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#1 | |||||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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That said, your original objection seemed to be to the quality of the writing/story whereas now it seems to be to the subject matter. Tolkien as Satanist or criminal, or paedophile.....Probably it would depend on the quality of the book & what the author was trying to do - I'd judge the book on its merits & object to CT or anyone else trying to stop me reading it. Quote:
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Or to take the argument further - we've seen a number of fundamentalist churches burn copies of LotR & other books (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials - even The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe) in the past, because they firmly believed that the books were 'evil' & promoted 'occultism'. We've also seen numerous accusations of 'racism' about LotR & Tolkien himself & I'm sure there are people who would feel that the book should be destroyed for that reason - would that be ok - would you support them in any attempt to get all copies of LotR destroyed - if they were genuinely upset and/or offended by the work? If we were all to get the right to destroy books/films/art that offended/upset us, or didn't attain to our elevated aesthetic standards, then frankly there wouldn't be much left. This is not about whether CT should be upset about the way his father is depicted in fiction, but what he should be able to do about it. Quote:
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 02-23-2011 at 03:25 AM. |
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#2 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
Location: watching the wonga-wonga birds circle...
Posts: 9,460
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Yo I was not being melodramatic just seeing how far your principles stretch.
Since this is not about quality or how he is depicted. ![]() You now seem to be saying that anyone can write anything and use any material how they like and the literary quality is the only criteria? Hmm .... so it is alright for YOU to judge on literary merit ... ? Actually there are books which have been sanitised but I think there is a fairly obvious difference between genuine novels that allegedly promote offensive ideas and creating a false history for a real person. James Martin's autobiography was recalled and pulped because of things he said about his step mother. But if you can hang around for someone to be conveniently out of the way.... you can defame them as much as you like. You seem to think overall that Christopher Tolkien is restraining the trade of various hard done by authors. The point is the Gaffer was in his own home. He wasn't a sqautter. You are really defending the rights of Saruman and his croney's to take over the Shire. The estate website states: Can I / someone else write / complete / develop my / their own version of one of these unfinished tales ? (or any others) The simple answer is NO. You are of course free to do whatever you like for your own private enjoyment, but there is no question of any commercial exploitation of this form of "fan-fiction". Also, in these days of the Internet, and privately produced collectors’ items for sale on eBay, we must make it as clear as possible that the Tolkien Estate never has, and never will authorize the commercialisation or distribution of any works of this type. The Estate exists to defend the integrity of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings. Christopher Tolkien's work as his father’s literary executor has always been to publish as faithfully and honestly as possible his father's completed and uncompleted works, without adaptation or embellishment. Whether you like it of not (and you clearly don't)the Estate owns the rights to Tolkien's works. and has the right to protect them and test the limits of those rights in the courts. Just as a householder has legal protection against squatters and burglars. The estate may have money. It may also be in the right. It seems to think it has a duty (and I think it probably does legally regardless of morality) to take action. You may have a preference to go for the "underdog" in any circumstances, but are you defending the corner shop against "the man" or the purveyor of stolen goods?. Presumably it would be easier for the estate to ignore all these things - and if you insist on making it personal, I don't suppose Christopher Tolkiens enjoys the vitriolic personal attacks they stir up (if he is aware of them) - and hope they would sink without trace. The Gardiner book was too expensive for me to consider even if I had been more interested and this - well given the millions of Tolkien fans, the fact that noone has read and reviewed in six weeks suggests that it probably doesn't improve after the few example pages and would have sunk without much trace. Modern wisdom says you should not give such things the oxygen of publicity. But then the precedent would have been set and the floodgates opened. What amazes me (apart from how anyone can write so badly and get published) is why the publishers don't check out the legal side first. There must be some kind of due diligence that isn't happening. This may be testing the boundaries but the other books fell at a really basic level.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#3 | ||||||||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 02-23-2011 at 08:15 AM. |
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#4 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
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A brief query, do you consider the greater fault to be the person/'plaintiff' or of the law for allowing such interpretation and action?
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"I am, I fear, a most unsatisfactory person."
