I actually turn to Tolkien when I’m in what I assume other people would call a “religious” mood: he has the virtues of poetic/literary merit and mythological self-consistency; moreover the fact that everyone, including the author, knows that it’s completely false and made-up gives a clean separation between my emotional response and any possible intellectual import.
Huh. You know, in many ways I think there are several fictional stand-bys that serve a somewhat similar function for me. One of them is Star Trek. I watched Star Trek TNG with my parents when I was younger, it was a weekly ritual. As an adult, I can recognize that it really isn’t very good TV: the acting was often poor, the writing poorer, and don’t even get me started on the technobabble. But it has a comfortableness to it that I find soothing in times of stress. LoTR, also. I do not think LoTR is great fiction. Tolkien was not a great writer. But it like to read it. It is a comfortable story, and has been with me for most of the years I could read.
I think its interesting that perhaps atheists and rationalists can find some of the spirituality we are allegedly so bereft of in the pages (or fast-moving frames) of an acknowledged fictional work. I would not be surprised if this has come up before on LW, but I must have missed it if it has.
EDIT: I also wonder if part of the difficulty in leaving religion is leaving the comfortable stories. To be taught for your entire life that the stories are true, and then realize that they might be false… to acknowledge such a realization might horribly taint the stories in ones mind. Humans seem to be very storytelling oriented, and it may be more powerful than we imagine, to reject ones storytelling tradition.
One of them is Star Trek. I watched Star Trek TNG with my parents when I was younger, it was a weekly ritual. As an adult, I can recognize that it really isn’t very good TV: the acting was often poor, the writing poorer, and don’t even get me started on the technobabble.
Lots of people do, in fact, give a special status to Star Trek and Star Wars. Not quite the same kind of special status that people try to give to [insert religious book here], but it seems to go beyond normal fandom. For example, people declaring their religion as “Jedi” on census forms.
I used to love Tolkien, when I was a kid. But honestly, I can’t see the attraction as an adult. Piling centuries of backstory onto a character doesn’t make it three-dimensional. And while Tolkien’s short doggerel can be fun, his long poems are boring. I don’t know—I’m not a poet—but they’re probably technically excellent. That doesn’t save them.
I love his long poems—I once memorized the Lay of Earendil, and Erranty, and The Hoard, and The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, though I don’t remember all of them now. It’s nice to have something to recite to myself when waiting for the bus or something.
And I do find most poetry boring; I have a collection of American verse, but it seems that Poe is the only worthwhile poet of the lot—of course, as for Tolkien, others will certainly differ on this.
One person’s trash is the next person’s treasure, I guess.
So, when I first (tried to) read the Silmarillion in high school, I thought it was incredibly dry and boring. But when I came back to it a few years later in college I thought it was great, and still do (I now like it much better than LotR, in fact). Probably the sort of epic/mythological style it’s written in is something one either loves or can’t stand.
I actually turn to Tolkien when I’m in what I assume other people would call a “religious” mood: he has the virtues of poetic/literary merit and mythological self-consistency; moreover the fact that everyone, including the author, knows that it’s completely false and made-up gives a clean separation between my emotional response and any possible intellectual import.
Huh. You know, in many ways I think there are several fictional stand-bys that serve a somewhat similar function for me. One of them is Star Trek. I watched Star Trek TNG with my parents when I was younger, it was a weekly ritual. As an adult, I can recognize that it really isn’t very good TV: the acting was often poor, the writing poorer, and don’t even get me started on the technobabble. But it has a comfortableness to it that I find soothing in times of stress. LoTR, also. I do not think LoTR is great fiction. Tolkien was not a great writer. But it like to read it. It is a comfortable story, and has been with me for most of the years I could read.
I think its interesting that perhaps atheists and rationalists can find some of the spirituality we are allegedly so bereft of in the pages (or fast-moving frames) of an acknowledged fictional work. I would not be surprised if this has come up before on LW, but I must have missed it if it has.
EDIT: I also wonder if part of the difficulty in leaving religion is leaving the comfortable stories. To be taught for your entire life that the stories are true, and then realize that they might be false… to acknowledge such a realization might horribly taint the stories in ones mind. Humans seem to be very storytelling oriented, and it may be more powerful than we imagine, to reject ones storytelling tradition.
I think I assign special status to Star Trek, too. Sure, it might be full of gaping plot holes and inconsistencies, but—but—it’s Trek!
Lots of people do, in fact, give a special status to Star Trek and Star Wars. Not quite the same kind of special status that people try to give to [insert religious book here], but it seems to go beyond normal fandom. For example, people declaring their religion as “Jedi” on census forms.
This is not surprising. Religion is a special case of fandom, not the other way around.
I have a post on this somewhere in the depths of my entry-bunnies, but no idea when I’ll post it.
I used to love Tolkien, when I was a kid. But honestly, I can’t see the attraction as an adult. Piling centuries of backstory onto a character doesn’t make it three-dimensional. And while Tolkien’s short doggerel can be fun, his long poems are boring. I don’t know—I’m not a poet—but they’re probably technically excellent. That doesn’t save them.
I love his long poems—I once memorized the Lay of Earendil, and Erranty, and The Hoard, and The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, though I don’t remember all of them now. It’s nice to have something to recite to myself when waiting for the bus or something.
And I do find most poetry boring; I have a collection of American verse, but it seems that Poe is the only worthwhile poet of the lot—of course, as for Tolkien, others will certainly differ on this.
One person’s trash is the next person’s treasure, I guess.
So, when I first (tried to) read the Silmarillion in high school, I thought it was incredibly dry and boring. But when I came back to it a few years later in college I thought it was great, and still do (I now like it much better than LotR, in fact). Probably the sort of epic/mythological style it’s written in is something one either loves or can’t stand.