ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin

James Wynn · 16 Apr 2007, 21:46 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:46:26 -0500
Subject: (urth) ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin
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References: <428900.56593.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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Message-ID: <e8e9702e0704161446o1e765cecsa6b14a0524c270db at mail.gmail.com>

> It strikes me as very weird to define the book after what it tries to be
> rather than what it is. The fact is that when you look at what kind of
> story it is, it is indistinguishable from much modern fantasy. It's a
> secondary world story with magical or fantastical elements that draws
> its estetical inspiration from myth and epics, like most modern epic
> fantasy of quality. The fact that there are some hideously unoriginal
> role playing stories doesn't change this fact.

On the issue of genre labels, I'm not sure I agree with this. Putting,
say, "The Sword of Shanarah" in the bin with the works of William
Morris is to me like labeling the music of the Ramones "Doo-Wop". Yes,
the Ramones show self-evident influence from 50s music; in fact, the
intention of the whole New Wave movement is a return to simple cords
and the roots of Rock&Roll. Undoubtably, it is useful to your local
record store to classify the Rolling Stones, Devo, and Lionel Richie
in the same bin labeled "Rock", but it never helped me to organize my
record collection (not that I own any Lionel Richie albums).

Tolkien's works occupy a middle ground between Morris and Brooks in
that he was writing as a fan of Morris, and Brooks was rewriting
Tolkien. Tolkien is the inventor of Adult Fantasy as we understand it
today. "The Simarillion" of the Morris's Mythopoetic genre. "The Lord
of the Rings" is the new animal that fills bookstores now.

The old Mythopoetic genre is as much the grandparent of modern horror
(e.g. Lovecraft, Machen and Stephen King) as it is of modern Fantasy.

> Tolkien did not invent this tradition. Before him there were writers
> like William Morris, Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison who did similar
> things and just because the tradition hadn't spawned widely marketable
> genre until after Tolkien doesn't make his stuff much different from
> what came later.

This is like saying Ellery Queen novels are not much different from
Edgar Allen Poe's novels and that the divide that is Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle is just an over-sized landmark in the Mystery genre.

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