One of the pleasures of reading literature is noticing how compressed they are.
This is true for Tolkien, Turgenev, Hemingway or Pound. The amount of information per page—per word!—is incredibly high, which permits the conveyance of ideas which simply do not land when spoken more plainly.
You don’t need to go to high literature to find this density, by the way. Political speeches from Republican Rome and America’s Founders have a similar aspect to them.
It's interesting you mention that. Even Obamas detractors admit he spoke well. True, but i find JFKs speeches are on a different level from that. And it's not just him, but the contrast is particularly striking.
Now in the UK all we get are monotonous robots or people who have clearly had intensive coaching in how to speak in a clear. Decisive. Direct. Way, to inspire confidence and project competence. The two qualities entirely absent in most of our politicians.
The less said about the other side of the pond the better.
> Even Obamas detractors admit he spoke well. True, but i find JFKs speeches are on a different level from that. And it's not just him, but the contrast is particularly striking.
My off the cuff observation is that there is a lot less mastery of language than there used to be in America. I'm not really sure why, but compare the grand language used by the early political leaders to, say, Obama, and it's striking. And that's not saying Obama is a bad speaker! He has a ton of charisma and makes you want to like his ideas by the way he presents them. But he's never given something on the level of Lincoln's Gettysburg address (in my opinion at least).
> never given something on the level of Lincoln's Gettysburg address (in my opinion at least)
I’m arguing he couldn’t have. Until America regains a literary tradition, the complexity and imagery gained with heavy words is lost against the conciseness soundbites demand.
> I'm not really sure why, but compare the grand language used by the early political leaders to, say, Obama, and it's striking.
IMO that's a direct consequence of becoming a real democracy: can't just target those rich enough to get a fancy education.
IIRC, the land ownership requirements had already gone by the time of Lincoln's Gettysburg address, but I expect them to have still been writing with such an audience in mind.
Not just America. But it's partly a cultural thing. If someone would imitate the style of a century ago, he would be mocked for it and considered a self indulgent show off. The best example i can bring is Jacob Reese Mogg, otherwise known as The Rt Hon Gentleman from the 18th century.
One thing that is thankfully unique to America is that rudeness as a debating tactic can win elections.
I’m no expert in other country’s politics, but it would be pretty surprising if that was unique to America. Boris Johnson? Nicolas Sarkozy? Silvio Berlusconi?
Not even close. The nearest equivalent is Prime Ministers Questions which is a regular staged event.
Look at the debates from 2015 where Trumps opponents are rendered speechless by his overbearing personality. He makes himself the centre of everything and is completely shameless about it. He's an American phenomenon. BUT, the reason it works is because he means what he says and does what he says he'll do. America has always appreciated straight talkers more then Europe.
Jacob Reese Mogg isn't only mocked for being anachronistic, but also extreme poshness. That he went canvasing with someone he called his nanny is one such noteworthy oddity.
My experience has been the exact opposite. Yes, there's literally a lot of information, but so much of it is irrelevant fluff that could be eliminated or trimmed without losing much. I've seen multiple paragraphs of Tolkien, for example, that narratively boil down to "they walk across the field". To be clear, I don't see that as a flaw. The fluff serves to set the mood. But that's different from saying that the text is especially information-dense.
> so much of it is irrelevant fluff that could be eliminated or trimmed without losing much
Are you sure? Or is that just superfluous for the way you’re reading it?
In some cases, it’s overly verbose. But if you’re taking this away from acclaimed authors, consider picking up some literary criticism (fancy words for fan theories). Chances are, there is meaning embedded in what you’re dismissing as fluff.
The "mood" is the information too.
That's not really "information" in the information-theoretic sense that the other person was using, when it can be rewritten in all manner of different ways while conveying the same overall mood. The densest way to communicate "Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired" is exactly that. All the other words one would write around that core idea would not provide any more specificity to the sentiment, they'd just there to allow the reader to immerse themselves. Unless the information is simply the words themselves, in which case no text is any more entropic than any other.
> Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired.
This does not set a mood and thus does not convey the same information. This removes the information about mood and setting away while keeping only rough plot point in.
The outcome in terms of how reader interpret the situation is massively different. The thing you wrote implies that all they need is to go to sleep an hour sooner and rest, all will be fine.
The thing you're describing that's missing is context, not information. At that point in the plot, the reasons why they couldn't simply take a break wherever they wanted had already been explained, so it didn't need restating. As for mood-setting, I've already addressed that in other replies.
> The densest way to communicate "Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired" is exactly that
Uh, yes. This is press-release speak, optimised for a fourth grader’s reading comprehension.
If, on the other hand, you want to develop the motif of the Unseen—central to Tolkien’s work—the type of tired the characters are and how they’re detecting and addressing it is incredibly germane, interesting and totally lost in your summary.
You’re also describing the first scenes we see through familiar eyes of Mordor. The landscape is an extension of Sauron’s will. The contrast with the developed, organised, albeit crowded cities of men; the arrogance implied in the desolation; et cetera pack information lost in your summary.
The type of tired is "really". What happens is not that there's some additional information that I'm not communicating in that one sentence, but rather that the time it takes you to read "they're both really tired" is not enough for your mind to dwell on the idea and empathize with the characters. Now, if I instead were to write "They're both really tired. They're super tired. Oh man, they're so tired. They're so tired, you've never been this tired in your life", that would be extremely shitty writing, but it would give you time to ruminate on the information.
Extended time is your own proposal, and one you successfully defeated. This is generally called a strawman.
Instead, I propose that the type of tied is informationally and qualitatively distinct. The exhaustion of the weight of the world, internal struggle, amidst a dismal hellscape is different than "really tired".
Great writing can build depth of quality and understanding with the authors intent.
LOTR could be summarized with a sentence. The content is in the detail.
>Extended time is your own proposal, and one you successfully defeated. This is generally called a strawman.
Uh... Huh? So it's my argument, which I've refuted, and therefore it's a strawman? I think you should go get refreshed on informal fallacies. No, what's happening here is that there's a phenomenon that's being discussed -- namely, mood-setting in fictional writing -- and I'm proposing as its mechanism not additional information, but rather additional time. If you want to participate in the discussion you can't dismiss my argument my incorrectly calling it a strawman. You have to explain why it doesn't work as an explanation, like this:
>Instead, I propose that the type of tied is informationally and qualitatively distinct. The exhaustion of the weight of the world, internal struggle, amidst a dismal hellscape is different than "really tired".
Yet, if we were to replace the particular flavor of tiredness with a completely different, equally intense one, it would evoke the exact same empathic feeling on the reader, because the imagination is not precise enough to reproduce other people's feelings with such granularity. Someone can't precisely imagine the difference between the tiredness felt by Conan after 12 hours of turning a mill for the sixth day in a row, and that felt by Frodo. The reader is going to reach that passage and feel that the characters are really tired. That's why such long descriptions don't contain any more meaning; because they can be replaced with something completely different and put the same idea in the reader's mind: "Sam and Frodo are really tired".
>LOTR could be summarized with a sentence. The content is in the detail.
I've already addressed that. If the information is the words themselves and not their meaning, then any English text is equally information-dense. "It's raining" contains a third as much information as "it's raining, it's raining, it's raining", since it contains a third as many words.
> * if I instead were to write "They're both really tired. They're super tired. Oh man, they're so tired. They're so tired, you've never been this tired in your life", that would be extremely shitty writing, but it would give you time to ruminate on the information*
You’ve set up a great question. Why is what you wrote shitty writing while what Tolkien wrote not?
The answer isn’t just variation. If you look at what’s been conveyed in his writing that wasn’t with your repetition, you’ll start unlocking what I suspect you know is there but are having trouble describing.
>The answer isn’t just variation.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
And presumably political speeches from Republican America combines the best of those two?
> presumably political speeches from Republican America combines the best of those two?
Why?