcock's and M. John Harrison's) as a springboard to further fiction. I've seen a similar attitude in recent Lovecraftian fiction. And I certainly agree with you, if I'm not misreading and misrepresenting your point, that Tolkein is still an influence on any writer consciously trying to break with the conventions for epic/heroic fantasy that Tolkein more or less established with LOTR.

Randy M.

 

[YoungAuthor]

I think that Tolkein has become less popular these days, but I still see him as one of the best writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

[KatG]

Anyway, in case my point didn't come across, what I was trying to say is that big publishers don't take the kind of risks with edgier fiction that challenges established forms that small publishers do: The reasons for this usually come down to numbers of books printed and profit -- the small press can take years to sell out a slow selling item (within the last few years Arkham House was still selling copies of books they had originally had printed 20+ years before), but the need for an immediate turnover and profit inhibits big publishers from doing so. Not that they never take risks -- my impression is that Perdido Street Station was a risk -- just that they tend to be even more calculated risks than small presses take.

I won't entirely disagree with this re numbers situations, but the big publishers make edgier choices than you're willing to admit. They have very broad lists, yet because they publish stuff that you consider fluff, that they are also doing edgier stuff tends to get disregarded. Nine times out of ten, the authors you all bring up as edgy are published by the big presses.

A small press can keep a book in print for awhile, especially if it does collectors editions, like Arkham House. They can also go out of business very easily or can't afford to reprint or distribute. Big publishers may let stuff go out of print, and often stupidly. If the author doesn't get back the rights, though, the big publishers may bring the works back into print at a later point and are right now busily doing this. But the reprint market isn't really the point, especially as you don't think there was a lot of good stuff in the past to reprint. You're asserting that the small presses find the cool new stuff and the big presses usually miss it. I'm arguing that this is A) based purely on your own fictional preferences; and B) an inaccurate reading of the field. That the founders of some small presses also believed this and so started their small presses does not change my view that their views were inaccurate.

THERE WERE EXCEPTIONS.

See, that's the problem. You are calling them exceptions, as in rare. My argument is that there were lots of good writers throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Many of them were contemporary fantasy writers who were very successful. Many of them were writing secondary world fantasy. There was a lot of fantasy put out that you might not put in the same league with some of the bigger names, but in the general fiction world, there are a lot of novels put out that I wouldn't put in the same league with leading fiction authors either. By insisting that only a tiny handful of SFFH authors in two decades ever did anything good, you are trashing dozens of major, excellent authors. Now maybe that's how you view them. But that doesn't make it objective fact. I don't agree with your view of the 1980's and 1990's fantasy as a wasteland at all. And if I've misunderstood your view, my apologies, but you did put it in caps.

Also, your view about how marketing in fiction publishing works is one that I don't agree with. I have explained why to people in discussions numerous times, about the business factors involved, but it's a not-relevant topic here and nobody listens to me anyway, so I'm not taking it up further.

while unaware of and probably uninterested in the nature of what they were publishing.

I have rhetorical flourishes? All the SFFH editors -- people who have been doing this for twenty, thirty years and published all the authors you say you liked in the past and most of the ones you like in the present -- have just thrown pots at your figurative head.

Really, Kat, I know you think some of us are naive for chastizing publishers, but it's equally naive to write as though all publishers all the time are honorable and knowledgable of their product and at heart have the souls of artists and are not just scrabbling for a buck in genre to finance their other projects. (Lit. history: Look into the genesis Black Mask magazine.)

I don't think you're naive. I think you like everything to be black and white. Whenever I bring up information about how publishers operate, I'm accused of insisting that they are honorable and noble, etc., which I'm really not. I think publishers are sneaky. But apparently, the publishers are black-hearted, money-grubbing, soulless Darth Vadars who wouldn't know a good book if it hit them in the face but occasionally just luckily stumble on a title, and I'm insisting that they are good-hearted, art-loving, author-promoting saints, a title that should only be reserved for small presses. How about a little gray here, dude? It's a nice myth, but again, reality is a lot more complex. Like the fact that small presses are just as capable of screwing authors over and of rejecting writers we might think are really good as the big boys.

