New Tolkien Story To be Published

vingilot writes "CNN reports that Christopher Tolkien has edited and will release a new book by his father. From the article: 'Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarfs of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.'"

Well! I stand corrected.

I guess outrageously long copyright terms really do encourage artists to produce more work after they die.

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

I hope so...I can't wait for Tupac's new album in 2080!

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

Actually, he added on to the joke by providing a more concrete example that a specific group of people could relate to, therefore making it funny!

Don't be an asshat.

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

It's almost like you're saying Chris Tolkien is only pimping incomplete scraps of his fathers work to make a cheap buck for himself. If that were true, you'd expect him to have written a bunch more books with "Tolkien" in really big print on the back, in an attempt to fool the ignorant into buying what amounts to extremely amaturish fanfict.

(Special place in hell reserved for Chris Tolkien and Frank Herbert Jr.)

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

I know that I have works from my father and I've extended them in my own interest, but always with the intent to honor my father and his inspiration. Maybe young Tolkein thinks in the same fashion? He is bringing his fathers work to life. Just another viewpoint.

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

I agree 100% as far as Frank Herbert Jr. There should be a special space in hell reserved for people like him. For people who shit on everything their fathers built.

Also, It is also quite obvious that Herbert Jr has written his books. They are written using the current modern American literature style which is beaten into kids in college. I still remember by own brush up with this experience with horror 15+ years later. It is the same style as used by Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson and most of the modern American Sci Fi/Fantasy writers. There are lots of repeats and a single idea is reiterated at least 3-4 times to ensure that the dumb reader gets it. The vocabulary is a fraction of the vocabulary of most of the older generation like Herbert Sr, Zelazny, Le Guin, Bradbury (in fact from the old generation - everybody but Azimov). The overall lexical construction is quite primitive as well. It is quite obvious who wrote these books.

As far as Chris Tolkien the situation is not so straightforward. He published at least one clearly and purely J.R.R. Tolkien Book - the Silmarilion [amazon.co.uk]. That was J.R.R. Tolkien all the way and if not for Chris Tolkien, it would have failed to see the light of day (it was published postmortem). The Unifinished Tales [amazon.co.uk] seem to be what junior sells them for - drafts, notes and unfinished tales. Looking at the style and vocabulary they also seem to be a J.R.R. Tolkien work, just quite what it says on the tin - unfinished.

I have no idea about this new book, but I hope that he does not join Hurbert junior in that circle of hell. He has done not that bad so far. He has shown some his dad's dirty laundry (stuff j.r.r. never intended to be published) but he has not shit on his grave just yet (or I missed that one in the bookshop).

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

If you've read the History of Middle-Earth series [amazon.com], which really is a collection of notes, you'd see that the text of the Silmarillion is indeed J.R.R Tolkien's own writing. There are even facsimiles of 70 year-old manuscripts, unless you want to accuse Christopher Tolkien of forging those too. The sparse, vaguely epic style of the Silmarillion as it appeared in print is how Tolkien wrote it from the very beginning. Those who find it strange because "it's not like Lord of the Rings" are forgetting the fact that that trilogy was penned first as a sequel to a children's book (The Hobbit, of course) so of course its style was going to be different.

Only one chapter of the Silmarillion had to be penned outright by Christopher Tolkien, and it is the shortest one.

Just a money grab?

From TFA:

Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.

"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the 'Children of Hurin' as an independent work, between its own covers,"

So the question is, will there actually be anything new in here that readers haven't seen before, or is it merely pulling bits from various texts and stitching them together in a fresh binding? Sounds like the latter to me...

Re:Just a money grab?

So the question is, will there actually be anything new in here that readers haven't seen before, or is it merely pulling bits from various texts and stitching them together in a fresh binding? Sounds like the latter to me...

Considering he is somewhat of a Tolkien scholar and has worked on this 30 years, I doubt that it is just a hodgepodge of works. There probably is a bit of truth to the money grab in that the recent success of the LOTR movies probably encouraged him to finish editing and/or publishers to publish the work.

Re:Just a money grab?

CJRT is "somewhat of a Tolkien scholar". The Pope is "a well-known Catholic". The Sun is "a nearby star". Michael Moore "is not entirely pleased with the Bush administration". Slashdot "occasionally posts dupes"....

Re:Just a money grab?

Most of the books released by Christopher Tolkien since his father's death have been predominantly 'new' material. There are meant to be many, many files full of manuscripts that J. R. Tolkien wrote but never published in book form.

