XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien.alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:17:18 +0200, Troels Forchhammer   
    wrote:   
      
   >I think that the passage that I remembered must be this one:   
   >      The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many   
   >    orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner,   
   >    fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green   
   >    from the highlands down to Anduin.   
   >  (_LotR_, V, 1 'Minas Tirith')   
   >   
   >But notice that I made no claim to all these being _archaic_ -- just   
   >that I suddenly realized that I had read that sentence a dozen times   
   >without knowing _exactly_ what a number of the words meant, just   
   >taking in the general meaning.   
      
   A propos of this (or not, as the case may be), thirty years ago I was reading   
   "The wounded land" by Stephen Donaldson, the second chronicles of Thomas   
   Covenant the Unbeliever.   
      
   I wrote in my diary at the time:   
      
   "Donaldson writes a good story, but his style grates after three long books,   
   with Covenant the leper clenching himself on every page, gagging on acid and   
   chewing broken glass and other gory and distasteful activities. Perhaps most   
   annoying, from someone who is supposed to have an MA in English, Donaldson   
   trips over his long words, and piles on the metaphors and adjectives until one   
   wonders if he knows what they mean. He uses "inchoate" more as if he likes the   
   sound than to add to the meaning, and uses "sojourn" several times when it   
   seems from the context that a journey and not a stay is meant.   
      
   If he uses relatively common words wrongly, one wonders whether he knows what   
   he is talking about when he uses words like "incarnadine", "crepuscular" and   
   the like, and then describes something as "livid green" in one sentence, and   
   "iridiscent green" in the next, which is almost a total contradiction."   
      
   When Tolkien uses archaic or obscure words, you hardly notice it -- as you   
   said, you read it a dozen times before you realised that you didn't know what   
   some of the words meant. The words are natural to his style.   
      
   When Donaldson uses such words, however, they stand out, like sports fans when   
   they realise that the TV camera is pointing at them, jumping up and down and   
   waving their arms.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm   
        http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw   
        http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)