Sauron was the good guy?

[Smivs]

An interesting new perspective. Imagine the story of the last Ringbearer from the other side's point of view, where Barad Dur was a haven of science and technological advancement and Aragorn was a scheming luddite.
Read the article here.

[Cody]

Sméagol was the good guy... without his intervention at the end, all would've been lost.

[Smivs]

Oh, stop being so precious His motivation was far from altruistic!

[Cody]

'We hates it Smivsss...'

[ClymAngus]

Can't we be allowed one well written story that's nicely black and white without some post-modernist ****ing it up? It's a psychopathic and relentless foe! "this is a fantasy, we know about the reality, don't question the fantasy."

John kicks the ball. Spot runs after the ball. See spot run.

How did the ball feel when the evil John kicked it? Do Spot really run after the ball or was he forced to by the tyrannical oppression visited upon him by years of brain washing by John? We may see Spot run but is it right that we should watch the degradation of a fellow mammal?

AAAAHHH! SHUT UUUUUPPP!

I'm sorry if you can't hang your own psychological and socio-political anxiety off your own story then don't hang it off someone else's. It's like firing a muck spreader at the Taj mahal; it's cheap, easy and destroys more than it creates.

And before any monkey starts making comparisons one novella doesn't even scratch the service of elite. It was a world opener not a sandbox. Middle earth is Tolkiens sandbox, if you don't like that go play on the swings.

[Smivs]

The 'Eye of Sauron' has spoken

[ClymAngus]

The 'Eye of Sauron' has spoken

Sorry that was a bit heavy handed of me, but honestly. There would have been room for a fiction book with "ugly ain't necessarily evil" or even a parody, but jacking a well thought out world is just plain lazy, it maybe well written but it's bolted on a borrowed frame. This smacks of MASSIVE insecurity on behalf of the author.

I'll point you in the direction of some of the saner comments that adorn this frivolous and ill conceived review (Sunday night? Need something juicy to publish on Monday morning? Bit hung over? Don't worry Laura, we've all been there.).

Now that may sound uncharitable but I distrust anyone who has such a close connection with C.S. Lewis to be objective in such subject matters, given the historical association between the two. She can defend C.S. Lewis but can't do so for Tolkien? A touch Janus young lady.....

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 07:09 PM ET
Please Read LOTR...

....or at least read it more closely. I actually enjoy your reviews, and they're one of the few things I still click on when I visit this site. But although you were careful, the "eyeball" reference gives you away. Sauron was not a gigantic disembodied eyeball; the Eye was a metaphor for a Foucauldian-type panoptic presence ultimately internalized by Sauron's followers, and which strove for god-like omniscience. I don't believe someone of your intelligence would have misinterpreted that, it's pretty clear in the books.

The flaming eyeball is Peter Jackson's creation, and only exists in the films. No snark intended, but it's intellectually lazy to review a parody or whatever you wish to call it and not even bother to read, or at least fully read, the work it parodies.

I wasn't aware of the Russian novel, but the Tolkien deconstruct-thing has been a little tired for some time. I remember well the article in SALON a few years ago with the same critique, imploring us to "have fun with our fantasy literature," and not "accept it" at face value, etc. The net is awash in similar "Tolkien-subversive" pieces. It seems to excite a certain lefty cohort. Tolkien was white, Christian, male, patrician (by inclination if not by birth) and a bit of a luddite, so I guess I understand why. Those are pretty much all bad things by definition these days, right?

But while it's seemingly de rigueur to parody or deconstruct almost everything now and infuse it with a multicultural ethos--and that's fine--is it even that creative anymore?

Neither Tolkien nor the world he created was anti-medicine, anti-science, anti-knowledge, etc. It does bespeak a natural theistic worldview, so if that's a dealbreaker, then you'll hate it.

Beyond that, if Tolkien was a "propagandist," it was for an eco-friendly world devoid of the faceless dehumanization that has accompanied modern industrialization.

Oh, that and smoking "weed," of course.

But then he wasn't a propagandist, and history wasn't written by the "winners." It was written by the man who actually envisioned and created Middle-earth, over many years, as a philological exercise to begin with. And it's fiction, not allegory. Fiction.

The Orcs aren't black or Muslim; they're just monsters.

All the deconstructs ever spawned can't change that, and ultimately say more about their own authors than anything at all about Tolkien or the grand-scale fairy tale he wrote.
—David Schlaefer

[Smivs]

No need to apologise. I consider LOTR to be one of the greatest works of all time, and was more intrigued by the concept of viewing the events from 'the other side's' point of view than agreeing with the conclusions, or the way it was done.
And, considering your avatar, the 'Eye of Sauron' remark just seemed irresistable

[CheeseRedux]

I must say I have trouble seeing how the premise of Sauron as a good - or even neutral - guy can hold up. Disregarding any sort of motivation and morality, you're still left with the fact that every major military operation had Sauron and/or Saruman as the aggressor. I guess you could call them preemptive strikes, but seeing as the other side at no time prior had made any move indicating coming aggression, that's quite a stretch.
The only way I can see this even getting close to working is by asserting that the story we know is grossly falsified. And then you're left with a story whose very framework is hardly recognizable any more, since you'd have to either rip out at the very least the attacks on Hornburg & Minas Tirith, or insert something making those attacks justifiable.

Nothing wrong with telling a story from another perspective (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, anyone?), but there's just no way you can tell that story with a positive spin on Sauron. Saruman, on the other hand, could possibly be made to look good.

[drew]

I might read this, because I'm intrigued by the slant - 'history is written by the victor' and I like the idea of telling the same story from different viewpoints, but the multi-culteral crapola can go hang.

The Orcs aren't black or Muslim; they're just monsters.

Right on.

And it's fiction, not allegory. Fiction.

Right on again.

cheers,

Drew.

[DaddyHoggy]

I read LOTR every few years. I've also read Silmarillion several times too - not as a story - but as a history book - a history of which the events in LOTR are but the tip of a very big iceberg. If I was half as good a fantasy writer as Tolkien, I'd be 200x better than I am now...

People should leave well alone, Tolkien said many years ago, that he did not base Sauron or the Orcs on anyhting in particular but he couldn't help but be influenced by his experiences during the two World Wars. At the end of the day, you write what you know and expand from there...

[ClymAngus]

I read LOTR every few years.

"Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!"

------------------------------------------------------------
Orly?

Hippy hoppy, klippy cloppy, flippy floppy pillo..... "cK" It's a trap, get the axe. Blood I'm guna spillo!

[drew]

I read LOTR every few years.

"Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!"

------------------------------------------------------------
Orly?

Hippy hoppy, klippy cloppy, flippy floppy pillo..... "cK" It's a trap, get the axe. Blood I'm guna spillo!

Yeah... I skip that bit of the story. It always feels like a chapter that belonged in another book.

Cheers,

Drew.

[Cody]

It always feels like a chapter that belonged in another book.

Like Bored of the Rings, perhaps.

[CheeseRedux]

It always feels like a chapter that belonged in another book.

Like Bored of the Rings, perhaps.

Or, conceivably,  The Adventures of Tom Bombadil...