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Old 04-15-2007, 04:42 PM   #1
Sir Kohran
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Tolkien Why so little?

The impending release of The Children Of Hurin, over thirty years after Tolkien's death, got me wondering...

We all know that Tolkien spent decades - indeed, much of his life - working on the Legendarium that centered around the world of Middle Earth. The amount of sheer material he produced overall is absolutely staggering - the universe he created is probably larger than most mythologies. He has hundreds of characters, ranging from minor incidental people to incredibly complex and well developed protagonists. I'm not even going to go into the depth of languages. The Legendarium he created in his mind and in his notes is without a doubt one of the biggest one-man creations of the century, if not all of history.

What I find puzzling is how little of his work actually made it to print. Tolkien only really published four solid books on Middle-Earth in his lifetime - The Hobbit, The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Two Towers and The Return Of The King. For the amount of material he produced, having published a relatively small amount of it in just four books seems strange. This situation becomes even worse when we consider the last three as one book - The Lord Of The Rings (which is how Tolkien himself considered it). So essentially Tolkien only really published one main work - The Lord Of The Rings, with The Hobbit as a sort of prequel. In this regard Tolkien's material seems tiny by comparison to others. Look at the other fantasy/sci-fi franchises - Harry Potter has (or will soon have) seven quite long books, and Star Wars spans six big movies, with goodness knows how much more in the expanded universe. The Redwall series has over fifteen books. By comparison the amount of work Tolkien brought to the public seems very small (ironic, considering that his work provided the foundations for quite a bit of those listed). And yet we know that the amount of material Tolkien produced was actually much, much bigger. Yet he never published most of it.

In later years, his son Christopher Tolkien has published most of the Legendarium, primarily with The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc. and now with The Children Of Hurin. But if it wasn't for this, I imagine that most of Tolkien's vast universe would never have made it beyond his private work. From what I know of him, he seemed to be quite content to live his entire life without it going anywhere further than The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit.

So what it boils down to is...why did Tolkien put so little of his work out in public? After all the hard work he put into it, why was he so reluctant to go beyond one trilogy and a prequel?
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Old 04-15-2007, 05:31 PM   #2
Child of the 7th Age
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Sir Kohran -

This is a great thread topic. It is something that has bothered me as well.

There are many sides of this coin but some particularly stand out. First, there was Tolkien's inability to finish things. He was always dithering with his story....putting a poke here, a tweek there, and even starting some things over from scratch. According to Carpenter, there were several things that prevented Tolkien from finishing a story to his own satistfaction. Carpenter says Tolkien was overwhelmed with both personal and academic demands and, as a result, did not have enough time to do things in the "perfect" way he wanted to. (Remember that in addition to the books you listed, Tolkien wrote and edited a number of texts, essays etc. as a medievalist, which were part of his duties as a professor. Indeed, he spoke of "pressure" to spend less time on myths and more in scholarly pursuits.)

Carpenter also criticized Tolkien as being someone who put off projects and, as a consequence, never finished anything. (Boy, do I sympathize!) He also said that Tolkien loved the mystic allure of the unfinished picture. He preferred to have unexplanable mountains hanging in the distant mist. The last thing JRRT wanted to do was to tie everything down, cross every "T", and dot every "I". It would take away all the mystery.

If manuscripts aren't finished, then it is obviously hard to send them in to the publsher so all this has to be a factor. The other side of the coin is the publisher's attitude. We all know how JRRT struggled to get the Silm published in his lifetime. Part of the problem was that he couldn't get a clear cut "yes" from any publisher. Perhaps, if there had been a clear cut "yes", this would have made a difference in enabling him to finish things up and get them into print.

Basically, what I've been saying up till now are the "truisms" that are constantly repeated whenever someone talks about why Tolkien didn't put more into print. What's harder for me to tell is how many of these truisms are actually "true". One of the things that struck me lately is how heavily we are influenced by Carpenter's portrayal in his bio. Carpenter says many things that are more opinion than fact. They are not clearly documented because, almost by their nature, such things can not be proven. Two examples of this would be comments Carpenter made on the Tolkien marriage and another would be the whole question of whether JRRT did not finish things because of "procrastination" or some innate deep-seated desire not to see his projects end. I think a lot more can be said and considered here than I've seen discussed in print, and I would be very curious to see how other Downers view this question.

My gut feeling is that we have"bought into" Carpenter's stereotypes to a greater extent than we should. But if we don't buy into what he has said, then where do we start?

