Posts by Jake Pollock
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Sounds like a criticism that could be made of Austen, Shakespeare just as much.
I'm not saying that all authors should deal with these topics, by any means. God forbid. My point is that the answer to the 'Tolkien rendered a complete and multi-layered world' argument that many people trot out is 'no he bloody didn't.' Clearly, my point of view is not particularly defensible without putting much more time into the discussion than I can afford (although I'll maintain that a few farms does not an economy make), but this is a 'bitch about classics' session, and so I feel it is within my right to advance half-baked opinions about things.
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To return to LOTR for a moment:
Craig, firstly, Tolkien may have been horrified at the genre his work spawned, but spawn it did. Frankenstein too regretted his monster (and that's a great, great book).
From that article:
But The Lord of the Rings isn’t just a novel, with a plot and a dreadful prose style. It’s a whole world, with its own half-hidden structure and shifting layers.
This is exactly the thing which he's always praised for, and it's exactly wrong. Because whole worlds usually have things like economies -- hence my question about Frodo at the Prancing Pony. We're told there's a whole wonderful history to be found in these pages, but in fact all we get is some made up languages and a bunch of crap about goodies in the West and baddies in the East. How do the people of Gondor feed themselves? Do they trade with anyone? How are hobbits able to sustain themselves on such an apparently small patch of land without trading with neighbours for grain? What do orcs eat when they're hanging out in Mordor? (and if the answer is each other, then how has Sauron prevented a civil war, when all he can do is look at people?) The basic material conditions of the lives of these people (except for elves, because they have bread that never goes stale) are never more complex than 'Hobbits like to grow things'. We are never told, do they sell their products to one another, or are they a bunch of communists?
And don't try and tell me that it's more of a chronicle-style history than a modern one, because even Holinshed knew the effect on population growth on food prices. I'm not asking for Melville-style descriptions of looming or anything, just a suggestion that the author of this apparently intricately-realised world has given a thought to how the people in it sustain their populations.
I would add that I'm not adverse to the genre. I'll always have a soft spot for Lloyd Alexander, and think that The Hobbit is a terrific children's book. But LOTR, give me a break.
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Kyle: I will hear nothing good said of Lord of the Rings. 1000+ pages of ' incredibly detailed history' and we're still left with the burning question: how did Frodo pay for his stay at the Prancing Pony?
Also, seeing as J.R.R. Tolkien invented the genre of interminable fantasy novels about elves and dragons, I think he bears some responsibility for the truly bad stuff.
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(in which the "uniquely attractive" Brian Thompson intones, in his velvet Shakespearean murmur, the word "millenniums").
Oh, he was talking about one thousand intonations used to indicate hesitating or inarticulate utterance on the part of a speaker. Closely related to 'millenniahs'.
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Plus, I get unreasonably annoyed at people who use exclamation marks in their status updates on Facebook. Now there's an anxiety for the modern world.
And I get annoyed at John Hodgman, who isn't as funny as he should be.
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I'm getting that, Jon. It started when I updated the flash player to look at the nzonscreen website.
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Sacha: I asked Richard Prebble about that after he spoke in the University of Auckland quad before the 2002 election. He was more interested in cleaning the egg off of his jacket than answering my question, but he said something about the 1970s welfare system being responsible for the rise in crime in the 1990s.
The logic was 'the welfare state nearly bankrupted us, so we got rid of it, and that's where crime came from'. Now that I think about it, I don't see how that answered my 'your policies drove the crime rate up, isn't it hypocritical to then campaign on law and order?' question at all.
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Do I have to feel warmly about the advertiser to avoid this crime, or just watch diligently and intently?
You don't even have to do that. Ironically or even caustically is fine, although it helps if you repeat jingles and catch-phrases in conversation occasionally, so that advertisers can be assured that they've rented some space in the zeitgeist.
And Mark, although you're a tall person and I'm sure your son takes after you in that regard, I just don't think his shoes would fit me.
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You might be interested in these posters, Kyle.
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I personally feel that by not watching the ads you're stealing television.