Christopher Tolkien to finish lost Middle Earth novel

[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!

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

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

Same here. This review is full of fantastic possibilities for threads:

But how does fate work? Is it independent of free will or is free will its agent? Steeped as he was in the saga tradition, Tolkien understood as few others have the power of tragic irony in narrative. Theoretically, pride should resist fate; in practise it fulfils it. From this paradox Tolkien derives a remarkably original tale of tragic fall. The children of Hurin do not, like the parents of Oedipus, rush to avoid their destiny: they defy it.

Pride leads Turin to ignore the help of Thingol, the elf king, not to mention his long-suffering messengers; pride leads Morwen, wife of Hurin, to a similar refusal. Pride has loyalty as its chamberlain, and even love and pity turn to disaster.

'Pride should resist fate; in practice it fulfils it.' &' The children of Hurin do not, like the parents of Oedipus, rush to avoid their destiny: they defy it'. Wonderful insight.

&

There is terrible, but somehow uplifting, irony in the depiction of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears: Fingon calls out joyfully, "The day has come!'' before the battle, and is echoed by Hurin at its disastrous close crying in despair, "Day will come!'' 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.

These comments on irony in Tolkien's works call into question the old throway line that Tolkien didn't use irony - well, certainly he didn't use it in a sneering way, to mock, but o'Brien is certainly correct in pointing up Tolkien's use here of tragic irony. What else is the Hobbits' return to the Shire to find it devastated by Sharkey's ruffians but tragic irony?

[davem]

Just got my copy. God ol' Amazon

[Lalwendë]

I've got my copy too - very, very nice indeed!

[Thinlómien]

Ah, that's so unfair, it's still 21 hours til I get mine... or 20 at least...

Anyway, there was a horrible article about CoH in the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, exaggerrating the Kalevala-connection and similarities and constantly calling the main character Húrin...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Ah, that's so unfair, it's still 21 hours til I get mine... or 20 at least...

Anyway, there was a horrible article about CoH in the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, exaggerrating the Kalevala-connection and similarities and constantly calling the main character Húrin...

Oooh, is there a weblink? I think you can run articles in other languages through the mac and translate them, so might be worth a look!

Trying to read everything I can get me hands on!

[Lalaith]

But you already have your hands on the thing itself!

It's *so* unfair. Mine still seems to be awaiting dispatch. WHY?

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Oooh, is there a weblink?

I checked their website and I didn't find the article... They have a virtual version of the newspaper but it costs... Anyway, I can check it at home and translate the most horrible passages - if I find them worth it - and post them here...

[davem]

CNN gets in on the act:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/book.../tolkien.reut/

[Mithalwen]

I nearly had a fit at lunchtime when it was threatening not to get me the book til 21st!!!! Mean of it since it dispatched it along with my UT barely an hour later .... now it is inthe hands of the Royal Mail.. but I may have a peak in Waterstones tomorrow lunchtime..

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I nearly had a fit at lunchtime when it was threatening not to get me the book til 21st!!!! Mean of it since it dispatched it along with my UT barely an hour later .... now it is inthe hands of the Royal Mail.. but I may have a peak in Waterstones tomorrow lunchtime..

Oooh, nasssty Amazon! I see if anyone's ordering the book now they're in for a long wait as it seems to have Sold Out! Certainly on Amazon UK anyway where they are quoting a 4-6 week wait. Obviously sold all their copies on pre-order and waiting for a second print run!

Why, Children Of Hurin, it's the new Wii.

[Essex]

Costco's (well the one in Thurrock, Essex) has loads of copies of it for a tenner!

[davem]

Salon.com on CoH
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2...rin/index.html

What sits in the foreground is that persistent Tolkienian sense that good and evil are locked in an unresolved Manichaean struggle with amorphous boundaries, and that the world is a place of sadness and loss, whose human inhabitants are most often the agents of their own destruction.

[Lalwendë]

I just glanced at this and thought it said:

"good and evil are locked in an unresolved Mancunian struggle with amorphous boundaries"



Anyone see Newsnight's excellent, intelligent item about this last night? With Adam Tolkien interviewed?

Linky to the show is in davem's post here.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I just glanced at this and thought it said:

"good and evil are locked in an unresolved Mancunian struggle with amorphous boundaries"

"a place of sadness and loss, whose human inhabitants are most often the agents of their own destruction"

Sounds like Manchester to me.

[davem]

More:
http://www.centredaily.com/188/story/70971.html

&
http://www.courant.com/features/life...headlines-life

From which we get:

In the 1950s, Smith created the first index for Lord of the Rings, a task that required sorting out the elaborate Middle-earth world.

