No, I’m saying that it takes itself incredibly seriously which to me - this is my own personal opinion - comes over as a bit pretentious.
Tolkien was attempting to build his own equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon epic from scratch and I get that . I even admire it. But I empathize with his friend C S Lewis (perhaps apocryphal) response when show the first draft “for Christ sake John, not more fucking elves…”
Like I say, I don’t expect Gandalf to be slipping on a banana peel while Frodo and Sam do a ‘Who’s on first?’ routine.
But for me there’s no change in pace, mood or objective to sustain my interest for the length of the whole work, which is probably why I generally more or less get on with the first book and enjoy the first film; but get less interested and eventually numbed to the rest of the story because it feels like endless servings of more of the same. To me it just comes over like, this happens, this happens, this happens then good triumphs like you knew it would.
Gollum is the only character that truly seems to go beyond a basic 'i am here to do this in the narrative ’ and is mercurial and interesting to watch/read
No, I’m saying that it takes itself incredibly seriously which to me - this is my own personal opinion - comes over as a bit pretentious.
Tolkien was attempting to build his own equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon epic from scratch and I get that . I even admire it. But I empathize with his friend C S Lewis (perhaps apocryphal) response when show the first draft “for Christ sake John, not more fucking elves…”
Like I say, I don’t expect Gandalf to be slipping on a banana peel while Frodo and Sam do a ‘Who’s on first?’ routine.
But for me there’s no change in pace, mood or objective to sustain my interest for the length of the whole work, which is probably why I generally more or less get on with the first book and enjoy the first film; but get less interested and eventually numbed to the rest of the story because it feels like endless servings of more of the same. To me it just comes over like, this happens, this happens, this happens then good triumphs like you knew it would.
Gollum is the only character that truly seems to go beyond a basic 'i am here to do this in the narrative ’ and is mercurial and interesting to watch/read