Obscure Tolkien book to come out this spring

[LanternWaste]

Source: MSNBC Wire Services

NEW YORK - An early, long-unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien is coming out.

"The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun," a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics that predates Tolkien's writing of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, will be published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

According to Houghton, the book will include an introduction by Tolkien and notes by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, whose fantasy novels have sold millions of copies, died in 1973. "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun" was written in the 1920s and '30s, when the author was teaching at Oxford University.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29242931/

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Mods, apologies if a dupe... I searched and didn't see this posted.

[sofa king]

1. If I were still thirteen....

...It would go on my bookshelf right next to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. And it would likely go equally unread.

Sorry, all you Frodists out there, but I couldn't find the love for 'em.

[LanternWaste]

2. I enjoyed his stuff...

I enjoyed his (Tolkien's) stuff at 13, 31 and even 42... but I'm the first to admit that one's taste in literature is highly subjective.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. This isn't part of that. It's apparently a retelling of the old Germanic legend--

the Sigrdrifumal of the Elder Edda, the stuff that formed the background of Wagner's Ring Cycle.

[sofa king]

4. Yes, and that's what makes me think I won't read it.

I fear it will be the literary equivalent of waiting around drunk for hours just so I can say I heard Ride of the Valkyries.

[Jackpine Radical]

15. Yeah, pretty much, if you're not into that kind of thing.

I kinda like that stuff, though. I've struggled through the Elder Edda, including dabbling in the Old Norse, which I can't quite reliably read based on my mediocre ability to read the modern Scandinavian languages & German. Nevertheless, I have been fascinatd by that stuff since childhood, and once wrote a book, published in Britain, on the runic traditions.

[Zhade]

17. Honestly, the best thing Jackson did was cut Tom Bombadil.

Utterly unnecessary to the book itself -- didn't advance the plot in any meaningful way, and was just annoying and dumb.

If he'd kept it, we'd have gotten HOBBITS: THE MUSICAL.

[Bolo Boffin]

20. You say HOBBITS: THE MUSICAL like it's a bad thing.

but i agree that Tom didn't need to be in the movie

[Zhade]

21. I sure do.

NT!

[AyanEva]

30. That section of the book was so annoying that it actually made me angry.

I'm like, "WHY IS THIS IN HERE?" but I kept reading through it thinking that maybe I was supposed to get something out of it. By the time they parted ways with Tom Bombadil, I was still like, "WHY WAS THAT IN THERE?"

[Zhade]

32. I know! And then he just comes in at the end, LIKE WE STILL GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HIM.

Worst part of the story. Tolkien should have cut it entirely.

But I forgive him, thanks to the rest of the story.

[gulliver]

31. Gotta respectfully disagree.

Bombadil was immune to the power of the Ring--unlike the entire rest of the inhabitants of Middle Earth. That makes him one of the most interesting things in the story. Granted, he was not too interesting plot-wise, except for when he put the ring on his finger and didn't disappear. That showed that there was an entirely different form of power at work, a hint that there was more to the world, an orthogonal plot, something permanent if prosaic.

Yes, it was corny and weird: the "nightly noises", the Barrow wights, the old willow. But that was palate cleansing. Jackson should have left Bombadil in. The movies could have used something to air out the plodding, foregone course of the war and the periodic monster confrontations. Those are the things that probably really held the audiences who hadn't read the books though.

Jackson should have left out the whole Aragorn/Arwen/Elrond thing. I took that whole thing as an attempt to glue a love story and major female character onto the structure. It was a hack. Arwen was much more powerful as a mystery in the books. Bombadil would have made the movie more Tolkien-esque, IMO. Boring, like the Earth and the past.

[Zhade]

33. Goodness, no. Just no.

TB was not interesting in the slightest. More importantly, from a story point he was utterly unimportant to the entire tale.

[Xithras]

42. Bombadil was an indirect reference to the plot of the Silmarillion.

As great as LoTR was, the Silmarillion revealed that it was really just a footnote, a last gasp of a war that had stretched over the life of the world. The true power and magic had already left the world, and the mightiest ages of the magic civilizations had already been lost to history. Sauron was just a lowly assistant who happened to be left on the planet when the real war had ended, and was only considered powerful because the TRUE powers had already been destroyed or fled. He was an anachronism from an earlier era. So was Tom Bombadil. So was Gandalf.

Bombadil acts as a reminder that, while Sauron was powerful, there were still other forces in the world that were even greater. To him, Sauron didn't even qualify as an annoyance.

