I don't really think we can study Tolkien as a novelist, because I don't think he wrote novels. He identified his task as mythopoeia, and I think he was writing myths; his work specifically draws on source material that is pre-novelistic (i.e. Nibelunglied, Icelandic Sagas, Poetic Eddas, etc.). Even if The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion were all marketed as novels, they are anachronistic as far as the history of the novel form goes. His style is in debt to the epic tradition as well, even though prose dominates more than poetry; if you compare Tolkien's work with that of later fantasy authors, it's so different.
Myths are certainly worth studying. I was just commenting on Tolkien's work being "dry"; his style isn't novelistic, it's epic. In The Silmarillion, particularly, he's really striving for that pre-novelistic tone, the sense of high, refined narrative that one finds in the Norse myth cycles. His works are actually more interesting when studied in the context of what he was doing: mythopoeia. In that light, I actually find The Silmarillion more entertaining and intellectually stimulating than any of his other works. The linguistic components of his work also contribute to their worth, you're right.
yeah, yeah, i totally get that "Tolkien's work wasn't novels"
i really do, but, at the end of the day,
i actually prefer fantasy works that really are novels
look, i have probably read more "fantasy" type works than anyone here
and i can very clearly see and apreciate the differences in writing style from one author to another
now
having said all that
Tolkien is fucking annoying
i don't mean to say that i'm annoyed with the worlds that he created
i just mean to say that his writing style was as annoying as hell
seriously, there's a really huge-ass number of hardcore fans of the movies who have never actually read Tolkien's books, and the reason for this is not the illeterate people that go to the movies
but really much more so just the people that hate Tolkien's writing style
there are a lot of people who read dozens of fantasy books a year, who saw the LOTR movie just because it was a book that they felt that they "should have read already"
the people who think LOTR book series is awesome partially (if not mostly) just because of previous people saying how awesome it was
it's exactly like how a movie's opening day at the box office will be huge or tiny just based on whether the movie critics loved it or hated it
because of Tolkien's weird-ass writting style, there's actually a huge-ass-amount of people that actually try to read LOTR and just can't get past the first fucking chapter
