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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 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...
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and yes, Chris Tolkien has fed off the teat of his late father's creativity for a long time now. still, the literary joy of reading The Silmarillion, The Narn i Hin Hurun, The Lay of Leithian, and more, far outweighs whatever motives young Tolkien may have in editing and publishing these many works.
Prof. Tolkien, while living, tried and failed to publish the Silmarillion. The other works were never even close to publishable. yet he often talked and wrote of these tales having a life of their own, and I don't think he would object to their being shared with millions of fans.
I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to have read of the First and Second ages of Tolkien's world.
I will read it though, that is for sure. I will however, credit the subject material to Tolkien while the rest will go to his son and his 30 years of editing. I doubt anything could be tampered with so much and still hold the same value as the original. Then again, maybe because it was not "finished" he fleshed it out - either way it is not a book authored by Tolkien to me.
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Slashdot had a story some time ago that they'd found a copy of Beowulf translated by Tolkien at the bottom of a box of his papers in the Oxford library. Supposedly they were going to publish them as soon as they'd deciphered his terrible handwriting. But I haven't heard of it since.
Hmm.. Maybe there's a reason the story was tossed aside in the first place?
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"The OED cites a bewildering variety of spellings from various periods:
I don't know enough about the history of English spelling to be able to figure out what range of sound patterns lie behind that list."step 3: god dammit, it doesn't work
Maybe it is in this world, but not Tolkien's. He actually wanted to make the plural be "Dwarrows."
"The real 'historical' plural of dwarf (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic. Still I rather wish I had used the word dwarrow." - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #17
I know what you mean, the Sil is not an easy book to read. Actually, it's a really hard one to read the first time around. Then I finally realized that it didn't really matter if I forgot what I'd just read, or just which elf was which (why do half their names have to start with "f" anyway?). Once that happened, I was able to read the whole thing without too much trouble. It still wasn't (and still isn't) an easy read, but it's definitely worth it. It's just so beautiful, and profoundly sad, and gives a nice perspective for the Lord of the Rings.
"Wow, that's great," I thought, as I read the title of the article. Then I made the mistake of clicking on "Read more..."
:)
Man are you lot ever a bunch of depressed, jaded people. Almost every single comment has been attacking Mr. Tolkien for doing homage to his father's work. How sad...
(Please, no "You must be new here" comments..
Now if only Brian Herbert would do that with his own father's unfinished work on the Dune series, rather than writing absolutely awful novels based on them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
On the otherhand, the time spent could also mean he didn't have motivation, not that he wanted it to be "perfect."
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
According to the sellers, that book is in German. I suppose Beowulf may well translate into German better than English.
As I understand it, Tolkein's contribution to Beowulf wasn't so much the translation but an essay called The Monsters And The Critics, back in the 30s. Apparently it was the first time anybody had looked at Beowulf as a thing with literary merit, rather than just a piece of linguistic evidence.
Personally, any epic tale that has the main character tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it has got some serious literary merit in my book!
The story really does have a lot going for it, once you get past the language barrier - Old English really does read a lot more like German than modern English. It was one of the coolest books I'd ever read - full of adventure with tons of gruesome details (like the whole 'tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it' bit) that you'd never seen in any other piece of classical literature aside from Dante's Inferno.
The end kind of sucked, as I recall, but as far as adventure and ass-kicking go, Beowulf was one of the best, if not *the* best.
No. Have you actually read any of their respective writing? JRRT was a professor of English language and literature at Oxford University. His technical command of the language was pretty damn high.
I've read most, but not all, of the volumes of Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth and I've enjoyed them greatly. I felt no hint of exploitation or dilution. I'm very grateful to Christopher for taking the time and effort (and flack) to make all these parts of his father's work available to the rest of us.
If you are interested in exploring these other works, you might want to start with "Unfinished Tales" which provides a nice bridge between what happened in the Lord of the Rings and the larger world of the Silmarillion.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I don't know about all that. I've always found the Unfinished Tales and the History of Middle Earth series to be a wonderful look behind the scenes -- much like the extras on most DVDs. They're not necessary.. and they're certainly not up to the same standard as the main works.. but I've always found them entertaining and insightful. The depth of analysis and commentary certainly doesn't make it seem like exploitation.. but rather exploration.
Berj
But the style is still there in parts. Take this passage:
And then read this:
And then say again that these are not by the same author. If anything, Tolkien's creative genius shines through more strongly in his posthumous work, which didn't need to be heavily edited to appeal to a popular audience.