It's important to understand the foundational difference between the father of modern fantasy, Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien, and one of Tolkien's literary descendants, Robert Jordan. Understand that I'm not writing this to proclaim one of these author's king, nor am I trying to convince others of the literary merits--academic or aesthetic--of the writers who happened to be born after Tolkien and so must proclaim homage to Tolkien due in the least to the linear flow of time. Instead, it is important to understand why Tolkien does deserve such an homage, and how he has been successively surpassed particularly in the craft of writing.
To put it simply, Tolkien was an academic, and as such Tolkien has had the strongest understanding or sense of the nature of myth, fairy stories, and their relationship to the fields of historiography and art. Tolkien's two most famous lectures-turned-essays on these topics, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," and "On Fairy Stories," give us exactly the type of groundbreaking academic perspective you would expect from a forward-thinking professor ruminating on their well-trodden field of study. Tolkien understood fantasy, fairy story, or myth, as a cultural artifact, but moreover elucidated the value of that artifact in relation to human experience. Myth, in Tolkien's hands, became real. Conversely, I do not know of any writings by Robert Jordan--or other major contemporary fantasy writers, for that matter--that approach the subject from the angle of academia that Tolkien did. In fact, I think Tolkien did so so effectively that Tolkien essentially closed the book on the value of the fairy story. We're convinced Tolkien-- thank you.
However, this is not to say that Robert Jordan's writing of fairy story, or, as Tolkien coined it, Jordan's use of the land of Faerie (though others like Edmund Spenser used the phrase) was in any measurable way better than Tolkien's, because Jordan obviously owes a tremendous debt to Tolkien's understanding of mythology or fairy story. In short, Tolkien was an academic, a fantastic storyteller, but in the end a mediocre writer. "Clumsy" is the best way to describe The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (LotR), and The Silmarillion. The appendices at the end of LotR and the very existence of The Silmarillion itself, exemplifies Tolkien's lack of mastery over written narrative. I contend that had Tolkien been a master writer, The Silmarillion would have been worked in to the larger tale of LotR. This failure is exactly where Jordan succeeds. The Silmarillion is essentially a giant appendix to LotR. It is part of the story that Tolkien didn't understand how to include in the main body of the LotR narrative. Jordan, on the other hand, doesn't use appendices, but rather 14 novels to make the story--appendices and all--unified. The entirety of the story is meshed together. In a very real sense, Jordan is standing on the shoulder's of Tolkien's genius regarding how fairy stories work, and where Tolkien failed in the craft of writing them, Jordan succeeded.
In Jordan's contiguous (although certainly not chronological) narrative, we get the Breaking of the World and the wonders of the Age of Legends which preceded it. We follow the rise of Artur Hawking and note the fall of the Aes Sedai from worldly importance-- all without appendices and all without breaking stride from the original narrative, because the history of Jordan's world is the narrative, or more specifically, the characters in Jordan's world experience their own mythology in the way that Tolkien explained we ourselves should be experiencing mythology in his essay "On Fairy Stories."
In a sense, I then see Tolkien's five books (previously mentioned) as the equivalent in narrative volume as Jordan's fourteen books. Jordan required the mythological interstitial fluid to connect the mythologies and histories to his characters, and this written connection birthed a tale larger in physical books than Tolkien's, but on the same capacity of narrative accomplishment. This is exactly what makes Jordan's tale so much more readable than Tolkien's and a much more smoother experience. We are not asked to fit the Tolkien-appendix apparatus into Jordan's story, for Jordan does it for us. That is a master writer, and that is exactly what separates the two apart.
5 comments:
Amazing Review. Jordan improved what Tolkien offered.
If Tolkien had "failed," we wouldn't still be talking about him.
I love Robert Jordan and I love Tolkien. They are doing different things. Tolkien was the trailblazer in the realm of modern fantasy; to say that he failed is like saying that Seinfeld isn't funny anymore. Tolkien no longer seems special, because 90% of all fantasy novelists in the last seventy years have done little more than copy his successes.
Jordan was both deconstructing and reconstructing the world Tolkien built. The reason Jordan succeeds is because he acknowledges the literary traditions which influenced him--works like Beowulf, King Arthur, and most of all the Lord of the Rings--without being bound to tell the same story they did.
Tolkien was an excellent writer. If we expect better prose today, it is because we stand on the shoulders of literary giants like him.
Jesse B.,
Tolkien's failure lies in his organization and his ability with the craft of writing itself. Tolkien's work is certainly not a failure when we look at what he accomplished in a holistic sense. However, to recognize where he failed takes nothing away from his academic genius and the gift he has given literature. He showed us--by example, mind you--the monolithic importance of fairy story, and the reassurance that fairy story surely doesn't lie in the realm of children, but is rather built of the same material with which religious mythology--what most see as serious or as Tolkien named them "higher mythologies"--is built. Tolkien's failure, then, was in the craft of writing, for his academic sense overshadowed the poetic.
If you read Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories," you'll find that Jordan is not merely accessing a world that Tolkien created, nor is Jordan re-constructing such a world. Based on Tolkien's own writings I'm sure he would say the same. Instead, both writers have touched upon what Tolkien coined the Realm of Faerie. It's a realm that existed before Tolkien, although indeed Tolkien made us realize the cultural importance of understanding the true nature of Faerie.
To your last point, I agree. Tolkien was an excellent academic writer. To form a narrative where appendices form a large portion of the tale is the equivalent to writing a major dissertation with a mountain of end-noted material to sift through. The references to Middle-earth's past within Tolkien's text are essentially scant of detail--which is why Tolkien felt the need to flesh the story out in appendices, and also why Christopher Tolkien felt compelled (or ordered by his father) to publish The Silmarillion posthumously. As far as narrative flow is concerned it's an absolute mess. However, I'll say again, to recognize the mess is not the same as trying to discredit Tolkien or ignore the monumental feat he accomplished in bringing the Realm of Faerie into the modern cultural consciousness.
The essay's point, then, was to focus on the ability of Robert Jordan to in fact succeed at crafting a contiguous narrative, which is exactly where Tolkien fell horribly short.
You seem to be suggesting that Tolkien didn't tell a good story. And yet, seventy years of derivative fantasy works suggest to me that his story resonated more deeply than any other fantasy work.
Bad storytelling doesn't create such a lasting impression. Tolkien was writing in the style of the ancients; they and C.S. Lewis were his peers, and Lewis, too, aspired to ancient (religious) literary tradition.
You don't need to know about Feanor or Morgoth or Numenor or the Silmarils in order to understand the story of Frodo and the Ring. You don't need to know the long history of Middle-Earth. I agree that Jordan does a much better job of weaving mythology organically into the story. That's because the mythology of the Wheel of Time is directly relevant to the story itself. Events from the ancient past affect the story in the present. Jordan was, indeed, very skilled at this.
But Tolkien was the trailblazer. He carved out the path down which every work of modern fantasy either walks or consciously departs from. To criticize one aspect of his writing and call him a failure is to miss the forest for the trees.
Really, extremely really enjoyed this post, and 100% concur. Thank you, for finally putting into words why I (a voracious reader) LOVE the story of the Lord of the Rings, and yet cannot seem to get through the entire Lord of the Rings book series. However I love both the story and the telling of the story, with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. This is a most interesting take on the comparisons between the two and I enjoyed the read as well as definitely using the post as a discussion topic.
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