[delis-thumbs-7e]

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim it through.

[notahacker]

> Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring.

If you want to see it then way Tolkien saw it, probably the best way is to get through all that unimportant stuff involving rings and battles as quickly as possible to get to the appendices where Tolkein spent his time thinking about the history and etymology and even neat little details like how the calendar worked in the Shire...

(I'm only half joking)

[jahnu]

> One would be mad to simply skim it through.

Reminds me of an ah-ha! moment I had as a kid playing a text adventure game on my C64. I was stuck for a while and tried to find alternative ways forwards. I typed in "cheat" and it replied "OK, you win!" and ended the game.

[thaumasiotes]

This is also possible in the first and second Monkey Island games, using hotkeys ctrl+W or maybe alt+W.

The cheat code will immediately end your game while informing you that you scored 800 of 800 points (presumably a Sierra reference; this is the only way to score any number - including zero - of points).

There's no particular reason you'd discover this while playing either game, but if you play the third one, a mandatory plot point will show the message "You lose. You scored 0 of 800 points," referring back to the obscure joke in the earlier games.

[jahnu]

Haha! Love it.

[harshreality]

One might also argue that The Little Prince is "far more complex" and deeper than anything written at a typical adult reading level. That lower linguistic surface complexity allows more space for the reader to explore ideas and themes.

I'm skeptical. Is there no more value to series like Gormenghast, Book of the New Sun, and The Second Apocalypse, beyond mere literary masochism, compared to LotR? Like them or not, LotR, as elaborate as its mythology is (if you include Silmarillion and some or all of the History of Middle Earth), is not at the same level.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

One would like to point out that the set {Gormenghast, Book of the New Sun, and The Second Apocalypse} is not a subset of {fantasy books I have come across}. I would not dare to claim that LoTR is the end all of all fantasy writing. Perhaps the word ”complex” was a bad choice here, since I’m sure there is books with more complex structure (which is not necessarily a good thing…)

I think what I tried to say is that the language Tolkien uses is as much or more part of the middle earth as are the characters, maps and whatnot. The obvious point is that he created whole new languages and writing systems for the book, basing the two Elvish languages on Finnish and Welsh etc. Other is that he changes his vocabulary depending on what he is describing. I am not a linguistic scholar, but I’m fairly vertain that at least in Two Towers the parts describing nature, forrests and whatnot use solely words that are celtic in origin, ie. no Latin influence and very old. There’s also structural techniques of interwoven plots that I can’t even start to unwind.

Point being, you can very much read the book on surface level as Frodo and the Ring and Swords and lah-di-daa and that is all fine. That’s how I read it when I was 12-13. But there is so much more, mastery of English language comparable only to Cormac McCarthy and Joyce… Here Tolkien is very much a singular writer, escaping the limits of genre he very much was essential in creating.

So no wonder it is perhaps the most influential book of the 20th century.

[coolcoder613]

Not celtic, germanic, i.e. Anglo-Saxon derived words.

[throwway120385]

I've read that Tolkien wrote There and Back Again / The Hobbit as a book for his children. Then he started writing what would become The Fellowship of The Ring for his kids, but he quickly realized that the story was taking many dark turns and that he was best served by moving away from writing it as a book for his kids.

[peruvian]

I read that he partly wrote LOTR to have a "source" for the new languages made up!

[qmr]

I don't know. I enjoyed it in tweens and high school, couldn't get into it again in later life.