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C00002 00002	[This story is an excellent example of media distortion.  I doubt that the
C00010 00003	[This article, from the Wall Street Journal, needs no comments. -- MRC]
C00020 00004	[Royalty, yet!]
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[This story is an excellent example of media distortion.  I doubt that the
author article read either "The Silmarillion" or "The Lord of the Rings".

The inaccuracies in this  article are frightening, especially  considering
its wide publication.  I am hoping that a better article will be  released
soon.

What the  critics do  not consider  is that  "The Silmarillion"  is not  a
popular novel, as LotR is, nor was  it intended to be.  Instead, it is  an
attempt of an accurate  rendering of the legends  of the First and  Second
Ages of Middle Earth, including the  history of the Valar, the Elves,  and
Men, and where the  origins of Dwarves,  Ents, and Orcs  are also for  the
first time recounted.  It recounts matters that were ancient history  even
at the time of the Third Age of Middle Earth, when the events  popularized
in "The Hobbit" and LotR occured; yet everything that happened in the  end
of the Third Age had its origins in the First Age.

In my opinion, because  of this "The Silmarillion"  is a much better  book
than LotR, and again  its worse criticism  must be that  it is too  short.
Despite some points  where clearly the  book could have  been better,  the
genius of its author  shows through.  "The  Silmarillion", because it  was
never finished, achieves its greatness.

What comfort there is from the  article arises mostly in that the  critics
clearly have no understanding of  Tolkien; phrases such as "allegory"  (or
"trilogy", although that doesn't occur here) indicate their ignorance.  It
is to the book's credit that such people criticise it.

In any case, for better or worse,  here it is.  When I could not  restrain
myself, I have added comments.  -- MRC]

By ED BLANCHE
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - J. R. R. Tolkien's posthumous epic ''The Silmarillion''  was
published today, and the critics agreed that it's not up to ''The Lord  of
the Rings.'' But the publishers are sure it will be a best seller.

''We have  a first  edition print  of 800,000  in Britain  and the  United
States,'' said a spokesman for Allen and Unwin, the British publishers.

Tolkien, a professor of English at Oxford University for 34 years, started
''The Silmarillion'' in 1916 but left it a jumbled mass of  much-rewritten
manuscript when he died  in 1973 at  the age of 81.  It was assembled  and
edited by his  son Christopher, a  lecturer in English  at Oxford and  his
father's literary executor.

[MRC - The covering of Tolkien's personal history is too brief, but  would
be excusable for a  short article had the  next three paragraphs not  been
included.]

The book, planned as Tolkien's final work, is a descriptive pre-history of
the mythical, allegorical world  of Middle Earth  that Tolkien created  in
''The Lord of the Rings'' and populated with the Hobbits, a race of little
people given to overeating and family trees.

[MRC - What truth there is in this paragraph is deeply submerged under the
misconceptions.]

''The Lord of the  Rings'' is a collection  of adventure tales  describing
the heroic quest of  a Hobbit named  Frodo to destroy a  fatal ring -  the
source of evil - and his encounters with monsters, natural dangers and the
power of evil.

[MRC - It is  clear that the  author merely read a  review or synopsis  of
LotR.]

''The Silmarillion,'' which  the publishers  call a  ''prequel'' to  ''The
Rings,'' opens in the land of Numenor, a star-shaped island from which the
characters journey to Middle Earth before the days of the Hobbit.

[MRC  -  Totally  false.    The  author  obviously   did  not  read   "The
Silmarillion"; otherwise he would not  talk about Nu'menor, which was  not
founded until the Second Age, in the context of the creation.]

It explains the creation of Middle Earth, covers its First and Second Ages
and makes clearer the past often referred to in ''The Rings.'' But it only
refers to the Hobbits once.

[MRC - True,  and the whole  of the  article could be  improved with  this
paragraph remaining out of the previous four.]

''Is it as good as 'The Lord  of the Rings'?'' critic John Ezard asked  in
his review in  The Guardian.  ''No, not by  a long  chalk. Yet .  . .  the
stories, even in  their undeveloped  promise, come  close to  the best  in
European legend.''