Though Tolkien downplayed it, LoTR also took a few cues from the WWII era in which it was written. The rise of a once vanquished foe, the horrifying leader with dreams of world domination, the fight to save the world from domination by evil...it's no coincidence that he wrote the book in WWII London. Several people have made the connection that England's wealthy elite were often derided during the war as being aloof to the tribulations of the commoners and of the war itself. They lived in their country estates, experienced none of the shortages or rationing, and used their power and privilege to largely insulate themselves from the conflict. While Bombadil wasn't written as a malicious character, more than one person has drawn the connection between the character so powerful and aloof that the war didn't concern him, and the elites of WWII England who largely acted the same way.

[JerseygirlCT]

26. Unfinished... not so captivating

Silmarillion - ok.

None of it reaches the heights of LOTR for me, though.

[iverglas]

44. and when I was thirteen

I felt exActly the same way.

Some eager librarian or bookstore person in the early 60s recommended that my mum buy me the lot of them for Christmas one year, evidently because I would read anything fantasy or sci fi ... CS Lewis, Edward Eager, the coloured fairy books, Heinlein, Asimov, Ellison, Bradbury, Alison Uttley, L'Engle ... so if I was that undiscriminating, I'd read Tolkien.

I'd rather have got socks. Worst most boring most tedious crap I'd ever laid eyes on. Struck me that it was fantasy for people who'd never read good fantasy.

Every have the pleasure of reading his poetry? I got landed with a whole book of it. Even the bits of it in the novels ... I'd find myself reading the prose to the rhythm of

da DA da DA da DA da DA ...

Brr. Makes me shiver to remember the pain of it.

[grytpype]

5. Like clockwork.

[LanternWaste]

6. You confused me on that one...

What is like clockwork...?

[grytpype]

9. Every X months the Tolkien Estate publishes something that JRR didn't publish in his lifetime.

I don't know when they're going to run out of material...

[Recursion]

13. He is kind of the Tupac of fantasy novels

And I'm curious how many more manuscripts Christopher is sitting on.

[Xithras]

43. Hundreds, allegedly.

I read an interview with Christopher Tolkien a long while back, and he explained that his father was a prolific writer who religiously wrote down every story that popped into his head. Some were first drafts, while others were half finished. Some were even only a few paragraphs or just plot outlines.

Keep in mind that Christopher Tolkien is actually the "author" of most of the works being released at this point. The Silmarillion was the only one nearly finished when Tolkien died. All of the books since then, including this new one, are heavily modified, expanded, or embellished by Christopher Tolkien. He's a skilled writer in his own right, and is actively trying to complete his fathers works.

[slampoet]

7. Well, thank god they aren't releasing "Frodo does Dallas"

[Marrah_G]

8. omg omg omg omg !

[LanternWaste]

10. I'm gonna go out on a limb here...

"omg omg omg omg !"

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume your a fan of his works, yes...?
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


No worries-- my dream house is:

[Marrah_G]

11. I would TOTALLY live in one........

I cried during that first scene cause it looked exactly how I had pictured it since childhood.

Yeah.....I am a big Tolkien fan. I snagged the hobbit from my brother when I was like 8.

[LanternWaste]

16. I knew there was a reason I liked you...

I knew there was a reason I liked you! :)

We can be neighbors-- you get Bag End, and I'll take Mr. Tumnus' cave (Lion, Witch & Wardrobe). We'll meet at the Green Dragon in Bywater once a week and dance on the tables. :)

(Not to try to out-nerd you or anything, but I hope you've seen the extended release of the film-- the Shire sequence is so much more fulfilling and full of beautiful landscape shots. A real must see if you dig the movies...)

[Zhade]

18. I pretty much only watch the extended cuts.

Every six months or so, time permitting, I'll do a 3-day marathon. One movie a day. Great stuff.

[LanternWaste]

19. Thank God!

Thank God! I was afraid I may be one of the only people in the galaxy to do that-- but you're the second person this week who's told me the same thing.

I limit my viewings to merely once a year-- but as I've got a handful of DVDs I also watch more than a few times (Band of Brothers, A&E's mini-series production of Horatio Hornblower, and a few others that I call "comfort film"), the year can go by pretty fast.

To this day, every time I watch the third film and we come to the sequence in which the Rohirrim make that final charge into the flank of the Army of Mordor, I get a serious case of goose-bumps. ("Swords will be shaken, shields will be splinted...!").

Great stuff indeed!

[Zhade]

22. Hell, reading your description of the charge just gave ME goosebumps!

It may be time to visit Frodo and pals again... : )

Btw, I don't thank god, I thank Peter Jackson. :p

Funny story: friend of mine has a friend at New Line. He went to pick her up, she put a script in his hands while she opened a filing cabinet, then she locked the script inside. It was for FOTR. This was while filming was ongoing.

