American Tolkiens and War Weariness

An interesting link regarding George R. "The American Tolkien" R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien.

I don't like calling Martin the American Tolkien for a few reasons.  First, he isn't the American Tolkien.  Not even close, jack.  I care not a whit what Time Magazine has to say on the matter.  When somebody spends their entire life writing a single opus derived from history, mythology and language, then maybe we can start talking about calling people American Tolkiens.  Besides, we've had plenty of preceding authors being called the American Tolkien: Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Stephen R. Donaldson.  Probably even Christopher Paolini.  It's a meaningless phrase that makes light of Tolkien's monumental achievement.

Second, why refer to him as the regional derivative of a more famous author when he could, and should, stand on his own two feet?  I'd rather refer to him as the first George R. R. Martin than the American Tolkien, if it's all the same to you chaps.

But that's just me, of course.  Then there's this bit.

Quite a few of them are adventure stories that celebrate violence, or more often treat it as something unreal and without cost. These aren’t the projects that are reaching outside the usual genre readers to talk to the wider audience. If there were a market for the celebration of warfare, we’d have any number of options inside epic fantasy. That isn’t what people are responding to. We have no appetite for Conan bathing in the blood of his enemies.

Hmm.  Well, at least he gives Conan the credit of being literature, albeit literature that seems to either glorify violence or consider it of no consequence.  Possibly both.  My response:

Perhaps that’s true of the stories by other authors, but the original stories by Howard don’t celebrate violence, so much as render it as an unavoidable facet of the human condition. It is a cause for sombre reflection, as much as the carnal thrill of fear, energy and exertion could be considered glorification. Conan loves the thrill of battle because it is life at its closest to being lost: it’s the same sort of thing that attracts extreme sports enthusiasts, danger-seekers, and criminals. But at no point does Howard give any impression that war and battle in the Hyborian Age is as loveless, petty, relentless, hollow and miserable as it is in real life, regardless of the fleeting joy the Cimmerian experiences in the moment.

Nor can one consider the violence in Conan as lacking verisimilitude, or lacking cost. Conan’s scars sting, bleed and ache following every battle; his dead allies are mourned and their loss is palpable. There are plenty of stories where Conan barely gets out alive, and is dripping with blood from a multitude of fresh wounds. Not all the characters survive the story, be they friend or foe, be they deserving or undeserving of death.

One need not look further than “The Hour of the Dragon” to see the relevance of the Conan stories to the cynical approach to war:

“Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn were slain, and when his young brother Tarascus was crowned in the great coronation hall, the populace cheered until the towers rocked, acclaiming the monarch on whom the gods smiled.

Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently the signal for a war of conquest. So no one was surprized when it was announced that King Tarascus had declared the truce made by the late king with their western neighbors void, and was gathering his hosts to invade Aquilonia. His reason was candid; his motives, loudly proclaimed, gilded his actions with something of the glamor of a crusade. He espoused the cause of Valerius, “rightful heir to the throne”; he came, he proclaimed, not as an enemy of Aquilonia, but as a friend, to free the people from the tyranny of a usurper and a foreigner.

If there were cynical smiles in certain quarters, and whispers concerning the king’s good friend Amalric, whose vast personal wealth seemed to be flowing into the rather depleted royal treasury, they were unheeded in the general wave of fervor and zeal of Tarascus’s popularity. If any shrewd individuals suspected that Amalric was the real ruler of Nemedia, behind the scenes, they were careful not to voice such heresy. And the war went forward with enthusiasm.”
– “The Hour of the Dragon”

Not unlike a certain other war in recent memory that people are increasingly cynical towards…

Any thoughts, lads & lasses?  I'd say Howard, like Tolkien, doesn't so much celebrate or glorify battle and war - rather, they celebrate heroism and bravery.  I easily see echoes of Conan, the Æsir, and the myriad soldiers of Aquilonia in the blood-and-thunder of Gimli, Boromir, and the Rohirrim.  At the same time, they certainly don't shy away from the cruelty, gore, grief and misery war and battle results in.  More than a few Conan stories start at the aftermath of a battle, robbing the reader of the excitement and thrill of action, and leaving us wandering among the red ruin of conflict, screams of the dying punctuating the deathly silence.  One need not deny the feats of glory and triumph to accept the dark, horrific reality of war.  Howard and Tolkien seem to get it.  I'm not far enough in A Song of Ice and Fire to judge whether Martin does this too, but no doubt if they're there, they're plain to see.