
My Father's "Eviscerated" work - Son of J.R.R. Tolkien finally speaks out - porker
http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father-039-s-quot-eviscerated-quot-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-j.r.r.-tolkien-finally-speaks-out/hobbit-silmarillion-lord-of-rings/c3s10299/
======
acabal
I'm a little torn on this.

On one hand, the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting" (as was
Peter Jackson, I believe, which is why he refused to direct the Hobbit movie
for such a long time). That's a downright criminal practice and "victims"
perfectly describes those unfortunate enough to be targeted.

On the other hand, JRR the man passed away years ago, and his son is almost
90. Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that
the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to
retell as it sees fit? How long should his children, and their children, and
_their_ children, expect to control and profit off of the work of a long-dead
man? (Yes C. Tolkien did some original stuff with _Silmarillion_ and _Hurin_
but we're talking _Hobbit_ and _LotR_ here.)

That's a loaded question and obviously C. Tolkien and companies like Disney
think copyright should be eternal. (And no doubt New Line now wishes its own
copyright on its little gold mine would remain eternal too.) But personally I
think stuff should enter the public domain much more aggressively for the good
of culture and society.

In such a world C. Tolkien might have made a little cash for a while, perhaps
been happy that his family created a cultural touchstone, and maybe went on to
do something original and no doubt productive with his own talent. But we'll
never know, and now he's spending his last days growing increasingly
embittered because he feels that he's lost control of something he didn't even
create in the first place.

~~~
Ingaz
It's not only a question about copyright laws, money, etc.

Popularization of JRR works sometimes disgusting.

The most disgusting thing(for me, and I think I'm not lonely): LONG ELVEN
EARS.

JRR almost reinvented elves. He transcend them from butterfly-like insects
into unearthly beautiful beings almost like humans, but in every aspect
better.

This effort is ruined: now everybody knows that elves are "guys/gals with long
ears". Of cause: it's a lot easier to make long ears, than to make ...
unearthly beauty.

(Excuse me my Runglish )

~~~
stargazer-3
A quick note about elves: it's a misconception that before Tolkien's work an
elf was pictured as a fey. Nordic elves were very Tolkien-ish, for example.

~~~
jff
I've read explanations that elves as winged 5" fairies were a Victorian
invention, and it kind of fits. European myths from before then generally much
more serious.

------
kqr2
With regards to the _Lord of the Rings_ movie trilogy:

    
    
      Cathleen Blackburn, lawyer for the Tolkien Estate in 
      Oxford, recounts ironically, "These hugely popular films 
      apparently did not make any profit! We were receiving 
      statements saying that the producers did not owe the 
      Tolkien Estate a dime."
    

In "Hollywood Accounting", a $19 million movie can make $150 million and still
not be profitable.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollyw...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollywood-
accounting-how-19-million-movie-makes-150-million-still-isnt-profitable.shtml)

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/the_friday_podcast_an...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/the_friday_podcast_angelina_sh.html)

~~~
tsotha
Isn't it amazing how wildly successful films like _The Return of the Jedi_
never made a dime, and yet Hollywood seems eager to make more every year?

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
I'd like to see this used as evidence that the movie viewing may cost 12$ for
a ticket, the movies are actually worth negative dollars.

Use their own tax cheating against themselves.

------
tomasien
To call Jackson's work an "evisceration" is just so misguided I can barely
stand to read on. J.R.R. Tolkien was an academic of the highest caliber, and
it seems his son has retained his love of the more arcane and in-depth aspects
of the Middle Earth world. I, personally, agree with them: I find the
Silmarillion to be the most interesting work of Middle Earth, but that's only
because I'm a massive geek.

As far as a pop-culture and on-screen rendition of the books go, Jackson's
work has been superbly loyal to the source literature and to the audience who
pays to see them.

