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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jan 29, 2019 12:21:56 GMT
The Lord of the Rings played a big part in my childhood. I tried to read it in more recent years and was incredibly bored. All that rabbit-skinning and natural description. Apparently Tolkien's friends hated going on walks with him because he would spend ages looking at shrubs. That's how I feel about his writing. I do like intricate descriptions in novels. Sometimes. All styles in moderation. With Tollkien I've often wished for more description, as some of his created beings I find it hard to visualise. I've taken interest in depictions in the few film productions, but I'm not sure of some of these.... I have a decade-old article by a Dr Kenton Craven who's described as "a wandering teacher/scholar without portfolio currently teaching Honours and English and World Literatures at Tennessee University in Cookeville; he had taught widely throughout the US, and in the Kingdom of Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman" Extraordinary in itself. I don't agree in toto with the beneath paragraph as I've enjoyed some of the writers mentioned and think them quite genius- "I lived through much of the twentieth century and dutifully read it's literary canons: Faulkner, Joyce, Proust, Lawrence, Kafka, Mann, Borges and their cousins and imitators. For me, the smoke had cleared after a century of rebellion and narrative experimentation, and I find two great works standing above the rubble of innovation and deconstruction- JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, the Chartres and Notre Dame of modern narrative fiction. In some measure my preferences may be chalked up to taste, but I would like to suggest that what I would call traditional storytelling, straightforward narrative as practised by Tollkien and Undset, in which technique is masterfully subordinated to the nearly invisible unfolding of a vision by an omniscient author is best capable of rendering a universal vision of reality. I mean a rendering that satisfies the deepest hunger of the heart for divine mysteries, not the superficial hungers for easy resolutions catered to by the formula writers who fill the bookstores" The article was actually about Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and Tiina Nunnally's clear English translation. I think Joyce wrote some very good stuff before he started going mad and experimental. I haven't read Faulkner, Mann, or Borges. I read a little bit of Lawrence and enjoyed him moderately, but think his reputation vastly inflated. I have happy memories of reading Lawrence in the deserted bar of the King's Head hotel in Richmond, North Yorkshire, while drinking brandy and colas, two nights a row, looking out onto the almost-deserted town square. I started reading Proust but broke off after a disgusting description of a chamber pot. Actually, it wasn't particularly disgusting, but I don't think chamber pots should feature in literature at all. I read The Trial by Kafka and agree with C.S. Lewis's assessment-- it's more a myth than a work of fiction, in that reading it doesn't really adding anything to hearing it described. I think the same thing of Beckett's dramas, although jk disagrees with me and might be right. I haven't read Sigrid Undset. Although I speak about the importance of reverence all the time, I must admit my contrarianism flares up whenever Tolkien is invoked in conservative and Catholic circles. Or even Chesterton and Lewis. This is because I am a bad person.
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Post by Séamus on Jan 30, 2019 9:12:20 GMT
I do like intricate descriptions in novels. Sometimes. All styles in moderation. With Tollkien I've often wished for more description, as some of his created beings I find it hard to visualise. I've taken interest in depictions in the few film productions, but I'm not sure of some of these.... I have a decade-old article by a Dr Kenton Craven who's described as "a wandering teacher/scholar without portfolio currently teaching Honours and English and World Literatures at Tennessee University in Cookeville; he had taught widely throughout the US, and in the Kingdom of Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman" Extraordinary in itself. I don't agree in toto with the beneath paragraph as I've enjoyed some of the writers mentioned and think them quite genius- "I lived through much of the twentieth century and dutifully read it's literary canons: Faulkner, Joyce, Proust, Lawrence, Kafka, Mann, Borges and their cousins and imitators. For me, the smoke had cleared after a century of rebellion and narrative experimentation, and I find two great works standing above the rubble of innovation and deconstruction- JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, the Chartres and Notre Dame of modern narrative fiction. In some measure my preferences may be chalked up to taste, but I would like to suggest that what I would call traditional storytelling, straightforward narrative as practised by Tollkien and Undset, in which technique is masterfully subordinated to the nearly invisible unfolding of a vision by an omniscient author is best capable of rendering a universal vision of reality. I mean a rendering that satisfies the deepest hunger of the heart for divine mysteries, not the superficial hungers for easy resolutions catered to by the formula writers who fill the bookstores" The article was actually about Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and Tiina Nunnally's clear English translation. I think Joyce wrote some very good stuff before he started going mad and experimental. I haven't read Faulkner, Mann, or Borges. I read a little bit of Lawrence and enjoyed him moderately, but think his reputation vastly inflated. I have happy memories of reading Lawrence in the deserted bar of the King's Head hotel in Richmond, North Yorkshire, while drinking brandy and colas, two nights a row, looking out onto the almost-deserted town square. I started reading Proust but broke off after a disgusting description of a chamber pot. Actually, it wasn't particularly disgusting, but I don't think chamber pots should feature in literature at all. I read The Trial by Kafka and agree with C.S. Lewis's assessment-- it's more a myth than a work of fiction, in that reading it doesn't really adding anything to hearing it described. I think the same thing of Beckett's dramas, although jk disagrees with me and might be right. I haven't read Sigrid Undset. Although I speak about the importance of reverence all the time, I must admit my contrarianism flares up whenever Tolkien is invoked in conservative and Catholic circles. Or even Chesterton and Lewis. This is because I am a bad person. My memory may be incorrect, but I think Woolf mentioned something about ULYSSES proving that it's not good to be too brilliant at too young an age(I suppose that would be a thumbs up to DUBLINERS'); definately she did refer to ULYSSES as someone feeling the need to break every window in a house in order to breathe. (Was she too much of a humanist to apply what she said to society and often Catholicism today?) I'd personally rank KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER as equal to LORD OF THE RINGS... It's a bit hard to compare or favour one to the other. I suppose it's strange that, her Noble prize notwithstanding, film productions and popular culture hasn't been as enthusiastic about it. I'm sure toy companies could make Erland and Lavran figurines just as exciting as Gandalf and Frodos or even Luke Skywalker or C3P0s. Undset's parents were archeologists- she possibly gives the most accurate description and 'mind's eye' from the Middle Ages of the famous books about the period, including today's authors. I haven't read much of Scott but Dr Craven makes a comparison: "Many writers from Sir Walter Scott to Umberto Eco have given us novels of the middle ages, but for Sigrid Undset 'the long ago and the far away' of romantic fiction were of no interest. From the time she read Njal's Saga as a young writer, working ten hours a day as a secretary in an engineering office, Undset knew what kind of fiction she wanted to write about- the mediaeval world she first learned about as a daughter of an archaeologist who filled his home with weapons and armour of Viking times" The non-fiction SAGA OF SAINTS, a short history of Christianity in Norway by Undset was very good also. Her biography of St Catherine of Siena left me a bit cold somehow. Of interest#1> both works that our non-portfolio scholar mentions in the article are 3 in 1 novels, in the case of KRISTIN we have THE WREATH followed by THE WIFE followed by THE CROSS. Is this a significant tip for epic-story-writing? Of interest#2> writing about a Christian society, though with residue of pre-Christian Scandinavia prevalent also, many days and seasons are marked by church Feasts and Saints days. One mentioned through the book is July 8th- feast of the Selje Men, an ancient martyr group, traditionally from Ireland, very much the Dympna and Gereban of the region.
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