From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Speaking of scathing book reviews (Re: Tolkien Bio)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 19:18:46 GMT

>>>In article <carl-071292133702@mac7.gsfc.nasa.gov> carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov (Carl F. Hostetter) writes:
>>>>
>>>>  My opinion: this is a book with 
>>>>   a message, and the message is "stay away".


>>In article <CHRISLEY.92Dec8152355@black.oxford.ac.uk> chrisley@oxford.ac.uk (Ronald L Chrisley) writes:
>>>
>>>In silly Australian accent:
>>>
>>>"This is not a book for reading; it's a book for laying down and
>>>avoiding..."
>>>


>In article <1992Dec8.212703.17162@leland.Stanford.EDU>,
>jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) wrote:
>>
>> Wasn't it Dorothy Sayers who once wrote in a book review:
>> 
>> "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly; this is a book to be hurled 
>> away with great force."
>> 

In article <carl-091292094207@mac7.gsfc.nasa.gov> carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov (Carl F. Hostetter) writes:

>Another of my favorite scathing reviews, by whom I can't remember, read
>in toto:
>
>"There are entirely too many pages between the covers of this book".
>

	All of these scathing reviews have reminded me of a review of
Ruth S. Noel's book, _The Mythology of Middle-earth_, that I saw once in
_Beyond Bree_.  The review was so nasty that I thought it was worth saving
just for the humor value.  It is reprinted below for your pleasure.  (Sorry,
I don't have the specfic bibliographical info for this--  I think it's from
around 1979 or 1980, but I'm not sure).  

	I should point out that the views of the reviewer are not 
necessarily my views, nor do I necessarily disagree with them.  I am simply
posting this because I thought it was so scathing that it was humorous and
it is about Tolkien as well.

	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu>

__________________________________________________________


	_The Mythology of Middle-earth_ by Ruth S. Noel, Thames and Hudson,
		1977, reviewed by Nick Lowe.


