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Post by trescuinge on Mar 7, 2017 20:18:15 GMT -5
I remember reading Tolkien's statement on the back of the Ballantine edition, but never knew the story. Thanks, Deuce.
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Post by deuce on Mar 12, 2017 20:19:47 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Mar 30, 2017 10:42:01 GMT -5
Steve Hickman has done some excellent Tolkien art. Far better than the Hildebrandts, Lee or Howe, IMO.
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Post by deuce on May 11, 2017 9:08:39 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 1, 2017 18:21:17 GMT -5
Good article on JRRT and Beren and Luthien: www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-40109396I'm getting really tired of Alan Lee illustrating Tolkien tales. His artwork is incredibly lifeless and static, IMO. Then again, I don't think any artist has done a great job at capturing the power of what is a pretty badass tale.
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Post by johnnypt on Jun 1, 2017 21:27:58 GMT -5
Good article on JRRT and Beren and Luthien: www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-40109396I'm getting really tired of Alan Lee illustrating Tolkien tales. His artwork is incredibly lifeless and static, IMO. Then again, I don't think any artist has done a great job at capturing the power of what is a pretty badass tale. Hopefully Amazon is shipping out my copy soon. This is Christopher's last hurrah at age 92, I'm looking forward to seeing how he's assembled things.
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Post by johnnypt on Jun 20, 2017 12:33:27 GMT -5
Read about half of B&L this morning thanks to subway signal problems you may have seen mentioned on the web today. It's different from Children of Hurin in that it doesn't tell the story straight through. It goes back to an idea Christopher had sometime between the Silmarillion & History of Middle Earth: he would trace the evolution of the story from its beginning as one of the key "Lost Tales" to how it ended up when it got to the Silmarillion. It seems Tolkien intended the Lay of Leithian to be the definitive version of the story and anything in the Quentas would be a summary. However he just never got around to finishing the poem. It's certainly more for someone who enjoyed the History than one of regular books (Hobbit, LOTR, even Hurin).
Considering this is the best way Christopher felt he could approach the material to tell the story, it's unlikely something similar could be done for Fall of Gondolin. Literally the only known time JRRT told the full story was the Lost Tales version. It didn't even evolve much from there, other than the Unfinished Tales version of the early part of the story, he simply didn't go back to it apart from the summaries in the Sketch, Quenta Noldorinwa or Quenta Silmarillion. So it really looks like this is the end of the line.
6/23 Edit-finished it yesterday. The only drawback to doing things this way is that some of the little details that DON'T get changed along the way get a little glossed over, especially if they are in the long excerpt from Leithian. Going back and forth from prose to verse and back and forth again isn't conducive to telling a cohesive story unless you know it pretty well. But he had to deal with the reality that his father simply didn't have large sections of it done in prose.
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Post by deuce on Jul 6, 2017 20:52:49 GMT -5
Art connected to the Rankin-Bass production of The Hobbit:
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Post by themirrorthief on Jul 21, 2017 1:30:32 GMT -5
it kinda irks me that Tolkein is generally held in MUCH higher esteem than Burroughs who gave us twenty times the stories
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 21, 2017 8:50:58 GMT -5
it kinda irks me that Tolkein is generally held in MUCH higher esteem than Burroughs who gave us twenty times the stories I'm sure that the difference is that Tolkien was a scholar so his academic knowledge of linguistics weighs in to help make his work more mainstream accepted, whereas Burroughs just was a guy who told great stories. Same for Howard and others, who were the "common man" telling yarns instead of the "educated man" involved with the classics. For the record, I like all three -- Tolkien, Burroughs, and Howard. :-D It has always interested me that certain stories have been classified as "the classics" and are taught in schools but when I read them they aren't nearly as interesting as many of the fiction stories that I like to read. It's sort of like the academic folks are trying to keep certain literature elite.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jul 21, 2017 9:17:49 GMT -5
it kinda irks me that Tolkein is generally held in MUCH higher esteem than Burroughs who gave us twenty times the stories I'm sure that the difference is that Tolkien was a scholar so his academic knowledge of linguistics weighs in to help make his work more mainstream accepted, whereas Burroughs just was a guy who told great stories. Same for Howard and others, who were the "common man" telling yarns instead of the "educated man" involved with the classics. For the record, I like all three -- Tolkien, Burroughs, and Howard. :-D It has always interested me that certain stories have been classified as "the classics" and are taught in schools but when I read them they aren't nearly as interesting as many of the fiction stories that I like to read. It's sort of like the academic folks are trying to keep certain literature elite. While I enjoyed the Hobbit I couldn't really get into the LOTR stuff as much - I found it very dry and the repetitive stuff every time they camped seemed to drag for me. I did enjoy his Tom Bombadil material and felt it odd they excised his character from the movie trilogy but then played up characters that were mere footnotes. As far as that style of fantasy I much more enjoyed Dennis L. McKiernan's Mithgar novels. His Iron Tower trilogy is killer, with a much more (and this is strictly my opinion so take with a grain of salt) readable flow. It's all heavily Tolkein-based of course, as he originally was planning a sequel to the LOTR trilogy then ended up going his own direction after that fell through.