"There were tons of contemporary fantasy writers in the 80’s and 90’s who were bestsellers and acclaimed."

Exaggeration, followed by dubious assertion that bestsellerdom makes fiction in some way good, followed by vague word, 'acclaimed,' acclaimed by whom?

I did not say that bestsellerdom makes fiction good, nor have I ever said this. It doesn't make a book bad either. What I was saying is that contemporary fantasy writers were not invisible to fans in the 1980's and 1990's, because they were bestsellers and acclaimed, as in acclaimed by fans, critics, and receiving of the major awards in the field -- and still are, because a lot of them are still publishing. I was talking about the myth that contemporary fantasy barely existed in the 1980's and 1990's -- a myth that seems to have gotten started in the 'oughts.

Also, I did not say that you believe all the myths I was talking about. It's not all about you when I'm complaining.

The Dragonlance and Realms stuff -- the material put out by TSR -- was one publisher trying to do merchandising tie-ins to their games products. Even so, they did sincerely care about fantasy, in all forms, and they greatly expanded the market for fantasy fiction by bringing in readers, but did not at all swamp other publishers in bookstores, where their titles often weren't sold. It was feared that they would do so, but they didn't, nor was that danger ever really real. TSR's book publishing arm was, by and large, a small press, similar to Solaris and other game-backed operations today. To blame them for all the ills of the fantasy market, especially when they went bust and practically disappeared for years, and to say that all the other publishers didn't matter and were ignored by fans, is again, a complaint I find wholly inaccurate. I'm perfectly aware of the perception; I'm saying I think that the perception is more a desire to have black and white than a realistic view of what happened. Likewise, the notion that D&D drew solely from Tolkien I find to be exaggerated.

Anyway, if that's changed here, well it's partly your own darn fault by constantly harping on the range and extent of contemporary fantasy. So there! I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, YOUNG LADY!

Would that I could take credit, but tis not the case. Word of mouth and word of mouth Internet chatter got more fans interested in reading those titles, same as always. Also, this site became better known, more fans started dropping by and some of them were contemporary fantasy fans. It's a natural progression. I would actually give more credit to RobB and Hobbit for getting interest in the sub-field going here.

I haven't come across most of these accusations of anti-Tolkeinism.

Declaring a loved author to be the anti-Tolkien is a time-honored tradition among fantasy fans and declaring something to be dark, gritty and different is a time-honored marketing approach of publishers. It's believed to be a way to distinguish your author from the pack, to say that your guy is the best, since many fans see Tolkien as wimpy. When I worked for NAL, Kay was the anti-Tolkien, the cool dude. But what happens is, over time, you lose the title to a newer author or batch of authors.

And remember, the bigger you get in sales, the less cool you may be regarded as being. Martin has been sort of losing it to the younger crowd, but he's been pretty resilient. ChrisW just mentioned in another thread that he thinks Erikson peaked already. So it will be interesting to see what happens in the next ten years.

Tolkien did not establish any "tropes" of heroic secondary world fantasy, as far as I'm concerned. Fairy tales and folklore did. Tolkien was just the shining example that you could write a big old fairy tale for adults in the modern age, and it could be complex and dark and offered layered meaning. There aren't any Tolkien clones or anti-Tolkiens, really, because Tolkien didn't invent new fantasy elements or the idea of a quest or war or a blighted landscape -- as folks on this thread and others have pointed out. Which makes the long-time obsession with Tolkien in this aspect a bit of a puzzle.

 

[Mithfânion]

Just a small niggle Kat G, from your otherwise eloquent post on Tolkien's Fantasy template:

Aragorn's reluctance and fear to take up the crown

You are confusing book Aragorn with Film Aragorn here. Such things happen more and more as the films burn their character interpretations and concomitant vast alterations into people's minds. But book Aragorn is by all means a wildly different character from Film Aragorn, if you look beyond the fact that they are both presented as a warriors and hunter-travellers, with dark hair.