This is just straight-out snobbery, and I don't care for it.

~~~
geargrinder
While the Jackson films may be entertaining and good in their own right, they
aren't very loyal to Tolkien's source material, or even their own canon, as
someone else has pointed out.

For a Tolkien fanatic like myself, they are almost unwatchable. I can
understand changing details and dialogue because it is a different medium. But
Jackson changes the motivations and major actions of many of the main
characters in LoTR.

------
corporalagumbo
A lot of "tough shit" responses here. I like to sympathise with sensitive
people - I think Tolkien was clearly a very sensitive, quiet, private man, and
Christopher similarly. I don't think Tolkien ever imagined his work becoming
as popular and mass-culture as it did. He took it so seriously I think it
would have shocked him. And from the way this article describes it, Tolkien's
work formed the bedrock of a very sensitive, private, tender father-son
relationship - and that bedrock is now being smeared around every cinema and
toystore in the world. Rightly or wrongly, that must hurt a lot for
Christopher.

Perhaps nothing should be allowed to remain private. Perhaps privacy is an
affront to the rights of the people. But I don't think so. I think everyone
has special, private things from their lives - special things they would be
upset to see appropriated and distorted at will by other people with little to
no understanding or reverence for the meaning those things hold to you.
Christopher is only different because the things that made his childhood
special and to which he feels protective have become an unstoppable
blockbuster film series.

Hell, I can sympathise. Maybe it's just snobbery, but damned if I don't feel
disgusted by the shameless, opportunistic faux-Tolkienism whipped up by by New
Zealanders in the wake of the films. Nobody in New Zealand gave a shit about
Tolkien before the movies. It was only when people realised that it was going
to be huge that suddenly everyone became a lifelong Tolkien fan and every
farmer next to a film site was running a Hobbit tour... You know, my grandpa
read The Hobbit to me when I was young, and he even has a photo from when he
met Tolkien (before the books took off.)

Edit: On another note, I think it's a bit rich for Hackernews readers to
criticise Christopher for snobbery/possessiveness - after all, the whole
bloody point of Hackernews is to discourage average internet users, prevent
that 'Eternal September' thing - and maintain a conversation to an elite-
defined standard. Everyone has their own snobbish preferences I think.

~~~
ramblerman
"Perhaps nothing should be allowed to remain private. Perhaps privacy is an
affront to the rights of the people. But I don't think so."

What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with privacy. Tolkien
_sold_ his books publicly and then _sold_ the rights for the movies.

We can certainly argue about the quality, and correctness of the films, as
well as the due compensation to the Tolkien estate. But privacy, really?? It's
not like hollywood execs snuck in and recorded these bedtime stories in the
dark. They were sold by their owner.

~~~
corporalagumbo
I wasn't talking about the legal situation. I was trying to sympathise with
why this man might feel wounded - after all, he was young when that decision
was made, and he didn't make it. And neither he nor Tolkien everimagined how
big LotR would become. But he still has to accept and deal with something very
private and special to him being reshaped and reappropriated for the whole
world, in a way completely alien to his own feelings about the works.

Like I said, maybe he is wrong to feel possessive, maybe not. But I still
think just writing him off as a hyper-sensitive, overly-possessive snob, as a
few HN readers have done, is very mean-spirited.

------
rjzzleep
> Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why?
> "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people
> aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit
> will be the same kind of film."

no, hobbit is worse. the first episode of hobbit was a 3 hour long trailer
with zero substance.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Wait, what do you mean no substance? We had a rabbit-powered Santa Clause-
esque sleigh, a "thunder battle" between two Michael Bay-esque transformers
("robots in disguise" as mountains), lots of silly makeup for the dwarves,
Voldemort from Harry Potter made a cameo as the "pale orc," and we got to re-
watch maybe 25 minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring again. Oh, and we learn
that Kili is apparently related to Legalos, when you see his unrivaled agility
and skill with a bow and arrow.

It takes a lot of effort and hard work to take a great story that would have
easily made the best 3 hour movie of the decade and turn it into a 10 hour,
3-part ridiculous something. "No substance," he says!

