New Tolkien Books:updates

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

I think we probably all know that... what with all the woefully ruminating about what "could have been", had Christopher Tolkien taken a more "liberal" approach to publishing his father's writing. I'm just saying that this seems more in character with his publication of the Silmarillion and somewhat in Unfinished Tales twenty-five years ago, when he willingly modified and added to (albeit sparingly) his father's texts; rather than being in the spirit of the meticulous presentation of texts that we've seen in the HoME since.

Which makes me quite excited. A complete text, from Christopher Tolkien, is bound to be good. And coming AFTER his years working on the HoME, it should be able to avoid some of the more avoidable problems of filling in the gaps- as evidenced by the "Fall of Doriath" portions of the published Silmarillion. So I'm really curious to see how the "Nargothrond" chunk in the middle of the Narn is played out- whether we see much an expansion or addition to the published Silmarillion text. And, like you Davem, I'm curious (and hopeful) to see if "The Wanderings of Húrin" will make it in- and especially curious to see how much editting, and of what nature, goes on there.

Overall, I'm really excited about this... very excited! But it seems very "out of the blue" and a bit out of keeping with what Christopher Tolkien has done over the past 25 years or so. Is it perhaps an attempt to get out an "official" completed Narn- before Christopher dies and the texts go into the public domain? Or is it a resurgence late in life of a subcreatorly urge?

Or what?

My guess is that when CT assembled the Silmarillion, it was never anticipated that there would be so much appetite among Tolkien's fans for unfinished and many drafted tales and so he got the work his father so much wanted published in a coherent, if as he himself admits, less than perfect version. Also I think I remember reading that papers had been transferred to Marquette in a fairly haphazard way and he may not have had access to everything at the time he did the Silmarillion. Now that CT has done "his duty" and edited as a scholar with minimum personal input so much of the raw materials, maybe he is now devoting his remaining time to assembling tales from the Silmarillion as perhaps he wishes he had done origianally, and with the benefit of the work on HoME.