 

[BarVybe]

This is really just a preposterous question...much like asking who is better: Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds. Different eras, different circumstances and environments.

One that for certain sure that ALL subsequent published fantasy authors owe to Tolkien and his era peers is the ability to be published. Fantasy didn't exist as a genre previously and I suspect that if Jordan had gone and pitched the Eye of the World to a publication house back then his work would have never seen the light of day.

So - lets just give Tolkien his Jackie Robinson, great talent and barrier breaker dues and move on.

- P

 

[Randy M.]

Hi, Kat.

I don't have time now to think out much less offer up a full response, but I do want to apologize. Honestly, that message did not sound as testy and irritable when I sent it as it does on rereading today. I thought I was in a good mood on Saturday, but maybe I wasn't and apparently I took it out on you. Again, I am sorry for that.

But I do stand by what I said about your efforts on the board. Others may have initiated the discussions of contemporary fantasy, but you have been contributing to and pushing the discussion since I first joined.

Randy M.

 

[KatG]

Well, I'm going on ancient memories of book Aragorn, so you may have a point, Mith. My memory is that book Aragorn was more waiting to take up his duties and more confident that he could do them, but he wasn't happy about it either, and worried like the elf queen about corruption, etc. Film Aragorn seemed surprised he was getting asked to do stuff, lacked confidence and contemplated chucking it. Which was kind of interesting.

But both versions fit the reluctant, brooding warrior symbol -- the guy who doesn't want to fight but is good at it, who is gruff, sulky and tough, who may be mysterious, may do or have done not so nice things, and may even have a tortured, tragic past of some sort. He's a warrior, warrior on the edge. Wolverine, Aragorn, Harry Dresden -- always a popular concept, especially right now, and one that can stand for many different things in a story and with regards to what topics the author might be exploring with the story.

BarVybe -- you might want to look further back on this thread, where there are some compelling arguments for why Tolkien is not quite as responsible for the fantasy category market as you seem to feel he is, and how the idea that he is responsible has had some unusual effects on the field. You might still not agree with that view, but it's been an interesting discussion.

Randy -- I don't think I'd call a post that compliments me testy. If we're to regard it in that light, then I have been equally testy, not to mention long-winded. Let's just say that I don't worry about arguing with you about different views. I don't worry about arguing with Mithfanion, Bond, etc., and I learn new things from all of you. We've been doing this for a long time, and I hope we don't scare off new people. Sometimes it gets a little heated. But people here listen, instead of just yell, and that's why I stay.

Okay, now I'm back to kindergarten teacher mode, ain't I? At least this one's relatively short!

 

[Irrelevant]

I think Tolkien is the still the greatest "gateway" author. I started reading fantasy after reading Tolkien. His name is recognized by so many people outside the genre and it's probably the only fantasy novel many people have ever read. Especially those who list LOTR as their favorite book.

Here's the problem with people who have been fans of fantasy for a long time. The first few fantasy novels won't surpass Tolkien's work. The first I read after Tolkien was Raymond E. Feist who was quite impressive, but not as good as Tolkien. Eventually, I just got around to reading better stuff in the genre.

So if you poll readers of all genres about their favorite book, Tolkien is going to be the highest rated fantasy author on that list, but if you only poll hardcore fans of the genre, those who have read over 30 books in the genre, then Tolkien isn't going to be number 1. Stephen Erikson is my current favorite.

 

[Richard H. Fay]

Here's a question that arose in my mind, as an aside to the main discussion - should Tolkien's works even be seen as "fantasy", or would it do more justice to his style and relevance to see his works as "classic literature"? Some of the things mentioned by those that didn't care for Tolkien's works got me wondering if they were approaching the books the wrong way. I think his style is more comparable to "classic literature" than it is necessarily comparable to "contemporary fantasy". I don't think books written fifty or seventy years ago should be seen in the same light as books written today, or even ten or twenty years ago.

See my thread "Tolkien as classic literature?" for more of my thoughts regarding this issue.

 

[KatG]

Lord of the Rings is both classic literature and fantasy. The line between contemporary and classic shifts very amorphously as time passes, but right now is probably somewhere around the 1960's.

