| Re: The Children of Hurin
I'll be very glad to see the Children of Hurin stories finished and soon on the shelves. They’re quite compelling sagas.
A few years back I was quite taken with the tale of Turin, but disappointed that it existed only in chunks spread across three different Tolkien releases, none of them complete. Well, the Turin saga in the Silmarillion is complete in a sense, but lacks a LOT of text, such as that found in Unfinished Tales. (The Silmarillion is more of an overview narrative, whereas the text in Unfinished Tales is more detailed, featuring a lot of dialogue and characterization not found in The Silmarillion.) I so badly wanted to read it as a complete, epic story, I took it upon myself to make a "complete" version. Using the Silmarillion chapters, the text published in Unfinished Tales, all the footnotes therein, and material published in the History of Middle Earth series, I edited it all together into a “complete” Tale of Turin. It was novella length was all was said and done, and all the writing was Tolkien’s. (A few fragmentary lines from Christopher Tolkien, culled from footnotes, were included because they helped transition passages.)
It has pretty much sat around on a CD-R since.
If the boss knew I did it on his time, he’d wonder what the point was. And I wouldn’t have an answer. Hooray for wasting my time!
As a lifelong Tolkien fan, I’m very glad to see Christopher Tolkien undertaking and completing this project. He’ll have a LOT more to work with, texts that have never seen the light of day, and which will make this an even more compelling saga than it already is. I’m thrilled at this news. |