JRR Tolkien's second-rate prose

[blantyr]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

The similarity of Österling's name to the Easterlings in the books as a factor? That's pretty unlikely. If it were true though, it would seem a rather petty concern for one on a Nobel committee.

I'm hardly a linguist, but I've got an odd bit of knowledge from genealogy. The above touches on a bit of family history. When my Österling predecessors immigrated from northern Europe to the New World, they anglicized their family name to Easterling. It seems Öste translates to east. (Is this why Hobbits study genealogy? )

I would agree this ought not to be a significant factor in Nobel discussions. Still, Tolkien's depiction of humans from the east and south (Southrons) of Middle Earth are not the most politically correct of all possible depictions. If one is not from the northwest of Tolkien's world, one is apt to be portrayed as a crude evil barbarian in league with the Dark Lord.

I am reminded of Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, an alternate reality story where Adolph Hitler moved to the United States after World War I, and became a fantasy writer whose major work was Lord of the Swastika. Spinrad was illustrating how close fantasy novels where some races are pure and nobel while all the opposition is portrayed as vile and subhuman might be to fascist racism. If The Lord of the Rings was not intended as a thinly veiled retelling of World War II, The Lord of the Swasticka was precisely that, and at the same time a highly barbed parody of a broad class of good against evil fantasy novels, not just Tolkien's. (Wiki suggests that the intended primary target of the satire wasn't specifically Lord of the Rings, but Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Still...)

I don't know if Österling was thinking along this line at all, but the perspective on Tolkien's work might not be lightly dismissed.