Christopher Tolkien to finish lost Middle Earth novel

[narfforc]

Hey Lal do you think it would have got into the Sunday Sport for Mikey and Britney the Manchester Chavs to understand or care about it, whilst eating left over pizza and kebab from last night, and opening the first beer of the day (well it wern't in my copy that I nicked ). Joking aside, wasn't this to be expected, isn't it always the same, some nobody trying to sound clever and arty by way of making it in to the 'literati' and acception into the 'Dead from the neck up Club'

[Lalwendë]

I'd laugh my head off if it was in the Sunday Sport! Mind, it would only get in there if it had nudey ladies in it or maybe some new evidence that Elvis had been found alive and well on the Moon.

I just exercised my usual Sunday morning grumps and wrote some sarcasm to send in. If they print it:

Ooh, those awful critics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So nice to see a 'critique' drawn yet again from the somewhat overused text "Being Smugly Sarcastic About Tolkien For Dummies", written by Edmund Wilson one dreary morning when he had a bit of a headche.

All the features you expect are here. A little snipe at the poetry, an underhand linking of Tolkien fans with spotty ne'r-do-wells, use of the word "Wagner", etc. etc. etc. I suspect I might have been able to read this review with my eyes shut.

Really, if it was necessary to produce the usual negative review which must accompany anything with the dreaded name of "Tolkien" attached it (be careful to be seen scoffing lest you lose your literati points, fair readers!), then it might be nice for once to read an original critique rather than a Review By Numbers.

[davem]

From the Independent:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/b...cle2450332.ece

[Elmo]

Originally post by Davem
Here we go - Sunday Times 'review'. http://entertainment.timesonline.co...icle1639071.ece

Thing I hate about the Sunday Times reviews is that the previous week in the Culture they did all the promo saying how brilliant it would be and then the next week they slated it. Its the same with films and tv when the two idiots, Cosmo Landesman and AA Gill respectively, destroy something that the same paper had claimed was the Second Coming the previous week.

[Lalaith]

Who is this Murrough O'Brien?
I feel a crush coming on.

Seriously though, some really good insights. I like this, for example:

Even the apparent irony that Turin effectively forgets his mother in the wanderings which began as a quest to find her is not a reproach to Tolkien's art but to the delusion that such quests can be carried by the power of passion alone.

[davem]

Wall St Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...jQxMTI4Wj.html

[littlemanpoet]

I have a growing respect for Murrough O'Brien, which isn't saying much since I never heard of him before. But I like this a lot:

Does this book deserve a place with the great myths, the high sagas, or should it be considered an interesting relic - much as Beowulf itself was before Tolkien proclaimed it literature? Or is it simply a pretentious folly? I fear that it will be considered as the spin-off it was never intended to be. I hope that its universality and power will grant it a place in English mythology. Hang on though - that didn't exist before Tolkien.

Hee hee!