	It stinks.  Of all the vapid, cretinous essays by half-baked
American academics or pseudo-academics purporting to offer illumination of
LOTR, Mrs. Noel's contribution outweighs all its rivals in its gargantuan
worthlessness.  "This book," its author professes, "relates Tolkien's works
to the mythic themes on which they were based".  What it in fact does is
to group Tolkien's ideas rather cavalierly ujnder headings like "Places",
"Beings" and "Things", and then to whisk through noting mythological sources
and analogues.  This, as we shall see, is not the same thing at all.  Never-
theless, it does sound like a good idea; one of the few scores on which
JRRT can be roundly criticised is his heavy reliance on the stock motifs of
folklore in preference to genuine narrative invention.  Tolkien, of course,
adopts a kind of defence in everywhere suggesting that the ubiquity in
European folktale of magic rings, dragon-hoards and so forth owes itself to
a submerged memory of the real thing; hence in Sil, he plays with the names
"Atalante" (of sunken Numenor) annd "Avalonne" (of the haven of Tol Erressea)--
which I for one regard as the cheapest, most contemptible trick he ever
pulled.  This scissors and paste quality of Tolkien's imagination is
important, and it would indeed be very valuable if someone with Tolkien's
grounding in folklore were to go through the books and catalogue all the
conscious or semi-conscious recurrences of well-worn folkloric themes.
	Unfortunately, as Mrs. Noel observes in her introduction with a
devastatingly split infinitive, "to thoroughly appreciate Tolkien's works
it is necessary to have an understanding of mythology."  Mrs. Noel has none;
it need scarcely be said that she has no understanding of Tolkien either.  I
don't know and it's not at all obvious from her book, what Mrs. Noel thinks
"mythology" is, but since her examples are drawn almost exclusively not from
mythology in any currently accepted sense, but from folktale and legend,
I don't suppose it matters much apart from causing any moderately educated
reader to wince everytime she misapplies the words "mythology" or "mythic".
	What is more serious is the shallowness of her pretence at scholar-
ship.  All her "mythological" material is second-hand--  apart from the easy
ones like Snorri Sturluson, Malory, Beowulf, and the Mabinogion, she never
goes back to the original sources, falling back on phrases like "a theme
found in Teutonic mythology."  What in God's name is "Teutonic mythology"?--
Grimm? The Eddas?  The Nibelungenlied?  The scholarly authorities she cites
are no better; either they're desperately outdated (Jacob Grimm, The 
Golden Bough) or they're celebrated crackpots (Robert Graves, Lord Raglan).
Of the standard modern writers on myth--  Cassirer, Dumezil, Eliade, Kirk,
Levi-Strauss, Malinowski--  we hear never a word.  Nor do we, if Tolkien's
acknowledged sources are to be treated, find more than a couple of passing
references to the Kalevala, or to the whole corpus of classical legend.  
Instead, we find ourselves referred to the _New Larousse Encyclopedia of
Mythology_--  which "is comparable to" (see below) citing the _How and Why
Wonder Book of Science_ in a treatise on quantum mechanics.  She seems never
have heard of the one reference work utterly indispensable to any study of 
this kind, Stith Thompson's 6 volume _Motif-Index of Folk-Literature_. And
finally, she uses such sources as she does without any sense of critical
judgement--  pp. 135-8 for instance, (on external souls) is cribbed whole-
sale from Frazer (abridged edition, of course; it appears from the biblio-
graphy that Mrs. Noel is unaware that _The Golden Bough_ exists in anything
other than an abridged edition).  Even so she doesn't seem to have read her
sources properly: for example, we find lot's of impressive bluffing on
the subject of shamanisms although Mrs. Noel obviously doesn't know what a
shaman is--  she certainly doesn't know the plural.  [She uses "shamen" 
rather than the correct "shamans"]
	But this is only the most basic of the woman's gross incompetences.
What really makes the book so infuriating is its increcible banality.  From
start to end we are confronted with a stream of trivial, superficial, and
utterly unenlightening parallels adduced for various motifs in Tolkien, 
without the last attempt to relate (as you will recall Mrs. Noel pragmatically
announced) anything to anything.  Mrs. Noel's favourite phrase "so-and-so _is
comparable to_ such-and such" (with the variant "is similar to) occurs about
six times a page and even finds its way into her pretentious description of
the jacket illustration, but never once does anything ever get compared.  If
Tolkien uses a name or motif with pre-existing associations, I want to know
how he uses those associations; when Tolkien "was influenced by" something,
I want to know the nature of that influence.  Instead we get page after page
of meandering down channels that any fool can tell at the start are dead
ends--  like comparisons of Tolkienian Elves with Teutonic (sic) Elves (sic)
in immense and fruitless detail; and the occasional outburst of really
dangerous lunacy, such as the likening of Glorfindel to a sun god, Frodo
to a vegetation spirit, and Sauron to Odin.  The last of these is so 
fantastic you can scarecely believe it's there on the page:  "In all mythology
Sauron is most similar to the Scandinavian god Odin," declares Mrs. Noel and
notes the truly astounding resemblance in both's having one eye.  She then 
spends a paragraph telling us about Odin's one eye.  Then she spends a
paragraph establishing that there is otherwise nothing whatever in common
between the two figures.  Then she says, "There is no doubt that Tolkien's
parallels between Sauron and Odin were conscious ones."  Uh, 'scuse me ma'am,
_what_ parallels?
	The banality isn't restricted to Mrs. Noel's subject matter, either.
Every now and then she wanders off into critical comments about Tolkien so
inane that you wonder why she bothers:  "Free will plays some part in 
Tolkien's works, and circumstances arise when fate is dependent upon choice."
"Some part"!?  "Circumstances arise"!?  Or take Mrs. Noel's analysis of the 
character of Aragorn which I quote in full:  "Aragorn is a particularly
complex character.  He first appeared in _The Fellowship of the Ring_ 
climbing over the Bree gate in an unquestionably suspicious manner.  He 
evolved in presence and nobility until he was crowned King Elessar of Arnor
and Gondor."
	When all this is said, it remains true that amidst all the dross,
the reader will inevitably find out some things that he didn't know about
Tolkien's names and sources; but nothing like as much as a book of this
nature ought to tell, and unaccompanied by any criticial observations such
as might elevate the information above the casually remarkable.  Mrs. Noel's
analytic technique is about as systematic as a constipated chicken; she
couples the critical understanding of a Lin Carter with the scholarly insight
of a Gracia Fay Elwood, and the book is written in a bland, moronic style
irresistably reminiscent of _Look and Learn_.  Most of the space is taken up
with irrelevant resumes of Tolkien; the chapters and sub-chapters are short,
and always seem to cut off just before they get to the point; the type is 
large, the format spacious and the acreage of blank space considerable.  The
index is singularly unhelpful, and wouldn't direct me to all the horrors I
had wanted to quote you;  I don't like the dust-jacket; the binding's the
wrong colour; and the price is preposterous.  It stinks.
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