Have you read other Tolkien books....

[areader]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/unfinished tales/and so on...fascinated by the Inklings and biographies on Tolkien's life. Even enough to go into they mythical origins of things that were borrowed. Once you go into that the maps become so much more interesting...places that are still on our maps...the sheer magnitude of it all is amazing.

[Naryaló S dú]

I would never read books other then the lord of the rings, the hobbit and the simirillian. This si because Tolkiens son released them out of his fathers many secret works, even though before he died Tolkien asked his son not to release any more of his books.

[pyan]

Can you quote any references to support this sweeping statement?

For a start, if you belive this, you shouldn't have read the Silmarillion, because that was put into shape, edited, and published by Christopher Tolkien, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, after his father's death - and it was his express wish that this should be done, as JRRT had always wanted it to be published.

Secondly, what "secret works"?
Most of the notes and drafts of Tolkiens work were sold, not donated, to Marquette University by JRRT himself, for their use. They are freely available for study on application to the University, and are accessible to their students.

Thirdly, the History of Middle Earth series, published by CJRT is not a story as such - it is an account of the writing of the story of the LotR.

May I respectfully suggest that you read the Letters of JRRT, and some of the biographies - Carpenter's is a good one to start with.

[paranoid marvin]

It's just a shame that The Silmarillion and Children Of Hurin couldn't have been presented in an easy-reading style like LOTR or The Hobbit

They may be informative and interesting to those requiring further knowledge of Middle Earth , but I cannot say that they are ENJOYABLE to read - which , let's face it , is the main reason people read novels

If The LOTR or The Hobbit had been written in a similar style to The Silmarillion or The Children Of Hurin , it is unlikely that either would have been as well-read , and well-loved , as they still are today

[j. d. worthington]

I must say that I disagree where The Silmarillion is concerned. It's in more of the "high style", if you will, but I find it thoroughly enjoyable; it remains one of my favorites, not just of Tolkien, but in general.... I've not yet read The Children of Hurin, as I'm swamped with other reading for a good while to come, I'm afraid... but I'm glad to have it, and the little I've browsed through it, I don't think I'd agree with you there, either.

Perhaps it's just that I've read so many of the older fantasies, which used a more "distanced" style -- William Morris, E. R. Eddison, James Branch Cabell, etc. -- and therefore I've no complaints about such an approach. But, then, even when I first began reading fantasy, there were authors who used such, and I found (and still find) them to be eminently entertaining, as well as much more textually complex, allowing for new layers in repeated readings, so that they seldom grow old or stale... they simply continue to grow better with each reading.

On The History of Middle Earth, however... that one can be a bit of a pain at times, if you're looking for enjoyable reading as far as story is concerned. Parts of it are indeed just that, and there are many passages that are among Tolkien's most beautifully written and moving; but other sections you have to really have a love of the concepts and ideas he's playing with -- not simply the "secondary world" he's building, but the philosophical concepts underlying everything -- in order to truly enjoy them...

[pyan]

j d; Have you the complete set of HoME? I wanted to know the reason for the Trotter/Strider change, and I can't find it anywhere.

[paranoid marvin]

But why release these 2 books - silmarillion and hurin - in a style totally different to the far more popular approach taken in LOTR and Hobbit?
Like I said , if these 2 books had been written in a similar 'high style' it's highly inlikely that they would be as popular today ; indeed it's arguable whether anyone would have a agreed to publish them in the first place

[j. d. worthington]

Pyan: Yes, I do, though it's been some time since I went through them. I'll try to track down that for you sometime this week, though.

As for why... well, for one thing, The Children of Hurin was written during the same time he wrote The Silmarillion... which he was working on long before he ever thought of The Hobbit, let alone LotR... and neither of them were done in a single go, but over years (decades, really). And actually, such books were much more the approach given to fantasy, outside the pulps. Even in LotR (or, for that matter, briefly, in The Hobbit) you see such a "high style"; it is more the tone used in some parts with Rivendell, or Rohan, and certainly with several portions of the sections on Gondor.

You still see fantasy books take this sort of approach at times, though not anywhere near the amount they used to. But many of the best-known names in fantasy used such a style, and they certainly didn't suffer any great lack of readers (as far as people read fantasy at that point, when no type of fantastic tale, be it horror, fantasy, sf, etc. was all that much in favor, it being a period of extreme realism in fiction save for the pulps). Eddings had three books in a much more difficult style published, which remain classics to this day (a fourth was also published, but posthumously and unfinished); Cabell has always had quite a strong reputation, as he was one of the greatest American stylists of the Twentieth Century; Dunsany certainly was extremely popular for some years, and is becoming so again... and influenced the majority of writers until LotR became such a well-known book; Clark Ashton Smith uses a very lapidary prose style, especially for his outright fantasies; not to mention Lovecraft.... So I'm not at all sure that it would have had such difficulty being published for that reason.

