News from the BBC
Christopher Tolkien, who edited and published the posthumous works of his father, Lord of the Rings writer JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95.
The news was confirmed by the Tolkien Society, which described him as "Middle-earth's first scholar".
After his father's death in 1973, Mr Tolkien published the acclaimed work The Silmarillion.
Scholar Dr Dimitra Fimi said the study of JRR Tolkien "would never be what it is today" without his input.
My first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien's work was The Father Christmas Letters, which were written for Christopher and his siblings. In more recent years, I've dipped into Christopher's work on Middle Earth, both his History of Middle Earth, and the various pieces of his father's work that he edited and expanded upon.
What memories do Soylentils have of the Tolkiens' work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:06PM (10 children)
Has anyone actually finished this book? I mean no disrespect to Christopher -- the first books I read after the SRA readers, were the Narnia books and the Lord of the Rings set and I imagine I've been seriously influenced by both having started reading them (and then re-reading multiple times as I've aged) from a pretty young age (starting around six or seven). But I just couldn't get through the Silmarillion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)
I've read it through several times (but not in the last 10 years). I really enjoyed it. I read Hobbit and Lord of the Rings before that, of course, but I found I really enjoyed The Silmarillion to the point where I used to recommend it to others. I would have to go back and pull it off the shelf to look it over again because it is hard for me to distinguish the details in my mind from Unfinished Tales, which I read about the same time, but I for sure enjoyed them both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:14AM
Do you also find fascination in the movements of the skies?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday January 17 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
I've read it, twice at least, maybe 3 times. It's not really a book. It's a collection; and in some respects reads like the bible, in other respects it reads like the Iliad. Or put another way, the language, ever a character in its own right in a Tolkien work is deliberately even more archaic here; because this is this world's oldest stories; and that age comes through. And this is this worlds old mythology and so its constructed like a mythology and it reads like one. The result is a difficult read but a literary feat. That's perhaps why it is both so satisfying and so difficult at the same time. The complete experience of it lends it a remarkable authenticity that you just don't see in anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:01AM
Silmarillion is not a polished work. It's the background for Lord of Ring saga. Tolkien wanted to publish that work along with the Lord of the Ring, but the publishers wouldn't have it.
It was the background tale constantly revised as he published the Lord of the Ring trilogy. and Christopher gathered, compiled, edited, and published, so the readers can appreciate the world Tolkien wanted to portray,
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 17 2020, @11:58PM
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have been criticized as "comfort food". The Silmarillion is definitely not comfort food. Much darker. And actually, I found some of the darkness overdone and illogical. Why couldn't Feanor make more Silmarils? Why did he stop at 3 when he made them? One could suppose that the substance of which they are made is exceedingly rare, and that's why there were only 3. But then, why do they have to be destroyed in order to revive the Trees? But, you know, it's more dramatic that way.
And even if it is comfort food, there's still a Neo-Goth tone to Lord of the Rings. Everything used to be greater, and has been in a long decline ever since the Elder Days. Lothlorien is fated to fade away. Win or lose, the elves must leave Middle Earth or decline, just because. The Ents are probably doomed, having become separated from the Ent-wives millennia ago. King Theoden says of the great horse Shadowfax that in him one of the great steeds of the morning has returned, and that such a return shall not happen again.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:20AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:24AM
Just so you don’t feel like you’re the only one, my experience was much the same as yours. I was a voracious reader and The Silmarilion wasn’t my first Tolkein book. I expected to enjoy it, but page after page whittled down my enthusiasm until I finally had a critical moment of self-awareness and said, “I don’t *have* to read this.”
Put it down, never tried it again. Read lots of other stuff I enjoyed more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @10:26AM
It reads as a history book, IMO. Whether that's a good or bad thing… Well, I've more enjoyed reading ‘Black book of Arda’ fan fiction than Silmarillion itself.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:02PM
Yes, but it's been so long ago I forgot what it was even about. Maybe I should read it again?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by tbuskey on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:36PM
It's a tough read I've been told. I've reread the Silmarillion more than I've reread LOTR; it's my favorite. Maybe it's because I was fascinated by Norse Mythology in elementary school.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Friday January 17 2020, @09:12PM (5 children)
I was in high school, probably 1979. I had taken a literature class taught by an aging spinster, Millie Stovall. Along through the semester, she told us that our next book would be The Hobbit. I groaned. This was very soon after the animated Hobbit movie came out, and I thought it was for kids. But of course, I had no choice in the matter and began the novel, fully prepared to hate it.
I couldn't put it down.
It was a beautiful, exciting story and when I reached the end, it left me wanting more. It was my introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien, and by extension, later in life, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.
I learned a few important lessons that year: that great literature could be found in unexpected places; and that Millie Stovall was my favorite teacher ever, to name a couple.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:13PM (1 child)
When my son was about 6 he started to read The Hobbit. He took it on his own initiative and I was thrilled. I wasn't really sure how much he was reading, but we would talk about story details so I knew that he was picking it up. Then after a while I noticed that he wasn't reading it any more. He was about 2/3rds of the way through. It turned out that his motivation came from the fact that I told him there was a dragon in the story, but after about 2/3rds of the way through WITH NO DRAGON, well, he had enough.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:03AM
Seconded that, already posted details a few times but similar down to a T what you described. The forest part in particular dragged on and on to no end.