She once had to deliver a talk to the Tolkien Society about the author's work. Having met him only a few times, Smith felt she needed more information. Tolkien, whom she describes as cheerful and chatty, hastily sent off three-and-a-half handwritten pages about his life and work.

"I think he was a little tipsy when he wrote it, but it was very good," she says. She simply read the letter to the society and the talk was a success.

[davem]

Michael Drout review of CoH
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/2007/04...-contains.html

[Lalwendë]

And now it has made the BBC News website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6562757.stm

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

And now it has made the BBC News website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6562757.stm

Might be worth keeping an eye on the BBC podcasts site too:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...4778.stm#daily - may become available for download soon

Also try 'Listen Again' for 'Front Row' right now - AS Byatt on CoH

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

She doesn't like it (neither does Mark Lawson)

[Lalwendë]

Update to the BBC news site with words from Adam.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6562757.stm

It's interesting as he seems to be following in his father's footsteps regarding the 'official line' on the films and what they have done:

Tolkien's grandson Adam, who worked as assistant editor on the book, was also at the launch.

He said he was "sad" at how some fans have forgotten about who his grandfather actually was.

"Everyone talks about the brand , the franchise and the films. People obviously forget there's a man behind it, that he wrote it for his reasons and the books are wonderful," he added.

"I'm certainly not unhappy about the success they've had, but it's a shame that it should become a brand. It's a work of art."

Strong words.

[davem]

I think AT's statement reflects the same feelings his father has expressed - its never seemed to me that they 'hate' the movies, but rather that they fear 'Tolkien' becoming a 'brand' & the books as 'First draft screenplays'. AT is right - Tolkien's work is Art, not merely a source for Hollywood to mine for their next blockbuster.

I think its clear from both AT & CT's comments that a movie of CoH is not on the cards 'for the forseeable future' as they put it on their site. Again, not because they necessarily hold any animus towards the LotR movies, but simply because they want to re-establish in the public consciousness the fact that JRR Tolkien was an author, not a comercial brand name.

[Lalaith]

She doesn't like it (neither does Mark Lawson)

She at least criticises constructively, as a LotR fan....Lawson does the usual clever-clogs lazy urban sneery thing, which I could, quite frankly, have predicted.
"I just don't care about the difference between a dwarf and an elf."

I like the way she puts him down at that point.

"That's because you don't read Norse mythology."

Anyway, Lal and Dave, lucky possessors of the Precious, I'm still awaiting an answer to my question up there *points*

[Lalaith]

place of sadness and loss, whose human inhabitants are most often the agents of their own destruction" Sounds like Manchester to me.

*snort*

[Child of the 7th Age]

Lalwende,

Thanks for Adam's words on the BBC news site. That is a great link and a great quote, if only people will read it carefully. It is a beautiful answer to a lot of "garbage" that was floating around the internet in terms of the family's supposed reaction to the films.

The more I hear from Adam, the more I am impressed. I am wondering this. It seems as if Adam is featured more and more prominently in recent press releases, interviews, etc. from the Estate. As an assistant editor, he is also getting experience in working with the family's manuscripts. Can we assume that the family is planning on putting Adam in a position similar to that which Christopher presently occupies on the sad die that the older generation passes away? Is it possible that he will be given the blessing even to do limited releases of material or make decisions such as when and if the Beowulf papers will be made public?

One last word....thanks everyone for posting the news as I would never have time to search out these links. And a special thanks to you and davem for giving so much time and effort to this. It's been a joy.

[Bêthberry]

So what shall I do? Go buy the book and read it, or spend what time I have for leisure listening to all these nattering nabobs of negativism?

One thing that Byatt said was, I think, whistfully telling. In complaining that CoH doesn't give enough development or information about the characters--so that she doesn't care about them--she said that she was absolutely sure that Tolkien's head held that information, that he had fully imagined all the characters. And that she recognizes the wonderful aspect of his thoughts about language change, and that she really quite regretted that this fullness was not brought out in the text, despite the constant changing of sword names etc.

It's as if she recognizes that Tolkien had a genius and regrets that it doesn't come through in this text. So, is she more generous than most of the nay-sayers? I'm not sure. This could simply be that very British way of being backhandedly snarky. Yes, that's it, I think. Now I shall go snooping through her novels trying to decide what nasty sort of character actually speaks with her voice.

Oh, yes, and of course she claims her credentials about northern myths. I recognise the type.

[Sauron the White]

Please allow me to throw a little cold water on this. Given the statements of the last few days, it seems one very big reason for "new book" is the Estate and HC want to reclaim the spotlight that they feel was taken from them with the wild success of the three films. So in order to do that they take a bunch of previously published material and repackage it and call it the first new Tolkien book in thirty years.

