David Brin's criticisms

[Aiwendil]

Wow - I've seen some reasonable critiques of Tolkien, but Brin's essay is surprisingly muddled and imperceptive. I seem to remember an equally brainless tirade against Star Wars from him. Has anyone read actually read anything by him? Is his fiction any good or is it as uninspired as this?

[littlemanpoet]

Okay, so he's not a Brit bashing Brit. I take that back.

But he sets up a paper tiger: "bullies" taking other men's wives and wheat "has always been the way" of things, and so people have to be made to feel good about being ruled. Whereas the historical record may vindicate his claim in a general way, this only tells us that rulers have historically abused their authority. He refuses to consider that there may actually be something legitimate called "authority". If one took his arguments to their natural conclusions, and accepted them, one would have to be an anarchist and consider democracy only the next step in the governmental evolution of humanity. What tripe.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Wow - I've seen some reasonable critiques of Tolkien, but Brin's essay is surprisingly muddled and imperceptive. I seem to remember an equally brainless tirade against Star Wars from him. Has anyone read actually read anything by him? Is his fiction any good or is it as uninspired as this?

I read one of his stories which was pretty good, I think it was called "Crystalline spheres" or something like that. Maybe a good storyteller, but he's not as bright with essays. As far as I look at it, he's quite "out", but there's more essays like this out there (and it will take several Downs' forums to examine them all )... personally I don't bother with them, or at least don't let them influence my opinions on Tolkien (though if there is anything that may enlighten me on same point, I seek and check if it fits and then I may even learn something...).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Brin's criticisms are of a piece with China Mieville's, and not too distant from Philip Pullman's. What all three have in common is adherence to some form of secular materialism: Mieville is a doctrinaire Socialist, Pullman a militant atheist, Brin a technolator. Not really mindsets prepared to find Tolkien's philosophy appealing!

Brin tries to make two arguments here. The first is a complaint that Tolkien doesn't share his worship of 'progress', technology always carrying us onward and upward. Well, that's true. Tolkien's youth was seared by the first War of the Machines; he was there when a generation of young Europeans were immolated in a mechanical Moloch. Why should a Somme veteran see 'progress' in the Maxim guns, the quick-firing howitzers, the phosgene gas? For that matter, why should a contemporary man, doctorate or not, have such confidence that there's nothing wrong with mass deforestation and the pouring of poisons into the air and water?

But the sillier argument, one shared by Mieville and many other leftists, is the political one. Please pay attention, Trots: Tolkien wasn't writing a political book (and didn't buy the 'all art is political' bromide). He's not arguing political theory nor advocating monarchy as a form of government: it's simply a datum of a faux-medieval world. It's not as if the Captains of the West were wickedly crushing some Sauronian Autonomous Workers' Collective! Mordor is of course a monarchy as well- but an utterly tyrannous, totalitarian monarchy, where the Ruler is also the God. Indeed not unlike the regimes contemporary with LR constructed in the name of the 'workers.'

If there is any political dimension at all to the Lord of the Rings it's the very basic contradistinction between coercion and slavery, and freedom maintained under a light and enlightened hand. It's noteworthy how egalitarian the Western rulers are- any Rider can speak his mind to Theoden, for example. For all Brin's (and others') rantings about 'hierarchy' and 'tugging the forelock,' there isn't in fact any of this in Tolkien- these are the critics' projections. For Tolkien, that government governs best which governs least; isn't the Shire effectively an anarchy?

After all there's nothing sacred about democracy, "the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the others" according to Churchill. It's merely a pragmatic prophylactic against the rise of a Caligula or a Stalin. Plato's philosopher-kings would be great, if they existed. If there were some absolute guarantee of monarchy permanently in the hands of the likes of a Trajan (or an Aragorn) we should jump on it. It's not as if our prized universal franchise has a very good track record for picking illustrious rulers!

What Tolkien really was on about, of course, was the dual evils of Pride and Power. Power, "the making of the Will instantly effective:" whether by 'magic', force, or enslavement; and the concomitant of that Pride which hold's one's Will superior to the desires or good of others. Tolkien's heroes are defined by their *reluctance* to exercise power (this hardly needs rehearsal). And Pride ineluctably goes before a fall- the "snootiest" races, as Brin calls them, are responsible for the Kinslaying, the Rings of Power, and the Breaking of the World. Truly some of Tolkiens' peoples are gifted- but when they forget that their abilities are indeed gifts, to be used for the common benefit (like Sam's box of earth) then the consequences are dire. Gandalf never forgets that he is a Steward, the 'servant of the servants of Eru' in a formulation Tolkien would have known. Denethor forgets what Stewardship means, and in his pride chooses to exercise the last element of power remaining to him- filicide and suicide.

It may be that some of the attacks on Tolkien from the Left (I'm thinking here of Mieville, not necessarily Brin) is that they alraedy have imbibed a fair dose of Sarumanism. "Knowledge, Rule, Order," in time we can control the power, and override the weakminded fools who don't relise it's for their own good.... Shippey is quite right in identifying Saruman's speech as a politician's doublespeak (a word coined by Orwell at the same time Tolkien was finishing the Lord of the Rings).

[Aiwendil]

Mieville is a doctrinaire Socialist, Pullman a militant atheist, Brin a technolator. Not really mindsets prepared to find Tolkien's philosophy appealing!