He wanted to break into that filing cabinet SO BAD!

[JerseygirlCT]

28. Add me to the list of geeks

I reread the books - sometimes once a year. And the movies I bring out to entrance the small kid. He'll be reading the books, too, once he works through the library-sized pile he's already accumulated in his room, lol.

I don't know what it is about them - and I do love fantasy and sci-fi, but these books... there's something so magical and special about them for me.

[Zhade]

34. It's the courage and real emotion found within that does it for me.

Highly inspiring.

[JerseygirlCT]

35. It is. And it doesn't stop getting to me, no matter how many

times I reread the books. Every time, I'm totally amazed and transported. Even when I know exactly what will happen. Even with all that.

I do need to get new copies, though. Those paperbacks from HS are getting pretty worn!

[Idylle Moon Dancer]

45. Indeed

I pretty reliably cry at Boromir's death scene.

[Broken_Hero]

36. That part, where the Rohirrim

charges in ROTK always, always gives me goosebumps...that whole sequence was awesome, I just love blasting my speakers out when that part comes out.

I watch the whole LOTR once a year as well, usually Thanksgiving, or Xmas time...I got the extended stuff, so it takes roughly 12hours to cut through them all...same with Band of Brothers, I usually watch that once, or twice a year...for some reason, that set doesn't seem to drag on and the whole set goes by fast.

[JerseygirlCT]

27. That's what amazed me, too Marrah

Do you remember the awful cartoon version? Blech.

But Jackson just nailed it. I went, expected to be very disappointed, and possibly pissed off. And there, on the screen... was just what I'd always seen, too.

(And I started reading the Hobbit to my kids before they could really read it themselves. I think they're almost fully indoctrinated by now, lol)

[Marrah_G]

38. The Hobbit cartoon was HORRID !

I seriously cried my eyes out in the theatre during the first scene of LOTR. I had expected to be left down, instead it was so good, so right. Way beyond anything I had anticipated.

[kevsand]

12. He still is responsible for the single finest moment in all of English literature:

Frodo at the Council of Elrond: "I will go, though I do not know the way."

[KatyMan]

14. Close,

But the best part is in Return of the King: "Horns, horns, horns. Horns of the north, wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last"
:D

[Hekate]

37. Nay, Gandalf to Frodo in the mountain...

Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me... I wish none of this had happened,"
Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Deep in the darkness of the Bush years I watched LOTR-1, and the hairs just about stood up on the back of my neck at that scene.

I have been a fan of the Trilogy since 1965, and I love the films as much. Peter Jackson absolutely managed to create that world as I envisioned it, especially the Shire.

Hekate

[poverlay]

39. I had to get out my red leatherbound version to get the exact quote, but this is the part that I

used to read out loud: From The Battle of the Pelennor Fields when the Nazgul is about to kill Theoden and "Dernhelm" gets in the way: "A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'" 'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!' Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'"

That part, in the context of the most amazing fantasy battle ever consigned to paper at that point, used to get my heart a-pumpin' big time!

I wish Jackson had kept it verbatim from the book. Even if only the bold part above. Still an amazingly rendered work by Jackson. He really worked a miracle for all the true fans out there.

[Hekate]

40. Oooooo, red leatherbound? Can I touch?

You just gave me goosebumps with that quote.

One change that Jackson made that I completely applaud is expanding the role of a few women, but Eowyn's battle scene was already wonderful.

Hekate

[poverlay]

41. I know! Only the readers appreciate that. My mom got it for me when I was 14. I almost never even

open it. Instead I go to the extremely beat up boxed set that my grandma got me when I was ten. It just sits, for twenty plus years, in a place of honor on my dresser or bookcase. I just dust it and think: Precious..preeeecious... (Yes, I'm a complete fantasy nerd and proud of it.)
Ya know, I'm pretty sure you can still buy the exact same version for $40.-$80. on Amazon. It has a wonderful fold out map of Middle Earth.

I agree with you about Jackson expanding the role of women in the movie. Eowyn, Arwen, especially Galadriel, and even Rosie were fantastic characters. He could have used more like them, and of them, and not harmed the story in any way. Of course it feels like heresy to even so much as think about changing the LOTR!

~P

[JerseygirlCT]

29. A great line, to be sure nt

[TXDemGal]

23. Wow, seems like a risky business move on Houghton's part

in this economy. Retelling of the Norse epic(s)...think I'll probably pass on this.

[BreweryYardRat]

24. Cooooooooooool.

Great news.

[JerseygirlCT]

25. I still love LOTR

I reread it every few years - it's like taking a vacation for me.

And I'm desperately attempting to hook my kids, too!