Post by Owner and Manager of AST I and IIPost by {88Keys}I finally got around to reading The Lord of the Rings (wanted to read
the books before I watched the movies). I'm almost finished with "The
Fellowship of the Ring." Starts off kinda slow, but good stuff once
it gets going.
I know LOTR fans are devout, that's for sure. I can't read it.
I was forced to read The Wind in the Willows when I was five and from then on
out, I was ruined to imaginary reading. I couldn't stand it. I kept asking,
"How can a toad talk?" I was too into Thor Heyerdahl and his studies of the
people in the Pacific, his Easter Island studies, and a few years later how he
built the boat out of reed to prove travel was possible far before we'd ever
imagined in his RA expeditions.
WTF would I want with a talking toad?
I'm a non-fiction gal, though DaVinci Code -- a work of fiction -- was very
interesting.
eShellzo, Ph.D. Apt. #1A in AST 1
Wearing a black armband for the Wesleys-- 3/03, Abe-- 9/03, Jack--10/03,
Maggie--10/03, Caroline--11/03, Cassie--11/03, Roman--1/04...
http://angelfire.lycos.com/tv/alttvdoolfaq/
It's not called Imaginary Reading, but I suppose it could be *explained* as
that. There's actually a genre of literature that The Wind in the Willows or
books of that nature fall in to. It's called Magic Realism.
There are some very well-loved authors who fall in to that genre such as
Bradbury, Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and especially Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Lewis Carroll's work is also Magic Realism.
I think the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe series is a bit more inclined
towards Magic Realism than LOTR, but you've certainly got a right to feel
that Tolkein's work is a little too mystical and a little too
"other-worldly" for you. I know a lot of people who feel the same way.
I can't STAND Marquez for that very reason. He gives life and power to
inanimate objects in his writing when you least expect it and it creates a
sense of helplessness in the reader. It's just so over the top to me,
really.
You have to throw YEARS of what you've learned in literature and English
classes out the window to even enjoy that kind of writing and to me, that's
just too headache inducing of a task.
I view Tolkein's work to be sort of fairytale/mystic/folklorish. I don't
think it's as hallucogenically bizarre as some of the foremost leaders of
the Magic Realism genre, though.
I think there are many elements in the LOTR trilogy that ring true with real
life. For instance, I think Sam and Frodo's kinship is not so overrated that
it is unbelievable.
I think fauns who talk, and cry and laugh in The Lion The Witch and The
Wardrobe, however, is just too much for me to take, as is much of what
occurs in Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titans---A good book, but a very
hard to digest without a good dose of skepticism.
Imaging *writing* that stuff as opposed to reading it. I don't think it's
possible to write it effectively without being a little bit stoned in the
first place. How does one get himself in to that type of mindset to write
like that for chapter upon chapter?
JN