~~~
iand
The giants were in the book. Everything else was in the books and writings
around the Hobbit (apart from the rabbits of course). I'd heard that the
Radagast scene was terrible but I didn't think it was that bad in the end -
they portrayed him pretty well as one of the wizards that had lost interest in
the peoples of Middle Earth in favour of animals.

~~~
ComputerGuru
> _The giants were in the book._

Do you mean the mountain transformers? Sorry, they weren't.

Here's a quote from the "thunder-battle" scene:

> He knew that something unexpected might happen, and he hardly dared to hope
> that they would pass without fearful adventure over those great tall
> mountains with lonely peaks and valleys where no king ruled. They did not.
> All was well, until one day they met a thunderstorm, _more than a
> thunderstorm, a thunder-battle. You know how terrific a really big
> thunderstorm can be down in the land and in a river valley; especially at
> times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash. More terrible still are
> thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up from
> East and West and make war._ The lightning splinters on the peaks, and rocks
> shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling into
> every cave and hollow; and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise
> and sudden light.

To me, that quite clearly is a symbolic "battle." Not mountains turning to
golems or giants or transformers or what-not.

~~~
andrewl
I think Tolkien meant the giants to be real in the Hobbit. The paragraph after
then one you quoted starts with:

 _When [Bilbo] peeped out in the lightning flashes, he saw that across the
valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a
game, and catching then, and tossing them down into the darkness where they
smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a
bang...They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the
mountansides.

"This won't do at all!" said Thorin, "If we don't get blown off or drowned, or
struck by lightning, we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high
for a football."_

After the party escapes the goblins and gets through the mountains, Gandalf
suggests blocking up the entrance in the pass through which they had been
ambushed:

 _"I must see if I can't find a more or less decent giant to block it up
again," said Gandalf, "or soon there will be no getting over the mountains at
all."_

~~~
ComputerGuru
I stand corrected.

~~~
pdonis
You shouldn't, at least not completely. The giants in the book are giants--
very large humanoids. They are not mountains that transform into something
else.

~~~
andrewl
Tolkien never actually describes them, so we don't know if they're stone-
giants because they live among the stones of the mountains, because they throw
stones, or because they are made of stone. I actually pictured them as Pdonis
describes them, as very large humanoids, although I can't be sure.

But I don't think we can definitively settle the question of the giants' form,
as we simply don't have enough data. So I suggest we branch out to another
unanswerable question: would Gandalf have used Emacs or Vim? How about Sauron?

~~~
pdonis
Tolkien doesn't come right out and say "giants are very large humanoids", but
so what? They are described as throwing stones, which clearly implies that
they are humanoids. The "very large" part is implied by the word "giant";
also, of course, there are plenty of mythological references to giants, in
particular in Norse mythology, which Tolkien is known to have drawn upon, and
they're always very large humanoids.

------
teilo
I sympathize with Christopher. I won't even say that he's wrong to feel the
way he does.

However, I do not think what has happened with the films is wrong at all. I
think it is a fine and lasting tribute to Tolkien. It has done more than any
single thing to introduce a vast audience to this fabulous world _and to
Tolkien's original work,_ millions of people that would never have picked up
the books otherwise.

------
smky80
I read a lot of comments that people felt the movies were pretty loyal to the
books, so I thought I would add my own little rant to add some perspective for
those who maybe read the LOTR books when they were ~15 or so and never read
the Silmarillion.

The movies are fairly loyal to the books from a pure "action" perspective, in
that they're about some midgets that find a ring and try to drop it in a
volcano, there's a wizard, a ranger who's supposed to be a king, some elves
and dwarves and stuff, and some battles, etc ...

The movies are NOT loyal at all to the broader mythology and spiritual aspects
of Tolkien's world. The movies are full of scenes where these aspects are
sacrificed in order to add very tiny bits of drama and action.

