Why do you read HoME?

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

This is either high praise for the quality of Tolkien's early work and ruminations or a stinging condemnation of the fantasy out there.

Or maybe it says more about us the fans...

It was not intended to say any of those things. I don’t know how to find out exactly how much volumes of the HoME series have sold compared to other books. But indication of high sales alone would not impress me. I am not much impressed by such statistics.

I have read many best-sellers and many obscure items and have not found myself pushed to read more best-sellers because they were, to my taste, generally superior to the other works. I read what I think will please me, which is not necessarily what will please others.

I liked the HoME series, and that was sufficient reason to read them, regardless of what others might think. I do not particularly like, as examples, writing by Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan. I do like, mostly, writing by Neil Gaiman and the new novel by Eowyn Ivey, to name some popular works. I loathed Star Trek. I loved Doctor Who and Babylon 5. I loved Planet Toilex, not mentioned now anywhere on the Web, save in this post. I also loved the non-mentioned television series “The River Margin” and the barely remembered series “It’s A Man’s World” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_...28TV_series%29 ).

In short, I like what I like, and think it fortunate for me when a forum turns up devoted to one of my interests and when a series of books that I happen to like has proved as popular as the HoME series has. It does not surprise me that most of my individual other likes are not shared, or that most individual other likes and dislikes of others on this forums are likewise mostly not shared with others.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by jallanite

It was not intended to say any of those things. I don’t know how to find out exactly how much volumes of the HoME series have sold compared to other books. But indication of high sales alone would not impress me. I am not much impressed by such statistics.

I have read many best-sellers and many obscure items and have not found myself pushed to read more best-sellers because they were, to my taste, generally superior to the other works. I read what I think will please me, which is not necessarily what will please others.

I was being semi-facetious and hold to similar principles myself.

However, just to explore the idea, if something is valuable intrinsically but nobody knows about it...is it valuable? Tree in the forest type of question I suppose.

I am reminded of the part in Candide where during his stay in Paris Candide dined with The Man of Taste who had written a play that had never been outside of the bookseller's shop but Candide was quite taken with him.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

In my case it was simple, although I would have snapped up the BoLT anyway, being enamored of Sil and UT: I had had, for years, a burning desire to read the original Fall of Gondolin. The news that it would see print was a frubjous day.

[Orphalesion]

My favourite part is the Shibboleth of Feanor, with all it's little tidbits about the various members of house Finwe.

And I absolutely adore the "Round World" version of the mythology. I wish Tolkien would have been able to come up with some solution to the problems it would cause with the rest of the Mythology and properly implement it.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

And I absolutely adore the "Round World" version of the mythology. I wish Tolkien would have been able to come up with some solution to the problems it would cause with the rest of the Mythology and properly implement it.

My thought is that JRRT solved this by recasting Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly Mannish tradition, and he was going to give the Round World point of view in other accounts (or notes), for comparison.

Oddly enough (or ingeniously enough, I think) in my opinion a main "other" source being the confused mannish tradition of the fall of Numenor (The Drowning of Anadune). In it Men confuse the Elves with the Valar for instance, or certain points of geography, or don't all believe what the Elves teach... but the tradition includes that the Western Elves teach the World was always round (believe it or not, Men of Numenor)...

... the King of Numenor even wants to test this teaching by sailing East to get around the ban! But it never happens, and other stuff happens. Or you have the Elvish account of the Awakening of the Quendi, where (despite being a fairy tale mixed with counting lore) the Sun already exists before the Elves awake. Possibly too, the account of the Death of Feanor's youngest son... if that was to stand as a variant Elvish telling of the matter of Losgar (outside of the main QS text), it at least implies the Sun already existed, if I recall correctly.

Thus no need for a completely Elvish Silmarillion, with its always round worldedness and early existing Sun. That's why I think Myths Transformed was abandoned, even though the Dome of Varda made it into a later "LQS" text.

My opinion anyway.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by Galin

My thought is that JRRT solved this by recasting Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly Mannish tradition, and he was going to give the Round World point of view in other accounts (or notes), for comparison.

Oddly enough (or ingeniously enough, I think) in my opinion a main "other" source being the confused mannish tradition of the fall of Numenor (The Drowning of Anadune). In it Men confuse the Elves with the Valar for instance, or certain points of geography, or don't all believe what the Elves teach... but the tradition includes that the Western Elves teach the World was always round (believe it or not, Men of Numenor)...

... the King of Numenor even wants to test this teaching by sailing East to get around the ban! But it never happens, and other stuff happens. Or you have the Elvish account of the Awakening of the Quendi, where (despite being a fairy tale mixed with counting lore) the Sun already exists before the Elves awake. Possibly too, the account of the Death of Feanor's youngest son... if that was to stand as a variant Elvish telling of the matter of Losgar (outside of the main QS text), it at least implies the Sun already existed, if I recall correctly.

Thus no need for a completely Elvish Silmarillion, with its always round worldedness and early existing Sun. That's why I think Myths Transformed was abandoned, even though the Dome of Varda made it into a later "LQS" text.

My opinion anyway.

That's well and good if you are interested in Mannish Legends. I am not.

I'd rather have a Silmarilion that would recount the "actual" history of Middle Earth. To me it seemed more a "cop out" because Tolkien might have been afraid that he was no longer up to the task of restructuring the Legendarium in such a significant way.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

That's well and good if you are interested in Mannish Legends. I am not.

I'd rather have a Silmarilion that would recount the "actual" history of Middle Earth. To me it seemed more a "cop out" because Tolkien might have been afraid that he was no longer up to the task of restructuring the Legendarium in such a significant way.

I think such an approach risks treating this fiction as too "real". Ultimately I think the major concern is that the "actual history", which might be better understood as a "version more cohesive with modern scientific knowledge", would not retain the original poetic qualities of the old story. It might have a new one, but it would be different.

I don't think the original version of the story being treated by the author in later years as a "Mannish legend" diminishes from its potential meaning. For me at least the meaning is more important than what is "true" according to the internal narrative. It's all fiction at the end of the day, even fiction within fiction. It's not like one version is actually "true".

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

(...) I'd rather have a Silmarilion that would recount the "actual" history of Middle Earth. To me it seemed more a "cop out" because Tolkien might have been afraid that he was no longer up to the task of restructuring the Legendarium in such a significant way.

I think Christopher Tolkien is correct about JRRT's thinking, in a period before his father had even finished The Lord of the Rings.

"Where could such ignorance of the Elves be found but in the minds of Men of a later time? This, I believe, is what my father was concerned to portray: a tradition of Men, through long ages become dim and confused. At this time, perhaps, in the context of the Notion Club Papers and of the vast enlargement of his great story that was coming into being in The Lord of the Rings, he began to be concerned with questions of "tradition" and the vagaries of tradition, the losses, confusions, simplifications and amplifications in the evolution of legend, as they might apply to his own -- within the always enlarging compass of Middle-earth.

This is speculation; it would have been helpful indeed if he had at this time left any record or note, however brief, of his reflections. But many years later he did write such a note, though brief indeed, on the envelope that contains the texts of the Drowning of Anadune:

"Contains very old version (in Adunaic) which is good -- in so far as it is just as much different (in inclusion and omission and emphasis) as would be probable in the supposed case:

a) Mannish tradition
b) Elvish tradition
c) Mixed tradition"

note by JRRT loosely dated to "sometime in the 1960s"

Now granted the note itself dates from the 1960s specifically, but the texts that inspired Christopher Tolkien's comments here are much earlier, again, dated to before The Lord of the Rings was even completed.

For myself I think Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly mannish affair was a natural enough resolution.