Time Magazine mini-review on CoH

elentari3018

elentari3018

Rohan
It's short so i'm typing it all out...

Elf Esteem
"There are two knids of Tolkien fan: the day-trippers who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and let it go at that, and the hard core-- the mighty Uruk-hai fo Tolkien fans-- who have delved into The Silmarillion and grok the deep history of Middle-earth. The latter group will snap up The Children of Hurin, a "new' tale of MIddle-earth cobbled together by Christopher Tolkien out of manuscripts left behind by his dad JRR. But there's a lot there for the weekend warrior too.

Children of Hurin is set in the First Age of MIddle-earth 6500 years pre-Frodo. Your hero is the good-hearted but proud and irascible Turin (son of Hurin), a human warrior who had the good fortune to be trained by elves in wicked swordsmanship. Your villain is the cowardly and spiteful Morgoth, your basic evil incarnate, who squats in his dark fortress of Angband and makes war on all that is just and beautiful.

Children is written in Tolkien's full-on high heroic style, which is sometimes hilarously dorky and faux archaic and as a short subject it never achieves the towering operatic grandeur of the trilogy. But it's still a huge pleasure to be back in Middle-earth and see it in a younger wilder era. There's plety of lore for scholars, and plenty of dwarves and balrogs and mighty smiting for the casual fan. Just one warning: it's a dark tale with a flawed hero, full of ruinous accidnets and bitter betrals. You'll have to wait till the Third Age for a happy ending."


Two of my disagreements:
1) there are no balrogs in CoH-- only mention maybe but not actually there...
2) I thought that the main villain was really Glaurung because he inflicted the most damange to Nienor and Turin... Morgoth is behind it but there is no mention of him really (in terms of doing active harm) other than his inprisonment of Hurin.


What does everyone think?

It *is* cool that it's in Time Magazine no matter how short it is--- (though of course i would appreciate it occupy the whole entertainment section. ;)
 
I object to being referred to as an Uruk-hai! Mighty Tolkien fans may be, but we're not evil.

There's a brief Balrog at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but only a brief one. But it's there.

With regard to your second point, I disagree. Morgoth is definitely the villain. Glaurung's a henchman - a pretty evil and powerful henchman as henchmen go, but he's not the driving force of evilness at this stage of Arda's history. And he's not the one that curses Túrin. Just because Morgoth isn't there on scene as it were doesn't mean he's not the bad guy. It's interesting the reviewer describes him as "cowardly" - perhaps not the word I'd have chosen, but it does fit. I suspect we shall explore the role of Morgoth more when the Reading Room discusses CoH in June though!
 
that it is not the dragon, but the spirit inside him, that is the real danger. And the spirit inside Glaurung is Morgoth's spirit.
 
Thanks for the heads-up on the Time article... who's on the cover? (It's easier to pick out an issue when you can see who's on it.)

I tried finding the EW article on the net, but they haven't posted it yet, so I hope you don't mind if I post it here.


Sword Loser

J.R.R. Tolkien hit fantasy heights, but his posthumous epic is stuck in Middle-earth.

by Jeff GIles

J.R.R Tolkien's The Children of Húrin is a tragedy - and not just because I had to read it. The posthumous novel unfolds in Middle-earth six or seven thousand years B.F. (Before Frodo), and concerns Túrin, an exile wandering among outlaws because his family has been cursed by the dark lord Morgoth. Túrin’s anguished mother has no idea what has befallen him. His sister’s destiny is on a collision course with his own. And before long, he gets swept up in Morgoth’s genocidal war against the Elves. Only his wits, his decency, and his faithful sword Gurthang – called Anglachel before it was reforged at Nargothrond – stand between him and the dark lord’s wiliest dragon, Glaurung. Nothing at all stands between him and his Shakespearean fate. To reveal any more would be… boring.

Look, I love Tolkien as much as the next guy who got pissed when he couldn’t be Dungeon Master in high school. (Okay, college.) And I reject the notion that his work is a love-it or hate-it proposition. It’s possible to be stunned by the expansiveness of The Lord of the Rings’ vision – without it, there would be no Star Wars or Harry Potter, end of story – but still groan over its swampy, unedited prose. It’s possible to remember The Hobbit as a singular event from childhood, but still suspect that The Silmarillion is just a migraine waiting to happen. Tolkien died in 1973, sailing away to the Grey Havens at age 81. His son Christopher has been holed up in the south of France ever since, contending with thousands of pages of Dad’s stops and starts. Sad to say, but Christopher, now 82, will either finish cobbling together the whole wide story of Middle-earth, or literally die trying.