Case in point: Elrond's racist rant in "The Two Towers" movie to his Elf
daughter Arwen, trying to convince her not to marry the mortal Man Aragorn.
Look, I get it from a screenwriter's perspective: it adds some drama to the
Aragorn/Arwen love story (which doesn't get much play in the books), it
modernizes the story a bit to add the racism angle, and Elrond is a minor
character in the movies anyway, so why not make him a Heel?

The problem from a broader perspective in the Tolkien universe is that Elrond
(the Half-elven) is himself a descendant of Elves, Men, and Maiar (angels).
His ancestors are among the great heroes of the First Age of the world. And in
fact the reason why Sauron's boss isn't ruling the world at the time of LOTR
is because Elrond's half-elf dad went himself to the Gods to request their
help, on behalf of both Elves and Men. He was returning to the Gods a jewel
containing the original Light of the world, that Elrond's human great-great-
grandfather rescued from the Devil so he could marry Elrond's elf/angel great-
great-grandmother. Oh, and Aragorn is a direct descendant of Elrond's brother
Elros. And Elrond himself had lived 6000+ years by the time of LOTR and had
fought alongside Men at the end of the Second Age.

From that perspective, the scene in the TTT movie, and the characterization of
Elrond in general, is ridiculous. And the movies are full of these sorts of
changes, where a little bit of drama/action is added at the expense of RUINING
the story from the broader perspective of Tolkien's mythology.

~~~
Digit-Al
I would say two things in response to this.

Firstly, think of the plight of the screenwriter who has to a) adapt a story
that will take most people about a week to read into a three hour film; and b)
has to create something that will make lots of money. I can completely
understand the resentment felt at a beloved book being turned into a very
different film - I have seen a number of well liked stories turned into
something completely different (see my next point). I think you just have to
view film adaptations as a completely different product.

Secondly, there is a long history of books being turned into films that do not
bear much relation to the original work. A few examples from my own life. The
Stephen King novella "The Running Man" was turned into a film that contained
the same themes, but was a very different story. The film "The Lawnmower Man"
was also taken from a Stephen King short story of the same name. The story of
the film bore absolutely no relation to the film, and to this day I can't work
out how they could possibly draw any relation between the two. A long time ago
I hired a video of a Dean R Koontz story called "Watchers". I had enjoyed the
book and jumped at the chance to see a film adaptation. I was to be
disappointed. What I watched, whilst having the name of the book was not an
adaptation of that book - the story was completely different. I can only think
that they wanted the name of a popular author to help sell their shoddy film.

~~~
smky80
Yeah I get it. My point is just that a lot of people consider the movies to be
fairly loyal to the books, and I have to agree with Christopher Tolkien that
they really do "eviscerate" the story and aren't much more than action movies
aimed at 15-25 year olds. That's not to say other people can't enjoy them,
many do.

I've thought a lot about how I would do the LOTR movies or the Silmarillion as
a TV series if I had the chance! And I really think the choices Peter Jackson
made suggest (1) a weak understanding of the source material, and (2) not an
especially strong film-making ability, and nothing PJ's done since LOTR has
convinced me otherwise.

------
jballanc
Honestly, I think the only thing you need to know to understand how the books
and the movies differ is that, in the books, the ring is destroyed half-way
through the last book...

~~~
pdwetz
I was bummed when they changed the ending; I loved how in the books the
Hobbits went back home and kicked ass.

~~~
Jare
I much prefer the movie approach where The Shire and its inhabitants remain
largely oblivious to and untouched by all the evil, death and suffering that
has happened. It's almost as if everything happened so a little part of the
world could remain innocent like a child.

~~~
geargrinder
Well, this was a major theme in the book - how you can never go back to
innocence and pretend all the bad stuff didn't happen. But in Hollywood
everything is happily-ever-after and we never have to learn from our mistakes.

------
mitchi
He really doesn't like the movies Peter Jackson made? Shit. Other authors
weren't so lucky with their movies... The LOTR series is a real success.

