JRR Tolkien's son Christopher dies aged 95

[High Lord Tolkien]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/ ... es-aged-95

Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95, the Tolkien Society has announced. The society, which promotes the life and works of the celebrated writer, released a short statement on Twitter to confirm the news. The statement said: "Christopher Tolkien has died at the age of 95. The Tolkien Society sends its deepest condolences to Baillie, Simon, Adam, Rachel and the whole Tolkien family." Tolkien, who was born in Leeds in 1924, was the third and youngest son of the revered fantasy author and his wife Edith. He grew up listening to his fathers tales of Bilbo Baggins, which later became the children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit. He drew many of the original maps detailing the world of Middle Earth for his father's The Lord of the Rings when the series was first published between 1954 and 55. He also edited much of his father's posthumously published work following his death in 1973. Since 1975 he had lived in France with Baillie.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2012, Christopher's son Simon described the enormity of the task after his grandfather died with so much material still unpublished. Simon said: "He had produced this huge output that covered everything from the history of the gods to the history of the people he called the Silmarils - that was his great work but it had never seen the light of day despite his best efforts to get it published." His son was left to sift through the files and notebooks and over the two decades after his father's death, he published The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Beren And Luthien and The History of Middle-earth, which fleshed out the complex world of elves and dwarves created by his father. "It's enormously to my father's credit that he took on that huge task. I remember the crateloads of papers arriving at his home, and no one could be in any doubt at the scale of the work he had taken on," Simon said.

Although he worked tirelessly to protect his father's legacy, he was not impressed by what he saw as the commercialisation of his work. He was famously critical of Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning film adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings. In a 2012 interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he criticised the adaptations, saying: "They gutted the book, making an action film for 15 to 25-year-olds." He also said: "Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time," and that "the commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing".

[wayfriend]

Gah.

That's too bad. After reading the History of Middle Earth, I came to admire his hard-nosed approach to the Estate. I hope his successor carries on in his footsteps. Anything else would be a loss.

[Rigel]

In a 2012 interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he criticised the adaptations, saying: "They gutted the book, making an action film for 15 to 25-year-olds." He also said: "Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time," and that "the commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing".

Well, yeah... I was just having this discussion yesterday with someone at work who had never seen Peter Jackson's early work, and I pointed out how ludicrous it was that the man who mad Bad Taste, Braindead and Meet the Feebles would be the one to make The Lord of the Rings.

I do love the filmed trilogy as something separate from the books, but I can't stand his Hobbit trilogy, while I'll go watch the Rankin/Bass Hobbit film at the drop of a hat.

To the subject at hand, Christopher Tolkein took on a tremendous undertaking, and it's partly due to his work that Middle Earth has so many rabid fans today. Imagine if we had never gotten The Lay of Beren and Luthien, or The Silmarillion. Part of what drew me in to these works when I was young was the backstory, and it was such a rich backstory, that we never could have appreciated without Christopher's work.

[wayfriend]

Well, it goes without saying that CT's demise would bring out feelings about the movies. (On this, I am firmly on the the-movies-don't-change-the-book side.)

But let's remember that Tolkein's works first became a phenomenon when they were adopted by the hippy anti-Vietnam counter-culture of the 60s. Then it was kicked into the nerd counter-culture by the rise of Dungeons and Dragons. Zaentz tried to commodotize it in the late 70s but failed out of sheer ineptitude. All of this before Peter Jackson came along. Tolkien was hardly ever taken seriously outside of a tiny group of zealots, was always carried by a popular and irreverent culture, and lest we forget, much of the scholarly and/or literary approaches to Tolkien were undertaken in response to, and perhaps in opposition to, all of this popular appropriation which some so despise. Without it, Tolkien would have faded into obscurity long ago, his Estate would not have been deemed worth preserving, and no publisher would likely have ever considered anything Christopher wanted to write.

My opinion.

I pointed out how ludicrous it was that the man who mad Bad Taste, Braindead and Meet the Feebles would be the one to make The Lord of the Rings.