- (Letter #124 To Sir Stanley Unwin) |
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#5 |
Wight of the Old Forest
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Unattended on the railway station, in the litter at the dancehall
Posts: 3,329
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I've had a look at the few excerpts of the book available in the Amazon preview, and I have to agree with Mith that the writing is crap - from the cliché of Tolkien's presumed spider phobia to my favourite failed metaphor, "a gulag of deepened liver spots" (infallibly picking the wrong foreign word which doesn't mean what he thinks it does; "archipelago" is what you were looking for, Mr Hillard - but I suppose you can blame Solshenitsyn for confusing you.
![]() But this is beside the point, and I agree with davem insofar as I'd prefer to have the chance to judge the worth or worthlessness of a book myself instead of having it preemptively pulped. What irks me most about the Estate's behaviour in this case is the argument that "the cover art and typefaces in 'Mirkwood' were similar to Tolkien's work to a degree that it would provoke unfair competition", which is an obvious smoke screen. For those who haven't looked at the cover, it depicts a huge watercoloured tree and three tiny figures in the lower left corner which can, by their attributes of staff, bow and axe, be putatively identified as a wizard, elf and dwarf. If that's "unfair competition" for Tolkien's works, so are 90 % of generic fantasy since the 1970's, but I haven't yet heard of any legal action by the Estate against The Sword of Shannara, which pilfered from Tolkien's works to a degree no halfways self-respecting author would dare to consider today. Now if CT said outright, "I don't want my dad to be written about (and possibly misrepresented) as a character in somebody else's fiction", that's a different matter; it's still debatable in my opinion whether that should give him the right to have the book in question suppressed, but I can sympathize with his feelings. But to hide the issue behind a strawman argument like the one quoted above is undignified - actually, I feel it's an insult to us fans, presuming we can't tell the real thing from a cheap rip-off.
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Und aus dem Erebos kamen viele seelen herauf der abgeschiedenen toten.- Homer, Odyssey, Canto XI |
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#6 |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 6,003
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. |
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#7 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Well, I've finished Chapter 1 & I'm sufficiently interested to go to chapter 2 - if only because I've nothing else on. Its a potboiler of course, but its hardly 'offensive' so far. And its fun to see familiar ideas taken up & played around with.
What if the 'Translator Conceit' wasn't actually a 'conceit' & Tolkien really had translated the Legendarium from ancient manuscripts, & what if there were more - what if things had been concealed, deliberately covered up? And what if that Other World on which the Tolkien's tales were based was actually 'rea'l & could break through into this one? I think those are sufficiently interesting ideas, & worth playing around with. Nothing so far that convinces me that CT has any kind of a case - though I doubt he's read the book. But then, if you're rich enough to be able to get your lawyers to destroy anything you think might, possibly, if seen in the right light, from the right angle, bother you even very, very slightly, then why bother doing anything but get it destroyed - & if you can take the writer & publisher down as well - for their presumption, to humble their 'pride' in daring to 'offend' you, all well & good. |
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#8 | |||
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Heaven's doorstep
Posts: 8,039
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From the admittedly little I've gleaned about this book online, I think it's sensational garbage, though it could no doubt be turned into a blockbuster of a film.
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Music alone proves the existence of God. |
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#9 | |||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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EDIT: WHAT I FIND FRUSTRATING IN THIS MATTER I (& please check this out via a search if you don't believe me) have been one of CT's greatest supporters on this forum. I still feel he is deserving of respect for all he's done re his father's unpublished works. However, this unquestioning support for CT, this belief that wherever there is a 'conflict' between CT & another author (or series of authors - 1) Drout with his thwarted attempt to publish Tolkien's translations of Beowulf - which CT originally gave him permission for & subsequently withdrew. 2) the recent publication of Tolkien's translation of the Book of Jonah, which the Estate stopped. 3) the recent biography of Hilary Tolkien which they also stopped, & now 4) the attempt to destroy all copies of this book) its always the other party that's wrong is hardly logical. As if CT & the Estate are living saints who simply CANNOT be in error & who are deserving of unconditional, unquestioning support. Sorry, there are too many examples now of this kind of behaviour on the Estates's part, & this continued unquestioning support requires one to adopt a position of believing that there are 'dark forces' out to assault CT & the Estate & make them suffer out of sheer malice. If this was the only incident of such an attempt on the Estate's part to stop publication of a book about Tolkien I'd be inclined - as in the past - to give them the benefit of the doubt, but frankly, for all I'm grateful for CT's work on his father's part, it begins to look like pettyness & bullying.
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 02-24-2011 at 03:00 PM. |
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