~~~
enneff
I wish PKD could have lived to see Blade Runner, (the original) Total Recall,
and A Scanner Darkly. He would have loved them.

~~~
nikcub
PKD did see an early cut of Blade Runner, and commented that it was 'exactly
as i'd imagined it', which was ironic since neither Scott nor the art and set
design guys had actually read Androids.

edit: Wikipedia says "given an opportunity to see some of the special effects
sequences", but i'm certain that Scott says in the documentary that he showed
him a complete early cut of the film

------
shmerl
While I usually prefer film adaptations to be as truthful to the original as
possible, I think in order to be be good films, they sometimes need to
introduce something new. A simple example mentioned in the article are women.
I don't really understand what they complain about. While book story can
ignore some aspects of the world, visual film is a different matter. Imagine
picturing Dale without showing any women. While Tolkien doesn't speak about
female Dwarves for example, ignoring them completely while picturing refugees
would be simply unnatural. The same goes about Elves and etc.

However not all changes are the same. When characters are changed in some
weird manner, which makes them very different from the books - it already
becomes bothering and there is simply no justifying reason for it, except for
director's ego. In the Lord Of The Rings there were several such examples. For
example Aragorn, Boromir and Frodo were changed in a big way. Their actions in
the film didn't match their characters from the book (i.e. for their book
versions it'd be unnatural to do certain things which they did in the film).
So I partially agree with criticism, but only partially. Making a carbon copy
of the book probably wouldn't make a good film.

------
Camillo
Surprisingly, one of the most interesting things on that page is the comment
by Thomas John Mosbo explaining a subtle but profound difference between the
way the One Ring is destroyed in the book and the way it is destroyed in the
movie.

~~~
pdonis
I noticed this too, and I agree with Mosbo's take on it.

------
IvyMike
Everything I ever heard on the subject says that Tolkien "wanted to write a
mythology for England" when he started writing LOTR.

Mythologies are almost by definition uncontrollable, so the fact that it's
taken on a life of its own in a way proves that Tolkien actually succeeded
with his initial goal.

------
tesmar2
Anyone wanting to know the perspective in which JRR Tolkein wrote his fantasy
ought to read this PDF:

[http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-
tolkien...](http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf)

You should be able to then judge whether or not the movies have done justice
to the spirit in which his books were written. Judge for yourself as C.
Tolkein may or may not be right.