Ezard also said  the new  book was Tolkien's  ''Genesis, Exodus,  Paradise
Lost and Drowning of Atlantis rolled into one.''

''I found it heavy  going,'' Terence Ryle reported  in the Daily  Express.
''The style is so consciously that of the King James version of the  Bible
that it grates in a way 'The Rings' never did.''

Christopher Tolkien is working on the rest of his father's papers and  has
said he expects to publish a number of poems and short stories from  them.
But he said ''The Silmarillion'' is probably the last major Tolkien work.
[This article, from the Wall Street Journal, needs no comments. -- MRC]

	A SUPERB ADDITION TO TOLKIEN'S MYTHOLOGICAL REALM

By EDMUND FULLER

Few books  have  been as  eagerly  awaited by  a  large audience  as  "The
Silmarillion," by  J.R.R.  Tolkien.   It was  rumored  as  a  tantalizing,
legendary work  during  Prof. Tolkien's  lifetime.   After his  death,  in
September 1973, his devotees  were fearful they might  never see it.   Now
here it is, thanks  to the dedicated editing  of his son, Christopher,  to
whom the task was bequeathed.  It is worth the long wait.

It is the background and prior history of those vastly popular works  "The
Hobbit" and  the  trilogy  "The  Lord  of  the  Rings."   They  set  forth
portentous events in  what Prof. Tolkien  called the Third  Age of  Middle
Earth.  "The  Silmarillon" and  other units  of the  volume encompass  the
Creation and  the First  and Second  Ages, completing  the fabric  of  his
extraordinary personal mythology.

I first heard  of "The Silmarillion"  from Prog. Tolkien  himself, in  two
long conversations with him at his home  near Oxford, in 1962, when I  was
submitting for his comment one of the first critical appreciations of  his
work.  He  wrote  "The Silmarillion"  long  before "The  Hobbit"  and  the
trilogy.  The true link between those later, but first-published books and
"The Silmarillion" was an emergent awareness in his own consciousness, and
it resulted in some modifications of all of them.

For the history  of this  unique body of  work, and  comprehension of  its
"sub-creator" (his own  word; he insisted  always that there  is only  one
Creator), read the first  full-scale, authorized biography, "Tolkien,"  by
Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin, 287 pages, $10), which is splendidly
done and invaluable.  I  recommend also an  unusual little book,  "Tolkien
and `The Silmarillion,'" by  Clyde S. Kilby  (Harold Shaw Publishers,  Box
567, 340 Gunderson Drive, Wheaton, Ill., 60187, 89 ppages, $3.95).   Prof.
Kilby spent the summer of 1966 as a voluntary assistant to Tolkien.

"The Silmarillion"  was  an  accretion,  so diffuse  a  collection  of  of
elements,  with  so   many  variants,   that  Prof.   Tolkien,  always   a
perfectionist, always tempted to start all over again when he undertook to
revise anything, simply never could focus it into final form.  He came  to
understand that Christopher would have  to do it for  him and did what  he
could to pave the way.

Christopher Tolkien has carried out that charge superbly.  I had  expected
an import addition to  a body of  work but thought  its interest might  be
secondary or historical.  Instead, it is  a work of power, eloquence,  and
noble vision that would be notable even  if "The Hobbit" and "The Lord  of
the Rings" had  never been.   Yet I would  still recommend  that a  person
first approaching Tolkien  being with  "The Hobbit,"  for the  deceptively
simply,  "childlike"  (a  fine  word)  flow  of  its  narrative,  becoming
increasingly complex in the development  of the trilogy, prepares the  way
for the high vein of "The Silmarillion."

