View Single Post
Old 02-08-2011, 04:11 PM   #124
davem
Illustrious Ulair
 
davem's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,256
davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I think whatever Tolkien may or may not have wanted to happen to the information in the letters at the time he wrote them is fairly academic - unless one imagines him to be sitting on a cloud somewhere fretting about what is or isn't contained in a biography of his brother. I honestly think Tolkien's own feelings/wishes are impossible to guess at - it may well be that he would have no problem at all with this material is (whatever it may be) coming out. It seems like the 'Estate' (ie Christopher Tolkien) is the one with the problem.

There are two possibilities here - 1) this material is entirely mundane - the brothers reminiscing about childhood events, everyday trivia, & this is a simple case of CT pointing the Lawyers at the authors (& his members of his own family, let us remember) & shouting 'Get orf my Land!'. Unacceptable to my mind, given the work put into this book by sincere people - I've met the author (in passing at Oxonmoot) & I know that she is not some hack looking to make a fast buck by writing a tacky book on JRRT. And I can't believe that Hilary's children/grandchildren feel any less respect for him than CT feels for his father. If this is about the kind of 'trivia' I'm talking about its very petty on CT's part to stop it being published - whether he has a 'right' to do this or not.

The other possibility is that it is something more 'serious' that the family do not wish to be made public, because it would 'embarass' those family members who are still around, or (at the far extreme) harm the reputation of Tolkien in some way. That becomes more difficult, because, as I've pointed out, the family have authorised a number of biographical works (Letters, Caprenter's bio, Garth's book on Tolkien &WWI), in effect creating an 'authorised' version of JRR Tolkien. Now, if there is more to JRRT than they have told us - & if that 'more' would alter our understanding/perception of him (for good or ill) then I don't see how the family could justifiably object - if a man was, say, a drunken cross-dressing wife-beater, who was at the same time a painter of genius who loved animals, his family would be justified in a) refusing to talk about his personal life at all, & avoiding any authorised biography at all (& thus protecting their sensitivities), or b) being entirely honest & open & authorising a warts & all biography which gave a true insight into the whole man. Where they would not be 'morally' justified would be in publishing an authorised biography which focused entirely on the animal loving painter & failed to mention the drinking, cross-dressing & wife-beating. In such a case, you either say nothing, or you tell the truth - either is justifiable - but lying by telling only half the truth would be unacceptable.

Now, I can't see there is any other option here - its either a petty act, callously destroying 3 years work for no other reason than that they don't want some perfectly harmless trivialities to be made public because they own the letters, or its because the material is something more 'significant' & they want to cover it up - which would be morally questionable, given they have gone out of their way to give us their own 'acceptable' version of JRRT.
davem is offline   Reply With Quote