I'm extremely glad to see that some more have been put together into what I'm sure will be another amazing book.

Re:Just a money grab?

How on earth was that comment deemed 'Funny'?

OR should it be "How on middle-earth was that comment deemed 'Funny'?"

Now that's funny!

*Tumbleweed rolls accross in background as people stay silent*

Re:Just a money grab?

There are meant to be many, many files full of manuscripts that J. R. Tolkien wrote but never published in book form. I never saw that as being a good thing. There are reasons why authors don't publish every little thing they write, and it probably because they realized it was crap. They really shouldn't be publsihing stuff a writer didn't want published after they're dead, to say nothing of 'finishing' their work. Its almost never worth it.

Re:Just a money grab?

They really shouldn't be publsihing stuff a writer didn't want published after they're dead, to say nothing of 'finishing' their work.

If that were the case here, I would agree. I would also agree if this were just any person doing the editing.

However, that's not the case. It isn't that JRRT didn't want these books finished - indeed he specifically etrusted his son with doing just that - he just didn't manage to get it done before he died. Many an author has that problem, and JRRT had it in spades. The man was a professor of the highest calibre, and a perfectionist to boot; he left nearly unimaginable amounts of work unfinished. There is far more than the aging CJRT will ever be able to bring to publishable form, especially given that his standards seem to be, if anything, even more conservative than his father's.

As others have noted, it was these works, the histories of the first and second ages of Middle Earth, that were JRRT's life's work. It was these works which he truly longed to bring to finished form. "The Hobbit," and TLOTR were mere side stories, writen at the behest of publishers, and never meant to be the main story. "The Silmarilion" was the main story, and the publication of the other works is in part an attempt by CJRT to flesh out that story; which, sadly, was completed in more of a rush than might have been. If it had been known in the early '70s that anyone would still care about J.R.R. Tolkien in 30 years time, I think the finished "Silmarilion" would have been better for it.

Besides, this isn't some hack, pulp-paperback writer writing new stories to milk a popular series, this is the world's foremost scholar on JRRT - a man with a personal relationship to the author which allowed him to see much of the story as it developed - painstakingly piecing together decades of manuscripts and notes into some semblence of coherence. If anyone, ever, was qualified to finish the work of another, it would be Chistopher Tolkien being qualifed to finish his father's work.

Story will not include "Hobbitses"

for they have largely been found to be "tricksy", not to mention "false".

Abandoned?

Well the article at least makes it seem like Tolkein abandoned it due to time pressures or something similar, as opposed to considering the work to be sub-standard. The fact that he included exerpts in his other works would seem to be a good sign.

Re:Abandoned?

Tolkien was a notorious procrastinator, leaving pieces of his work alone for 20 or 30 years at a time before picking it back up.

JRR specifically left his son Christopher in charge of his estate after his death to continue, finish, and document his lifetime's work. The Silmarillion was an early compilation, based on his father's outlines, of a variety of tales -- the Tale of Hurin is mentioned as one of those texts. IIRC, JRR specifically tasked his son with completing the Silmarillion.

Christopher Tolkien has been exceedingly honest in his attempts, documenting divergences and inconsistencies with his father's intentions, and getting help (Guy Kay) when possible. He also doesn't present it as his own work, its usually "JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher" etc. The Tale of Hurin will clearly be presented as a 'best effort' recovery from notes and incomplete texts.

Given the choice of a) no material, or b) Christopher's best interpretation of the material, I'll take 'b' every time. If you want to see butchered work after an author's demise, look to Robert E Howard's Conan stories, or the latest 'additions' to the Dune series.

Re:Abandoned?

I'm struggling through it right now... my problem is I only really get a chance when I take my son to martial arts and wait for him. I get about two hours a week to read, excepting when I'm on vacation when I might get a little more.

The problem with the Silmarillion is that each character has like 10 names that are used interchangeably, most parts read like the worst, most dry history book you've ever read, there's no contextual maps (my book has two maps... but as time changes, so do the names of cities, towns, and natural landmarks, so you can hardly figure out where anything is taking place unless your mind is a steel trap and you're taking notes (and come on, I'm not being tested on it, I'm not taking notes).

I have to constantly refer to the indices to see what things are and how they're pronounced...

I'm about 4/5 the way through, though, so won't give up this time (last time I tried I was in high school, about 20 years ago).

Balrogs?

