Book of material written by Tolkien edited by Carl Hostetter

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, this is an interesting development.

The Nature of Middle-earth

Carl has posted here in the past as Aelfwine, but from what I have seen elsewhere (such as in the Tolkien Society's Facebook page) he is unable to comment publicly on this project, so I won't expect him to say anything. It appears that the news got leaked by someone at Houghton Mifflin, and then it was made clear that it was also being published by Harper Collins.

[Inanna]

oh, wow.

[kzer_za]

Exciting news! I'm very curious whether Amazon has seen this material?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Honestly, I'm more excited about John Garth's The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. What a wonderful book.

We'll see about this one. It could be great, or it could be meh.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I definitely moving much more to the "great" side of expectation.

Here is a very good interview with Carl in which he talks about the book.

From Linguistics to Metaphysics: interview with Carl F. Hostetter, editor of the new book by J.R.R. Tolkien

I particularly appreciated this quote:

NoMe brings some of Tolkien’s last writings. What to expect from this new publication?

I can’t yet speak about any more specifics, but I can say that The Nature of Middle-earth will appeal most to those who enjoy the descriptive and historical parts of Unfinished Tales, as well as those who enjoy Morgoth’s Ring.

That would be me!

Reading this interview definitely made me more excited about the new book. But I must admit I was quite taken aback to suddenly see my name mentioned in the middle of it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Google Books has put up a preview, including the table of contents, and Carl's Foreword.

https://books.google.pt/books?id=MDQKEA ... &q&f=false

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks for sharing that! Is this the first time we've seen Tolkien use the word "puberty"?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Could be. I check in the discussion in "Laws and Customs of the Eldar" in which he talks about Elves reaching full stature at between 50 and 100 years old as the most likely place where it would have been used, but I do not see it there.

I also searched through Letters and while there is one appearance of the word, it is in introduction to a letter Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin, observing "Edwin Muir, reviewing The Return of the King in the Observer on 27 November, wrote: 'All the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes .... and will never come to puberty. .... Hardly one of them knows anything about women.' Tolkien, in characteristic form, responded, "Blast Edwin Muir and his delayed adolescence. He is old enough to know better. It might do him good to hear what women think of his 'knowing about women', especially as a test of being mentally adult. If he had an M.A. I should nominate him for the professorship of poetry – a sweet revenge."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Doug Anderson has asked me to review this book for The Journal of Tolkien Research (he had previously asked me to review both Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin). So I guess I'll be reading it very closely. As I mentioned in another thread, I am endeavoring to read the entirety of HoMe between now and when I receive the book, so that I can consider "NoMe" (or "GNoMe" as Elthir at TORN dubbed it) as the final chapter of one long work (albeit by a different editor). We'll see if I make it.

[TolkienJRR]

Cant wait. I preordered my copy of Nature but nothing yet. Some have received their copies already. I am jealous.

[kzer_za]

I've flipped through various sections and read bits and pieces. My first impression is that this has some neat tidbits (like slightly more on the Avari, and one of the more explicit statements that the Valar did in fact make a mistake in summoning the elves), but nothing earth-shattering. Some parts do demonstrate a weakness of Tolkien's final phase in focusing too much on highly specific nitty-gritty technical details and tinkering with things that didn't need to be changed.

That said, I'm glad it was published.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I just submitted my review (or at least a first draft of it) to Doug Anderson. It is quite a long review (I thought my review of The Fall of Gondolin was long, but this one well exceeds it) and it quite mixed. My assessment largely matches yours, k_z, although there is some material that I think is very important. I agree with you though that there is "too much on highly specific nitty-gritty technical details and tinkering with things that didn't need to be changed" and also that there are some things that never should have been taken off the cutting room floor. There is also (I won't reveal the details here) an aspect of overstepping the bounds of editorial function.

[TolkienJRR]

I finished mine a while back thoe I never attempted any type of critical analysis. I am anxious to hear your review of it and show me what I missed myself.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't think that is fair to yourself. My perspective is no more valid than your own. And, to quote something that I wrote in the review (at least as it stands now):

Of course, with a book of this nature with such diverse subject matter, different readers are likely to find different portions of greater and lesser interest. Even with The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s most popular and successful work, Tolkien observed “that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved.” (FR, Foreword to the Second Edition, xxiii). This is even more true with material such as that presented in this book. As Tolkien stated in a draft letter in 1956 talking about preparing appendices for The Lord of the Rings, “… while many like you demand maps, others wish for geological indications rather than places; many want Elvish grammars, phonologies, and specimens; some want metrics and prosodies — not only of the brief Elvish specimens, but of the 'translated' verses in less familiar modes, such as those written in the strictest form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (e.g. the fragment at the end of the Battle of the Pelennor, V vi 124). Musicians want tunes, and musical notation; archaeologists want ceramics and metallurgy. Botanists want a more accurate description of the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil, alfirin, mallos, and symbelmynë; and historians want more details about the social and political structure of Gondor; general enquirers want information on the Wainriders, the Harad, Dwarvish origins, the Dead Men, the Beornings, and the missing two wizards (out of five).” (Letters 248.)

This new book has some of each of these things: biology (particularly Elvish biology but also some fascinating details of fauna and flora of Númenor), geology, maps and diagrams, and (of greatest interest to this reviewer), a very deep dive into some of the thorniest and most profound philosophical, spiritual and theological questions raised by Tolkien’s legendarium.

I will add that there is an aspect to my review that I am fairly sure that you will disagree with. And that is okay.

The nice thing about the online Journal of Tolkien Research is that the time between submission and publication is usually pretty short, so I am hopefully that you will be able to get to see the full review soon.

[Jude]

Wait - so the new book has some musical notation in it?

[Inanna]

V, your review excerpt has me really curious about this book…

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No, no musical notation, precious. I suppose I need to revise that section to make that clearer.

Inanna, there is a lot of fascinating material in this new book that I will need read several times to get a real handle on. There is also a lot that I can guarantee I will be skipping over in future readings.

ETA: I changed "This new book has some of each of these things: ..." to "This new book has many of these things: ... ."

[Jude]

Too bad about the lack of musical notation. I always wonder what the melody is when I come across the songs during a reading. I know the melody of the ents' march from a recording of a reading Tolkien himself did of that section. I'm actually in the process of composing a version of Sam's song in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. And I know the melody of the Troll Song, since during a discussion back in the TORC days, we found out that it was based on the traditional Song of the Fox. I knew that song because as kids we had a record of Odetta singing it, and it was one of our favourites. When I found this out, I wrote my dad from work to tell him what I just learned, and he wrote back "I knew that - it was obvious from the rhythm."

For the curious, here is Odetta singing the Song of the Fox:



(you can mentally substitute in the words of the Troll Song, if you like)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm actually in the process of composing a version of Sam's song in the Tower of Cirith Ungol

And when the composition is done, you are going to record it and post it here, right?

Right?

[Inanna]

Right?