Teacher's Bad Rowling Advice

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

The public image of Tolkien doesn't exactly make a big deal out of the fact that he loved a lot of popular fiction himself (Asimov and H Rider Haggard, for example); instead it focuses on the more 'high-brow' stuff he liked. So his public image is that he spent his hours in reading sagas and the Eddas and Beowulf and the like...

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein loved the cinema, especially Hollywood action-films (in thirties and fourties)! And he was the most grim and gritty one indeed, more serious than an apocalyptic.

Hitler loved the popular movies as well, but that's going to require another explanation... or does it?

The popular image of these two are also kind if edited...

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

For example many academics want to differentiate themselves from the commercial world and the values it carries with it and thence see their position in the opposite direction: what sells can’t be good, what entertains can’t be good, what is easily approached can’t be good etc.

The cynic in me sometimes feels that the literati feel the need to justify their existence at Uni. You can even see it here with the, "Yes, I know that a Lit degree wasn't that practical..." - and note that I make no judgment on that, as if we were all scientists and engineers, the world would be pretty boring and colourless. But, that said, do some feel that if the stuff that they are teaching is 'pedestrian,' handed out with each child's Happy Meal, then just how darned hard could it be to teach? Also think, as mentioned about the deconstructionists, that by seeing something so bizarre as 'great,' you give the impression to those either not in the know, or more likely, not interested or not having the time to look too closely, that what you're saying/showing/displaying is not only the Emperor's clothes, but his whole wardrobe.

Just to defend the academics a bit in the end.

So the literati aren’t always wrong or stupid and thence we should seek for the bad publicity of the fantasy also from other areas. Prejudiced the academics may be – and they are, trust me, I know enough of those people to say this – but there surely are other issues, like ones we have been talking here about… mass-producted moneymakers, lowest common denominator searchers, instant gratification seekers…

To defend the other side a little - yes, they are in it for the money. You may want to make art, but these publishers/editors/hacks are governed by the bottom line. Should they invest in one superb book that may or may not catch the fancy of Joe and Jane Q. Public? Or is the better business model to McPublish - shoot out as many medium-to-low quality books as possible that, though not feeding the souls of the readers to any great extent, give them a little something that may make them come back for another bite? Use and reuse, glom onto any author's name recognition (or their parent's), immediately copy/bandwagon any idea that looks promising and sell sell sell. And don't forget any movie or toy spin-offs.

Should I have my illustrators read the novels for which I have them create covers? Or, if the novel is fantasy, should we slap on the usual barbarian with sword with accompanying buxom 'babe' with a dragon in the background? Oh, that's right, there's elves in this one, so show some solemn people with 'alien-like' faces and pointy ears, and that should suffice.

Maybe this is why the fantasy novels are placed as they are in the store, as how can anyone take a book seriously with such stuff on the cover - is every book about Conan? Surely you don't expect me to read this stuff, as the pile is growing as we speak?

One of my daughters, nicknamed, "Boog," watches TV intently. We as a family do not watch much, and we limit what the kids do watch, but I can see that its message ("Buy! Buy! BUY!") has already sunk into Boog. She already knows that the story that she's watching (when left to her own unchoice in channel - whatever happens to come on next) isn't really that interesting, will be forgettable but will have just enough sparkly to keep her attention until we get back to the commercials.

She's just starting to learn her letters, but think about it - when she learns to read, what are her expectations given what the world (and not her parents... I say as I begin to pat myself on the back) has already prepared her for? Tolkien or McPublished Robert Jordan (as in Wheel of Time)? Even video game producers see the new trend as, "For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," [John Riccitiello] was quoted as saying. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."

Frank Herbert, my favorite SciFi author, and arguably one of the best, published the first Dune novel via Chilton, the same small company that produces auto repair manuals, having been passed over by the biggies. His glomming son, continuing the Dune series is McPublished by Tor Books, part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

What to do? Teachers are a part of the culture, and either spend time sifting the wheat from the chaff or just exclude it a priori. Or they could use the advice of experts, teach goshawfully eclectically boring stuff and, as a result, turn the kids to Rowling.