Tolkien's style is what they'd call Edwardian, plus he did want it to sound bardic. So yes, it isn't the same in tone, language choice, etc., as other novels and even other fantasy novels written in the 1950's, I'd say.

 

[Bond]

Tolkien chose to write in an intentionally affected way. There are those who think all the circuitous rambling, droning, and invoking an essential part of the Tolkien experience that makes it special. I think it somewhere between quaint and a laborious chore. Forgive me if I think it has less to do with anachronistic writing than pedestrian writing. I loved reading many authors from the 19th century even when they were full of idioms unique to their time. Despite this there were many who could draw my eyes forward effortlessly. Given this, to what should I ascribe the difference in my reading experience with these older authors and Tolkien? I'll go for the simplest answer: those who can write in such a way as to make reading effortless are skilled; those who cannot, are not. One can take other things into consideration but at its most basic good writing is clear. The style and tone Tolkien adopts is one of the things that differentiates Tolkien but I would observe it is not one of the things that was copied by succeeding popular fantasy authors.

 

[DailyAlice]

If you are saying that all good writing makes reading effortless, I can't agree. Some good writing is smooth, energetic and facilitates an easy ride. Some bad writing is fussy and time-wasting. But there is such a thing as good writing that chooses its tone, takes its time, and actually expects that the reader will work.

Tolkien requires some effort from me. But so does Dickens and Trollope, and no one accuses them of substandard writing.

 

[Randy M.]

If you are saying that all good writing makes reading effortless, I can't agree. Some good writing is smooth, energetic and facilitates an easy ride. Some bad writing is fussy and time-wasting. But there is such a thing as good writing that chooses its tone, takes its time, and actually expects that the reader will work.

Tolkien requires some effort from me. But so does Dickens and Trollope, and no one accuses them of substandard writing.

Thanks, DailyAlice. I was looking for a succinct way of answering that, but was failing and you did it for me.

Randy M.

 

[Richard H. Fay]

If you are saying that all good writing makes reading effortless, I can't agree. Some good writing is smooth, energetic and facilitates an easy ride. Some bad writing is fussy and time-wasting. But there is such a thing as good writing that chooses its tone, takes its time, and actually expects that the reader will work.

Tolkien requires some effort from me. But so does Dickens and Trollope, and no one accuses them of substandard writing.

Let's extend this argument a bit further - I think Lord Dunsany is not always an easy read, but he's often considered to have been a master of the English language. Just because Dunsany may not be an effortless read, it doesn't mean he was a bad writer. He just wrote with a poetic richness and density that may seem "off" by today's standards.

Again, I think people can certainly have their own opinion about Tolkien's work, but just because you don't like his style doesn't make him a bad writer in general. He's just not the right author for your personal tastes.

Let me point something else out - "dense" writing wasn't always seen as a bad thing. Writing with a poetic slant wasn't always seen as a bad thing (Tolkien was a poet, too). However, it may seem "affected" by modern readers. That's why I suggested that Tolkien should be approached differently than current fantasy literature.

And besides, what's wrong with having to think a bit and work the brain while you're reading? (By the way, I don't find reading Tolkien to be that much work. Dunsany, now that can require a bit of work, but I still enjoy his works as well.)

 

[Bond]

Again, I think people can certainly have their own opinion about Tolkien's work, but just because you don't like his style doesn't make him a bad writer in general. He's just not the right author for your personal tastes.

If this is all you had to say then I wouldn't have commented. But you added something else. What you seem to have said is that classic literature is written in a certain way that makes it difficult to read and the reason people have difficulty appreciating Tolkien is because Tolkien's writing is classic literature. Wrong. Lots of classical literature is very readable. Difficult reading does not equate with classic literature. Affected writing does not equate with classic literature.

Let me point something else out - "dense" writing wasn't always seen as a bad thing. Writing with a poetic slant wasn't always seen as a bad thing (Tolkien was a poet, too). However, it may seem "affected" by modern readers. That's why I suggested that Tolkien should be approached differently than current fantasy literature.

