facher83 said:
How does being a good storyteller not make you a good author? An author, by definition, is most simply a creator of content. A writer has a job to conve, in words or other communicable ways, to get a message across to another person. Tolkien seems to do both of these objectives fine. Tolkien is criticized for being a poor English writer, novel writer, and to have a lot of complaints against his novel 'setups' not being perfect. I'm not sure I agree with your account that Tolkien is a bad author - I mean, you supported him to be a good author already, but just sort of took it away based on a technicality that doesn't have anything to do with being an author, but being an editor, literary grammar police, or a strict reviewer who ignores content and pays attention to the fact that having a paperback cover must mean the writer sucks, because it's nto hardcover. I don't understand you.... you're on a bandwagon that doesn't exist.
(I've only read the first half of FotR, and I could really care less about Tolkien's image, but your reasonings seem way beyond flawed to discredit an 'author'). |
Making a story and presenting a story are two completely different things. Tolkien made a good compelling story, nobody is objecting to that, but the way he presents it is shit.