Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on December 06, 2001 at 10:45:22 from 195.93.48.176:
In Reply to: Re: Cherry Picking...? posted by David Shelton on December 06, 2001 at 08:29:22:
Two very different writers. Tolkien frequently attempts a "high" style, and the result is bathetic. A good test is to read it out loud; just about anything involving his Elves will reduce the audience to helpless laughter, and his verse is ghastly, but when he is down at the everyday level he plods along well enough. Ransome's prose style is so good that it is just about invisible, and unlike Tolkien he has a good ear for dialogue. Tolkien achieved something remarkable; a sustained flight of imagination which creates a world which actually "works", but it is very different indeed from Ransome, who operates as a sort of super-realist.
Curiously, given their shared interest in folk stories and fairy tales, they might have been much closer.
Does anyone know if they met?