Look folks, I am happy to have the story of Turin in one very pretty volume. Its worth the money. But some of the reaction here and on other sites is akin to The Emperors New Clothes. Why is it being ignored that this so-called "new" book is not new at all?

I thought the cynical Sellamillion criticism of the SILMARALLION was absurd. Readers were getting a very substantial book about new tales that they had not previously been privileged to read. But this time - COH - its nothing like that. The recent statements that a prime motivation was to regain the spotlight for the books away from the films just adds to that negative feeling for me.

THIS IS NOT A NEW BOOK. The marketting slogan slogan should be "new sales but no new tales".

[Lalwendë]

Lalaith - I can't answer you that yet as I'm enjoying reading it nice and slowly.

And I believe Adam T will indeed be inheriting his father's role!

Now I've listened to that AS Byatt review with interest as her book Possession is my second favourite; it's a work that has all the required 'literati' features but seems to go a bit beyond that too and satirises the 'establishment'. Plus it's a beautiful story. If you are looking for an evil character she has a fabulously loathsome one in this novel in the form of Mortimer Cropper, the academic who has decamped to an incredibly wealthy US university and is engaged in buying up every last scrap of memorabilia or paperwork relating to the fictional poet Ashe (a thinly disguised fictional Tennyson) and squirreling it away in the archives where only the 'authorised' can ever view it. I think some folk here (not me ) might find the evil displayed by him redolent of their own feelings about the control over the Tolkien archive?

Byatt, like a lot of the literati alas, displays her snobbery in the interview. Slipping in that her mother went to Cambridge and how clever she was as a child by reading her mother's Cambridge texts, even though its irrelevant. Had to laugh at how she saw people re-enacting battles as 'strange' - personally the thought of getting dressed up in 'a nice dress' and going out to 'dinner in a nice restaurant' with one's mother is strange to me. She may have been born in Sheffield but she was born into a life quite, quite far removed from The Full Monty. But anyway...snobbery and inverse snobbery aside...as that's to be expected in a BBC review (unless reviewing something by a young writer when such folk always want to appear as 'street' as is possible with a cut-glass accent *cynic*).

Under all of this there was an interesting counterpoint to Drout's argument that there is too much description in LotR. Byatt's beef with CoH is that there is not enough description, and I'm inclined to agree that what the works after Lord of the Rings are lacking is the long, lingering descriptions that we found there! We are told of long lists of places but have little or no context in which to place them - we are also told of many places and swords with multiple names in LotR but it doesn't seem such a bombardment because of all the lingering descriptions!

Lawson we'll ignore. He's a nice presenter and looks pleasantly unthreatening in his tweed jacket and beard/glasses combo (Viz comic have spoofed him - they do like popping the bubbles of the literati, meh), but he's not a terribly original writer himself I'm afraid. He might pick up on Dyson's supposed gripe "Not another effing elf" but has someone said to him "Not another effing satire about the media"?

[davem]

Detroit Free Press.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...YAK03/70417029

[davem]

BBC report on the launch:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6564953.stm

[Sauron the White]

The signed books at Barnes & Noble in New York sold out within one hour this morning. The first two people got in line at 4 AM and came from Russia. And....


http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Children-of-...QQcmdZViewItem

no surprises here.

[Mithalwen]

Apparently my copy is waitig for me ..but I couldn't resist a peek in Waterstones ....

Interestingly because I ordered the History of the Hobbit as well I am recommended to buy Mony Pythion Series " on DVD.... maybe it isn't a coincidence that so many DOwners like Python ,,but I winder why Series 2?


To get back on point, Adam Tolkien has translated the books of Lost tales so he seems like the logical choice - he is not just going to be a token Tokien-surnamed media friendly figurehead .....

As for the critics, I don't know if I am even going to bother reading them. I have a degree in literature, I know how criticism works and my love of Tolkien is almost separate from my love of other literature. I am just thrilled that I will have my favourite silmarillion story up together...

[Child of the 7th Age]

Actually, there are two signed books on e-bay now, and I expect there will be others. The second dealer is such a doofus that he has advertised it as being signed by J.R.R. Tolkien himself along with Lee! (Quite a trick if JRRT could do that...)

See here for the second listing: Children of Hurin.

[Sauron the White]

Gee whiz! I thought the one with CT's sig was great. This one is much better.

By tonight there will be a book signed by Turin himself.

[davem]

More on the launch
http://www.tvguide.com/News-Views/En...spx?idx=799432

[Elmo]

Article in the Scotsman today about CoH. Guess which was the only review of it they quoted

The 'review' in the Sunday Times

EDIT: Here's the article if anyone cares...
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=586542007