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Originally Posted by Morwen
In Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys, writes about Mr. Rochester's mad wife, a character from Jane Eyre. .
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Have to say that was one that popped into my mind - haven't read it but I did catch the recent BBC adaptation of it.
Now, I've never stated that it would be
impossible for someone to write a great book based in Middle-earth. Perhaps one day they will. It won't be Tolkien though. As to it being seen as independent of Tolkien's work, that would depend on it
not being authorised by the Estate - if the Estate authorised it it would inevitably be seen as part of the Legendarium. But no stories of Middle-earth can be published without the authorisation of the the Estate. Catch 22.
I just don't see that anyone will ever have the skill & insight that Tolkien had - such a writer would have to have Tolkien's intimate knowledge of Middle-earth history & languages & be as great a writer - something I think is often underplayed. AN Wilson makes some good points here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m...71522693538744
(ignore the typos!)
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Now the army of Tolkien imitators and creators of alternative universes fill the fantasy sections of the libraries. They are books largely written by and for nerds.
Yet with the master, it isn't so. In this new book, as in The Silmarillion, you feel yourself in the presence of a personal genius.
It is an odd thing to say, since his aim was to create an impersonal mythology, and you can see the affinities it has with Hebrew, Greek and Nordic equivalents. The ineluctable tendency for events to go wrong, and for the beautiful and the delicate to be vanquished, knows no let-up.
Yet, though there is not one word of preaching in The Children of Hurim, you never doubt that it is worth being good, even though evil triumphs.
You close it thinking how extraordinary was the life of Tolkien, who for well over half a century, while pursuing an academic career, continued to evolve - unpublished and without much encouragement - a self-contained world of myth.
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That first bit is worth re-reading:
'Now the army of Tolkien imitators and creators of alternative universes fill the fantasy sections of the libraries. They are books largely written by and for nerds.'
I think that's what we'd get - however much some may wish for a genius to give us a masterpiece.