Letters to the Editor
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Thanks for a rich review
I've read other more shallow reviews of the book, and neither the context of Tokien's life and struggles which I didn't know much about, nor the work itself were covered as well. Until I read your review, I don't think I'd have bothered to read it.
Thank you!
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Doom, doom, doom
After reading the Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion, you do indeed have an entirely different perspective on Tolkien. The functioning term here would be "doom." One could say he is simply pastiching the old Icelandic gloom-and-doom sagas, but I tend to believe he is channeling his own feelings about our modern age.
I found this quote once in his official biography:
"Our myths may be misguided, but they steer us however shakily to the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil."
You can't put it any plainer. Here's a quote from LotR, even used in the DVD of the Jackson movies:
"You have your own choice to make, Aragorn. To rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil...or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin."
I don't think that quote is just artistic license either, but his own apocalyptic attitude about modernity and the domination of rationalism in our Huxlian "tech-civ" Mega-hive. Most important in all the Tolkien prequels is the sense that bad stuff can stay in the system causing problems long, long into the future...that there is some critical mass of bad karma/wyrd that can and will take on a life of its own--to haunt generations to come.
This mentality is not widely regarded on this side of the Atlantic. For example, if we look at how America treats Billie Holiday, you'll see how we always paint a smiley face on an incoming avalance of bad. Holiday was the grandaughter of a slave (bad), grew up poor in broken families (bad), had been sexually abused (bad), became a drug addict and died before her time (bad)...but of course now she's worth millions to the record companies and she's a beloved jazz singer (good!). Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad--then out comes the smiley face--good! Tolkien, on the other hand, only goes through one or two iterations of bad before he lowers the Very Bad hammer. He doesn't spin doctor bad to good. Just the opposite. This is, in general, a European trait, and one of the main points of division between us and them: they embrace the doom, we plaster everything with smiley faces.
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COMMERCE ASIDE...
It's interesting but not surprising that the review would include the obligatory "warning" about the tone and content of this book as it also does, seemingly by rote, for The Silmarillion. It's frankly a shame that casual readers of Tolkien are discouraged from actually reading Tolkien and instead encouraged to remain superficially transfixed by the action-adventure, video game, plastic action figure intrepretations of the not-now-or-ever-a-trilogy known as The Lord of the Rings. Hey! It never hurts to read above your head or outside your tastes every once in a while. Especially when it comes to work as profoundly rich and stubbornly individual as that of Tolkien.
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Silmarillion
Well. I thought I was a Tolkien geek, but I see now I was wrong.
Um, I have read the whole Silmarillion, parts a few times, but I think that anyone who considers this the adult work of literature and LOTR the action figure kids stuff is, shall we say, well outside the mainstream. I think the warnings to the general reader are well taken - the people who it's right for will find it.
I'll put Turin on my reading list.
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The Children of Hurin
It is central to this new publication that much of it was written in the aftermath of World War One in which Tolkein served. The fall of The Men of the West and Elvin civilization in The Children of Hurin exposes a clear analogy to the sad political reality of one actually unfinished war that led us into the most bloody century ever experienced. Tolkein and his son are ambivalent but are also squinting into a harsh world carefully searching for honor for man and elf kind through flawed characters.
Tolkein was a precursor and participant in his way with the post war artisans that used art to work through their war scars. This new release clearly showcases a brutal reality with a healthy skepticism of both heroes and adversaries. This is how I like my fantasy with realism,well drawn main characters,without a candy-coated setting...Oh and a message of hope through persistence. The Children of Hurin is a great addition to the Tolkein library.
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Is the Tolkein canon still a "habit" of campus druggies?
I'm serious, folks! When I was in high school & college (late 60s/early 70s), reading a Tolkein book was considered to be a wink-wink signal that yes, you were "into" drugs and read this stuff for all the hidden meanings, etc...
So since I wasn't into the one, I never went near the other, either. Can I do so now without damage to my "clean" reputation?
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Tolkien's preoccupation with the nature of Evil
Having read this excellent review and recently finished reading the book, I am convinced of another, deeper connection between it and the Lord of the Rings. I'd always been fascinated with the One Ring, and how it corrupts some races and persons, but not others. Humans, of course, are the easiest race to corrupt, and--with apologies to One Ring poster-boy Gollum--Boromir is the prime example of one who is driven to do evil by his desire for the Ring, though he deludes himself into believing it's for the good. Frodo was corrupted at the very last minute, before the Ring's destruction. Gandalf and Galadriel knew they'd be corrupted if they took the Ring. Samwise had the Ring and was never corrupted.
Does the Ring cause people to do evil, or must there be within the person already the potential to do evil for the Ring to do its work? In other words, is Evil an extrinsic or intrinsic force?
Morgoth cursed Hurin's family with a terrible doom, all the more powerful because he is an immortal being. And yet, as Mr. O'Hehir points out, Turin's own nature seems sufficient to bring about the doom almost without the help of any curse.
Being one of those few, I suppose, who have read and reread and actually enjoyed the Silmarillion, this same issue pops up repeatedly there as well--Morgoth stole the Silmarils, a terrible deed, but the rash decision of Feanor to retrieve the jewels is what seems to have caused the Elves millenia of tragedy and unhappiness.
So is evil an external or internal force, or a combination of both? I don't think Tolkien himself had an answer to that question, but reading the tragic story of Hurin and his children is a marvelous way to puzzle it out.