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#1 |
Guard of the Citadel
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxon
Posts: 2,205
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Interesting news davem, I for one enjoy the lighter version too, but I would definitely like to read this more recent one too.
Perhaps a sort of attempt to close the gap between the LotR and The Hobbit, as far as the language used or the style of writing is concerned. I enjoyed the chapter in the UT with all the extra-information, so I'll be looking forward to purchasing the book ![]()
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“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
Delos B. McKown |
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#2 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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I'm perfectly happy with the version we have now to be honest, though of course I'll want to read this. I'm not sure if my contentment is due to familiarity or not, but I do know that the version I have read so often has a special place, and any new version wouldn't be able to take that away. A bit like 'New Coke' was never going to replace the original flavour I've grown to love.
![]() It's quite annoying actually that Tolkien was such a perfectionist - had he not been so obsessed with redrafting maybe he would have published more work in his lifetime? But then this begs the question, would it have been as good? ![]()
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#3 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
Location: watching the wonga-wonga birds circle...
Posts: 9,460
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I didn't know about this and I am delighted. I find The Hobbit cloying now- though I found it still "works" well read aloud to young children - and have often wished he had written a grown up version in the style of The Quest of Erebor which would fit better with the LOTR ..but then I also wish he had rewritten some of the early chapters to fit in with the rest of LOTR....
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#4 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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Would you have been happy with it as a 'replacement' though? Because that would have been what happened - we'd simply not have the existing Hobbit, it would merely be a curious collector's item for sale at high prices on eBay (as V1 is now).
Did you read The Hobbit first? I've got the feeling you did? This does have a point.... ![]() Would kids who read The Hobbit at an early age as a 'kids' book' still be caught up with the same enthusiasm for Tolkien if they read a darker book? Would they read it at all? It's one of those books that any parent, no matter how 'puritanical', would feel comfortable giving to a child to read, but I'm not sure they would feel the same about a darker story. The thought of having the early chapters of LotR re-written fills me with abject horror though! I've absolutely NO problem with the Hobbit 'not fitting' - I mean, nor does the Sil, and thinking along those lines leaves us with a 'canon' of one book, which is just stupid to my mind. Few if any writers produced a lifetime's body of work which was entirely consistent in tone, voice and style, and I have no problem that Tolkien's work is the same. It's interesting rather than annoying to me. ![]()
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#5 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
Location: watching the wonga-wonga birds circle...
Posts: 9,460
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I have no problem with not fitting per se ... it is the fact that it is so much a children's book withall those asides that makes it just about unreadable for me now .let alone the Tralalalally Elves..... It seems to be the children's version of teh "real story".
Children love dark books - always have done ..... though I do wonder at the sanity of the parents who take very tiny children to the Harry Potter films.... especially latish showings.... but the Hobbit is already pretty dark and the most upsetting thing was the goblins eating the ponies (which Tolkien clearly realised given the high equine survival rate in LOTR). For my money the Barrow Wight and Old Man Willow are two of the scariest part of LOTR and that is in the "Hobbit style bit". It is not content but style...
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#6 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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This is another interesting bit I found from Rateliff:
Quote:
I think in a way we can see the process repeated in LotR - the early chapters, as Mith points out, are very close in style to TH as we have it, while by the end we are completely in the world of the Sil. Hence, if this 3rd ed. of TH had been completed One can only assume that the early chapters (or at least the first chapter) of LotR would also have required re-writing as that would have seemed 'out of place'. Lal's point is interesting - given a 3rd ed Hobbit would have replaced the one we have, how many fans would have been drawn into Tolkien's world? Would any of us really want to sacrifice that innocent world, where there was less noise & more green, simply to have something that 'fitted' better with LotR? Its not so much the 'darker' style that would have 'excluded' children, perhaps, as the more adult style & language that would have resulted - its not a book that parents would have chosen to read to their children. And of course, one would have to wonder (given the reaction of A&U's reader to the Sil legends Tolkien offered as a sequel to TH) whether, if TH had been in a more 'adult' style in the first place, we'd have anything of Middle-earth at all. It seems that publishers were much more 'tolerant' of 'fantastical' literature back then when it was aimed at children (not discounting, of course, the works of Dunsany & Morris). |
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#7 |
Wight
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posts: 111
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http://www.amazon.com/History-Hobbit...4574185&sr=8-1
960 pages?! Can that be right? In any case, I am looking very much forward to a darker, more adult and more LOtR-consistent "Mr. Baggins." In my opinion, it won't detract at all from previous editions of "The Hobbit." Personally, I would like to introduce my children to the original (2nd edition) and let them discover LOtR, Sil, and the "new" Hobbit" later and at their own pace...
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www.scottchristiancarr.com They passed slowly, and the hobbits could see the starlight glimmering on their hair and in their eyes. |
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#8 |
Regal Dwarven Shade
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: A Remote Dwarven Hold
Posts: 3,593
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Perhaps this will settle the "dwarves set off on this quest with no weapons" problem, which was always one of the oddest things for me.
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...finding a path that cannot be found, walking a road that cannot be seen, climbing a ladder that was never placed, or reading a paragraph that has no... |
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#9 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Quote:
& http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Hobb...4587559&sr=1-3 |
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#10 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Hopefully this updated version will make it possible to take the story more seriously in our discussions here. As it is, it's way too old to be relevant to the post-LotR Middle-earth. There might actually be some useful information about dragons, Mirkwood elves, the Necromancer or Beorn in this revision.
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#11 | |
Shade of Carn Dűm
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Quote:
I think that's why the LOTR movies were so good, they actually wanted to make a good movie, shot on location, with handmade armour and stuff etc. You could argue that the actual SCRIPTS were rubbish but at least it looks good... ![]() |
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