Slashdot Mirror
JRR Tolkien Book 'Beren and Luthien' Published After 100 Years (bbc.com)
seoras quotes a report from BBC: A new book by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien is going on sale -- 100 years after it was first conceived. Beren and Luthien has been described as a "very personal story" that the Oxford professor thought up after returning from the Battle of the Somme. It was edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and contains versions of a tale that became part of The Silmarillion. The book features illustrations by Alan Lee, who won an Academy Award for his work on Peter Jackson's film trilogy. It is being published on Thursday by HarperCollins on the 10th anniversary of the last Middle Earth book, The Children of Hurin.
WRONG.
He wrote a little of it in a rough draft format, then his son wrote everything else. At best it's a co-story, but this is a Christopher Tolkien story.
I'll probably buy it.
#DeleteChrome
Meanwhile, movie industry starts planning to make 2 trilogies of 150min films out of this book.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Did you not read his books?
Death is to be feared by the young but welcomed by the wise and old. We are to fill our lives, and the lives of those around us, with adventures, song, stories, food, and love. After we've filled ourselves up and spread ourselves thin we should embrace the next life that awaits us all.
Trying to extend our lives beyond it's natural course is a path leading to pain, suffering, and evil. Those that are successful lose their humanity.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Trying to extend our lives beyond it's natural course is a path leading to pain, suffering, and evil.
What natural course? The one where your mother died giving you birth and you die at forty because of a massive dental infection? Or the one where you're born in a sterile hospital and get to live to eighty five thanks to antibiotics, heart drugs, and/or chemotherapy?
Ezekiel 23:20
"Tolkien was also a devout racist."
No, he certainly was not. He despised the Nazis and spoke out publicly and specifically against their Racial "Theories", and he was also very public in speaking out against Apartheid in South Africa.
What I have a problem with is the fact that Tolkien in his Middle Earth was an Elitist. Aragorn was of High Birth but had to reclaim his Family's Throne. Elves are proudly Snobs. Even Frodo, Pippin and Merry come from "Respectable" Families. In fact the only character in "Lord Of the Rings" who is "Normal" is Sam, but by the end he is made Mayor, (For seven consecutive terms...), and pointedly, starts off his own Dynasty.
What little Democracy exists in his Middle Earth is in the Shire, and even there, Power is reserved for certain Bloodlines.
But that was _only_ in his Middle Earth. "Farmer Giles Of Ham" was an ordinary Farmer, prone to laziness and boasting, and in fact in the works outside of Middle Earth,Tolkien's original Characters are much more humdrum. (I'm leaving out his Translations such as "Beowulf" because those weren't his inventions.)
Unfortunately, idiots like Skinheads have taken to Tolkien recently because they read into his works just what Tolkien repeatedly, and sometimes angrily, warned against: The Lord Of the Rings was _not_ Allegory. There was no relation there to real people or real events. It was just a _Story_. At a deeper level, it was an investigation into just what a Story is, and this is something that Tolkien wrote about extensively; the relation of Stories, his "Fairy Stories", to Myths and Legends.
So, in conclusion, fuck off.