The Lost Tolkien Novel

[WilliamPitt]

The Lost Tolkien Novel

There are two kinds of Tolkien fans. There are the day trippers, the weekend warriors, who've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and seen the movies and let it go at that. Then there are the hardcore — the Uruk-hai of Tolkien readers — who have delved further, into The Silmarillion and beyond, who seriously grok the deep history and elaborate geography and endless mystical genealogies of Middle Earth. Now there's a "new" work of Tolkien fiction called The Children of Húrin, cobbled together by Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R., out of manuscripts left behind by his dad. As it happens, it's got something for both of the Tolkien tribes.

The Children of Húrin is set in the First Age of Middle Earth, six and a half millennia pre-Frodo, back when Treebeard was barely shaving (Tolkien scholars will know that The Lord of the Rings takes place in Middle Earth's Third Age). The First Age has a different feel to it: it's younger and wilder somehow. The elves, distant figures in The Lord of the Rings, spend more time outside their secret spa-resorts mixing it up with mere mortals. When, in the midst of a huge battle, a balrog rears up and whips down a warrior like it's no big thing, right there in the thick of the press, you realize the rules of the First Age are a little different.

The hero of Children is Túrin (son of Húrin), an aristocratic human who has the good fortune to be raised and trained up by the elves into a bad-ass swordsman. Túrin is good-hearted but flawed: he's irascible, quick to anger and quick to act on his anger — he has a bad habit of killing people before he quite realizes what he's doing (though he's always remorseful afterwards). "Túrin was slow to forget injustice or mockery," Tolkien writes, "and he could be sudden and fierce. Yet he was quick to pity, and the hurts or sadness of living things might move him to tears." A dark cloud follows him, and Tolkien lays on the omens of foreboding: you get the sense that Túrin was born under an unlucky star.

The villain of Children is the cowardly and spiteful Morgoth, who's your basic evil incarnate. Tolkien's baddies rarely have much in the way of personality, and Morgoth spends most of his time squatting in his dark fortress of Angband, casting a shadow over the land and generally making war on all that is just and beautiful. He leaves most of the actual scrapping to his lieutenants, most notably Glaurung, a wingless, wormy and rather sarcastic dragon.

More: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1611448,00.html

[bridgit]

1. i've always enjoyed Tolkien's visuals...

[BlueIris]

2. I'll confess to not...loving Tolkien all that much.

Flame away.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. I'll be buying it soon.

As soon as I finish off Dune (almost there).

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. I will probably read it

after I get finished with all of my Vonnegut re-reads.


Breakfast of Champions,

Bluebeard, and

Deadeye Dick to go

[Shakespeare]

5. Andrew O'Hehir in Salon had an excellent review a few days ago.

I'm really looking forward to reading this one.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/17/hurin/

Apr. 17, 2007 | A few chapters into the narrative of "The Children of Húrin," the more-or-less new book more or less written by J.R.R. Tolkien, a crippled woodcarver named Sador regards his abandoned handiwork with mixed emotions. Sador is a trusted servant of Húrin, lord of the House of Hador in the land of Dor-lómin, and he has been carving a great chair for his master. But months earlier, Húrin rode off to a battle that ended in terrible defeat. He did not return, and his lands have been conquered and pillaged by outsiders. So Sador has quit work on the chair and it has been "thrust unfinished in a corner."

While debating whether to break up the chair for winter firewood, Sador talks to Túrin, the young son of Húrin who will soon be sent into exile and become the wandering, accursed hero of this gloomy, gory and highly compelling tale. "I wasted my time," Sador says of his long labors, "though the hours seemed pleasant. But all such things are short-lived; and the joy in the making is their only true end, I guess."

It's impossible not to hear John Ronald Reuel Tolkien reproaching or consoling himself with these words. On his death in 1973, Tolkien left behind the unpublishable ruins of a vast body of legendary literature, encompassing an entire imaginary history of the world from its creation nearly until modern times. That history's grand heroic episodes -- the elements he believed were most important -- he wrote only in summary or in fragments, despite numerous attempts to craft them into prose narrative or epic poetry. He had significant academic success as an Oxford linguist and philologist, but most of his literary career was spent frittering away his energies on projects he never completed. He was plagued by writer's block, black moods and numerous changes of direction. He thrust many chairs unfinished into the corner.

(more)

[Broken_Hero]

6. I'll read it,

I've been thinking of ordering it from the SFBC....I got the Similirrion buth have been to busy of late to read it...

[Wetzelbill]

10. you know I almost wrote a short story about an Indian and a dragon

but I was talked out of it. Just the ultimate weirdness of the idea intrigues me. As stupid as it may sound. :)

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. I'm 'hardcore' - I love The Silmarillion - but I probably won't bother with this

I gave up on "Unfinished Tales", "The Book of Lost Tales", and so on, since they seem to retell stories that have already been covered - and "Children of Hurin" seems to as well.

Having said that, I'm struck how both the reviews linked to in this thread paint Turin as someone who, though heroic, just can't help killing innocent people in his enthusiasm - which makes him seem all too like Lancelot in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". I may not be able to keep a straight face the next time I reread The Silmarillion.

[pokerfan]

8. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who.

[Wetzelbill]

9. rarely am I awed by the sheer nerdness of a post

but I have to bow down to this one. :)