FUCK he is good
>>24886728what is he saying tho?
>>24886746That's so funny! BWAHAHHAHAHA!
>>24886728this wigga worth reading?
>>24886728All of what passes as art in contemporary society is a dumpster pile because it‘s focused on being "gritty" or "real" as a codeword for needlessly depraved beyond any balanced sense of genuine reality. To frame this as a challenge against aesthetic lies is willfully retarded.
>>24886728His only critique of Tolkien is that by consolation he meant mollycoddle, but that's not what Tolkien meant; he actually says the opposite in his definition of consolation.>The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
I'll take high fantasy over steampunk.
>>24886728It's a bloviating ChatGPT essay.>Em dashes>It's not X, it's Y,>It's this, it's that,>Corporatey, faggoty marketing language buzzwordsIf it's not written by ChatGPT, then this faggot is just some weirdo drone. Definitional corporate NPC slop.
>>24887035This was written over a decade ago before ChatGPT was even developed. You're not smart.
>>24886926The bas lag cycle is pretty good desu. He wrote a short story called The Tain which I liked too.
>>24887042It was written in 2002 for Socialist Review.
>>24886728>bla bla bla fuck whitey and kill whiteyanything worth reading in all this drivel?
>>24886728>glorying in warI think back on that dead Haradrim guy the hobbits saw and wondered how he'd come so far from home to die for no good reason and I don't see much glory honestly
>>24887090Or was it an Easterling? A human anyway.
>>24887042He's absolutely right in that it's written in atrocious GPTesque style, down to the boilerplate phrasing.>This is fantasy not as comfort food, but as challenge.lol! What an utter hack. He'll be long fogotten when people will still read and admire Tolkien, in fact it's disappointing he's not forgotten already.
>>24887171You need to read more. I doubt you know much about style if you haven't read a book a week for five years (I know you haven't).
>>24886728I think one of the reasons he hates Tolkien is because he's a Marxist and Marxists generally despise English culture.
>>24887179You're just mad your favorite slop scribbler got exposed as a bumbling hack by anons with better taste and linguistic sensitivity. You're probably crying right now.
>>24887187I don't even like China Mieville but that guy cannot even parse basic stylistic flair.
>>24887179>You can't criticize my favorite slop author unless you read this arbitrary number of booksSo what anon if I read a book per two weeks for four years, I'm disqualified and can't criticize Mr. Chyna.
>>24887187Funny how that's the exact reaction of the majority of this board whenever someone criticizes Tolkien. This thread is about to reach hundreds of replies off the Tolkien fans' collective butthurt. There is always a thread in the catalog farming (You)s from them - usually with GRRM in the OP. At least there's some variety this time, I haven't seen this Mielville quote before (but will probably be seeing it a lot more in the future whenever someone on /lit/ gets hungry for replies).
>>24887193What's there to parse? It's the throwaway "style" of labored undergrad essays and tripe for content mills. Exactly the thing chatgpt was calibrated to reproduce.
>>24886728Sounds like his problem is with Tolkienfags and imitators, not Tolkien himself.
>>24886728Kinda true but also I fucking hate urban fantasy.
Lancelot stabbing himself was a very stupid scene. Arthur's knighting was kino.
>>24887181its mainly because tolkien was a traditionalist and monarchist with a heavy romantic inclination which are probably the biggest no-no's for marxists and le gritty realist authors that wanna tell a story "how it really is, maaaan......"
>>24886728i am so happy he was right about the renaissance of fantasy literature and its definitely never been in a better place than it is now and i am also very glad that us as lowly men are finally appealing to women! hail satan!
>>24888055Why was Tolkien too scared to add rape scenes? I want to see elves get raped by orcs. That's what they would do. LOTR is unrealistic. Ever heard of the Rape of Nanking? Even babies got raped and their corpses played with.
>>24888071KekIt's amazing that some people genuinely feel like this though
>>24887047The Tain is just him expanding to stupidity a two-page entry in Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings. (The Fish of the Mirror)
>>24888055Thats sounds kind of boring. Probably why I hated reading Steinbeck in high school. Pages of dialogue and no forward movement. It was like a watching a mudslide in slow motion. Totally glacial and yawn-inducing.
>>24889186Liberals are often too concerned with making sure you understand THE MESSAGE that they forget to actually write an interesting story.
Kraken was a good book and I will die on thay hill.
>>24886728You know, given these criticisms, why wouldn't you at this point write serious literary fiction set in the present or historical periods? He essentially is critiquing Tolkien here for escapism. So what does he want? Escapism without the escape? He simply wants to indulge in his own perverse and nihilistic fantasies, which is arguably much worse for the psyche than idealistic fantasies like Tolkien.
>>24889232>He essentially is critiquing Tolkien here for escapism.Communists despise escapism for the same reasons they despise religion. They see anything that doesn't address social issues as a distraction.
>>24889237That's not what Marx said. He says religion is the opiate of the masses but also the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of the heartless world that makes religion the last safe haven of the poor and oppressed. People tend to misread that quote because they decontextualise it or otherwise remove it from its original intention: to critique the irreligious nature of world consuming capitalism.
>>24889285Regardless of what Marx said, many communist countries disapproved of religion.
I read The City and The City and found it underwhelming. Has he done anything better?
I agree with some of what he's saying, but his criticism seems to betray a view of art that is too utilitarian to create anything worthwhile, such an attitude seems to afflict most of today's leftists.
>>24886728>disStopped reading right there. What a hack.
>>24887090Strawmanning Tolkien is now the established way for fantasy writers to get noticed.It's a bit like the tradition of new members of parliament attacking the old grandees ... which only betrays their secret fear and respect.
>>24887171What really feathers his bed is his trendy politics.Today's publishing industry would promote a chimpanazee if it wore a Lenin cap.
>>24887226>butthurtThat's an odd way to spell "contempt."
>>24889685For not sucking Tolkien's cock?
>>24889758That strawman of your must be ready to walk by now.Why are you anti-Tolkien seethers such potty mouths?
>>24889780Why do you Tolkienfags forget where you are?
>>24889939He got lost trying to downvote his way out of a problematic subreddit
>>24886728The Hobbit is a children's book, Lotr is YA. Basic themes, uncomplicated stories, and simple characters are to be expected. It's not bad, it's just written for a less experienced audience.
>>24888062>picat least we still have sci-fi...
>>24886728>despises lotr at least in part because of all the fantaslop that came after it>becomes the godfather of ao3-style furry steampunk gigacringewhat did he mean by this
>>24890584He who fights monsters et cetra et cetra.
>>24889291he writes genre slop
>>24886728How the fuck do people not see that the long dashes make your stuff look like it's AI generated? Visually it's the first time I notice, it's so off putting
>>24891492People used em dashes long before "AI" existed, but they should stop because you—a moron—find it hard to tell the difference?