After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong. It
helps to know the mind of the one you are reading.

~~~
pdonis
_After reading it, I think the movies get a lot right and a little wrong._

I read this essay years ago (in The Tolkien Reader), and I couldn't disagree
more. If the standard is being faithful to the spirit in which Tolkien wrote,
I think the movies got a lot wrong and very little right. There's plenty of
discussion of this elsewhere in the thread so I won't belabor it, but I'm
surprised that anyone could read "On Fairy-Stories" and think that _that_
spirit is what the films portray. The films are Hollywood action movies with a
"fantasy" veneer; Tolkien's essay was talking about something very different.

------
stcredzero
_> Over the years, a sort of parallel universe has formed around Tolkien's
work, a world of sparkling images and of figurines, colored by the original
books of the cult, but often very different from them, like a continent that
has drifted far from its original land mass._

I much prefer the _Legend of the Seeker_ author's attitude toward the
television adaptation: The story in the two different mediums are each their
own separate things, to be enjoyed in their own separate ways.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Truth#TV_series_ad...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Truth#TV_series_adaptation)

Let's face it, there are certain people who will read the books and enjoy them
for what they are. Then there are other people who won't read the books but
will see the movies. What difference does it make?

As for the "Hollywood accounting," that's unfortunate. All parties in a deal
should feel they benefit, and none should feel hey have short shrift.

------
beloch
I don't mean to sound so mean, but I am kind of looking forward to the day
when C. Tolkien is "out of the way" and J.R.R's materials (which are hopefully
somewhat organized by now thanks to CT) can be turned over to an author who is
able to spin a proper tale out of those notes. Middle Earth is a great
setting, but it took a consummate story teller to make LOTR into a three-
volume page-turner. I'm not terribly interested in reading what CT has
published. It's like reading a screenplay for an unfilmed movie or code for an
unfinished video game. While it's interesting, it just feels like spoiling
what could be a great first-read somewhere down the line.

------
slowpoke
I seriously do not understand his problem. I don't like LotR either, but its
cultural impact is huge and it does in no way devalue the gigantic literary
work that Tolkien has created. Idiotic copyright lawsuits won't change
reality, either.

------
teeja
Never a fan of Tolkien's works, many friends have been, and I still recognize
what's not in the movies. But I don't underestimate the power of the
literature that moved so many.

It's not diminished one iota by any attempt at a performance in another
medium. Some who've not read the originals may be misled about them for a
time, just as a great piece of music may be misrepresented by a crappy
performance - say, what Karajan did for Beethoven (not saying Jackson did that
or not) - but never diminished by it. One is momentary, one is lasting.

------
tomasien
Ah he has a book coming out. Mystery solved.

------
generalseven
This article says Chris Tolkien hasn't spoken to the press in about 40 years.

Consider what the hacker community was like forty years ago, and the meaning
that LOTR had to this community forty years ago compared to now.

I could be wrong, but maybe that could be what Chris Tolkien means by
"eviscerated."

------
jspthrowaway2
I find it hard to have sympathy for Christopher Tolkien, who hasn't exactly
been a model steward of his father's imagination. I'm reminded a _lot_ of
Brian Herbert, who really hit left field with the posthumous _Dune_ stuff.

Given some of his actions, calling the film franchise an "evisceration" is the
pot calling the kettle black. Yes, let's film a 16-hour word-for-word
rendition of each book, because _that_ will work on film. I've liked
everything Jackson has done, and I think his work can coexist with the source
material without issue.

I'm in the minority; I enjoyed _The Hobbit_ even fully aware it suffered from
First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film _Dune_
next, so he can annoy _two_ posthumous estates.)

~~~
magicalist
Christopher Tolkien can be called many things. He hasn't always done the best
job stewarding his father's world, erring on the side of conservatism and
disapproving of anyone else's work based on his father's (rightly or wrongly).
And he's kind of a jerk.

But the Brian Herbert comparison just means you've never read anything
Christopher Tolkien actually published (or you never attempted to read Brian
Herbert's terrible terrible work). The _only_ publication where Christopher
Tolkien embellished or added to his father's writings was The Silmarillion,
published under pressure from their publisher to get it out the door as soon
as possible after his father's death and when he was younger (relatively) and
less sure about his bargaining position to leave his father's work untouched.
The added narrative was mostly connecting prose, meant to keep the story more
coherent, and one full chapter replacing a version that was hopelessly out of
date compared to the rest of the updates his father had added over decades.
He's repeatedly expressed regret about changing The Silmarillion (including
again in this article), and has even laid out exactly what he added to the
story so you can mentally edit it out.

Every single other book (that would be 13 of them, I believe) that he's
published has been literally a written guide to trying to piece together a
chronological view of all the undated scraps of rough drafts and notes his
father left behind. The only thing he adds are clearly delimited notes about
why he thinks some scrap came next and summaries about how some minor change
made elsewhere suddenly made ripples of changes through future drafts of other
sections, which he then proceeds to include verbatim.

In other words, there's no way to get _less_ respectful of his father's work,
short of leaving it unpublished. Again, he can be called many things (he
really does seem to be like a total jerk, and there's no way _any_ adaptation
would have pleased him, even a word-for-word dramatic reading), but comparing
him to Brian Herbert and what he did with Dune is beyond the pale.

Yes, Brian Herbert's work is just that bad :)

~~~
jspthrowaway2
Allow me to clarify that the reminding of Herbert that Tolkien triggers for me
is not based upon the quality of the work -- and I think you and I are going
to agree on how bad Herbert's is -- it's only the territorial and overbearing
defense of a creation not his own, often with ill effect.

In both cases, I wonder if we'd be better off had forward progress in the
canon died with the author.