[davem]

I'm wondering whether the negative reaction of the literati & the educationalists isn't some kind of hold over from the old puritan work ethic. Isn't fantasy just too far from the real world to have any 'relevance'? Maybe they feel that reading should 'produce' some valuable (in 'real' terms) effect - make readers better, more effective citizens, better able to 'contribute'.

Maybe Tolkien shot himself in the foot by denying that LotR had any 'meaning'? I do notice that many of the books about Tolkien are written by people who want to show the 'meaning' & relevance of Tolkien's works, whether pointing out the 'religious' meanings, or the philosophical subtext & the like. Its as though if the books can't be shown to be 'relevant' they are worthless.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

We also can't discount the fact that literature faculties are in most places heavily politicized (almost invariably to the Left), and Tolkien is just too Politically Incorrect. How many pinheads have we seen, starting with China Mieville, denouncing him for having kingdoms (instead of autonomous peoples' collectives, I suppose), or charging him with racism. After all, the main thrust of post-Derrida literary criticism boils down to ascribing some political view to a work, and denouncing it. Mosst of this (and God knows I've read a lot) is, under its incomprehensible jargon and the piling up of Authorities' polysyllabic coinages, just a pl;atform for the critic's sociopolitical rantings- certainly they tell you far more about the critic than the work criticised. Unfortunately Tolkien is not ony counterrevolutionary, he's also concerning himself with hopelessly outdated (and class-oppressive) matters like Honor and Courage and Death and Evil and even God- where's the social utility in that?

Edit: Davem- your last post is right on the money. No social 'relevance' - Tolkien himself wass onto that one, when he pointed out the derogatory use of "escapism", and confusing the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Oh, as to "genre fiction"- I love the very, very clever Umberto Eco setting out to give the Literati a finger in the eye over this, boldly writing a historical detective novel that's as highbrow as anyone could want- he even concludes it by quoting Wittgenstein, fer crissake.

[Lalwendë]

I agree that University faculties and depts are almost all (certainly in the UK) left-leaning, but I disagree that their dislike of Tolkien means he is right-leaning. If they see that in him then that is their mistake - and some will deliberately set out to find 'right-wing nasties' everywhere as much as McCarthy was paranoid about reds under the bed They conveniently ignore that this hokey Tolkien fellow was also an early environmentalist (whoa, a sinister Greenie!), explored the idea of anarchism and even tackled issues of racism. All this with skipping pixies and goblins? yes! Much as it might stick in the throats of a certain breed of leftist, it does not stick in every left leaning throat - certainly not in Europe.

But yes, certainly over here you can divide the left into two camps - the modern, Islington 'set' who fear anything remotely 'parochial' and the older type, us old (and young) beardy-weirdy types who just go a bomb for mad things like talking trees and echoes of ancient cultures Look at how that arch outdoorsman Ray Mears championed Tolkien in The Big Read. Remember Tolkien was one of THE icons of the original counter-culture.

Maybe they feel uncomfortable about being linked with hippies who smell a bit of patchouli oil and damp afghan coats? Maybe they have some Tolkien secretly stashed under the bed for when their dinner party guests have gone home after a nice evening discussing post-modernism?

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

We also can't discount the fact that literature faculties are in most places heavily politicized (almost invariably to the Left), and Tolkien is just too Politically Incorrect.
---
After all, the main thrust of post-Derrida literary criticism boils down to ascribing some political view to a work, and denouncing it. Mosst of this (and God knows I've read a lot) is, under its incomprehensible jargon and the piling up of Authorities' polysyllabic coinages, just a pl;atform for the critic's sociopolitical rantings- certainly they tell you far more about the critic than the work criticised.

What you say is most certainly true. But still I'd like to challenge that a bit.

If you look at the humanist departments - or those of sociology etc. - you can see that they are mostly manned (and "womanned") by people leaning more to the left than to the right. Whatever the context - like in France or Finland being leftist or rightist is a different thing from being one in Russia or the U.S., at least in scale.

But I'm not sure if your criticism can be founded on just politics this easily. Even if the view is luring: good-hearted conservatives against the reckless egoistic radicals...

In the 18th century France from where this dicothomy stems from the "modernists" or "liberals" (meaning the "bourgeois") were to the left of the chairman in the parlament and the conservative aristocracy were to the right. The liberals demanded more liberal economy (to boost their own situation in front of aristocracy's priviledges) and more liberal values (to suit their metropolitan experience of life) while the conservative aristocracy wished everything to remain the same as the status quo at that time was nicely on their side as they had all the wealth and priviledges.

