Christopher Tolkien was a grave robber and cashed in

[Ent]

In my Universe, Tolkien is alive, Moorcock can still write good novels, and Robert E. Howard published 300 Conan novels. Reality sucks.

Then of course, we have those who are just outright deluded. 😁

 

[Olorgando]

To get the material published it has to be sellable. If The Silmarillion or The book of lost tales been commercial failures we would not have seen the rest in print. CT would presumably then simply sorted and edited the unpublished material and then donated or sold it to a suitable institution. The fact is the work proved sellable, and the rest is (to coin a phrase) history. Why should this cause moral indignation? What was CT supposed to do? Self publish the lot? Donate it to a library on masse?

Oh yes, especially the publishers are interested in sales and profit. But then, Sir Stanley Unwin was willing to risk losing a thousand Pounds Sterling (that was serious money in the mid-1950's!!!) on LoTR, and told his Son Rayner so in a telegram, IIRC, on the condition that the latter considered the book to be a work of genius.

But have any of these trolls actually read anything of HoMe - or even "Unfinished Tales"? These are academic works by a professional scholar once working for the English School of Oxford, fer cryin' out loud! So many people have found "The Silmarillion" difficult going compared to LoTR. Oh, really? Try slogging through the commentary-, footnote- and endnote-riddled 5,000-odd pages of HoMe, you weenies. 😈

I don't know any sales figures for the 12 volumes of HoMe, either for single volumes or in aggregate. Compared to the at least 100 million and counting for LoTR, and the perhaps one, maybe two million for the Sil, they are likely to be an order of magnitude smaller. What I know for a fact is that only the first two volumes of HoMe, Book of Lost Tales volumes 1 and 2, ever got translated into German. To put it another way, these ain't "Conan the Barbarian" comics (and never mind films and TV shows. I'll add that the CtB books seem to be at least a notch above the popular fluff I just mentioned, from comments I've read.).

 

[Olorgando]

Not everyone likes reality. Rather they prefer an ideological world where all works according to their own design.

Yup. And often that fantasy world makes all of JRRT's writing look like a dry-as-dust documentary.
What's that phrase that seems so appropriate so often? 🤔
Oh, right ...
"Get a life!" 😈

 

[Ent]

o many people have found "The Silmarillion" difficult going compared to LoTR. Oh, really? Try slogging through the commentary-, footnote- and endnote-riddled 5,000-odd pages of HoMe, you weenies.

But sir Olorgando, other than this do you have any feelings on the matter?
(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
😇

 

[Gloranthan]

But have any of these trolls actually read anything of HoMe - or even "Unfinished Tales"? These are academic works by a professional scholar once working for the English School of Oxford, fer cryin' out loud! So many people have found "The Silmarillion" difficult going compared to LoTR. Oh, really? Try slogging through the commentary-, footnote- and endnote-riddled 5,000-odd pages of HoMe, you weenies.

You're basically paraphrasing me complaining about the 12 year olds on Quora giving me their "expert opinion" on Superman. There are over two thousand comics with the man in it, I've read them, have you?
I don't have all of the HoMe volumes, and I read selectively (I tend to skip over a lot of draft versions of published stuff) but anything to do with Elves, Morgoth and the Numenoreans I have consumed voraciously. And as for The Silmarillion being hard going in the opinion of some, I personally found it more interesting than either the Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Because it's got elves, Morgoth, and lots of wars; these are the things that really drew me to Middle-earth.

I wouldn't have minded much if Chris Tolkien went off on his own and started writing Middle-earth novels. If Frank Herbert's son can spin off his own father's novels, why not Chris?

 

[Ent]

complaining about the 12 year olds on Quora

Just wait 'til you're 71, youngster... but we must keep in mind it's the kids who know everything.

 

[Olorgando]

Just wait 'til you're 71, youngster... but we must keep in mind it's the kids who know everything.

Eh? Practically everything I learned in high school is obsolete by now (graduated 1973). You can probably add to that everything up to 1981, when I left the academic college / university ivory tower. And the odd decade later. Those kids need to do some serious reading of Socrates ...

 

[Gloranthan]

Those kids need to do some serious reading of Socrates ...

You mean, Plato. Socrates didn't write anything. Memorabilia presents a Socrates more to my liking.
To steer this back to Chris Tolkien and not a bunch of old people complaining about illiterate children, I really have no knowledge about the actual history/behind the scenes events which led to Chris finishing out the works he did. Upon completing The Silmarillion I was pleasantly surprised to find The Children of Hurin on sale for $5 at Barnes & Noble (surplus or something), so I bought and read it immediately. I noted some differences between it and the events in The Silmarillion (which I am sure others on here can detail better than I can). There is something of a stylistic difference between The Children of Hurin and the novels Tolkien completed in his life, but it still felt true to the spirit of Middle-earth. I have no idea if those differences were a result of Chris interpolating his father's drafts into a whole, if Tolkien simply wrote differently later in his life, or if he would have revised it stylistically when his notes were completed.