I think I speak for all true Tolkien fans when I say; This book will give the conclusive, irrefutable evidence that Balrog's indeed have wings. Namely, there will be one with wings on the cover.

Beyond "Lost Tales" and "Unfinished Tales"...

We now have the Really Lost, Unfinished Tales of J.R.R. Tolkien

Legolas Atreides

At last, the true secrets of the Bene Gesserit line of Noldor will be revealed! I LOVE pre-quels!

expected criticism

and yes, Chris Tolkien has fed off the teat of his late father's creativity for a long time now. still, the literary joy of reading The Silmarillion, The Narn i Hin Hurun, The Lay of Leithian, and more, far outweighs whatever motives young Tolkien may have in editing and publishing these many works.

Prof. Tolkien, while living, tried and failed to publish the Silmarillion. The other works were never even close to publishable. yet he often talked and wrote of these tales having a life of their own, and I don't think he would object to their being shared with millions of fans.

I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to have read of the First and Second ages of Tolkien's world.

Re:expected criticism

Nicomachus published his father's (Aristotle's) notes into a book, Nicomachean Ethics, that is part of the foundation of the western world.

Trilogy

This is the first part of a trilogy, actually. Chris Tolkien is co-writing them with Kevin J. Anderson, who is widely regarded as the finest science fiction and fantasy author in the history of either genre.

Re:Trilogy

with Kevin J. Anderson, who is widely regarded as the finest science fiction and fantasy author in the history of either genre.

Thanks for letting us know, Kevin.

Dwarfs

"Dwarfs" is only the plural form of dwarf stars. The plural for dwarf people is "dwarves". Yes, English major.

My elven is rusty - please tell me...

.. that "hurin" doesn't mean "corn". Cuz that would just be sad.

Whatever happened to his Beowulf?

Slashdot had a story some time ago [slashdot.org] that they'd found a copy of Beowulf translated by Tolkien at the bottom of a box of his papers in the Oxford library. Supposedly they were going to publish them as soon as they'd deciphered his terrible handwriting. But I haven't heard of it since.

Re:Whatever happened to his Beowulf?

We have to wait 30 years for his son to edit....

Tearing arms off and beating people to death it?

Personally, any epic tale that has the main character tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it has got some serious literary merit in my book!

The story really does have a lot going for it, once you get past the language barrier - Old English really does read a lot more like German than modern English. It was one of the coolest books I'd ever read - full of adventure with tons of gruesome details (like the whole 'tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it' bit) that you'd never seen in any other piece of classical literature aside from Dante's Inferno.

The end kind of sucked, as I recall, but as far as adventure and ass-kicking go, Beowulf was one of the best, if not *the* best.

Obligatory...

Now, that's what I'm Tolkien About!

name sounds familiar

wasnt Christopher Tolkien in that pulp fiction movie?

"he hid that book up his ass for 30 years."

incredible! i wish slashdot wasn't so jaded though

"Wow, that's great," I thought, as I read the title of the article. Then I made the mistake of clicking on "Read more..."

Man are you lot ever a bunch of depressed, jaded people. Almost every single comment has been attacking Mr. Tolkien for doing homage to his father's work. How sad...

(Please, no "You must be new here" comments.. :)

Good Stories from the Histories

I always thought there were (at least) three really solid books to come out of the Silmarillion - the story of Feanor and his kids, the story of Tuor and Gondolin, and the story of Hurin and his kids. All three are much better in the History of Middle Earth series than the Silmarillion (which was an awful book if you liked to follow characters for more than a chapter or two).

I'm looking forward to a newly fleshed out story, although it does feel a little like Christopher Tolkien keeps on discovering just a little more each time, in a way that would ensure a steady flow of books. "Oh look, here's a bit more of the story!" (two years later) "And underneath that bit was even more of the story! It's a shame I didn't think to keep looking before publishing." (two years later) "Well, what do you know! Some more of the story! Who could've imagined! Stap me vitals and so on."

But I'm being unkind here.

I'd also love to see a movie based on this story. Especially since Morgoth would play a prominent role. Unlike Sauron, he actually has a speaking role in the Middle Earth stories, and is a far more complex and interesting character. That, and he's got Balrogs leading his armies. Not that they could fly of course (the eagles of Manwe really hated them doing that).

Have the critics here actually *read* Tolkien?

There are a lots of people here bashing the Tolkien works that were released after J.R.R death. Have any of you actually looked any of these books? Given that most of these books are very dense and very scholarly works, it's highly doubtful that Christopher Tolkien edited them just to make a quick buck. The intended audience for these books was just too small for that.

