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New Tolkien Story To be Published
vingilot writes "CNN reports that Christopher Tolkien has edited and will release a new book by his father. From the article: 'Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarfs of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.'"
So, the son of a man so brilliant in imagination, his entire lifespan was not enough to finish his own work, cleans up, releases and generally attempts to carry on his father's work. Yeah, really sounds like a greedy asshole.
And quite frankly, I cheer CT's opinions of the movies. I found myself able to stomach Jackson's Fellowship, at least.. I can see the reasoning for Bombadil's disappearance, and I can even stow away sufficient ire to forgive Xenarwen. (It's a movie; one can only have so many minor characters, after all.)
Jackson's The Two Towers and Return of the Horrible, Hackneyed Fantasy Plot were horrible butchery of Tolkien's work. One must understand that in translations from book to film, things will change. There is absolutely no excuse for the wanton and brutal destruction of characters that Jackson is guilty of. Destruction of characters.. it stretches even far worse. Tolkien devoted a paragraph to describing the crown of Gondor, and Jackson couldn't even manage to get that even remotely correct. My god, when one can't translate a simple prop from book to film, how can one manage to translate the important things, such as the story?
CT is no JRR - there was only one JRR, and unless the world is very fortunate indeed, we'll likely never glimpse another so brilliant. Regardless of this, CT does damned fine work. You claim The Silmarillion lacked editting? Why, pray tell, would it need editting? It was quite obvious in line with what JRR wanted - he had taken it to publishers, who refused it effectively on the grounds of 'people are stupid'. I certainly won't argue with the publishers, but The Silmarillion was JRR's true masterpiece. The Hobbit is a mere children's story, and The Lord of the Rings was 'dumbed down' (for lack of better words) to appeal to a broad audience.
If you want to see a son doing horrible things, go talk to Brian Herbert. CT is far removed from the accusations you baselessly spew at him.
So the question is, will there actually be anything new in here that readers haven't seen before, or is it merely pulling bits from various texts and stitching them together in a fresh binding? Sounds like the latter to me...
Considering he is somewhat of a Tolkien scholar and has worked on this 30 years, I doubt that it is just a hodgepodge of works. There probably is a bit of truth to the money grab in that the recent success of the LOTR movies probably encouraged him to finish editing and/or publishers to publish the work.
No, but it does give some indication of motive. If I'm looking to make a quick buck, I sure don't spend 30 years turning it into a rather slow buck.
Most of the books released by Christopher Tolkien since his father's death have been predominantly 'new' material. There are meant to be many, many files full of manuscripts that J. R. Tolkien wrote but never published in book form.
I'm extremely glad to see that some more have been put together into what I'm sure will be another amazing book.
I'm struggling through it right now... my problem is I only really get a chance when I take my son to martial arts and wait for him. I get about two hours a week to read, excepting when I'm on vacation when I might get a little more.
The problem with the Silmarillion is that each character has like 10 names that are used interchangeably, most parts read like the worst, most dry history book you've ever read, there's no contextual maps (my book has two maps... but as time changes, so do the names of cities, towns, and natural landmarks, so you can hardly figure out where anything is taking place unless your mind is a steel trap and you're taking notes (and come on, I'm not being tested on it, I'm not taking notes).
I have to constantly refer to the indices to see what things are and how they're pronounced...
I'm about 4/5 the way through, though, so won't give up this time (last time I tried I was in high school, about 20 years ago).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
It's almost like you're saying Chris Tolkien is only pimping incomplete scraps of his fathers work to make a cheap buck for himself. If that were true, you'd expect him to have written a bunch more books with "Tolkien" in really big print on the back, in an attempt to fool the ignorant into buying what amounts to extremely amaturish fanfict.
(Special place in hell reserved for Chris Tolkien and Frank Herbert Jr.)
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, he added on to the joke by providing a more concrete example that a specific group of people could relate to, therefore making it funny!
Don't be an asshat.
Tolkien was a notorious procrastinator, leaving pieces of his work alone for 20 or 30 years at a time before picking it back up.
JRR specifically left his son Christopher in charge of his estate after his death to continue, finish, and document his lifetime's work. The Silmarillion was an early compilation, based on his father's outlines, of a variety of tales -- the Tale of Hurin is mentioned as one of those texts. IIRC, JRR specifically tasked his son with completing the Silmarillion.
Christopher Tolkien has been exceedingly honest in his attempts, documenting divergences and inconsistencies with his father's intentions, and getting help (Guy Kay) when possible. He also doesn't present it as his own work, its usually "JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher" etc. The Tale of Hurin will clearly be presented as a 'best effort' recovery from notes and incomplete texts.