~~~
magicalist
This and your comment above ("Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have
published his notes and thoughts in that form") are a fair point, though
Tolkien really did want to publish The Silmarillion for decades, he was just
unable to find the time to finish it. I actually have some family members who
feel the same way as you, and they've chosen to not read The Silmarillion at
all because they prefer the off-handed hints and references to earlier times
that pop in LotR to remain like that, rather than knowing the full stories.
Personally, I've always loved JRR Tolkien's notion that these were legends, so
conflicting drafts and different versions of tales were part and partial of
that history, just as most mythological characters have sometimes conflicting
and inconsistent stories told about them.

While it does sometimes seem slightly strange that Christopher Tolkien spent
basically his entire adult life helping with and then documenting his father's
work, it's really not that different from what most people choose as their
life's work.

And while it might reduce some of the artistic aura around his works, I love
seeing his thought process and how he evolved his world and characters. I
really don't see much difference between reading the assembled published
drafts and visiting Oxford and getting special permission to view the drafts,
short of the fact that they've now been curated by the person most likely to
be able to put them in close to the order they were actually written in. If it
helps, think of them as an academic work, purely for the Tolkien scholars that
came later, and not intended to be read cover to cover by most people. It's
only an accident that there was enough commercial interest in Lord of the
Rings to put these books in regular bookstores.

Brian Herbert sinned unforgivably when he claimed that his books were based on
his father's notes and unfinished drafts, so were basically the stories he was
going to tell, while constructing the plots around characters that had only
appeared in Brian's other made up Dune stories. He and his cowriter should
also just not be allowed to write. They have a terrible, terrible way with
words.

~~~
gbhn
As someone who suffered through the Silmarillion, I can attest that it sucks.
If you read it, you'll wish you hadn't. Partly as a result of this, and partly
due to other idiocy through the years, I have some schadenfreude knowing the
Tolkien estate is mad about the movies (as was inevitable). Couldn't happen to
better people. The stories would be much better off in the public domain. I
don't think it's a huge surprise the world works this way -- think of Star
Wars. Do you really think those stories are better off in the hands of George
Lucas or Disney? It turns out heirs are really poor custodians. We don't have
royalty either, for much the same reasons.

~~~
jmspring
Skip the first biblical section and the Silmarillion is mostly readable. It
took me 2-3 passes to realize this.

~~~
iskander
For what it's worth, the beginning of the Silmarillion is by far my favorite
part. Maybe it's easier to read if you've had previous exposure to mythology
and/or the Bible?

~~~
saraid216
I found the Ainulindale to be one of my preferred parts, but I'm also the kind
of person who would enjoy reading Hesiod or the Bhagavad Gita as well. I enjoy
religious literature without the bother of agreeing with it; it has a
different quality that mercilessly bends the strict fiction/non-fiction line
we like to pretend exists.

I actually read it while I was young and hadn't the money to buy my own books:
I got it as a single, enormous Word document from a friend and read it by CRT
display.

------
wissler
I have a hard time seeing how the work was "eviscerated" -- last I checked I
could still buy the actual work, i.e. Tolkien's books (which I'm sure got a
bump in popularity from the movies).

------
vowofnow
"In an era where most people would sell their souls to be talked about..."

What an outlandish and completely rediculous intro. I stopped reading right
there.

------
kostchtchy
I wish the younger tolkiens were not such artistic snobs and would produce
more material for my role playing games- both computer and pen and paper. Moar
contentz already. I guess if you're a literary art-snob you retire to France
and criticise and rarely produce. Pity

------
bborud
I'm sorry, but I think Christopher Tolkien is a pretentious cunt who has
wasted his life squeezing the last drops out of his father's writing career.
He should have spent his life creating original material rather than fussing
endlessly over someone else's creative output.

I think he owes Peter Jackson an apology for pissing on the greatest thing to
have happened to the Tolkien books in many decades.

What a whiny asshole.