When J.R.R died, he left literally thousands of pages of unpublished pages, many that he had been working on for decades. It would have been a real shame for this stuff to vanish forever. And Christopher Tolkien's contribution is usually just editing. He is generally very careful to separate his father's words from his commentary (usually with a different font).

A Tolkien Scholar on The Children of Hurin

Here is the blog of Michael Drout, the English professor who discovered Tolkien's Beowulf translation. His latest post comments on The Children of Hurin.

Wormtalk [blogspot.com]

And here's what he says:

HarperCollins is going to be publishing Tolkien's Children of Húrin as a stand-alone volume next year. According to the press release (which I haven't been able to find on line), the text was created by Christopher Tolkien's painstaking editing together of Tolkien's many drafts. The book will include a new map by Christopher Tolkien and a jacket and color paintings by Alan Lee.

He mentions several previously published versions of the tale and points out: "From the press release, it seems as if these variants will be stitched into a coherent whole in the same the way that Christopher Tolkien brought together disparate texts to create the 1977 The Silmarillion."

Prof. Drout is also the editor of The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, which due out this October. It's a scholarly reference, which must explain the $199.95 price tag on Amazon. (Maybe you can get your public or school library to get a copy.) Since I contributed several articles, I'm hoping all contributors get free copies.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien (The only book-length, day-by-day chronology of LOTR.)

Re:Greedy Children

Tolkein obviously didn't want this book published. Now his greedy kid is capitalizing on his fathers name just to make some cash and hurt Tolkein's reputation by publishing a book not up to his usual quality.

That's why he spent 30 years working on it right?

Re:Greedy Children

Look, the guy chose to die rather than have it published. I don't see how anyone could send a clearer signal, sheesh.

Re:Greedy Children

I don't see how anyone could send a clearer signal, sheesh.

He could have engaged in spontaneous human combustion while holding the original manuscript.

Re:Greedy Children

The time you take to complete a job doesn't necessarily correlate to the quality of the job done.

No, but it does give some indication of motive. If I'm looking to make a quick buck, I sure don't spend 30 years turning it into a rather slow buck.

Re:Greedy Children

I've only read the Silmarilion, ... However sometime after that, the seemingly endless stream of variant versions of the same stories seems to have crossed over the line of honouring his legacy to ruthlessly exploiting, and diluting, it.

I realize this is Slashdot and we have a glorious history here of commenting on articles without reading them but I must ask you how you can reach the conclusion that the volumes that followed the Silmarillion were exploitative and a dilution of the earlier works when you haven't even read them?

I've read most, but not all, of the volumes of Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth and I've enjoyed them greatly. I felt no hint of exploitation or dilution. I'm very grateful to Christopher for taking the time and effort (and flack) to make all these parts of his father's work available to the rest of us.

If you are interested in exploring these other works, you might want to start with "Unfinished Tales" which provides a nice bridge between what happened in the Lord of the Rings and the larger world of the Silmarillion.

Re:Greedy Children

Now his greedy kid is capitalizing on his fathers name just to make some cash and hurt Tolkein's reputation by publishing a book not up to his usual quality.

Uh, we're not talking about a snot-nosed punk trying to make a quick buck. The guy's eighty years old and has dedicated much of his life to his father's literary legacy, trying to make sense of his notes and half-finished stories (see the Silmarillion.) Whether his efforts have literary merit is one thing-- I personally think a dead author's notes and partial works should be buried with him-- but he's hardly trying to "make some cash."

Re:Greedy Children

Perhaps you would be good enough to give some examples. The *only* work I know of that he wrote was chapter The Fall of Doriath from the Silmarillion with Guy Gavriel Kay, because the only version of the story in existence was from the very earliest stages of JRRT's work on the mythos, and was completely unsuitable to be placed in the published Silmarillion.

CJRT has never released any fiction of his own. What he has done is released the larger part of his father's writings, right from the Book of Lost Tales first written in 1917. It's not easy reading for the casual reader, but for those interested in the evolution of the mythos, it's priceless.

Re:I felt a tremor in the force

Disturbance, not tremor, you fucking philistine!

Re:Bag It

So, the son of a man so brilliant in imagination, his entire lifespan was not enough to finish his own work, cleans up, releases and generally attempts to carry on his father's work. Yeah, really sounds like a greedy asshole.