If there's any advice that should be offered to anybody considering getting into J.R.R. Tolkien, it's "Stay the fuck away from The Hobbit."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:31PM
Name a single female character from the hobbit, it's only good because it marginalizes the majority-minority, pure MRA art, luckily amazon will fix it
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:07PM (1 child)
I was lucky, I'd found The Hobbit book before the movie (I still have the VHS of the movie, bought it for my kids). I'd read LOTR and looked for more Tolkien. I read somewhere that the book The Hobbit was actually intended for children; not sure if that's true, I only read that in a single article.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:59PM
The publisher certainly considered The Hobbit to be a children's story: he gave it to his ten-year-old son, who liked it enough that he decided to apublish it. The publisher later asked Tolkien for another book about hobbits, and got LOTR!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 17 2020, @09:22PM (1 child)
Reading assignment, a short extract from The Hobbit. Bilbo had found Golem in the caves, and then found The Ring, then the two had their exchange of riddles. I don't think any other extract from any other story ever captured my imagination like that from The Hobbit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:13AM
6th grade, teacher read to us for a while after recess. He started with The Hobbit. By the time he was halfway through I'd finished not only The Hobbit, but all 3 books of Lord of the Rings. Tried to read the other stuff and just couldn't get into it.
This would be '69, when Tolkein was just starting to take off.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:43PM (3 children)
He was a faithful executor of his father's legacy, preserving and publishing sr's other materials carefully and with fidelity.
Rather a sharp contrast to Frank Herbert's son who milked his father's legacy dry and sour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:29AM (2 children)
Thanks to him, the Lord of the Rings is now actually readable. He spent decades fixing the problems that the editors and publishers created in the work and the result is a read that's quite a bit more enjoyable. Years ago, I tried to read one of the editions from before he fixed the most glaring issues and I read the 50th anniversary edition. The 50th anniversary edition is a delight to read. The most glaring issues with the previous editions have been fixed and you can get a real sense of what J.R.R. intended the books to be like. They're divided into 6 volumes rather than the 3 that the set had been previously published as.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @10:14PM (1 child)
You know, of the JRR's work, only the Hobbit was genuinely well written work. LotR was good for the epic saga but the writing itself is ... well. In fact, LotR is one of rare cases where the movie was good bit better than the book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @11:18PM
In a sense that's true, but a lot of that has to do with the publishers wanting 3 books rather than 6 and insisting upon making various editorial corrections without consulting him as to whether the changes were OK. A great deal of his life after publishing the books was spent fixing the editions and correcting those errors.
If you read a more recent edition of the series, such as that 50th anniversary edition, you'll likely find it to be a much more pleasant experience than the editions most people read. It's split into the originally intended 6 books and is a lot easier to read than previous editions. I always though the LOTR was poorly written and impossible to follow, but that's mostly the earlier editions. The editions revised by Christopher are a much,much better.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Friday January 17 2020, @10:21PM (10 children)
Tolkien is huge in my family. Without any exaggeration whatsoever, I would put my older relatives up against Colbert in a trivia contest any day. One of them reads it yearly. By it, I mean the works. More than one has made the pilgrimage to our Graceland, aka New Zealand :)
My grandfather stood in line to get copies for his children. These books have been handed down in the family, and my first experience was being handed The Hobbit when I was young boy. I read it without stopping, and I think it was this book that started my love affair with books. Sci-fi and fantasy in particular.
A couple years later I was handed LoTR, and the sheer depth of that universe is still amazing to me. The mental journey while reading those books is one my fondest memories of childhood period. I'm holding a collection in a slipcase that I got in 1979 in my hands right now.
There are two great poems I remember, The One Ring, and Ezekial 25:17 :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @11:30PM (4 children)
And who can forget Ezekiel 23:20.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:03AM (2 children)
Me, apparently. For anyone else who needs a refresher:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:33AM (1 child)
The Message version, which gives 23:18-21:
The Bible is like an incel manual, by incels, for incels, forever jealous of the well-hung Chad.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:42PM
And, some places still have problems with hanging chad . . .
There's nothing new under the sun.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:05AM
Damn. I didn't know parts of the Bible read like a trashy romance novel picked up at the grocery store :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:23AM (4 children)
The One Ring is the ultimate in single points of failure.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:13AM
This bash.org quote [bash.org] comes to mind...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:28AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:36AM
Fortunately, nobody will get to the necessary exhaust port...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:01PM
A friend of mine sank into alcohol addiction, losing his driver's license, custody of his son, his job, and ultimately everything but his life. At that point I realized what the One Ring was: addiction. Junkies and alcoholics are Smeagol.
Danny finally went to AA and has his life back, including everything he lost, much like Bilbo.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:45AM
I first ran across a copy of the Hobbit when I was eight years old, in 1984. My father had 1973 editions of The Hobbit, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King (note the absence of one book), and so it was that The Hobbit was the first novel that I ever read and finished on my own. When I asked him where's The Fellowship of the Ring, he just shrugged and told me that he didn't know, as he hadn't read them himself, and just got them from a friend abroad. The books were otherwise absent from the bookshops in the third world right-wing dictatorship where I lived, and it wasn't until 1993 (long after the dictator had been overthrown) when I finally found a copy of Fellowship. Nevertheless, it probably isn't an exaggeration to say that Tolkien was the spark that ignited my lifelong love for literature and fantasy in particular.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.