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.'"

Comments

Just a money grab?

[TopShelf]

From TFA:

Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.

"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the 'Children of Hurin' as an independent work, between its own covers,"

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...

expected criticism

[acvh]

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.

Re:expected criticism

[professorfalcon]

Nicomachus published his father's (Aristotle's) notes into a book, Nicomachean Ethics, that is part of the foundation of the western world.

Motives in Question

[moore.dustin]

While I would love to believe that this is not a ploy for more money, I find it hard to swallow. He had abandoned the book and his son decided to abandon, edit, and release it for sale. Now I do not know his son obviously, but one must ask themselves, "If he respected his father, he would not being doing this would he?"

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.

Whatever happened to his Beowulf?

[Alfred, Lord Tennyso]

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.

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

[vancondo]

Hmm.. Maybe there's a reason the story was tossed aside in the first place?

-
http://vancouvercondo.info

Re:Dwarfs

[Yaksha42]

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

incredible! i wish slashdot wasn't so jaded though

[radarsat1]

"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.. :)

Tearing arms off and beating people to death it?

[sir_montag]

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.

Re:Greedy Children

[DrJimbo]

I've only read the Silmarilion, ... However sometime after that, the seemingly endless stream of variant versions of the same stories seems to have crossed over the line of honouring his legacy to ruthlessly exploiting, and diluting, it.

I realize this is Slashdot and we have a glorious history here of commenting on articles without reading them but I must ask you how you can reach the conclusion that the volumes that followed the Silmarillion were exploitative and a dilution of the earlier works when you haven't even read them?

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.