This volume begins  with "Ainulindale:  Te Music  of the  Ainur," a  brief
account of the Creation.  Equally  brief, "Valaquenta" pursues that  great
conflict among what  would elsewhere  be called angels,  in which  Melkor,
later known as Morgoth, is the equivalent of Milton's Lucifer.  Then  come
the 24 long  chapters of  the "Quenta  Silmarillion:  The  History of  the
Silmarils."  These are three jewels of extraordinary brilliancy and  other
properties, made by the Elf Feanor.   (Tolkien's Elves are of human  scale
but of greater powers.)   There is a struggle  for their possession,  use,
and misuse, among Morgoth, Elves, Dwarves, and Men.  "...the inner fire of
the Silmarils Feanor made of the  blended light of the Trees of  Valinor,"
long perished, which illumined  Middle Earth before the  Sun and the  Moon
were created or men came.

There follow two other  short sections which are  the bridge to the  Third
Age.  "Akallabeth" shows the downfall of Numenor, noble realm of the West,
and the growing powr of Sauron, the adversary in the later stories, though
lesser than Morgoth.  "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age"  completes
the linkage.   There are  maps, genealogies,  notes on  pronunciation,  an
index of names, and other appendices.

In his brief Foreword,  Christopher Tolkien explains  the premises of  the
work.  While the outline of the  history of Middle Earth is now  complete,
there is a promise of more particulars in "a wealth of unpublished writing
by my father concerning the Three Ages, narrative, linguistic, historical,
and philsophical, and I hope that it will prove possible to puish some  of
this at a later date."

Like his  friends  C.S. Lewis  and  Charles Williams,  like  Milton,  like
Spenser,  like  Malory,  Tolkien's  mythology   is  a  variation  on   the
fundamental images of the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Creator and the
Creation, of God and the Adversary, of men and their relations with  other
creatures, and of the ultimate choices which men must make.  Thus they are
great teaching stories wrapped in the fabric of high adventure.  They  are
not escapist because they  confront us, in symbolic  tales, with kinds  of
commitments which we would like to  escape but cannot.  Judgement is  here
as well as inspiration.

To single out  just one  unit from this  heart-lifting work,  the tale  of
Beren and  Luthien,  with  the  noble dog  Huan,  soars  above  all.   Mr.
Caprenter tells  us that  it was  the most  loved by  Tolkien of  all  his
stories; the names "Beren" and "Luthien" are on the gravestones of Tolkien
and his wife.

Tolkien is not for every taste,  but for the millions, in many  languages,
who vibrate to him, he is a  lasting joy.  "The Silmarillion" is the  last
structural block  of  his edifice,  among  the noblest  of  its  elements.
Beware those hailed  as his imitators,  who try to  conjure up the  exotic
with sound and fury  but lack the deep  underpinnings of J.R.R.  Tolkien's
theology, philosophy, scholarship and life commitment.
[Royalty, yet!]
a318  2058  04 Oct 77
AM-Queen-Tolkien,280

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - A deluxe edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's  trilogy
''Lord of the  Rings,'' with illustrations  by the Queen  of Denmark,  has
sold out, the book's publisher said Tuesday.

The 37-year-old queen, Margrethe Alexandrine Thorhildur Ingrid, belongs to
the worldwide following of Tolkien, the late Oxford professor who  created
a cult with his tales of medieval  myths and legends. He is best known  as
the creator of ''The Hobbit.''

The queen, using the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, drew 80 black and  white
ilustrations for the  1,500 numbered  copies of the  special edition  that
sells for $165, the Forum Publishing House said.

A spokesman  insisted that  the true  identity of  the artist  was  leaked
accidentally but he did not deny that the queen's link to the book  helped
boost prepublication sales.

Sources said the queen did the drawings ''just for the fun of it''  before
ascending to the  throne in 1972.  She mailed them  privately to  Tolkien,
with whom she corresponded until his death in 1973, they said.

A Forum Publishing House  representative came across  the drawings in  the
archives of  London's  Folio Society  and  secured them  for  the  limited
edition, a  company spokesman  said. The  books  are to  go on  sale  here
Friday.

Bold and  simple,  the  queen's  drawings  were  praised  by  professional
illustrators, who said in Danish newspapers they were ''surprisingly  well
composed.''

The publishing house  spokesman said the  queen was paid  ''just like  any
other illustrator,'' but the fee was being donated to charity. He did  not
say how much the fee was.
    
2358pED 10-04
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