New Tolkien Story To be Published 387
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.'"
Dwarfs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Greedy Children (Score:5, Informative)
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."
Herbert's Dune Series (Score:2, Informative)
I've been meaning to pick up the Simillarion as I've heard nothing but good things... perhaps this will be the viral marketing ploy that will motivate me enough to grab a copy.
Elves and Dwarfs? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Herbert's Dune Series (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Herbert's Dune Series (Score:3, Informative)
I highly recommend that you do. I scored a used hardcover copy on Amazon for under USD $20. As another poster mentioned, LOTR is but a footnote in the Tolkien universe's history. I've heard people liken the Silmarillion to the bible in that it can be a rather dry history, and that may be a vaild complaint. In my experience, though, it gets better every time through. The books included in the Silmarillion span from the creation of that universe up to the rise of Gondor. IMHO it gives the Elvish race much more depth (and also Men, to a lesser extent) than LOTR, and makes the friction between Elrond and Aragorn much more poignant.
Plus, thats how I found out who Elbereth really is and why people go around invoking her name all the time
Re:Herbert's Dune Series (Score:4, Informative)
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:Greedy Children (Score:4, Informative)
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.
A Tolkien Scholar on The Children of Hurin (Score:5, Informative)
Wormtalk [blogspot.com]
And here's what he says:
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:Just a money grab? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Is this it? (Score:1, Informative)
Not really. Both are equally far-removed from the original. Swedish or Norwegian would be much closer (except for the grammar). Icelandic would of course be closest. (Not to mention Norse.. but let's keep it to living languages)
Anyway, things don't really translate better just because the languages are close. It can make translation much harder, actually. Unless you're very careful you'll make the mistake of translating words with their cognates (related words) and not the word that's actually closest in meaning. For instance, the German "ruhig" ("calm") has no similar cognate in modern English to tempt you. Old English naturally has one, "rów" (calm). In Danish, you have the cognate "rolig" (calm). But if you go to Swedish, it has "rolig" as well. But then its meaning has shifted to "fun"!
In general those languages (Scandinavian ones) are so close that nearly every word in one has a cognate with the same or nearly the same spelling in another. And the meaning will be the same or nearly the same. A rough translation becomes easier. A good translation much harder.
On the plus side, you have the fact that cultural ideas, sensibilities, idioms, values, etc are closer. So in that respect translation becomes easier. (To continue the example, Swedish to Finnish is fairly easy in that respect. The languages are as divergent as could be, but the cultures are extremely similar)
The translation of Tolkien's own works is an interesting subject. (He had some big feuds with translators, due to his lingual skills. His opinion wasn't always a good one though, since he usually wasn't fluent in the modern prose of the language in question)
All in all, LOTR is essentially untranslateable. First due to cultural factors, from references to Arthurian legend, to simple things like the relationship to forests. The Shire being based on England's landscape, the hobbits find forests scary - something English people can relate to, but hardly a Scandinavian.
But the main issue is his extremely creative use of language. Take the language of Rohan for instance. It's based on Norse/Old English. The purpose being to imply that they spoke an older language which related to the hobbit's language in the way that this relates to modern English. (that is, being somewhat recognizable but not generally understandable). Should a translator replace that with something relating the same way to their language? Few would make the effort. So instead it becomes more foreign than intended.
Unless of course you're speaking a Nordic language! Then it gets really funny, because quite a lot of those names are exactly the same in modern Scandinavian. For instance, the old man Gamling (meaning: old man) was cast as a young man in the movie version, causing a lot of unintentended laughs when screened in Sweden.
"English" names are hard too. "Rivendell" sounds fine to an English speaker, and quite foreign to everyone else.
So if you were to translate it.. what do you do? First you need to know it. "riven" doesn't refer to a river (most probably think so), but to a rift (middle English, "riven") so it's basically "rift valley". Tolkien himself insisted that names like that should be geographically correct. But on the other hand, you can't make a plausible-sounding location name with that meaning in a lot of languages.
Yup. LOTR can really increase your appreciation of English and Tolkien, if you scratch the surface a bit.
In addition, (Score:2, Informative)
- The literary estate will often consist mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works . . . It may well also include: original manuscripts of published work, which potentially have a market value; unpublished work in a finished state or partially completed
- The position of literary executor has more to it than the simple monetary aspect, though. Appointment to such a position, perhaps informally, is often a matter of the author's choice during his or her lifetime. . . What is to be managed is not just a portfolio of intellectual property, but a posthumous reputation. Wishes of the deceased author may have been clearly expressed, but are not always respected
.I think the GeorgeLucasitis endemic to this site has tainted the Slashdot groupthink on this issue. While I haven't had a chance yet to search for details, I'm sure Mr. Tolkien keeps his father's vision close to heart and true.
Re:Greedy Children (Score:3, Informative)
As I said before, I feel very grateful towards Christopher Tolkien for making so much of his father's work available to the public. These books are not for everyone, perhaps they're not to your taste but that doesn't make them bad and exploitive.
IMO Christopher Tolkien is not being greedy. He could probably have just sat back out of the fray and lived comfortably off of royalties. Or he could have pursued his own career totally separate from his father's work and fame. I think he truly wants to get his father's works into the hands of the public and further, I think he is responding to a clammer from the fans of these works for more, more, more.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Plot Highlights (Score:3, Informative)