But The Silmarillion, at least (and, if I recall correctly, even the first volumes of The History of Middle-Earth), actually were on the best-seller lists for some time... and The Silmarillion went through several printings within the first few years; I don't know as it's been out of print since... so I think this is more a matter of taste than it being something the general readers (or fantasy readers in general) dislike....

[pyan]

Thanks, jd.

I find that I think of The Silmarillion, TCoH and the Unfinished & Lost Tales as being myths, and The Hobbit and the LotR as being modern stories based on those myths - to me, at least, it explains the difference between the "high style" of the former, and the more colloquial language of the latter.
There are bits of LotR that are reminiscent of the Silmarillion, though: the scene where Aragorn and Gandalf find the sapling of the White Tree, (RotK, Book VI, Chapter V, The Steward and the King) is in the same high style, as is most of that chapter.

[j. d. worthington]

Well, there's that (which is quite accurate, in its way); there's also the fact (as it notes on the title page of LotR) that these were written by the hobbits, and therefore are more likely to be colloquial, or at least less rigorously scholarly, as they were intended to be read by hobbits, as well. Whereas The Silmarillion is supposed to be taken from older Elvish traditions, as are the majority of things in Unfinished Tales and HoME (save for the sections of the latter on LotR). Tolkien followed through on such stylistic niceties, being very aware of such things. That's also why the sections on the Annals and the later history of Arwen and Aragorn reads more in the "high style"... by that time, the material was at least based on things from sources in Gondor, even if slightly recast by later holders of the Red Book....

Which is not to say he didn't make errors in such (though they're surprisingly few, considering the extent of what he did). Simply that he was spot on in choosing the style to convey not only the overt information he wanted the stories to tell, but also the feel of the traditions from which they (supposedly) came....

[paranoid marvin]

Well , all I can say is that personally I found The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings interesting to read , and , although I have tried several times , I cannot say the same of The Silmarillion

Maybe that's just me , but I suspect it is also the opinion of many others

[pyan]

Try skipping the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta, Marvin - the story begins to speed up a bit about chapter 17 of the Quenta Silmarillion, and you can always refer back, using the Index, if you get stuck.

[paranoid marvin]

Originally Posted by pyan

Try skipping the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta, Marvin - the story begins to speed up a bit about chapter 17 of the Quenta Silmarillion, and you can always refer back, using the Index, if you get stuck.

Ok , I will! I must admit I was interested in the earlier (pre--Hobbit) history of Middle-Earth. I guess I was just disappointed that The Silmarillion was not written in a style I was accostemed to.

Mind you , it only goes to show what an accomplished writer Tolkein was , flitting between such contrasting styles of writing seemingly so easily

[pyan]

I found the early part of the book very remote, if that's the right word, dealing as it does withe the creation and the coming of the gods. When it gets down to Numenor and Beleriand, and the interactions between the peoples that inhabit them, the fall of Gondolin, the stories of Beren, and Tuor, and Turin - "human" is not really applicable, but these stories are far more accessible than the start of the book.
Good luck with it anyway - I must confess, it took me a long time to appreciate the whole book, because I, like you I suspect, expected and wanted another LotR. But it is worth it, if you really like the writing of JRRT, I assure you.
I also recommend you read the Letters of JRR Tolkien, and cherrypick the History of Middle-Earth, if you really want to know more about the man, and the sheer depth behind the two main books.

[j. d. worthington]

I think "remote" is a very apt term here, Pyan... if I remember correctly, it's one that CRRT himself applied to those sections of the work. This isn't really surprising, as (according to the myth that Tolkien was creating) these were among the earliest Elvish traditions, dating back to before the fall of the Two Trees and the Noldorin exile (or encompassing the early parts of the latter)... so it is sort of like the earliest parts of the Bible; traditions that are so distant in antiquity that they are seen through a veil of ages... remote, high, and almost numinous in quality.

And yes, that can take some getting used to... but it can add to the feel of the thing, too, by putting the reader in the position of the later generations of elves, or even of men who are of the elf-friends, looking back to a history that is both hallowed and at the same time almost alien in its hoary antiquity...