Honest opinion of Tolkien? Never been to /lit/ pls don't

>>9274028
my enjoyment of fantasy begins and ends with Tolkien

He's alright. I really dig his interest in mythology which is apparent all over LotR. Dude tells a good story. His prose is rather lobotomized, but makes up a lot of ground for it with how much he gives a fuck about what he's doing.

>>9274028
He had a mastery of language comparable to Joyce, it's a shame he was such an autist who didn't know how to use it

>>9274030
This. I love Tolkien. I love the Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion. Don't let the plebs here tell you he sucks; he doesn't.

>>9274028

Great author, horrible following.

>>9274055
Not many of his following have actually read LOTR properly. I'm a big fan but the first to admit that there are soul crushing parts to it. Rivendel being one of them.

I probably would have sucked his dick, in the day

>>9274055

Why?

>>9274048

How do you know he had such a good prose? I liked his themes better than his writing.

>>9274066

Because he spawned the whole "Fantasy" genre, which takes the most superficial aspects of his novels and leave out what made those parts fit so well in his stories. That being his themes.

>>9274062
>there are soul crushing parts to it

I can never forget the way he ends the LOTR books. Fucking Sam just sitting there stuck with the melancholy of the happy ending just absolutely destroyed me when I read it.

>>9274055
The thing is, true Tolkien fans (the ones who've read all the books) aren't that bad. It's the fake fans (only seen the movies) who came with the rise of the 'nerdy' trend with people and who put LOTR in the same vein as Harry Potter / Star Wars that I can't stand. I can't even go into the comments sections of LOTR movie clips on YouTube anymore without getting pissed off. Nothing but a bunch of plebs pointing out 'plot holes' that are explained in the books and people who pretend to have read the Simarillion spouting half-baked nonsense.

one of my life aims is to have a child and read The Hobbit as one of their bed time stories

>>9274082
Tolkien himself even despised the majority of his fans.

>>9274074

Oh, I thought you meant LOTR fans specifically.

>>9274074
>he spawned the whole "Fantasy" genre
He spawned "High" Fantasy, which is a particular subset of it, not Fantasy itself which is something that grew more organically out of folklore and myth with an unbroken line up until his day. He just used some tropes that others copied fairly closely.

>>9274087
I could definitely see that. These LOTR psueds have been around since it became popular.

>>9274074
I think it's more fair to say that the fantasy genre was created by superficial immitators of his work.

His subcreation is an exercise in artificial mythology and stands apart from the fantasy genre as a whole.

>>9274074
This really isn't true no matter what definition of the genre you use. Even in its 'modern' form, Anderson was simultaneous with him, and Eddison published decades before. If you stretch the definition even a little bit fantasy has been around forever.

>>9274085
this desu

>>9274412
I think it's possible to define the genre in such a way that that's true.If /lit/ existed before Tolkien we wouldn't need a containment board for writers of fairy stories in the way that we need one for imitators of faerie stories.