Really, an intriguing question. Thanks, Sir Kohran.
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Last edited by Child of the 7th Age; 04-15-2007 at 05:47 PM.
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Old 04-15-2007, 05:41 PM   #3
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Interesting question. There are a few reasons, I think, though my knowledge of Tolkien and his motivations is not nearly as thorough as some around here, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt ;-) . Some may be my own conjecture.

My understanding is that Tolkien originally wanted to publish some of the older First Age tales of his legendarium fairly early on, but publishers would have none of it. Instead, he was asked to write a follow-up to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is what came out. And then after seeing its popularity, he set out to comprise a suitable Silmarillion for publication but, sadly, never finished the job.

Tolkien was always a perfectionist, tweaking his "histories", harmonizing the texts to match both each other and his ever-evolving vision (as seen by the multiple editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings). I think that has to be a contributing factor to why many of his greater tales remained unfinished and unpublished. That, along with the focus of his writings later in life, with essays on his creation taking precedent over the crafting of full-blown narratives.

Was he content with what was ultimately released to the public? I haven't studied Tolkien in-depth, but it wouldn't surprise me if, in a way, he was. His writing carries the air of an authentic history, with allusions to past events and figures that would seem obscure to all but the die-hard reader (Sil, UT, HoME, etc.). He didn't shy away from leaving some aspects of his legandarium shrouded in mystery, the answers of which existed in his mind alone (e.g. Tom Bombadil, the Blue Wizards, etc.).

As much as I would have loved to see some of the epic stories from his posthumous works come to full, rich completion, part of me enjoys that we the readers know them just as the characters in LOTR would have known them: ancient tales whose heroes (and villains) live on in mere story and song, existing as achetypes and legends that aren't (and maybe shouln't) be viewed in present tense. That sense of history is something I think Tolkien both appreciated and strove for in his conception of Middle-Earth.

Last edited by Maglor; 04-15-2007 at 05:49 PM.
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Old 04-15-2007, 06:14 PM   #4
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I have always thought that if Christopher was open to more help/or willing to publish with another (anyone coming close to to J.R.RTOLKIENS storyline) we would now have more of what Tolkien actually left behind. I have said before that I have written storylines for myself (not to be released to the public) which go beyond the Third Age into The Fourth Age, these involve the Blue Wizards and the attempts of the evil beings left behind to bring forth The Dagor Dagorath, this story goes back to the Music of the Ainur and Melkor corrupting more of the Maiar than what we know, one of these is Pallando or Alatar, Melkor being the most powerful and knowing more of the mind of Eru knew that his initial attempts of domination would fail, he decided to set up an insurance policy in the form of a powerful Maiar who would be able to utilise powers left behind if Sauron failed. Remember Sauron tried to make the Numenoreans worship Melkor, try to think that Sauron's aim initially was to bring back Melkor, and in which he failed and Melkor being THE DARK LORD knew he would, it was now the job of one the corrupted Blue Wizards to do so. The storyline involves the Staff of Radagast, the Staff of Alatar,the Ring of Saruman and the Father's of the Orcs and their leader Morwe. I have always felt that Tolkien ran out of steam, it is not suprising as he spent his whole life giving us his gift, that is why he wished to pass on his dream that we should add to it, the tree that should continue to grow has been fenced in by a family of Gollum's chanting 'It's mine it's my precious'. Christopher should have looked beyond a story we already know and given us something he had the guts to produce himself, this is a man steeped in the tradition of his father. Anyone could have produced a bigger version of The Children of Hurin given time with the same papers somewhat later, only Christopher can give us something NEW,and only someone else could help him.
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Old 04-15-2007, 10:19 PM   #5
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As a guy who writes at times, let me tell you that authors can't really just start writing out of the blue. At times you can have great ideas yet no idea how to say them, and if you try while you have those ideas you can lose the ideas. Getting your brain churning while able to express what's in your head at the same time isn't easy or common. With a job and a family, I am impressed that Tolkien gave us so much quality work, and the time it took him is just about right. With a mythos so large, it is fitting. Tolkien's early drafts are much different than the final story, and even Sauron started out as a severely minor character (who was a cat with only two cronies to boot.)

However, I have never seen Tolkien's works as something to continue or make your own ideas about. The works of Tolkien are immense, cover pretty much every detail, and in the end I got a solid in stone feeling that the tale was over. Tolkien's works are "fanfic proof," so to speak. This is Tolkien's story, Tolkien's tale, and Tolkien's life. Even Tolkien himself realized that the Lord of the Rings was the end of his works. There was no path left, the soul had been spent.
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