That I find not surprising in the least. Those movies required the unconstrained imagination, and the risk-taking of the avante-garde, not to mention a fearless approach to technology, which was utterly necessary to make LOTR. What would have been surprising is for Ron Howard or Martin Scorsese to have made it.

[High Lord Tolkien]

My opinion.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I must admit that Christopher's approach to the estate seemed a bit uptight.

OTOH, perhaps it's on his account that we don't have a LOTR Superstars meet Scooby-Doo gracing the Direct-to-DVD aisle.

Either way, cheers.

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

[Vader]

Publishing every paper napkin his father had schribbled on in a pub does not seem to far from commercialisation if you ask me.

In hindsight the Silmarillion is a Frankenstein monster and most likely not the way J.R.R. would have had it published. In a way Christopher gutted the work of his father here as well.

He was 95, so he had a full life. Godspeed nonetheless.

[Zarathustra]

Vader, The Silmarillion was published in the 70s. Christopher never stopped fleshing out the work that you say he "gutted." In fact, he kept working almost until the end, publishing the Fall of Gondolin in 2018. He has published over a dozen volumes of his father's writing in a scholarly, historical form. If you ever read any of this, you will see how monumental his task was. It was more like an archaeological dig than editing a book. Seeing Tolkien's creation come into being in the form of early, middle, and later drafts is a thing of wonder even more impressive than the finished product. It reveals this thing of beauty to be the product of sweat and tears, labor and love. It doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes from mortal, finite humans. I'm grateful that his son dedicated his life to putting all this together. I'm stunned that Tolkien created so much, it took two lifetimes to show us. A century long journey. My god. Tolkien began this project in 1917, and it has taken all this time to finally show us most of what he did.

Christopher was well aware of the "Frankenstein" nature of the Silmarillion. He regretted it, but come on, it's an unfinished work. Even JRR had problems making it a cohesive whole. That's not Chris's fault.

As for the LOTR movies . . . how long has it been since you guys watched them? I have watched them probably 30 times or more. And not only that, I've listened to every single DVD commentary for all three extended movies (there are 4 separate commentary tracks per movie! Over 40 hours of it!). I've watched every single extra (there are TONS!). I watched every scrap of news online before the movies came out. I spent 100s of hours on TheOneRing.net discussing the movies. I've always been a big fan. I still have my Burger King goblets and figurines.

But you know what? The movies don't hold up. I just watched them for the first time in many years with someone who isn't a fantasy fan, who never saw the movies until now. When you see it through the eyes of an average movie-goer in 2020, you see all the flaws. She said she could tell it was based on a very good book that she'd like to read, but the movie itself was a mess. And she's right. Especially the extended editions. Those additions stick out like sore thumbs. Every time the movies veered away from the book, it was so obvious, even she could tell. She would ask, "Was Frodo this whiny in the book? Did Sam really leave him in the book? Did this many people have fake deaths in the book?" It was OBVIOUS.

There are still a few scenes that bring tears to my eyes ("I can't carry it, but I can carry you!" and "My friends, you bow to no one!"), and most of the first 40 minutes of the Fellowship seems absolutely perfect, but so much of it sucks. Virtually every attempt at humor falls flat. Melodramatic acting. Shitty dialog. A bad script. Look at it again with fresh eyes.

Christopher was right.

[Avatar]

I don't hate the movies, but I don't love them either, and Fellowship was the best of them. (Don't even get me started on the Hobbit movies...)

The only thing the movies did that I definitely appreciated was leave out Tom Bombadril.

--A

[Rigel]

(Don't even get me started on the Hobbit movies...)

The Rankin/Bass one was pretty good

[Avatar]

That the animated one? Never managed to get into it myself, not sure why.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

The only thing the movies did that I definitely appreciated was leave out Tom Bombadril.

--A

Damn, how did I miss that comment?!? I'm with you all the way on that, Avatar! Tom Bombadil is tiresome to me. Writing him into the story early just as things were getting scary seems like a miscalculation on JRRT's part.