Given the choice of a) no material, or b) Christopher's best interpretation of the material, I'll take 'b' every time. If you want to see butchered work after an author's demise, look to Robert E Howard's Conan stories, or the latest 'additions' to the Dune series.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I don't really see any easy answer either way, actually.
This dilemma happens to every popular artist after they die. (Obviously, if they're not popular, there won't be any demand anyway and no dilemma) Often they didn't publish the stuff because it they didn't consider it 'done', or they didn't feel it was 'good enough'. Many (most?) great artists have very high standards in that respect.
The problem is that while those concerns may have meant a lot to the artist, they mean nothing now. If people are still interested long after their death, then their reputation is beyond tainting. There is absolutely nothing Chris Tolkien could release, no matter how bad, that would taint J.R.R.'s reputation, since everyone will know that the man himself considered it to be sub-par. Nobody is going to judge him by it.
Now, to take another example: Franz Kafka. He published little during his life, and wanted all his writings destroyed after his death, at which time he was virtually unknown. Obviously that didn't happen, since he's now regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
His friend Max Brod was the one who published the material. Who is prepared to condemn him? I'm not.
I guess the ethic that I'm suggesting is this: You can't blindly obey someone's wishes, even their last wishes, without considering the motives. There are a lot of possible ones for wanting something to go unpublished. The artist might've considered it too personal, and I think that might be grounds for obeying. But if the motive was a concern the work wasn't up-to-standard, then you might be able to disregard it.
In Kafka's case, I think it suffices to say that the guy had enough self-loathing and self-destructive emotions to fill a Goth club several times over.
I know that I have works from my father and I've extended them in my own interest, but always with the intent to honor my father and his inspiration. Maybe young Tolkein thinks in the same fashion? He is bringing his fathers work to life. Just another viewpoint.
There are a lots of people here bashing the Tolkien works that were released after J.R.R death. Have any of you actually looked any of these books? Given that most of these books are very dense and very scholarly works, it's highly doubtful that Christopher Tolkien edited them just to make a quick buck. The intended audience for these books was just too small for that.
When J.R.R died, he left literally thousands of pages of unpublished pages, many that he had been working on for decades. It would have been a real shame for this stuff to vanish forever. And Christopher Tolkien's contribution is usually just editing. He is generally very careful to separate his father's words from his commentary (usually with a different font).
While I would love to believe that this is not a ploy for more money, I find it hard to swallow.
Christopher Tolkien is 82 years old-- do you really think he's plotting to make millions?
Tolkien's children were actually involved with many of the Tolkien's legendarium. One of my copies of the LotR contains an essay by Tolkien where he talked about his family. Tolkien would discuss ideas with his children, let them read early drafts, they would point out inconstancies... I don't think Tolkien did this for all off the works, but this tradition started young-- The Hobbit was originally written specifically for the Tolkien children.
Christoper Tolkien probably understands the Tolkien legendarium more then anyone in the world-- and probably read the notes for "The Children of Hurin" 50 years ago.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I agree 100% as far as Frank Herbert Jr. There should be a special space in hell reserved for people like him. For people who shit on everything their fathers built.
Also, It is also quite obvious that Herbert Jr has written his books. They are written using the current modern American literature style which is beaten into kids in college. I still remember by own brush up with this experience with horror 15+ years later. It is the same style as used by Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson and most of the modern American Sci Fi/Fantasy writers. There are lots of repeats and a single idea is reiterated at least 3-4 times to ensure that the dumb reader gets it. The vocabulary is a fraction of the vocabulary of most of the older generation like Herbert Sr, Zelazny, Le Guin, Bradbury (in fact from the old generation - everybody but Azimov). The overall lexical construction is quite primitive as well. It is quite obvious who wrote these books.
As far as Chris Tolkien the situation is not so straightforward. He published at least one clearly and purely J.R.R. Tolkien Book - the Silmarilion. That was J.R.R. Tolkien all the way and if not for Chris Tolkien, it would have failed to see the light of day (it was published postmortem). The Unifinished Tales seem to be what junior sells them for - drafts, notes and unfinished tales. Looking at the style and vocabulary they also seem to be a J.R.R. Tolkien work, just quite what it says on the tin - unfinished.
I have no idea about this new book, but I hope that he does not join Hurbert junior in that circle of hell. He has done not that bad so far. He has shown some his dad's dirty laundry (stuff j.r.r. never intended to be published) but he has not shit on his grave just yet (or I missed that one in the bookshop).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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