Lord of the Rings boring books

[Lotrelf]

I find is rather amusing how LOTR books are declared "annoying and boring" by many people we see on the web.

I have a couple of questions that I believe needed no separate thread to be answered.
1). Why would one believe Tolkien was a poor writer (and thus over-rated by the 'fans of the books')?
2). Why would people think the story doesn't move anywhere?
3). Why would people think characters do not evolve throughout the book?
4). Why would someone state PJ does a better job in storytelling than Professor did? (Kill me!)
I have come across these points again and again all the time and have found those who state the above mentioned points quite ignorant.

Of course, it all falls down to "This is all about different tastes and you cannot force anyone to like the books if they're not interested in them."
True enough. But isn't that the thing? If you aren't getting the beauty of the books, you have to be open-minded enough to admit this. Why mention someone with far greater qualification, dedication and knowledge is not as good as you want them to be? This is offensive to say for any writer perhaps, and especially for someone who has literally poured out their heart and soul in their works. Ignorance of our generation. Ugh!

[Morthoron]

The Twilight saga sold millions of books, as did Fifty Shades of Grey. Having read a single page of each and finding the dialogue stilted and monosyllabic and the characters flat and tedious, I can only say one should never be surprised by the limited attention spans and juvenile reading capacity of the general public.

But then, one should consider how modern folks have been trained via media and the internet to react to stimuli. The world is full of brief memes and cat videos that requires the patience of a gnat to view and digest. The 24-hour news cycle has rendered reporting down to momentarily sensationalistic headlines and flittering twitters within a regimented amount of characters repeated long enough for the next news item to take its place, and the song structure in popular music has been reduced to catchy hooks repeated over monotonous rhythms and borrowed beats.

Big-box, brick-and-mortar stores, the bastions of consumer spending for a century, have gone the way of the dodo because people simply do not want to disengage from the internet and spend an afternoon shopping in a crowded mall. Order the crap online and be done with it. Let someone else deliver the goods. Likewise, the education system has all but eliminated cursive writing in school, because...who writes? Putting pen to paper has become as archaic as putting quill to parchment. Affix your X to the online document and proceed with your order.

And so, the works of Tolstoy, Hugo or even Tolkien, massive, sprawling story-lines with numerous characters and much dialogue and a lack of stimulating action or violence every few paragraphs, would naturally be viewed negatively with the jaundiced eyes of the tragically hip and eternally bored. I hate to invoke the name of Peter Jackson, but he did film Tolkien's works to play to this restless audience. Insinuation, ambiguity and nuance has been deleted in favor of action, chases and violence, dangling the string in front of the cat long enough to keep it engaged and then moving on to the next toy in his arsenal of arrested development.

Alas, to be an old fart in this day and age, and watch with dying eyes the collapse of culture! I may be a cynical curmudgeon, but I don't believe I am too far off in my presentiment.

[Barrel-rider]

Isn't is strange how Professor's use of the language holds up even now?

If he were alive today, as Professor John Ronald Reuel "I'm-so-not-immortal" Tolkien, I'd like to think he'd be proud of what we do.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

And so, the works of Tolstoy, Hugo or even Tolkien, massive, sprawling story-lines with numerous characters and much dialogue and a lack of stimulating action or violence every few paragraphs, would naturally be viewed negatively with the jaundiced eyes of the tragically hip and eternally bored.

In fairness, we have Martin with his massive, sprawling story-lines with numerous characters and much dialogue.

This one just has numbing action and violence every few paragraphs...and a great deal of sprawl.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

I find is rather amusing how LOTR books are declared "annoying and boring" by many people we see on the web.

I have a couple of questions that I believe needed no separate thread to be answered.
1). Why would one believe Tolkien was a poor writer (and thus over-rated by the 'fans of the books')?
2). Why would people think the story doesn't move anywhere?
3). Why would people think characters do not evolve throughout the book?
4). Why would someone state PJ does a better job in storytelling than Professor did? (Kill me!)
I have come across these points again and again all the time and have found those who state the above mentioned points quite ignorant.

Of course, it all falls down to "This is all about different tastes and you cannot force anyone to like the books if they're not interested in them."
True enough. But isn't that the thing? If you aren't getting the beauty of the books, you have to be open-minded enough to admit this. Why mention someone with far greater qualification, dedication and knowledge is not as good as you want them to be? This is offensive to say for any writer perhaps, and especially for someone who has literally poured out their heart and soul in their works. Ignorance of our generation. Ugh!

It really doesn't do to get angry, though- better just to say, "Well, I see it differently, here's why". I realise that can difficult, if you happen to be dealing with people who don't really understand the concept of taste being subjective in the first place. (You can usually spot them by their constant use of words like "factual" and "objective" to describe their personal reactions.)

Now it has been my own experience that self-identified fantasy fans do quite often dislike Tolkien. This is perhaps in part because the real explosion of epic fantasy as a genre only happened in the last few decades, so that those who make it their chief reading material are used to a more modern writing style (with, perhaps, dips into faux-archaic dialogue). And then, the very fact that it *is* a popular market means that a lot of it is pitched at a fairly simplistic, light-reading level. Nothing wrong with that, either- the point is populist writing tends to signal things like character development very heavily, because it has to allow for its readership not necessarily paying close attention.

As for "PJ being a better storyteller", I think the version of something you encounter first, if you like it, tends to seem like the "real" version, with others feeling not quite right. Though I regard the "Lord of the Rings" films as achievements in their own right, they *are* blockbusters and they adapt the story accordingly. I can see some movie fans being jarred by the difference when they come to read the book.

Basically- some people have a limited comfort zone, and automatically dismiss as self-evidently "bad" anything outside it. Obviously, since taste *is* so individual, they might not like "Lord of the Rings" (or whatever is in question) anyway, but the point is that they won't give it a chance in the first place. That mindset is not something you can change overnight. To get back to my original suggestion, calm, low-key disagreement is likely to work better than a passionate defence, since it suggests that maybe their opinions are not "objective facts" believed by all rational human beings. But you need to be patient.