But after socialism emerged these two parties joined hands to be the "right" against the terrible uneducated masses of the workers ("left") who demanded their share of the wealth they helped to pile for both the bourgeois and the upper-class.

If you have ever wondered about the irreconciability of the values both left and right, here's your deal. They are historically developed ideologies that have their roots that contradict themselves. Like the "rightist" belief in free market economy which automatically destroys small communities and traditional values or the "leftist" belief in the institutional or communitarian organisation of the society which leaves the free individual whom they praise in the shade.

So you can't add Tolkien to this soup without getting into problems.

Many ideals Tolkien goes for can be found from the agenda of the extreme rightist conservatists as well as from the most communitarian leftists.

---

I don't claim to have understood a lot from those few texts by Derrida I have read but we should give him - as any human being - an honest judgement as someone who has tried to communicate something to us and thence worthy of recognition. I can't see anyone claiming that his life's work was just a sham! What I think was central to Derrida - and his followers - was the idea that you could handle the work anyway you wanted. There was no primacy of the author as we couldn't tell anyway what her/his intention was (as s/he her/himself couldn't do that because of the different psychological hindrances) and because language was a system that had an autonomy of it's own that governed our thinking and thence also the text we were treying to interpret. So it was a free space then: literary criticism was an area where nothing was right or wrong. A few people have actually read Derrida's studies but they stick to his general program - and scorn it understandably. I think he has quite an interesting ideas on many authors - philosophers included.

What ideology or party-membership Tolkien would have gone for today? Or what style of literary criticism he would have accepted?

It's hard to say.

Not so easy as to say that generally the leftists hate Tolkien and Derrida is a fake....

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

I love the very, very clever Umberto Eco

Don't you know Umberto Eco is a leftist literati?

[davem]

Further to my earlier post:

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/logic.html

For instance, I read an article by the admirable Mr. Tilden, the great tennis-player, who was debating what is wrong with English Tennis. "Nothing can save English Tennis!" he said, except certain reforms of a fundamental sort, which he proceeded to explain. The English, it appears, have a weird and unnatural way of regarding tennis as a game, or thing to be enjoyed. He admitted that this has been part of a sort of amateur spirit in everything which is (as he very truly noted) also a part of the national character. But all this stands in the way of what he called saving English Tennis. He meant what some would call making it perfect, and others would call making it professional. Now, I take that as a very typical passage, taken from the papers at random, and containing the views of a keen and acute person on a subject that he thoroughly understands. But what he does not understand is the thing which he supposes to be understood. He thoroughly knows his subject and yet he does not know what he is talking about; because he does not know what he is taking for granted. He does not realise the relation of means and ends, or axioms and inferences, in his own philosophy. And nobody would probably be more surprised and even legitimately indignant than he, if I were to say that the first principles of his philosophy appear to be as follows: (1) There is in the nature of things a certain absolute and divine Being, whose name is Mr. Lawn Tennis. (2) All men exist for the good and glory of this Mr. Tennis and are bound to approximate to his perfections and fulfil his will. (3) To this higher duty they are bound to surrender their natural desire for enjoyment in this life. (4) They are bound to put this loyalty first; and to love it more passionately than patriotic tradition, the presentation of their own national type and national culture; not to mention even their national virtues. That is the creed or scheme of doctrine that is here developed without being defined. The only way for us to save the game of Lawn Tennis is to prevent it from being a game. The only way to save English Tennis is to prevent it from being English. It does not occur to such thinkers that some people may possibly like it because it is English and enjoy it because it is enjoyable. (GK Chesterton 'Logic & Lawn Tennis')

That's Chesterton on sport. I think it applies to literature too. Just like tennis (or football, or cricket, or baseball) its not enough for it to be a fun thing, a 'game'. It has to be made 'professional'. It has to be made useful, so that people can get something useful out of it.

I also note that our new Prime Minister likes to tell us how much the government intend to do to help 'hard working families'. Well, of course, what practical use are families that aren't working every hour or every day - well, apart from the 'quality time' they 'ought' to spend together 'doing things as a family' to strengthen the family bond & all that stuff.

