I also just finally read LotR after bouncing off it a few times. I had the opposite takeaway though, at least having played a lot of D&D but not having read a lot of fantasy novels, that - wow it was so much better and more thoughtful than the modern take.
Just Dungeon & Dragons and associates, plus of course the movies. As well as vague awareness of like, video game plots & tropes. What struck me the most was how LotR was very anti-war in a lot of ways which absolutely does not carry over. I can completely agree it was like Star Wars, especially in that: Star Wars (4 at least) was good! It had an incredible aesthetic that I fell in love with instantly, the story is simple and nice, every line is iconic. But more Star Wars just isn't that interesting and it did seem like everyone was trying to make their own worse version for a while at least.
I didn't say it isn't thoughtful or as thoughtful, just that it doesn't flow as well. I think most people who aren't pretentious literary students would be pro Tom Bombadil's removal, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to find it's a remnant from the time Tolkien wasn't sure if LotR would be a full-on children's book or not. The book could easily lose about 50 pages of descriptions and scarcely anyone would care? I could go on, but to me at least, it's simultaneously polished and rough as hell. EDIT/Addendum: Maybe to elaborate and add a bit of comparison with GEB (you CS folks love it): GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture. So a lot of their impact is just lost on me: I got it in a refined version before, so the progenitors feel clunky.
"Cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms" being the author's summaries of not only GEB (1979) but also Dawkin's The Selfish Gene (1976), I am fully ready to argue that GEB was an intellectual's retreat from Reagan. American culture was big on trite wordplay back then. It was largely insufferable.GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture.
Yeah totally - see what you mean about the Tom Bombadil & that. I like the prose now, but especially the first chapter is very long and academic and not exactly a page turner. Re: GEB also haven't finished it despite starting but I totally agree with you there, nothing felt like 'mind blowing'. For LotR though, I went in expecting to not be that impressed since I had all the cultural osmosis already and had seen the movies etc and, for me at least, it had a different tone and character and earnestness that I think the modern versions lost at some point. (I do still love the movies though). Recently read some Sherlock Holmes and did get that feeling though- everything was such a predictable trope, but I suppose at the time it was a lot more new
I'm not sure, but it was certainly influential. That's why we see it as trite and need its retelling repackaged. By the way, if you like British humor (humour?) with commentary on (among others) writers stealing and redoing things, I recommend Upstart Crow.Recently read some Sherlock Holmes and did get that feeling though- everything was such a predictable trope, but I suppose at the time it was a lot more new