And quite frankly, I cheer CT's opinions of the movies. I found myself able to stomach Jackson's Fellowship, at least.. I can see the reasoning for Bombadil's disappearance, and I can even stow away sufficient ire to forgive Xenarwen. (It's a movie; one can only have so many minor characters, after all.)

Jackson's The Two Towers and Return of the Horrible, Hackneyed Fantasy Plot were horrible butchery of Tolkien's work. One must understand that in translations from book to film, things will change. There is absolutely no excuse for the wanton and brutal destruction of characters that Jackson is guilty of. Destruction of characters.. it stretches even far worse. Tolkien devoted a paragraph to describing the crown of Gondor, and Jackson couldn't even manage to get that even remotely correct. My god, when one can't translate a simple prop from book to film, how can one manage to translate the important things, such as the story?

CT is no JRR - there was only one JRR, and unless the world is very fortunate indeed, we'll likely never glimpse another so brilliant. Regardless of this, CT does damned fine work. You claim The Silmarillion lacked editting? Why, pray tell, would it need editting? It was quite obvious in line with what JRR wanted - he had taken it to publishers, who refused it effectively on the grounds of 'people are stupid'. I certainly won't argue with the publishers, but The Silmarillion was JRR's true masterpiece. The Hobbit is a mere children's story, and The Lord of the Rings was 'dumbed down' (for lack of better words) to appeal to a broad audience.

If you want to see a son doing horrible things, go talk to Brian Herbert. CT is far removed from the accusations you baselessly spew at him.

Re:Bag It

"...the CG was obvious..."

As opposed to all those movies starring REAL balrogs and cave trolls?

Re:Herbert's Dune Series

No similarity at all. As young Herbert said in the intro to the first abomination bearing his name, he COULD have used Dad's notes to write the story of the Scattering as his father intended, or he could just write some backstory to Dune that he made up himself.

Bad choice, boyo.

Chris Tolkien doesn't write, he edits. He consulted closely with his father on the writing of the published works, and no one is more qualified to produce these versions of Prof. Tolkien's stories.

Re:Motives in Question

He had abandoned the book and his son decided to abandon, edit, and release it for sale. Now I do not know his son obviously, but one must ask themselves, "If he respected his father, he would not being doing this would he?"

I don't really see any easy answer either way, actually.

This dilemma happens to every popular artist after they die. (Obviously, if they're not popular, there won't be any demand anyway and no dilemma) Often they didn't publish the stuff because it they didn't consider it 'done', or they didn't feel it was 'good enough'. Many (most?) great artists have very high standards in that respect.

The problem is that while those concerns may have meant a lot to the artist, they mean nothing now. If people are still interested long after their death, then their reputation is beyond tainting. There is absolutely nothing Chris Tolkien could release, no matter how bad, that would taint J.R.R.'s reputation, since everyone will know that the man himself considered it to be sub-par. Nobody is going to judge him by it.

Now, to take another example: Franz Kafka. He published little during his life, and wanted all his writings destroyed after his death, at which time he was virtually unknown. Obviously that didn't happen, since he's now regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

His friend Max Brod was the one who published the material. Who is prepared to condemn him? I'm not.

I guess the ethic that I'm suggesting is this: You can't blindly obey someone's wishes, even their last wishes, without considering the motives. There are a lot of possible ones for wanting something to go unpublished. The artist might've considered it too personal, and I think that might be grounds for obeying. But if the motive was a concern the work wasn't up-to-standard, then you might be able to disregard it.

In Kafka's case, I think it suffices to say that the guy had enough self-loathing and self-destructive emotions to fill a Goth club several times over.

Re:Motives in Question

While I would love to believe that this is not a ploy for more money, I find it hard to swallow.

Christopher Tolkien is 82 years old-- do you really think he's plotting to make millions?

Tolkien's children were actually involved with many of the Tolkien's legendarium. One of my copies of the LotR contains an essay by Tolkien where he talked about his family. Tolkien would discuss ideas with his children, let them read early drafts, they would point out inconstancies... I don't think Tolkien did this for all off the works, but this tradition started young-- The Hobbit was originally written specifically for the Tolkien children.

Christoper Tolkien probably understands the Tolkien legendarium more then anyone in the world-- and probably read the notes for "The Children of Hurin" 50 years ago.

Re:More LOTR deluxe sets

Better buy it now. I hear in the Extended Version, the Mouth of Sauron shoots first.