Elric

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Tolkien's academic accomplishments aside, EUOL has a point. why do the elves go to the undying lands? ok, yah, we do know that, but do we know it from the info in LotR? no, we don't. There is a LOT of information like that. Information that motivates entire nations of characters, that is not entirely clear in the book itself. You either have to read the appendices or the other books (most of which Tolkien himself never published).

[42]

The Bible is the same way.

As to why the elves leave Middle Earth for the Undying lands. That is something really trivial to the story of LotRs. It doesn't really involve any of the main characters or the main plot line.

In Dune there are things like the Bene Geserat that are only explained in the appendices. Not once does Herbert actually mention clearly the purpose of the Bene Geserets in the story itself and they are a major plot element. If the reader doesn't check the appendices then he or she is only left to infer what they might be up to. And Lady Jessica is just confusing without reading the appendices.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The Bible is the same way.

...and....

As to why the elves leave Middle Earth for the Undying lands. That is something really trivial to the story of LotRs.

I don't even know WHERE to start refuting that. Why were the elves reluctant to participate in the wars? Why were they there in the first place? etc etc. There's a LOT that this impacted. This singular fact explains the motivations and personality of several important characters and thousands of unnamed characters. It is an intimate and important part of hte setting. "trivial" it is not.

[EUOL]

The 'problem' with Tolkien (and it's not really a problem, but it *is* the thing we're discussing here) is that he didn't write LOTR to be a story.  Or, at least, the story wasn't his primary motivation (or so I've been led to understand.)  To him, the world--and especially the language--was the focus of the book.  With that in mind, it probably didn't really matter to him whether LOTR was self-contained, or if people understood why the elves went to the Undying lands, or any of that sort of thing.  These are plotting elements which had no specific relevance--he was writing a history of a world that never existed, not a story specifically meant to entertain.

Every 'problem' I have with Tolkien comes from this idea.  I don't like that so many of the characters feel flat (everyone but the hobbit ring trio.)  By 'flat,' I mean that they lacked internal, personal conflicts.  In Tolkien's mind, however, these things not only weren't important--they had already been resolved.  There was no need for Aragorn to brood over whether he should become king or not.  I think Jackson correctly added some of these character conflicts when he made the movies.  But, it wasn’t really a problem in the original--the thing is, you just can’t do everything.  There isn’t enough space in a book format.  One couldn’t have all of the Tolkien setting *and* all of the character drama, otherwise the book would be far too slow and the plot would suffer.  Tolkien did what he did very well--better than anyone else ever has--but what he did is not currently what I want to teach my students.

[Eagle Prince]

And on the other hand we have Elric, he's all about internal conflict.

[42]

I can agree with EUOL for the most part. Robert Jordan has tried to include everything in his Wheel of Time books and they have dragged on for far too long.

I feel that Tolkien does a great job of selectively choosing what to show his audience and what to leave out. Personally, I don't find the elves to be that important in the LotR, though they are extremely important in the Sirimilion and the appendencies.

My issue with using Dune in your class isn't that it's not a good book. It is more that it's not a current book. It was published in 1965. Before you were born and in all likelyhood before any of your students were born. It reflects a lot of ideas that are prevelant in the 1960's, but some of them are just not as credible today.

Since you are trying to teach your students to be publishable they really need to take a hard look at what has been published in the last decade or so. Not that they should ignore older works, they just need to come up to speed with their contemporaries. Herbert, Asimov and Tolkien aren't competing in the market anymore. They died and every year their books will sell about as well as they did the year before. Who new writers are competing with are the likes of Terry Pratchet, J. K. Rawlings, Robert Jorden, and George R. R. Martin. The new writers are also changing the market and influencing what ideas the publishers are looking to buy.

[Eagle Prince]

But I'd rather never get published then be forced to write like Robert Jordan.

[EUOL]

Ah, and I guess this is where we disagree.  I think DUNE is where the market is going right now.  Not where SF is going, true, buy exactly where Fantasy is going.  DUNE is very similar to GAME OF THRONES in plotting and style.  I think Herbert anticipated the fantasy market.

In addition, as I noted before, my purpose in reading from a lit book in my creative writing class is so that I can give the students examples of good writing.  DUNE does this, in my opinion.  We'll look at current market trends, of course, but for that they'll be reading off of Scifiction.

Though, you do have a point in the fact that Herbert is no longer around.  He anticipated the market, but he isn't strictly of the market right now.  However, I'm at a loss to decide who I would do instead.  Martin and Goodkind have too much explicit material for a BYU class.  Farland and Card were done in the SF lit class last semester.  Hobb and Moorcock are too outside the mainstream.  Brooks is just plain untalented.  Everyone else falls into the same 'out-dated market' idea.

That only leaves Jordan-- in my place, would you do EYE OF THE WORLD instead of DUNE?

[Eagle Prince]

For what you're talking about, Eye of the World beats out Dune easily.  Sorry, but even I have to admit that.

Btw, so nobody has read either of the two new Elric novels?  

[Entsuropi]

Dune... is a pretty good book. I think. TBH, all i can remember is the sting film, which i love.

And goodkinds explicit material is annoying me.

And i have never, to my knowledge, even set eyes on an elric book.

[Fellfrosch]

I think that if you could get your students to write a book similar to Dune, they would be published remarkably quickly--not similar in story or world, but similar in style and quality of writing. It's an excellent book, no matter how old it is, and I think it's a great bok to teach your class.

As for my dissing of Tolkien, I ask you to please not canonize the man. Just because his book is arguably the best book of the century (and I believe that it is) doesn't mean that it couldn't have been improved by some judicious cuts and additions. His female characters are underdeveloped. Every major battle is resolved by a deus ex machina (the only one that isn't is the Ents at Isengard, which is mentioned in flashback rather than recounted directly). His introductory section is incredibly huge while much of the middle stuff is too short. That's not "tight" writing, and I don't think many editors today would let him get away with it.

[42]

I'm not argueing that Robert Jordan is by any means better than Frank Herbert. He frankly is not. However, Jordan is still alive and Herbert is dead.

And Fell, LotR was tightly written, when it was written. Remember that it came out well before the feminist movement, so it has amazingly developed women compared to what was being written at the time. So your only argument is that it is outdated and that can be said about every book ever written just about as soon as it leaves the printers.

I wouldn't say that Frank Herbert anticipated the market either. He was trendy once and now he's trendy again. Successful books do that.

I don't disagree with you using Dune as an example, you just need a healthy amount of contemporary fiction mixed in or your students will simply start doing what has been done before.

Not mixing in contemporaries is why BYU has so darn many abstract expressionist and minimalist shows. Both of which have been dead for over twenty years and show no signs of returning in the younger generation.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Eye of the World, had to FORCE myself to read 100 pages. Nearly burned the book in a campfire as a result.

Dune: read over the course of about 12 hours. It pleased me.

I just can't agree with you, 42. just because the most recent political manifestation of the feminist movement hadn't expressed itself when Tolkien was writing doesn't justify weak female characters. There were plenty of strong female characters before that -- even in the myths that he grounded his stories in, and Tolkien almost certainly considered women human enough. Plus that argument doesn't even come close to the other complaints. Face it, there are problems with the books. We all love it, but that doesn't make it perfect.

[42]

And you people think I'm the cynical one!

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

And you people think I'm the cynical one!

yes. Yes we do. But that's why we keep you around