You guys want tedious; you should read Pamela by Samuel Richardson.


....and she's reduced to tears and running out of the room.....again.


For me, the detail of Tolkien is one of the draws. The fact that he took all of these elements from Norse myth and molded it into a unique world that doesn't seem in the least bit Nordic.

I honestly think my main problem with Tolkien is that it's an epic without real heroes. The hobbits are decidedly unheroic. You need an Achilles not some version of the guy I see eating at Sbarro.

Leave the common man stuff for the existentialist writers.

What's Aragorn then?

I don't know he was kinda heroic but still too self-doubting and morose for my taste. But for whatever reason Tolkien wanted to prop up the importance of hobbits.

The hobbits are great because they're not the typical heroes though.

I can certainly see your point about the hobbits. It's all a matter of taste, but I like the fact that all of the heroes are surrounding these little guys, and all of them are more susceptible to the ring than the hobbits. It's wholly satisfying that it's the hobbits that pull everyone through in their personal resistance to evil.

Tally seems to be

Tolkien 4
Dickens 3

I'm holding off on voting for now. As long as it stays close, I'll stay out

@2wl; you've got to be joking. it's one thing to not like his writing, but it's another to completely dismiss the fact that he was an author...

@CA; oxford =]

@putin; you can't get so hung up on his opening chapters about the family trees and miss out on the other 95% part of the books he wrote. that's like saying you dont' like one troll on the forum and as a result, you want nothing to do with the entire webdip site. Take a step back and try to appreciate the bigger picture

Dickens

Sure, it just seems overwrought. I get it that I'm being lazy with Tolkien. And it saddens me because I really like the Niebelunglied and Beowulf. Just wish Tolkien read more like the stories of Siegfried and less like a series of lengthy ethnographic and linguistic essays on fake races.

Dickens.

I love Tolkien. I really do. But I've never found LotR to be anything more than a good story, let alone literature.

Tolkien

I'm pretty torn. When does voting end?

Tolkien 5
Dickens 5

Voting should end sometime in the evening Eastern Time.

It's usually midnight EST, but didn't we give the Orwell/Tolkien match more time?

*Orwell/Poe, sorry.

Hm, so regardless, the final match will be American Lit vs. Brit Lit... :)

Dickens

Decided. Tolkien

Tolkien 6
Dickens 6

Stephen R. Donaldson did adventure/fantasy better.

There was only one Charles Dickens.

You people are, MOSTLY, morons.

Dickens 7
Tolkien 6

Really? I thought I was only about 5-10% moron. But if I'm over 50% moron, that certainly frees up all of this unnecessary thought stuff that was happening so I can do something else more exciting with my life, like becoming a tour guide or professional mime.

There are those better at adventure/fantasy, but Tolkien is the one at the top four, for better or worse.

Does literature just mean any written words? My grocery list is literature, good reading too, for the few minutes it is needed.

You all have to be joking. How do you not realize how one sided this matchup is? We're talking about Charles Fucking Dickens, the greatest author to ever live, and you're hung up on the heroic traits of hobbits? Mapleleaf is right, you're all mostly morons. Grow up and branch out from fantasy.

Tolkien is without a doubt the king of fantasy. One genre. The US was the best team in CONCACAF qualifying for the World Cup but it doesn't mean they can match up with Germany or the Netherlands.

Tolkien.

The greatest author to ever live? He is pretty much single handedly responsible for the post-Victorian backlash against simplistic characters with simplistic plots with obligatorily happy endings. He is what progressive rock is to punk rock.

tbh i don't care much about this matchup because Poe is easily > both and should win this tourney hands-down

Tolkein.