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Post by johnnypt on Jul 21, 2017 9:37:21 GMT -5
it kinda irks me that Tolkein is generally held in MUCH higher esteem than Burroughs who gave us twenty times the stories I'm sure that the difference is that Tolkien was a scholar so his academic knowledge of linguistics weighs in to help make his work more mainstream accepted, whereas Burroughs just was a guy who told great stories. Same for Howard and others, who were the "common man" telling yarns instead of the "educated man" involved with the classics. For the record, I like all three -- Tolkien, Burroughs, and Howard. :-D It has always interested me that certain stories have been classified as "the classics" and are taught in schools but when I read them they aren't nearly as interesting as many of the fiction stories that I like to read. It's sort of like the academic folks are trying to keep certain literature elite. When I was reading the intro to Swords of the North about Steve Tompkins' idea of the Howard shared universe and how it was similar to Tolkien's, I started thinking about why they were similar and where they were different. I thought the main difference was that Howard's, as well as Burroughs', "shared" universe were created because of strictly market reasons: ERB and REH needed to sell stories, so they relied on characters that had worked for them before. If they didn't work, they had to move on to something else. So Burroughs just worked out his Clayton/Carter/Innes/Gridley/Custer/Julian/Napier continuum to give the audience something to relate to. Howard I suspect did something similar with stories like The Dark Man, that ties things that had seen print in with things he wanted to get out there.
On the other hand, Tolkien had been working on this alternate world for practically his whole life and was able to do that for the most part, because he had another job. However, when you think about it, Tolkien managed to get a lot his Middle Earth material out into the public by tacking it onto a sequel to a popular story. The Hobbit started out as somewhat of a separate story, not really related to the Middle Earth material. But after the Silmarillion was rejected, he resigned himself to having to write the Hobbit sequel. At that point he really began to tie all of it together. So his reasoning for doing it the way he did wasn't all that different from ERB and Howard after all!
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Post by themirrorthief on Jul 21, 2017 19:31:34 GMT -5
I first read Tolkien as a college freshman because it was required reading. I enjoyed it but at the time I thought it was pretty lightweight compared to Howard and Burroughs and Homer and Stevenson which I been exposed to much earlier in my life. I had a tough time getting into the McKeirnan stuff too. Tolkien is greatly loved and thats cool and there is no mistaking his incredible influence. In closing I declare we are lucky as heck to have them all and its ok if you prefer one over the other or whatever. And for what its worth I think Stephen Crane may be the greatest natural writer that ever lived. And considering he was 28 when he passed makes him ever more mind blowing.
And for what its worth reading the Hobbit as a college freshman was one helluva upgrade from Silas Marner which was required as a High school freshman!!!!
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Post by deuce on Jul 21, 2017 21:34:26 GMT -5
Húrin Thalion at the Battle of Nirnaeth Arnoediad. One of the mightiest and most tragic heroes from JRRT's history of Middle-earth was Hurin Thalion, the son of Galdor. By all accounts, Húrin Thalion was “the mightiest of the warriors of mortal Men.” Not just of the First Age. Ever. His son, Túrin Turambar, killed the Grandfather of All Dragons, Glaurung. Túrin was merely the mighty son of a mightier father. Hurin was the all-time champ of mortal bad-asses; a warrior of Conanic prowess. It took a horde of orcs and a Balrog simply to subdue him after he had slaughtered scores of foes. Hurin's saga is scattered between various fragments and summaries left by Tolkien. I bring together the tale of the first part of his life here: leogrin.com/CimmerianBlog/hurin-the-steadfast-part-one-of-the-wanderings-of-hurin/
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Post by deuce on Aug 1, 2017 16:26:41 GMT -5
David Wenzel is known to REH comics fans for his great Solomon Kane art, but he is also a long-time JRRT admirer. He's especially known for his Hobbit paintings done for various publishers since the '70s.
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