True enough, I suppose. On the other hand, I'm a leftist, humanist, anti-religious, pro-science, social democrat and LotR is my favorite book. And unless I'm quite mistaken a sizeable fraction of Tolkien fandom is similarly leftist. So either we're quite irrational or the conflict that people like Brin and Pullman see between liberal secularism and Tolkien's works is not quite as severe as they think it is.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

True enough, I suppose. On the other hand, I'm a leftist, humanist, anti-religious, pro-science, social democrat and LotR is my favorite book. And unless I'm quite mistaken a sizeable fraction of Tolkien fandom is similarly leftist. So either we're quite irrational or the conflict that people like Brin and Pullman see between liberal secularism and Tolkien's works is not quite as severe as they think it is.

Perhaps the difference is best explained in that you, Aiwendil, accept Tolkien's myth for what it is, whereas your like-minded counterparts fail to understand that "Tolkien wasn't writing a political book", to quote Mr. W.C. Hickli.

[Aiwendil]

Perhaps the difference is best explained in that you, Aiwendil, accept Tolkien's myth for what it is, whereas your like-minded counterparts fail to understand that "Tolkien wasn't writing a political book", to quote Mr. W.C. Hickli.

I suppose that's true. However, I think there may be more to it than that. I know that Tolkien wasn't writing allegory; but if I detected, shall we say, right-wing 'applicability' in LotR I would certainly dislike it (and the same goes for any other ideology I dislike).

To put it another way, while I certainly do not take Tolkien's work to contain a political or philosophical "message", I do think that (as in all really good stories), these kinds of themes can be found below the surface. But what I find under the surface is nothing like the extreme reactionist conservatism that Brin et al. seem to find. On the contrary, the ways LotR explores issues such as environmentalism, the tendency of power to corrupt, inter-racial cooperation, and even capital punishment fit very well with my left-leaning views.

So I think that Brin and friends are not wrong merely in that they read LotR as a political work; I think that the politics they read into it are the wrong politics.

[Boromir88]

So I think that Brin and friends are not wrong merely in that they read LotR as a political work.~Aiwendil

Well said, and why did Tolkien write the Lord of the Rings? Well, let's see what he says:

'I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable.'~Letter 181

Then you get people like Brin and Birzer (someone else I'm not too fond of) who like to attach their own personal agendas to the story, which starts to ruin the fun for readers...as I took from tumhalad's original post.

But with those people such as Brin who interestingly enough (and you can tell just by reading the article) admits to not really 'reading' the story:

"All right, I read Tolkien's epic trilogy a bit unconventionally, starting with The Two Towers and backfilling as I went along."

who do a shoddy job of research and just start attaching their own agendas to the story to push their point.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I suppose that's true. However, I think there may be more to it than that. I know that Tolkien wasn't writing allegory; but if I detected, shall we say, right-wing 'applicability' in LotR I would certainly dislike it (and the same goes for any other ideology I dislike).

Same here!

I always wonder when I hear these criticisms - have these critics not thought about who were the first big fans of Tolkien's work? The hippies? The counter culture? There's a very good reason they took to Lord of the Rings and it does not all have to do with copious amounts of mushrooms and pipeweed...

It always makes me laugh when both left and right pick up on the Scouring of the Shire as some kind of overt criticism of socialism, as if you look at it, Saruman is quite the opposite. And what seems to be the idealised Hobbit society? Some form of anarchism, clearly - with little state, plenty of sharing, lots of criticism of greedy people like the Sackville-Bagginses...The most 'political' in terms of left/right that Tolkien gets is to pull down, at every turn, forms of totalitarianism, from the fascistic/stalinist styles of Sauron and Morgoth to the greedy, exploitative Corporate machine of Saruman. He does have lots of Kings, but Tolkien never shies away from ripping apart any King who treats his subjects badly - these Kings may have 'divine rights' but they are very modern too in that they also have 'divine responsibilities'

I think some like to go after this surface reading that Tolkien was some antiquarian oddity what with his Kings, Wizards, Los and Beholds and whatnot. But look beneath the surface and his work is stuffed to the gills with modern ideas.

He's not an enemy of rationalism and science, but he is indeed an enemy of misapplied technology. It's no mistake that some readers have seen applicability between the Ring and nuclear weapons, and Tolkien pulls no punches that while it's fine to make Rings of Power with good intentions, with bad ones they simply become fearsome, and evil, weapons. Tolkien always makes the case for the common man too, or else why would it be Hobbits, Sam in particular, who save this world? He makes the case for giving the criminal some compassion in the shape of Gollum. He shows us how racism is ridiculous by showing us the friendship which grows between Legolas and Gimli. He shows us why we need to become tree-huggers by giving us the Ents. Blah, blah, blah....

I think only as time goes on will most people outside the fan community come to realise Tolkien's message. The world is changing now from left/right divides to other kinds of divide - seemingly that of liberty/control. For example - very odd in the UK now that our 'right' party the Tories are looking to ban seemingly everything that's bad for the environment (bye bye Plasma TV) - that used to something of the like put out by the extreme left in the 80s.

I suppose too this shows just how modern Tolkien really was.

Of course, it could just be that yet another fantasy/sci-fi writer is feeling restricted by the looming presence of Tolkien and wants/needs to pull things down a bit!