[Aiwendil]

But by the same token it's not therefore an "inherent" or "inevitable" flaw. It's just a reflection of how things have turned out.

Well, the way things turned out is the way things are - that is, what we have is what we have to deal with. What is "fantasy" really, but a collection of individual works that share certain characteristics? I guess what I'm saying is that if the problem is imitation is one shared by almost all poor quality fantasy novels, then it is by definition a problem with the genre.

If what you're asking is whether it's possible to write a fantasy novel without this problem, then the answer is yes. It's certainly possible if you don't imitate Tolkien. The problem is that mainstream fantasy basically is the imitation of Tolkien, so once you're no longer imitating, you're pretty far along the road to no longer writing "fantasy".

maybe the de facto UNreality argument does have some merit.

Perhaps it does explain why there's so much bad fantasy. But I wouldn't call it a defect of the genre. It's precisely here that the imitators fail to imitate; LotR stands out from the rest of the genre largely because of its similarity to reality. Unlike many modern fantasy authors, Tolkien did not invent a new world; he invented a mythic prehistory for our own.

You misunderstood what I was trying to say--when I said "say something" i didn't mean that he had an explicit message he wanted to get across (seeing that Tolkien disliked allegory), he "had something to say" in that he had a story he really wanted to tell.

I apologize for misunderstanding you. It's just that many who subscribe to the modern school use the phrase "something to say" to mean "social commentary". You used it in the more precise but less common way.

Maybe that's why many modern critics consider fantasy impossibly unrealistic? Because in today's world evil is more subtle and doesn't declare itself openly the way it does in fairy tales.

I think modern critics misunderstand evil both as it is portrayed by Tolkien and as it is in the real world. For Tolkien, evil is real. It is, if not literally a tangible thing, at least a strong force. But evil is also subtle in Middle-earth. Certainly there is nothing subtle about Sauron, but there undoubtedly is about the Sackville-Bagginses, or Saruman, or Eol. The subtleties are ignored by critics. And for all their protestations that evil is not as blatant in real life as it is in LotR, what about Hitler? What about Osama bin Laden? Tolkien's opinions on evil may not be universally accepted, but they are a valid way of trying to understand the world. There is nothing simplistic about them.

They don't do it because they want to communicate what's in their heart, they do it for approval from others, fame, or money.

Good point, though this was actually not what I originally meant. Certainly what you say is true about so-called "popular" art. The problem in "high culture" is rather different: these people assume that art must necessarily say something about the world; they think that the value of art is not in art itself, but in its interpretation. They are wrong.

First, in Hollywood the Oscars are VERY POLITICAL.

I agree with this and the rest of your post.

Aiwendil, this is a well-made point, but there are certain weirdos out there (like me), to whom, the philosophies of art and life are forever interwoven.

Fair enough. What I meant was that it is possible to be cynical about life and still to enjoy (and even create) works of art that are not fundamentally cynical.

I do not agree that "the purpose of art is to entertain".

And we're back to the "Book of the Century?" argument. But I phrased my point badly. Using the word "entertain" implies that popularity is the measure of success, and that's not what I meant. I should have said: "The purpose of art is to be aesthetically beautiful" - which is basically saying that the point of art is to be art, not to be social commentary, not to be allegory, not to be popular.

Secondly - surely art is art whatever its purpose ... in the end, the purpose of art is the same as the purpose of the artists, as contradictory, wide-ranging, obscure, instinctive and/or multi-layered as you can get.

But if this is true, then it's impossible to judge the merit of a work of art at all, save perhaps against its intended purpose. We'd have to judge C.S. Lewis by how well he constructs his allegory, Stephen King by how much terror he's able to create, cheap romance novels by how well they sell (Edward Albee by how bizarre his plays are . . .). And if, say, The Shining fulfills all the goals Stephen King had for it, who would we be to say that someone else who wrote with a different purpose is better?

The first examples that comes to mind are the best of the Russian post-revolutionary artists, Malevich, Kandinsky, Shostakovitch ...

Here's where my poor choice of words comes back at me. I can't really speak for Malevich or Kandinsky, but surely Shostakovitch's purpose was to produce works of aesthetic beauty. Or are you talking about the pro-Soviet aspect? If so, then I would say that it was not the presence of political propaganda that made his art great. If politics plays any part in the greatness of a work of art, it is rather because it contributes to the aesthetic value. For instance, the end of Shostakovitch's 5th symphony (which, we know now, is really profoundly anti-Soviet). Shostakovitch described it as representing forced happiness. The fact that it does resonate with the real world increases its beauty. But art need not have that resonance to be beautiful.

The combination of "happy is better than sad" and "the purpose of art is to entertain" sounds like a sinister political manifesto

I don't think anyone has suggested that "happy is better than sad". It's merely been pointed out that sad is not necessarily better than happy.

A big part of what drives devotees of 'high literature' away from fantasy is this transformation of an internal struggle between different impulses in an individual into an external struggle between characters who are emblems.

Agreed. I'd add, however, that fantasy does not always have that transformation as its goal. For Tolkien, the story was what was important; 'applicability' was a byproduct.

She said "no" because "It's just a big money-making induced movie that has no relevance at all to the real world".

Unfortunate. Particularly because LotR is among the books written with the least intent of achieving commercial success (even more so the Silmarillion).

So is the weakness of the whole genre that most modern authors do not have the time to spend creating a truly original or indeed complete world for their fictions to take place in?

This certainly is an important weakness. Perhaps Tolkien was so great precisely because he was an amateur.

Some modern fantasy series are massively wordy and the gaps between books inordinate (Robert Jordan)

Compared to Tolkien, the gaps between Jordan's books are miniscule. He's produced what - eight or nine volumes at about six hundred pages each? In the past ten years or so? Tolkien took ten years just to write LotR, and a whole lifetime on the Silmarillion.

The problem with Jordan's work I would argue is in both tone and soul. It lacks both IMHO, in any discernible quality

Agreed. But part of this may be due to the time pressure mentioned above. Part of it, on the other hand, is simply that he is Tolkien's inferior.

I will confess that to a large degree I am playing devil's advocate and hoping for some spirited responses...

I'm afraid this thread is just too cynical to defend pop fantasy.