Tolkien began writing The Children of Húrin in his early 20s, then tried and failed to finish it decades later. (Obsessives may remember the characters from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.) The author’s signature themes are in place: bravery, loyalty, men who keep changing the name of their swords. But writ far larger are Tolkien’s foibles. While editing fragments together, Christopher declined to insert any connective or explanatory prose of his own – a noble gesture that comes at a cost. At its worst, Húrin is an impenetrable forest of names, lacking in subtlety and delight, over-stuffed with strangled syntax: “’Alas!’ he cried. “Too well did I teach this child of Men craft in wood and field! An Elvish band almost one might think this to be!’” (Who invited Yoda?) Húrin is so awkward and immature a piece of writing that you ultimately feel a pang of compassion – not for Túrin, who proves to be an impetuous jerk, but for Tolkien himself. This is hardly the return of a king.

Giles gave the book a score of D.
 
Mind you, it won't be to everyone's taste. And sometimes Tolkien's prose is clunky. But I always think that the clunky bits are outweighed by the non-clunky, and I like the epic medieval sweep of the theme.

Thanks for posting the review.
 
lol i agree that we're not evil.

OH yes, i see you and Curious' point about Morgoth being the evil one in here... [blush] You both have good points.

I really like Marcel Bulles' commentary here especially this line:

But it’s the books that strike back now, at the turning of the tide. It will make more people start reading Tolkien again, some of them doubtful about the hard-to-read quality of The Silmarillion and its stories of the First and Second Age of Middle-earth.
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More of the article could be found here: http://www.marcel-buelles.de/the-children-of-hurin-tolkien-is-back-with-a-vengeance/
 
Thanks for the heads-up on the Time article... who's on the cover? (It's easier to pick out an issue when you can see who's on it.)

I tried finding the EW article on the net, but they haven't posted it yet, so I hope you don't mind if I post it here.



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The Times cover is with the VA Tech massacre victims... :(
You have to flip towards the back for a one column article. :p

Re:
Ok, there seems to be two types of people reading CoH-- those who *are* hardcore fans or those who are casual readers (which this Giles guy seems to be) who doesn't understand Tolkien enough to understand why there would be another book after 30 years.

Case in point... No one "sailed to the Grey Havens"-- it was somewhere to go in order to board a ship that PASSES INTO VALINOR
Tolkien died in 1973, sailing away to the Grey Havens at age 81.
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Therefore this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and falls into the category of those who are very misinformed about Tolkien's legendarium....
:p[:(][mad]
[/quote]
 
If so, it could only have been for the video release. I haven't kept up with Entertainment Weekly, which I used to read regularly, but the magazine's two film critics at the time of the films' releases were Lisa Schwarzbaum, who absolutely adored them, and Owen Gleiberman, who left the LotR reviews to Schwarzbaum, as I recall, but he did include RotK on his ten best list for 2003.
 
There's a brief Balrog at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but only a brief one. But it's there.
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My copy isn't due to arrive until sometime next week, but Michael Drout reads from the closing moments of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad as part of a radio interview here (he offers a couple corrections here). I hear Gothmog mentioned. Is Fingon's tag-team defeat earlier in the battle by Gothmog and another balrog not mentioned?
 
Ok, there seems to be two types of people reading CoH-- those who *are* hardcore fans or those who are casual readers (which this Giles guy seems to be) who doesn't understand Tolkien enough to understand why there would be another book after 30 years.

Case in point... No one "sailed to the Grey Havens"-- it was somewhere to go in order to board a ship that PASSES INTO VALINOR

Therefore this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and falls into the category of those who are very misinformed about Tolkien's legendarium....
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Mind you, I don't expect much of a book review at Entertainment Weekly, especially one so short, and it is pretty amusing to see an unsupported critique of Tolkien's style only a week after Michael Drout complained about that very thing and showed how to do the job right, but...

Is The Children of Húrin aimed only at devotees of Tolkien's legendarium? Should other readers be cut some slack? I remember what squire wrote last fall:

What is the import of a mainstream scholar's mistakes in getting the details of Tolkien's stories right?...

