So, I've just been reading Le Guin's TEHANU, and it's got me thinking about what bad books by a good author tell us.*
For example there's Austen's MANSFIELD PARK, where she has all the elements she usually uses in a novel but in the wrong combination. Or CSL's THE ABOLITION OF MAN, where he argues in favor of indoctrinating the young. Or one of Shakespeare's bottom of the barrel plays like TITUS ANDRONICUS or TIMON OF ATHENS. Logically the only way to avoid having a 'worst book' is to only write one book. And a given writer's worst might still be v. gd.
But when I tried to apply this line of thought to Tolkien I got into difficulties. MR. BLISS or ROVERANDOM might be serious candidates, but is it fair to include posthumous works? If we do exclude posthumous works, then I don't think there's a genuinely bad book in the fairly short list of books published in Tolkien's lifetime: H, LotR, FGH, ATB, T&L, SWM, RGEO. If I were forced to it I might opt for RGEO just because it has so little Tolkien content, but I suspect those interested in Tolkien's invented languages and invented scripts wd object.
--JDR
--current reading: Ordway, Briggs, light novel
*The inverse phenomenon, of a good book by a bad author, also occurs and is even more interesting, but that's an argument for another day.
6 comments:
All education indoctrinates. Lewis is opposed to what he considers bad indoctrination.
The "dueling curmudgeons" scene between Timon and Apemantus is one of the best things Shakespeare ever wrote.
Truly, you astonish me. Mansfield Park and The Abolition of Man bad books?
Hi David
I have no memory of that scene but am willing to take your word on it.
Your comment does raise another point for another day: when a mediocre or downright bad book has some passage of redeeming excellence, or when a great book has a section that utterly flops.
--John R.
I am grateful to discover I am not the only one who found Tehanu subpar, despite wanting to like it very much. I think part of it is that I never quite felt like the Tenar of Tombs of Atuan was really the Tenar/Goha of this work.
Taking "Leaf By Niggle" on its own I would be happy to call it Tolkien's worst piece of published fiction during his lifetime.
This might be helpful -- it's Gilbert Meilaender as quoted in Michael Ward's -After Humanity-, the new book about -The Abolition of Man-:
"To educate the youth in the primeval moral platitudes is to lead him into his human inheritance. This heritage frees him even as it binds him, for in binding him to a vision of what it means to be human it frees him for the only kind of moral development possible" (qtd on p. 108 of Ward).
Dale Nelson
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