Whatever the case I can appreciate the work Chris must have done to put it together and, being satisfied with the finished product (a top-notch fantasy novel for five bucks, come on!) I am glad he did it. I certainly prefer that outcome to sifting through piles of notes myself and trying to haggle a narrative out of it (as often is the case reading The History of Middle-earth).

 

[Olorgando]

You mean, Plato. Socrates didn't write anything. Memorabilia presents a Socrates more to my liking.

Correct. I mean what Plato wrote about Socrates. Jesus, Mohammed and Kong-fu tse (Confucius) were others that never wrote down anything themselves ...
The part of Plato's writing I have been most fascinated by is the uncompleted (of all of his works?) trilogy "Timaeus" (completed), "Critias" (incomplete) and "Hermocrates" (probably never written). It's our sole source for the "Atlantis" legend, and very likely suffers from multiple, decisive translation errors.

 

[Gloranthan]

Correct. I mean what Plato wrote about Socrates. Jesus, Mohammed and Kong-fu tse (Confucius) were others that never wrote down anything themselves ...
The part of Plato's writing I have been most fascinated by is the uncompleted (of all of his works?) trilogy "Timaeus" (completed), "Critias" (incomplete) and "Hermocrates" (probably never written). It's our sole source for the "Atlantis" legend, and very likely suffers from multiple, decisive translation errors.

My favorite is Gorgias, because Callicles was right and Plato knew he couldn't come up with a good counter-argument to stuff in Socrates' mouth, so had the character Callicles leave the scene without a proper rebuttle or counter-argument. Coward!

 

[Deimos]

 

[Amon Rudh]

I wonder what creators of this sort of garbage think of those losers that messed about with such an historical artifact as the broken Narsil just so they could remake it into a new shiny one for personal gain.
In his own writings JRRT, it seems, predicted even the events related to in this thread 😁

 

[Gloranthan]

I wonder what creators of this sort of garbage think of those losers that messed about with such an historical artifact as the broken Narsil just so they could remake it into a new shiny one for personal gain.
In his own writings JRRT, it seems, predicted even the events related to in this thread 😁

This just makes me wish I had Narsil. Broken or not. I'll take any magic sword.
Though the analogy kind of falls apart, because who are they going to blame for breaking Narsil? Did Sauron muss up Tolkien's drafts? lol
the deceiver

 

[Elthir]

There is something of a stylistic difference between The Children of Hurin and the novels Tolkien completed in his life, but it still felt true to the spirit of Middle-earth. I have no idea if those differences were a result of Chris interpolating his father's drafts into a whole, if Tolkien simply wrote differently later in his life, or if he would have revised it stylistically when his notes were completed.

I think there are large enough sections to attribute the style to JRRT. We know that the latter part of the Narn, from the section headed "The Return of Turin to Dor-Lomin" to "The Death of Turin" was written circa 1951 (thus before The Lord of the Rings was published), and according to Christopher Tolkien (here referring to the Unfinished Tales version) "has undergone only marginal editorial alteration."

And the part of the Narn dealing with Turin's earlier life is a work of the later 1950s. It includes
a twelve-page typescript composed ab initio, for example, and a section [to the end of Turin in Doriath] "required a good deal of revision and selection, and in some cases some slight compression, the original texts being scrappy and disconnected."

But for its central section [Turin among the outlaws, Mim, the land of Dor-Cuarthol, the death of Beleg, and Turin's life in Nargothrond] the Narn is at its least finished, "and in places diminishes to outlines of possible turns in the story."

This is a very simplified summary however, even with respect to the Unfinished Tales version (the later version for the book The Children of Hurin has more to say about the construction of that version).

(. . .) I am glad he did it. I certainly prefer that outcome to sifting through piles of notes myself and trying to haggle a narrative out of it (as often is the case reading The History of Middle-earth).

I enjoy that haggle, but the reading of the constructed Children of Hurin is indeed a different experience, and well worth it. I had to have the signed version, although no one was selling that
for five dollars. Or five anything!

By the way, thanks for helping me find my driver's license (missing for about three weeks). I wanted to check something about the Narn from Hammond and Scull's Companion, and found that I'd used my license as a bookmark -- I had a vague memory that I'd done that, in some book, but wasn't really sure!

🐾