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View Poll Results: How would the Professor feel about fanfic?
He'd like the idea that his work was being carried on by those who loved it. 19 43.18%
He would want only his son or another authorised editor to oversee all Middle-earth stories. 10 22.73%
He'd tear his hair out with rage and disgust. 10 22.73%
He wouldnt' have cared. 5 11.36%
Voters: 44. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 08-01-2007, 11:09 AM   #1
davem
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I've found this excerpt from Rayner Unwin: George Allen and Unwin: A Remembrancer p.126 posted over on the Plaza by my friend Geordie (hope he doesn't mind me passing it on...) :

Quote:
'While Tolkien remained in Oxford he and his secretary still had a lot of correspondence to deal with. He found this less and less amusing and more burdensome. "I came back yesterday to find a mass of letters, nearly all annoying and some troublesome" he told me in March 1966... In particular Tolkien was unable to deal with clashes of creativity. Many correspondents had been stimulated through reading LotR into an imitative and inept creativity of their own, based on some aspect of the book. Tolkien could muster very little tolerance for such misguided forms of admiration. The boisterous good humour with which he could face ridiculous aspects of real life deserted him when his own creation was misused. He would become angry and exasperated, and unless it was otherwise necessary we would try to shelter him from such well-intentioned effusions. He found it particularly difficult to commend, or even to write polite nothings about anything he did not actively approve of...Replies might be drafted but not sent, as after the expenditure of much time silence would seem preferable to hypocrisy'.
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Old 08-01-2007, 02:44 PM   #2
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Parody videos? Some are funny; some are not. An important point, for me, is that they are not serious and that there is humour.

Some fanfic does take itself seriously, and that's where I guess Tolkien would have the real problem. I'm sure he'd be able to laugh at jokes about Ents or Lorien politics or whatnot. What is far, far more dreadful than that is a straight-faced drama concerning Legolas' romances before the Council of Elrond.
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Old 08-01-2007, 03:51 PM   #3
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For all he might have wanted to produce a mythology that he could dedicate to his country, it seems he was hurt by attempts to 'extend' it. Clearly he felt it was 'his', & not something which belonged to others, which they could add to.

So the question is whether fanfic is technically an addition, or more of a 'tribute'. Tolkien, it seems, felt that what he produced was the story, & only what he produced. I suppose its akin to somebody entering your house & using your things. However respectful they might be of them, they are using them without your permission. He could control what he did with his creation, but not what others did with it. It reflects his values, his vision of the world, & would always be, in some way, him. I think it was, in the end, simply too personal. To find his characters doing & saying things which he hadn't set down would perhaps have felt to him as if they were being manipulated to suit the plans & desires of others. He was, in many ways, a jealous creator, with something of Feanor in him, & in some ways he did, perhaps, love too well the work of his own hands. And yet, it is his creation. For others to take up his characters was perceived by him, rightly or wrongly, to be an attempt to dominate his own creation, & by extension to dominate him. Of course he couldn't authorise other minds & hands to take up the reins.
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Old 08-01-2007, 07:11 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by davem View Post
So the question is whether fanfic is technically an addition, or more of a 'tribute'. Tolkien, it seems, felt that what he produced was the story, & only what he produced. I suppose its akin to somebody entering your house & using your things. However respectful they might be of them, they are using them without your permission. He could control what he did with his creation, but not what others did with it. It reflects his values, his vision of the world, & would always be, in some way, him. I think it was, in the end, simply too personal. To find his characters doing & saying things which he hadn't set down would perhaps have felt to him as if they were being manipulated to suit the plans & desires of others. He was, in many ways, a jealous creator, with something of Feanor in him, & in some ways he did, perhaps, love too well the work of his own hands. And yet, it is his creation. For others to take up his characters was perceived by him, rightly or wrongly, to be an attempt to dominate his own creation, & by extension to dominate him. Of course he couldn't authorise other minds & hands to take up the reins.
Great synopsis. I agree whole-heartedly.
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Old 08-05-2007, 02:50 PM   #5
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I'm one of the few, the proud, the ones who said he wouldn't have cared.

However, I also think that not caring could also imply either a negative or a positive reaction.

I think he had enough going on in his life and in his head to not give the issue a great deal of conscious thought. Although surely he would have reacted in some way - in some small way, perhaps. And this reaction could take on different aspects over time - annoyance, perhaps, or amusement, or even a sense of occasional pleasure.

Writers are moody, after all.
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Old 09-14-2007, 11:17 AM   #6
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I wish there had been an entry for "depends on the quality."

Quote:
Letter 131: I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and scketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
The defensive ire we see in Tolkien's letters (and elsewhere) seems to me to be directed at the lack of respect for the characters and the "high, purged of the gross" character of the legendarium as a whole. I imagine he would be, or try to be, more patient with one who attempted to respect the characters and the quality of the mythology, than with folk who did not attempt either; say, the movie-adapters in Letter 210.
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