Michael Moorcock once met JRR Tolkein, he admitted to liking him as a person just disliking his books.

 

As a person whose always disliked LOTR, book & movie in this day of Tolkein worship it's nice to have an ally in the second most successful fantasy author.

 

Moorcock accuses Tolkein of being a reactionary and an anti-realist. Creating worlds where servants live in happy unquestioning ignorance and no-one questions their place in society, in fact fight for this society which is portrayed as unquestioningly righteous.

 

Moorcock a political anarchist instead in every book he writes challenges convention, in his most successful book Elric Moorcock attacks the notion of a hero. "Prone to self-loathing, brooding and despair.... Elric presents an excellent example of a countersteriotype, because he was written specifically as the polar opposite of Robert E Howard. Howard's Conan and similar fantasy heroes. Instead of a mighty-thewed barbarian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian - n warrior who fights his way from obscurity to achieve fame and power, Elric is a frail, sickly albino, a highly-educated and cultured (often downright decadent) emperor who abandons his throne. Whereas the conventional fantasy hero rescues fair maidens from evil wizards and monsters and defends his country from invaders, Elric (inadvertently) slays his true love, is himself a powerful wizard in league with the Chaos lord Arioch, summons monsters to aid himself in battle, and leads a successful invasion against his homeland of Melnione. Finally, while fantasy heroes often begin as novices and gradually becom more skilled and powerful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman - l over time, Elric steadily loses his throne, his homeland, his family and friends, and his magical resources." Wikipedia

 

Are Moorcock's criticisms of Tolkein valid? Should we be celbrating him not Tolkein.

 

 

 

 

The notion of Tolkien being anti-realist is somewhat stating the obvious. He created a fantasy world and, being the 'god' or creator of this world he moulded the social and racial structure as he saw fit. For Tolkien, the distinction between races was a very clear one in his books, there were good races, such as hobbits, good but dangerous races, such as elves, and downright bad races, such as Orcs. There was also a very clear distinction of powers, ranging from the noble yet weak hobbit to the dark lord himself. What I am trying to say is, the world Tolkien created is his, unrealsitic, but filled full of observations about ourselves - like the inherent greed in man, for example.

 

In such a fantasy epic, not only is it easier to create heroes that anti-heroes, but it is more befitting to the genre, where good and evil are made clearly distinct, and the crossover either way is noticeable. On the other hand, though, a character such as Saruman exchanged his virtue in good for the benifits of his power, the Kings of Men (10 I think) started off as respected and glorious leaders, yet were led astray by power, as was the Steward King of Gondor. So he does explore the idea of anti-hero and transition towards and away from evil, just as you have pointed out Moorcock has done with his protagonist.

 

The idea of societal placemant and how the races were unquestioning about it, is in my view less about the idea of tiers of sub-servience, and more about a very large world, with many races, all concerned with their own affair and not the affairs of others. Within these societies there are leaders, andone must point out that no one ruler of middle-earth existed to cover all races. It is in fact the danger of a single, global ruler that made the different races come together in order to avoid this, and let the seperate groups live in relative autonomy to each other. It seems, to me at least that Tolkien saw the world, whether ours or the one he created as a collective mass of seperate identities, a mass that could converge in the pursuit of good, yet were probably better off remaining seperate, in respect of each other, yet not in sub-servience either. He was a traditionalist, after all!

 

Simply put, Tolkien makes you think Moorcock doesn't.

 

More simply put, in the world of fantasy literature, Tolkien is in the Premier League, Moorcock somewhere in the third division

 

With regards to tolkien; I don't know that he was unrealistic, many of his themes are quite real.  Not being a tolkien scholar, this is a bit above me, I believe some of moorcocks points are worth taking into consideration.  I think one could make a case for tolkien being a reactionary, though anti-realist would be a tougher case.  That being said, I admire the works of tolkien, dolphin has fleshed out some of the reasons.  Its hard not to finish reading the hobbit and LOTR's and not admire them because so much of what they say is of value, even (or perhaps especially) today. 

 

Originally posted by Paul ...where servants live in happy unquestioning ignorance and no-one questions their place in society, in fact fight for this society which is portrayed as unquestioningly righteous.

I disagree with this assessment, the way I understood it was this was a flawed society that had once been great.  (great could be interpreted many ways, though I view it as being better than the current state)  The wisdom of the past had been ignored/forgotten and the state had declined because of it. (that sounds like something a modern man/woman could run with)  Old allies were abandoned/ignored, and the kings gone.  Now, with Aragorn I see a man who proves his worth time and again (thereby proving he is the best candidate to lead his country - Gondor) and takes on the responsibility of rising to defend gondor from a society far worse than any other comparable one in middle earth.  He reunites gondor with rohan and lets the wisdom of the elves guide him. (being part elf himself, in this world the elves were superior to men in certain areas, especially wisdom) 

 

I don't like how this is coming off, (my post) but basically my thoughts are there are so many lessons one can glean from LOTR's and the hobbit that are timeless.  So overall, I think Moorcock has an interesting view of things that are worth looking into, (getting his books is something I'll consider if I ever have the money, hurray for student incomes) but for now I consider tolkien to be in a class of his own. 

 

Rider - I thought you were an editor for the magazine, just a moderator now?