Families who just sit around doing nothing, playing games, reading 'fantasy' books, daydreaming, are not contributing to society.

And fantasy is perceived to be such a waste of time. Its ok for kids to read about fairies, but there comes a time to 'grow up' & read proper books. Reading for fun, treating reading as a 'game' is too amateurish, & isn't going to help them get a job & contribute to the economy, or teach them how to be a good citizen.

It seems to me that child readers of fantasy are the dreamers, the artists, the interesting folk in potentio. They're also the ones who grow up to be the kind of nuisances who object to woodland being cleared to put up another shopping mall, to ugly office blocks being cloned ad infinitum across once beautiful cities. Because fantasy is actually seriously dangerous literature. 'Serious' literature which depicts 'the real world' only reflects our daily lives back at us & teaches us only that what we see around us is all there is, & all there can be. Its equivalent to replacing all your windows with mirrors.

Fantasy is like Pullman's Subtle Knife that can cut open ways into other worlds, & the thing that angered me most about HDM was that at the end Pullman forced the characters to close all those doors forever & left them all stuck in their own worlds - or risk destroying everything.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by davem

Because fantasy is actually seriously dangerous literature. 'Serious' literature which depicts 'the real world' only reflects our daily lives back at us & teaches us only that what we see around us is all there is, & all there can be. Its equivalent to replacing all your windows with mirrors.

If you haven't done that already, you should read the "Asthetic Dimension" (1977) by Herbert Marcuse (a post marxian theorist).

To make the point just two quotes...

Originally Posted by Herbert Marcuse in "The Aesthetic Dimension"

I shall submit the following thesis: the radical qualities of art, that is to say, its indictment of the established reality and its invocation of the beautiful image (schöner schein) of liberation are grounded precisely in the dimensions where art transcends its social determination and emancipates itself from the given universe of discourse and behaviour while preserving its overwhelming presence. Thereby art creates the realm in which the subversion of experience proper to art becomes possible: the world founded by art is recognised as a reality which is supressed and distorted in the given reality. This experience culminates in extreme situations (of love and death, guilt and failure, but also joy, happiness, and fullfillment) which explode the given reality in the name of a truth normally denied or unheard. The inner logic of the work of art terminates in the emergence of another reason, another sensibility, which defy the rationality and sensibility incorporated in the dominant social institutions.

Originally Posted by Herbert Marcuse in "The Aesthetic Dimension"

Art reflects this dynamic in its insistence on its own truth, which has its grounds in social reality and is yet its "other". Art breaks open a dimension inaccesible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle. Subjects and objects encounter the appearance of that autonomy which is denied them in their society. The encounter with the truth of art happens in the estranging language and images which make perceptible, visible, and audible that which no longer, or not yet, is perceived, said, and heard in everyday life.
---
"all reification is a forgetting". Art fights reification by making the petrified world speak, sing, perhaps dance. Forgetting past suffering and past joy alleviates life under a repressive reality principle. In contrast, remembrance spurs the drive for the conquest of suffering and the permanence of joy. But the force of remembrance is frustrated: joy itself is overshadowed by pain. Inexorably so? The horizon of history is still open. If the remebrance of things past would become a motive power in the struggle for changing the world, the struggle would be waged for a revolution hitherto suppressed in the previous historical revolutions.

Just reflect these words to Tolkien and today...

The question of usefulness raised by davem still remains... and I think it is a good one!

But now I need to sleep a bit.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Of course Eco is both leftist and a professional literatus. But he happens to be one who enjoys pricking his colleagues' pomposity.

On post-Derrida criticism:

I wasn't actually referring to the man himself as the endless dreary PhD dissertations and the publish-or-perish articles compelled from junior faculty. The criticism would be just as valid if the political game were right of center, although in that case Tolkien might not be regarded as quite so radioactive.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Of course Eco is both leftist and a professional literatus. But he happens to be one who enjoys pricking his colleagues' pomposity.

They all do it... the academics I mean. But it's (happily?) only a few who get their prickings published for the general audience...

Originally Posted by William Cloud

On post-Derrida criticism:
I wasn't actually referring to the man himself as the endless dreary PhD dissertations and the publish-or-perish articles compelled from junior faculty.