As Tolkien geeks, we fans on this board tend to jump on stuff like this. After all, we pride ourselves on our mastery of Tolkien trivia. But is it really all that important?

If their major points seem valid, should we be so critical? What is it about Tolkien and his funny little sealed-off world that inspires us to strive for mastery of knowledge of that world -- and then set up barriers of lore that outsiders must overcome before we'll read their thoughts about Tolkien's writings in relation to their own fields and disciplines (medieval studies, popular culture, literary criticism, etc.)?
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Gothmog appears, but he's not described as a Balrog - just "high-captain of Angband". Over the page a Balrog (singular) appears and "casts a thong of steel" around Fingon, which enables Gothmog to kill him. Annoyingly I left my Sil back in the UK (must get Mum to post it!) so I can't compare, but you're right, I think, that Gothmog is clearly identified as a Balrog in the Sil. And possibly in UT as well?
 
CoH falls somewhere between LOTR and the Sil. It's very similar to the Túrin chapter in the Sil, but has the advantage of standing alone without all the really early First Age stuff which appears to have caught many readers short. And there's much less editorialising from Christopher Tolkien than there is in UT or the HOME volumes. But it is a tougher read in terms of prose style and theme than LOTR, which will be a stumbling-block for some. So it wil obviously appeal more to the devotees than the mainstream reader who may have read LOTR or seen the films but not dared try the Sil - but it's perhaps not for the "read LOTR once, it was all right" sort of person. But then again everyone's different!
 
In Unfinished Tales, the Nirnaeth Arnoediad is not described, and Gothmog only appears once, in a note by Christopher T.

In The Silmarillion, Gothmog kills Fëanor shortly after the Noldor return to Middle-earth, kills Fingon and captures Húrin in the Nirnaeth, and kills and is killed by Ecthelion in the fall of Gondolin. In each case, he is described as "Lord of Balrogs", though maybe that description's use in the Silmarillion version of the Nirnaeth was Christopher's addition.
 
Maybe "Lord of Balrogs" meant he commanded them rather than being one? Or maybe this is just a Tolkien inconsistency!
 
It's interesting the reviewer describes him as "cowardly" - perhaps not the word I'd have chosen, but it does fit.
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[COLOR=330033]I thought of this thread today when, reading Children of Hurin, I came to this passage (p.166):[/COLOR]

  • "But we will win that time for him!" said Turin. "Nargothrond shall stand! Never again will Morgoth the Craven come forth from Angband, and all his reliance must be on his servants; thus says Melian of Doriath."
 
which could easily be faulty. Somehow his name seems familiar, but I have a negative memory of him in connection with the LOTR movies.


If so, it could only have been for the video release. I haven't kept up with Entertainment Weekly, which I used to read regularly, but the magazine's two film critics at the time of the films' releases were Lisa Schwarzbaum, who absolutely adored them, and Owen Gleiberman, who left the LotR reviews to Schwarzbaum, as I recall, but he did include RotK on his ten best list for 2003.
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I think CoH *IS* penetrable to casual readers... it really does stand alone by itself very well and with the Preface and Introduction giving a background to the First Age, i do not see why not any reader, Tolkien enthusiast or not, could not get into the story.

EW magazine is very low-brow..i saw it on newstands today and saw the review and this Giles guy just doesn't know what he's talking about. I prefer reading the review in Time Magazine or any newspaper that can critique a bit better. Maybe it's just not Giles' cup of tea but the writing was all right and i thought it did not deserve such a low grade. :p EW is for critiquing movies and tv shows-- they should stay away from books. :P

NE Brigand-- are you the same person i see posting on Prof. Michael Drout's blog? I like your thoughts. :)
 
NE Brigand-- are you the same person i see posting on Prof. Michael Drout's blog? I like your thoughts. :)
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The world is certainly better for there being only one of me.

I think CoH *IS* penetrable to casual readers... it really does stand alone by itself very well and with the Preface and Introduction giving a background to the First Age, i do not see why not any reader, Tolkien enthusiast or not, could not get into the story.
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I hope you're right. Several reviewers have been turned off by the introductory matter, which gives even some longtime Tolkien fans pause (for example, see this discussion on another site, particularly for dna's review).

EW magazine is very low-brow... EW is for critiquing movies and tv shows-- they should stay away from books.
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Well, I don't believe movies are necessarily lower-brow than books, so I can't agree with you there. But I think you're right that EW is not known for especially penetrating insights.
 
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