walleyed criticism
Mar. 3rd, 2011 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'm using that word in my review ... "walleyed". I was warned that this scholarly book was so bad that other potential reviewers had already looked it over and turned it down. From me, it's getting a ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calimac Demolition Special.
The instance that really gets me is this. The critic is aiming to compare Tolkien's narrative persona in The Hobbit with Lewis's in the Chronicles of Narnia. Of Tolkien, we are told:
A further charm of Tolkien's technique, it seems to me, is that it increases the verisimilitude of the fantasy world. When the narrator says of the strange persons Bilbo has just encountered, "But they were trolls. Obviously trolls. Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that," and makes further comments like "Yes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each," and "trolls, as you probably know, must be underground before dawn, or they go back to the stuff of the mountains they are made of," the sense that this is useful common knowledge that everyone should have at their fingertips makes trolls seem real, as if anyone might run into some out in the woods. In all the criticisms I've read of the narrative style of The Hobbit, nobody has ever previously said that it's "destroying the sense that this is a separate secondary world." Come to think of it, the critic is a bad enough writer that this might mean not "the illusion of reality is punctured" but "it makes it seem like the real world, not an imaginary one." But no, that would go against the thrust of everything else the critic says, and determining general thrust is the only way to figure out what this critic is saying.
So turn over two pages and read the critic's comments on Lewis's narrator.
I don't wish to bash Lewis too fiercely here, but I have to give Tolkien points for being more elegant and less annoying. When Lewis wants to describe something as indescribable, he writes, "It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste ... I can't describe it any better than that ... the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them." (This is a passage actually cited by the critic I'm discussing.) When Tolkien wants to express a similar sense of indescribable wonder, he writes, "To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful." Not only is this more poetic (Lewis's isn't poetic at all, he's vague and puffy), but - as other critics have pointed out - it expresses, in Tolkien's subcreative terms, a philosophical point about the nature of language that Tolkien learned from Lewis's friend, the linguistic philosopher Owen Barfield: that words that we've barked down to dull literal meanings once rang with what we'd now call figurative connotations.
Though Tolkien's narrative voice is often criticized for condescension, I've never seen Lewis's so criticized. (I may have missed something.) Yet it seems to me that Lewis is far more condescending. Tolkien takes readers into his confidence; Lewis brushes them off and lectures them. Both Tolkien and Lewis were professors of English, of course, yet it was Tolkien who, when consulted in his capacity as one over a point of usage, casually replied, "The answer is that you can say what you like." Pedantry points in one direction, common sense in the other, and "You may take your choice." (Letter no. 218) But it was Lewis, in his capacity as narrator of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who severely wrote, "This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited." (Mr Beaver had said, "It isn't her.") It is Lewis, not Tolkien, who makes me want to lock up all the world's professors of English in a room and hurt them.
calimac Demolition Special.The instance that really gets me is this. The critic is aiming to compare Tolkien's narrative persona in The Hobbit with Lewis's in the Chronicles of Narnia. Of Tolkien, we are told:
The method of narration is clearly directed at children. The narrator addresses "you" the reader, sometimes intruding into the story and thus destroying the sense that this is a separate secondary world. In addition, not only does he know what characters are thinking and what will happen in the future, but he also comments on the significance of events and poor decisions characters make. These interpretive and judgmental comments make the account seem less historical.Certainly, there are many readers who dislike the intrusive narrator in The Hobbit. Tolkien himself came to regret it, feeling that he'd been talking down to the reader too much. I don't think so; I find it delightfully witty, and I also like The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E.A. Wyke-Smith, which is the children's book Tolkien had been reading from which he probably picked up this narrative voice. And I also like it in the Pooh books, often derided as treacly, but where it seems to me that the narrator is taking the child reader into his confidence over the foolishness of characters of Very Little Brain. "I may be only six years old," the reader can think, "but at least I'm smarter than that."
A further charm of Tolkien's technique, it seems to me, is that it increases the verisimilitude of the fantasy world. When the narrator says of the strange persons Bilbo has just encountered, "But they were trolls. Obviously trolls. Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that," and makes further comments like "Yes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each," and "trolls, as you probably know, must be underground before dawn, or they go back to the stuff of the mountains they are made of," the sense that this is useful common knowledge that everyone should have at their fingertips makes trolls seem real, as if anyone might run into some out in the woods. In all the criticisms I've read of the narrative style of The Hobbit, nobody has ever previously said that it's "destroying the sense that this is a separate secondary world." Come to think of it, the critic is a bad enough writer that this might mean not "the illusion of reality is punctured" but "it makes it seem like the real world, not an imaginary one." But no, that would go against the thrust of everything else the critic says, and determining general thrust is the only way to figure out what this critic is saying.
So turn over two pages and read the critic's comments on Lewis's narrator.
In general, in typical fairy-tale style, Lewis uses short sentences and a conversational style, mentioning himself ("I" or "we") or addressing the reader ("you"). The narrator often interrupts the narrative by addressing the reader. ... The narrator also comments on his telling of the story. ... He says he could write pages and pages but "I will skip on," "I haven't time to tell it now," it would be dull to write down the details, or the story is almost over. ... The narrative technique helps guide reader responses and reminds them this is a story.OK, so let's get this clear. Lewis's intrusive narrator reminds readers that this is not real, it's a story. This is good. Tolkien's intrusive narrator destroys the illusion that this story is real. This is bad. How the same technique towards the same end is praiseworthy in one author and a flaw in the other is not explained.
