[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

In many employer-employee relationships there normally exists an imbalance in terms of power with the employer holding most of the cards. What in most situations would pass for constructive criticism or a difference of opinion or even just employee input can be construed as (to use your term) something "offensive" when directed to the boss. Employees have have much thicker skins than the bosses do if they want to keep their jobs. So if you give your input to a thin skinned boss and they take offense and it ends up costing you, is that always the fault of the employee. Or would you just take that position if the employer with the power is the Tolkien Estate?

Please tell me where these delicate flowers are. Which artists have been driven to despair & loss of hope by the cruel dictates of the Tolkien Estate? I only know of three main artists used by the Estate, Lee, Howe & Naismith, & they are among the biggest fans of the books & as far as I'm aware have never had any problems with the Estate at all.

I am sure that in the opinion of some, the Estate has never acted unreasonable in any way in all the past years. And just how do you define "an over-emphasis on monsters". Is there a scale which tells you what the acceptable quota is? Obviously not. Its totally subjective. As I said before, the monsters are in there and are in there for a very good purpose. JRRT wrote it that way. This whole no monsters thing seems to me to be the Estate attempting to sanitize the whole
ME tales - at least as it is illustrated.

Yes, its the opinion, in the main, of CT, & he owns the rights & has the final say on cover art. Why is that a problem? Are there artists out there who can only paint monsters? Tolkien did not over-emphasise the monsters in his writings - they are present, but not the focus of the stories, & CT seems merely to require cover art to reflect that.

It is a mystery then as to why would you mention emus and christmas trees when nobody is discussing them? Why would you compare the honest difference of opinion about the depiction of monsters with silly things like emus and christmas trees? You try to make fun of something serious by introducing the absurd. It does no credit to you.

Tolkien to Rayner Unwin
12 Sept. 1965

[In August 1965 Ballantine Books produced the first 'authorised' American paperback of The Hobbit, without incorporating Tolkien's revisions to the text. The cover picture showed a lion, two emus, and a tree with bulbous fruit.]

I wrot to [his American publishers] expressing (with moderation) my dislike of the cover for The Hobbit. It was a short hasty note by hand, without a copy, but it was to this effect: I think the cover ugly; but I recognize that a main object of a paperback cover is to attract purchasers, and I suppose that you are better judges of what is attractive in USA than I am. I therefore will not enter into a debate about taste -- (meaning though I did not say so: horrible colours and foul lettering) -- but I must ask this about the vignette: what has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why a lion and emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs? I do not understand how anybody who had read the tale (I hope you are one) could think such a picture would please the author.

These points have never been taken up, and are ignored in [their] latest letter. These people seem never to read letters, or have a highly cultivated deafness to anything but 'favorable reactions'.

Mrs. ---- [a representative of the paperback publishers] did not find time to visit me. She rang me up. I had a longish conversation; but she seemed to me impermeable. I should judge that all she wanted was that I should recant, be a good boy and react favorably. When I made the above points again, her voice rose several tones and she cried: 'But the man hadn't TIME to read the book!' (As if that settled it. A few minutes conversation with the 'man', and a glance at the American edition's pictures should have been sufficient regard to the pink bulbs she said as if to one of complete obtusity: 'they are meant to suggest a Christmas Tree'. Why is such a woman let loose?

Sorry - never read it. Perhaps the problem is the trying to read ones mind to get what they "really are thinking". Accept what I and other say by carefully reading the words we write without trying to change them or alter them so you can make a more clever response. Or worse, by trying read our minds to see what we really think about something. Or worse yet, to post an argument against what you think we really are thinking after you speculate on our "real" thoughts.

But you keep making out that the Estate are imposing unreasonable demands on artists, threatening to stop using their work (& thus causing them to lose money) when there is no evidence at all being presented for anything like that.

CT & the Estate don't want 'dark' images on the covers of the books. They don't want the focus on the monsters & violence. What is the problem? Why does that make them bad people?

Sorry, but it still feels like you're making some kind of veiled accusation about control freakery & an attempt to ruin careers or somesuch.