Slashdot Mirror
New Tolkien Book Released 'The Children of Hurin'
Zoolander writes "Christopher Tolkien has completed the last book of J.R.R. Tolkien from notes left from his father." The ultimate question is how much of a quality difference will there be; for instance the difference between Dune and Dune: House Atriedes is a pretty big gap. But in my experience, Christopher Tolkien has always taken a good, cautious approach when it comes to his father's work so here's to hoping.
I have always thought Chris has done a good job compiling his father's stuff. I can't wait to pick this up!
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
Good analogy. The difference between, say, The Fellowship of the Ring and any Christopher Tolkien followup (except perhaps the Silmarillion) is about as big.
JRR Tolkien and Frank Herbert were visionaries. Their books are legendary because they're so complete, so consistent, they're practically holographic. While those authors were also brilliant editors, especially Tolkien whose main gig was (as is well known) Oxford English Dictionary editor. Their (genetic, and thereby literary) heirs are undistinguished from a vast host of other second or lower tier of "visionary" authors, and have no special editing talent - nor have acquired any at their cashin publishers. While they also operate at a disadvantage while writing outside the original cultural contexts that produced those seminal works for a different audience.
Ironically, both Middle Earth and Dune are epic tales of the original forefathers of our times (Dune less obviously, sorry for the spoiler). A magical time when a unique individual arrived to set the worlds on the path that led to today's mundane, if relatively safe, existence. Both Tolkien and Herbert themselves portrayed themselves as mere humble quoters of the original stories, originally told by the great actors themselves. Their stories resonate with generations of the public partly because we understand that great storytellers are part of great stories which are part of great ages, come once in a long while, and cannot bequeath their talents and opportunities to their children.
On the bright side, both The Lord of the Rings and the Dune trilogies are so good that they can be reread often over a lifetime, delivering new rewards each time. Reading those later "extensions" is a waste of time that could better be spent rereading the original.
--
make install -not war
Well, I think Brian Herbert needs to learn the difference between "character" and "caricature". I admit I did read *all* of the BH Dune books nevertheless, because I'm a sucker, but Frank Herbert's most offhand scribbles are worth more than that crap.
Oh no... it's the future.
Nargothrond ruined, dragonfire and orcs all around, our hero living in the wild as a bandit hunting monsters, reclaims birthright, slays dragon, gets the girl, lives happily ever after... that (unfortunately) is Hollywood.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
A much better combarison would be the new Dune novel, Hunters of Dune, rather than the Dune prequels, since it's supposed to be based on the notes by Frank Herbert, while the prequels (Dune: Houses and Butlerian crap) were written completely from scratch and are often contradicting the original Frank Herbert books. I find that Chris Tolkien has really done as much as possible to preserve his fathers legacy, which cannot be said for Brian Herbert, who is trying to ruin his fathers franchise by putting out large numbers of half-baked books.
Except that Tolkien considered LotR the distraction, and the Hobbit's drawing on his mythos something of an accident. His main concern was the Silmarillion, which he tried unsuccessfully to get published alongside LotR.
The Silmarillion is not LotR, but it is, for those that have the patience and appreciation for that sort of thing, a glorious tale. Unfortunately, the published form is in many cases ripped from the Grey Annals, which were a sort concise historical chronology, and not in and of themselves full narratives. Tolkien planned a rather enormous expansion of the work, of which the Children of Hurin was the only part that approached completion. It, and the unfinished version of "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" that is found in Unfinished Tales are very much like LotR in storytelling quality.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Parts of the Simarillion work as good novellas in themselves. I particularly enjoyed the tale of Beren and Luthien.
I just saw Clerks 2 (b/c sometimes I like to punish the Ebert within) and while it itself is a terrible flick, it has perhaps the most perfect summation of my feelings on the LOTR trilogy, albeit the film form. As far as I'm concerned Tolkien Jr. would do well to stray somewhat and make a good action/adventure story (as TFA hints at) instead of the plodding tale his father took too many pages to tell. It had a great setting/world but god what a dull pedantic road trip LOTR was. We get it, the rings is evil. Really evil. Just drop the fucking thing in the volcano already.
Try reading Unfinished Tales and the appendix of LOTR, then maybe you'll enjoy Silmarillion more. In my opinion only The Silmarillion reveals full glory of Tolkien's creation, LOTR with is about humans, Silmarillion is about gods. No wonder why Christopher Tolkien despises Jackson interpretation of LOTR, it just ignores Silmarillion completely, downgrading magnificent story to some anonymous D&D quest.
I wish I had mod points for you. You hit the nail right on the head there.
All my friends really like the LotR movies, and I suppose they're good movies, if you've never read Tolkien's books and/or don't care about Tolkien's world. However I happen to like Tolkien's world, and The Silmarillion, and as a result I don't care for the movies at all.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
"It will be interesting to see how it stands up today alongside all the Tolkien-alike literature that we've become familiar with," said David Bradley
In my world there's nothing like what you could call "Tolkien-alike". Many have tried to ride the waves his writings have raised, still very few come even close to what he's accomplished. Maybe it's his background, maybe it's his decades' long knowledge in mythology, languages and literature, maybe it's his natural writing skill, maybe it's the timing, maybe it's all of these together that have resulted in a physical form that it's unique in so many ways. How will this new compilation be judged ? Supposing it's really good, it still will require a great effort to make it stand out from the oceans of fantasy bestseller wannabes these days.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Here is Wikipedia's article on the book.
I dearly hope Christopher, with all the material at hand about Húrin and Túrin, produces a book whose quality is close to his father's writings. If so, the unavoidable buzz that'll happen in our post-Jackson-movies world would be a huge boost to help popularize all books dealing with Arda before the War of the Rings (The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales,...). That'd be nice: too many people watched the movie, eventually read the related trilogy, and then nothing else.
- done the best editing job he was able to and publish them (did he have help? Presumably he has an editor at the publisher's, and I wouldn't hand this project to just anyone.)
- released them as-is (where they would have been ignored as unreadable or mined for ever worse atrocities by ever worse (screen)writers. Better a RingWraith than to be fouled the way the later Dune books did Frank Herbert.)
- shredded them all to avoid being accused of daring to profit from his father's estate (if JRRT had left cash, that would be fine, but writings...!)
Which would you prefer? I'm very happy to get the chance to see Tolkien's remaining writings, but I don't have the time to study the originals and no reason to think anyone else would be better at editing it for me.You may have read the books without understanding them.
Jackson kept elements of the story but changed the feel of the movie. He emphasised the frailty of the characters where Tolkien emphasised their majesty. He increased internal tension (between "the good guys") where Tolkien emphasised external pressure. We won't go into issues with specific characters.
I personally think that when adapting a film, the feel should remain the same even if the events change. A good example of this is the more recent adaption of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
meh