I don't wish to bash Lewis too fiercely here, but I have to give Tolkien points for being more elegant and less annoying. When Lewis wants to describe something as indescribable, he writes, "It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste ... I can't describe it any better than that ... the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them." (This is a passage actually cited by the critic I'm discussing.) When Tolkien wants to express a similar sense of indescribable wonder, he writes, "To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful." Not only is this more poetic (Lewis's isn't poetic at all, he's vague and puffy), but - as other critics have pointed out - it expresses, in Tolkien's subcreative terms, a philosophical point about the nature of language that Tolkien learned from Lewis's friend, the linguistic philosopher Owen Barfield: that words that we've barked down to dull literal meanings once rang with what we'd now call figurative connotations.
Though Tolkien's narrative voice is often criticized for condescension, I've never seen Lewis's so criticized. (I may have missed something.) Yet it seems to me that Lewis is far more condescending. Tolkien takes readers into his confidence; Lewis brushes them off and lectures them. Both Tolkien and Lewis were professors of English, of course, yet it was Tolkien who, when consulted in his capacity as one over a point of usage, casually replied, "The answer is that you can say what you like." Pedantry points in one direction, common sense in the other, and "You may take your choice." (Letter no. 218) But it was Lewis, in his capacity as narrator of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who severely wrote, "This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited." (Mr Beaver had said, "It isn't her.") It is Lewis, not Tolkien, who makes me want to lock up all the world's professors of English in a room and hurt them.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:07 pm (UTC)"'Wherever is this?' said Peter's voice, sounding tired and pale in the darkness. (I hope you know what I mean by a voice sounding pale.)"
[This is, by the way, a steal from E. Nesbit: "A sudden cold pain caught at Anthea's heart... (If you don't know what a cold pain is, I am glad for your sakes, and hope you never may.)"]
Sometimes the spur is slightly more hidden - as when he refuses to describe the witch's army on the grounds that the grown-ups would then refuse to let you read the book.
On other occasions he uses the topos of inadequacy-as-hyperbole, so beloved by the Renaissance (had I a thousand pens, I could not list all the times he does this, but can't immediately come up with an example).
Then again there are occasions when he alludes to the mystical inexpressibility of the divine, for which all words, no matter how well chosen, are inadequate, as in your "things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them." I prefer however the example towards the end of the Dawn Treader. Approaching Aslan's country, the sailors feel a breeze from the east.
"It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, 'It would break your heart.' 'Why,' said I, 'was it so sad?' 'Sad!! No,' said Lucy."
Having said that, I could happily lose the double exclamation marks.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:25 pm (UTC)And it may not be a good idea to compare a Lewis trope directly to Nesbit using one in the same manner. As Mark Twain once said, it's the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:07 pm (UTC)I look forward to your review
Date: 2011-03-03 06:53 pm (UTC)"Myth has the power to communicate truths than cannot be discovered or expressed in any other way. More than simply plot, myth is a 'net' to catch something else. However, pride results in seeking to possess created objects and using them to wield power over others. The created object therefore cannot be hoarded or possessed. Rather, it must be released to set the bird free from the net, leading the reader outside the self to an encounter with the 'Other'." (xii)
There had been no mention of "birds" or "the other" heretofore. All this came, incoherently, out of the blue. And then, there are passages like this one:
"Tolkien's own work — some completed and some not completed — is extensive, spanning his entire career. The twelve-volume The Silmarillion, which contains the history of Middle-earth, was Tolkien's grand work that began in 1917." (4)
On this, I am sure I need not even comment further.
Re: I look forward to your review
Date: 2011-03-03 07:29 pm (UTC)It's worse when the topic is the fiction. My favorite example, the two paragraphs on p. 48 that throw around Elvish ethnic terms with complete disregard for how they fit together, ending with the implication that the Quendi are one small subgroup of Elves.
With all that to cover, matters like that one on p. 4 (not the only odd remark on that page alone) I had to subsume under, "Sometimes, particularly in the opening chapter, this leads her into factual errors."
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:58 pm (UTC)As for the differences between Tolkien and Lewis, I think their ability to handle the narrative intrusion - particularly when addressing children-as-readers/audience - is in part that Tolkien was a father, where Lewis was not, and that affects things a bit. A father, who has dealt with the child from birth onwards, frequently does develop that "Specially Confidential" voice when letting the youngster in on something. I don't think that came as naturally to Lewis as it did to Tolkien, since Lewis doesn't seemed to have received it growing up, nor experienced giving it as an adult.
But beyond that, I also think that Tolkien was just generally more playful in his storytelling (and conversation, apparently) than Lewis was. Lewis strikes me as one who seems to have liked building a structure up to a humorous reveal, whereas Tolkien was prone to the quick pun and playful witticism (to the testing of his friends' patience). I think those personality differences also affected their handling of the intrusive narrative voice.