Tolkien's writing is affected even by the standards of his day. He was not writing pre-19th century, he was writing during the early 20th. His writing style was deliberately chosen to hark back to an earlier time. If you suggest that Tolkien should be approached differently than other fantasy literature then perhaps you should elucidate on what way in particular and why? In any event by doing so you pretty much admit fantasy literature of today has little in common with Tolkien's work. As for ostensibly dense poetic writing not necessarily being bad, that may be so, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is any good either. The good thing about clear writing is it is self-explanatory. Florid writing calls for justification.

And besides, what's wrong with having to think a bit and work the brain while you're reading? (By the way, I don't find reading Tolkien to be that much work. Dunsany, now that can require a bit of work, but I still enjoy his works as well.)

It's interesting that people seem to find difficult writing as conducive to thinking. I am of the opposite mindset. Difficult writing doesn't make you think that much on anything important because the conveyance of ideas is impaired. I find lucid writing much better at causing one to think. Anyone with experience using a disorganized badly written academic textbook should understand my point.

Dunsany? I have barely read anything by him but the short story of his that I did read suggests to me he was an Edgar Allen Poe wannabe.

 

[DailyAlice]

It's interesting that people seem to find difficult writing as conducive to thinking. I am of the opposite mindset. Difficult writing doesn't make you think that much on anything important because the conveyance of ideas is impaired. I find lucid writing much better at causing one to think. Anyone with experience using a disorganized badly written academic textbook should understand my point.
QUOTE]

Comprehending a challenging fictional style is quite different from trying to analyze the "ideas" in it. As a matter of fact, I don't go to fiction to be educated as to ideas, and actually tend to flinch away from message novels or novels of agenda. If your *primary* intention is to "learn things" from your reading, focus on nonfiction. That you use the example of an academic textbook in a discussion of Tolkien's merits is illuminating in itself.

This is not to say that extracting discussable notions from fiction is not possible or valuable. But they must be filtered through an aesthetic experience involving the emotions invoked. If Tolkien is a turnoff for you, fair enough. Move on. Science fiction in particular is full of intellectual grist.

On reflection, I don't actually find Tolkien's prose difficult. (It's been years, I tell you, years.) I just don't find myself inspired to reread. For me it involves getting into a certain relaxed, meditative mood, and my to-read stack keeps nudging me.

 

[Richard H. Fay]

Any Wuthering Heights fans out there? I can't stand the book. I tried to read it, but I thought it was absolutely awful. The mood was depressing and the characters miserable. It wasn't an easy or pleasant read at all. I didn't even finish it, and that's unusual for me.

And yet, Wuthering Heights is considered a classic. I don't deny that it is a part of classic literature, even though I personally dislike the book and think there are much better classics out there. Am I wrong in believing Wuthering Heights to be a classic because I also believe it's an awful book?

Any Frankenstein fans out there? It is supposed to be a classic horror/science fiction, and yet I found it mind-numbingly dull. It seemed to crawl along at a snail's pace and ramble on endlessly. Where's the sudden grab and quick pace of a modern novel? Again, I couldn't finish the book, couldn't find anything appealling to me in the book (and thought it was rather badly written by today's standards), and yet I don't deny it's status as a "classic".

My point was that certain classics are indeed hard or even "unpleasant" to read, and yet they are still classics. Not every book by every author is a breezy easy read. Some classic authors make you think and work (or just work), but that doesn't automatically make them bad writers.

Dunsany a Poe wannabe? Please do some research before you make statements like that. Dunsany was a key figure in the Irish literary renaissance. He wrote fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, plays, essays, and poetry. His poetry was so popular in his day that F. Scott Fitzgerald's main character in This Side of Paradise recites some of Dunsany's verse. Dunsany influenced several other writers, including H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft's dream tales often bear the descriptive term "Dunsanian" due to their strong ties to Dunsany's works. Lovecraft once wrote ""There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?"

And I ask you , where did I say that classics must be a hard read? I think what I said is that they might be a hard read.