Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
One of the interesting things about Tolkien's works is that we have a wealth of material put out by Christopher Tolkien that shows various pieces of back story changed over the years. The Hobbit came out in 1937. The LOTR (which was intended to be read as a single volume) came out in 1954. Tolkien spent many years refining those books. His initial manuscript of the Hobbit was actually finished in 1932.
We have examples of the retelling or reworking of many, many different stories. The whole host of Greek myths and legends, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Certainly, prose versions of the Iliad and Odyssey make those stories more accessible to many readers. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
The flip side is that a rework of LOTR/The Hobbit wouldn't be even remotely the same thing. That's the whole story teller thing. Part of what makes LOTR/The Hobbit what they were is Tolkien's constantly reworking them over the space of a long period of time. It's the craftmanship. A violin is a violin, yet a Stradivarius is renown for it's craftsmanship. That craftsmanship is what you lose if you go with a "dumbed down", or abridged version of LOTR.
Certainly I'm one of those people who would like to see some of the Tolkien back story given to a quality author. Perhaps, someone will file the serial numbers off of various pieces of the Tolkien back story and write Beren and Luthien as a stand alone novel, or better yet, the Tolkien estate will license it to a quality author, much like Sanderson finished off the WOT. I think it unlikely, but one never knows.
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I'm with you partway. I have strict rules about canon, personally. Publication draws a line under reworking a story, even by the author. I don't like revised editions (Waugh's rewriting of
Brideshead Revisited as one example; I'm glad the new version wasn't published here). And witterings outside the published material by the author don't count, either. J.K. Rowling needed to shut up a long time ago about gay Dumbledore and all the rest of it. Alas, I admit that if she publishes a book about Dumbledore backstory it becomes canon, as she's the author and it's her right.
That said, I don't care what a greedy, money-grubbing estate licenses, anything by someone other than the original author which fleshes out the published material, whether sequel or backstory, whatever, does not count. It didn't happen, it won't happen. I wish heirs had more respect for the artisty and integrity of that golden-egg-laying goose of an original author.