ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 17 Apr 2007, 15:34 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:34:45 -0700
Subject: (urth) ot-my mini review of Children of Hurin
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On 4/16/07, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

Distinguo: I think "the Mythopoetic genre" really exists more in retrospect
than it did at the time. And, while I know Tolkien respected Morris's work,
I don't think he was really all that much influenced by it (as Lewis said,
"As well try to influence a Bandersnatch!")

To consider Tolkien as the "inventor" of the modern genre of Adult
Fantasy is also kind of misleading -- he was essentially working in
isolation, had no intention of creating a genre, and would probably
be deeply distressed by a great deal of the work that is compared to
his. The modern genre was really created more by Lin Carter and
Lester Del Rey than by JRRT.

> 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.

Quibble -- Poe never wrote a mystery novel, just short stories.

More important quibble: Doyle stands closer to Poe than to the modern
mystery, in that modern mysteries (mostly) have a canon of "fairness,"
i.e., the information the detective uses to solve the mystery must be
presented to the reader. This is a post-Doyle innovation, and in fact the
Sherlock Holmes stories are decidedly *not* "fair," as a general rule
(this is why Watson so often comes across as a bumbling idiot).

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,
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salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards
reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

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