I see and after re-reading I apologise. No you weren't. And I do wholeheartedly agree with the stuff on "wanna-be-Derridas" or "would-be intellectuals" to whom appearing cool and nice and hip and surfing the wave just a bit before the latest trend is so important... and so annoying to follow... if I had energy enough to annoy myself with them in the first place...

But yes, I remember those people...

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

But this academic taste seems also to catch the people’s minds outside the literature departments and academic journals as well. I’d say that the majority of the people with university education (humanistic, scientific, engineering, marketing, juristic, medical…) would answer just like the board of the Randomhouse poll shows even if they would never had studied literature or aesthetics or belonged to those circles. Not to say that they would have actually read the books they deem so worthy of praise.

Yes, Nogrod, I do believe there are requisite works that must be on every given list of literary excellence, whether anyone has read them or not. I believe sometimes folks stock their bookshelves more for the bindings than the content. Milton's 'Paradise Lost' is just such an example. I'm sorry, but Milton's ponderous poem makes one actually wish for death, and head to heaven or hell directly, thus circumventing the dreadful tedium of reading every canto. Even in the 18th century, commentators were aware of this work's odd dual status of acknowledged greatness and unacknowledged dismissal:

Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. --Samuel Johnson

Originally Posted by Nogrod

So as you Morthoron protested that your seven year old daughter could teach Paul Klee about perspective, I think you should reconsider. If anyone of you have seen some early works by say Picasso or Kandinsky you know what I mean. They really knew how to paint and they were masters in the art. They just decided consciously to do something completely different – and they had their reasons for it. Just read any of the theoretical discussions there is a wealth of by modern artists like Cézanne, Matisse, Kandinsky, Picasso, Leger, Malevich… you name it.

I was being facetious in my comment regarding Klee, Nogrod. I am aware he had to train quite diligently over many years to eradicate his natural aptitude. I myself subscribe to the Al Capp view of abstraction in art:

Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered!

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Oh, as to "genre fiction"- I love the very, very clever Umberto Eco setting out to give the Literati a finger in the eye over this, boldly writing a historical detective novel that's as highbrow as anyone could want- he even concludes it by quoting Wittgenstein, fer crissake.

'The Name of the Rose' is one of my favorite novels, and perhaps it is because of Eco's genre-bending. It is a wonderfully taut mystery, but it is cherished by many staunch medievalists as well for its attention to detail. I don't believe I've ever read a better fictionalized account of the early 14th century. Not to say there are many out there.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Oh my! Between all this talk of bullying literati and dumbing down, why, I hardly dare know if I should admit to enjoying such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare--Abridged. But seeing as its for the stage--always a tart--I suppose it can't be held against me.

As long as you're not referring to the bowdlerized version of Shakespeare. *shivers*

If you have not done so already, take a look at Isaac Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. I used it often in school when stumped by particularly obscure allusions.

In regards to the political polarization of school faculties, as I said earlier, my friend's syllabus for her Master's program is more radical than the same program I took nearly 20 years earlier. I'll ask her for a copy so I can share the ludicrous direction the curriculum has taken. There is virtually nothing pre-20th Century, and if I recall much of the class content dealt with 'Topics in Contemporary Culture', realism, assimilation, naturalism, urbanization, immigration, colonialism, construction and reconstruction. There were some recognizable writers, like T.S. Eliot, Toni Morison and Gertrude Stein (the mama of Dada), and movements like Modernism and Postmodernism and cultural phenomena like reification. It was more an excursion into sociological extremes than literature.

I asked her if she got to read or comment on any good books lately. She laughed and said 'No'.

So, given the seemingly insurrmountable chasm that engulfs this forum's favorite genre, I wonder if fantasy will ever get the respect it is due (at least for the few pearls slung among the swine). Perhaps in another 500 years Lord of the Rings will be likened to Beowulf and become the sole province of curmudgeonly academics clositered away in stodgy studies.

P.S. In regards to modernism and the avant-garde, perhaps the most devastating critique of commonality and stream-of-consciousness writing regarded Gertrude Stein's work and was offered by her own frustrated editor, A.J. Fifield, who was provoked into parody when reading her latest manuscript:

I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot ready your MS three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy could sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.