The Children of Húrin By J. R. R. Tolkien with illustrations by Alan Lee; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2008 pbk. edition, 313 pages, $14.95.
We have an Ent living in our meadow.
Why not?
We are of the generation who popularized J. R. R. Tolkien in this land. We read The Hobbit to our children. We gave them The Lord of the Rings trilogy when they were ready.
Why wouldn't one of the ancient race of walking, talking tree giants take up residence with us?
Fantasy is serious business. Even for journalists. Lighten up, gang. You'll be more conversant with real people.
There's the Hollywood version of fantasy. But even bigger are the motion pictures of the mind that inspire us, steady us between good and evil on our personal quests and endear otherworld creatures to us as a comfort of the imagination.
Middle-earth is far less comfortable since the passing of Tolkien and the co-opting of his creation by movie moguls and the electronic gaming set who owe their pastime to literary fantasy.
So posthumous works by the master become bestsellers. His son Christopher Tolkien edited the squibs and scraps and notes that became The Children of Húrin.
You take what you can get. Isn't endurance the message of Middle-earth?
This is a dark and bloody work without much redemption, though. It's like sitting down to Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is at least majestic in its cosmic tragedy, and discovering you picked up the grisly Titus Andronicus by earthbound error.
First you wade through genealogies and set-up. Think of all the begats in the Bible. Or the penance Tolstoy exacts before getting you to the action in War and Peace.
At last you strike storyline like a vein of gold. But the ore plays out when Morgoth, the First Dark Lord, captures Húrin to crush the hero's spirit of rebellion in the First Age.
So attention shifts to the nobleman's children, Túrin and his sister Niënor. But they live lives of unquiet desperation, dismay and disaster that lead ever downward.
Finally comes closing confrontation with Glaurung, the worm-dragon of fire sent to fulfill hellish curse.
Just another day at the office in Middle-earth. Or perhaps where you work.
Túrin is no Ranger destined for the kingly triumph of the later works. His sister is no princess royal. Not yet on scene are Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf the Grey and, of course, Treebeard the Ent living in the woods of Fangorn during the Third Age of Tolkien's more popular works.
His son and literary executor opened a view into his father's mind as it sorted out the world that would become the Hobbit's and ours by extension. It's like seeing Michelangelo's chalky sketches for the Sistine Chapel instead of the finished work.
Read it to see how the grandeur came to be.
How grand?
Ask any of us who have an Ent living in our meadow.
Middle-earth is far less comfortable since the passing of Tolkien and the co-opting of his creation by movie moguls and the electronic gaming set who owe their pastime to literary fantasy.
So posthumous works by the master become bestsellers. His son Christopher Tolkien edited the squibs and scraps and notes that became The Children of Húrin.
You take what you can get. Isn't endurance the message of Middle-earth?
This is a dark and bloody work without much redemption, though. It's like sitting down to Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is at least majestic in its cosmic tragedy, and discovering you picked up the grisly Titus Andronicus by earthbound error.
First you wade through genealogies and set-up. Think of all the begats in the Bible. Or the penance Tolstoy exacts before getting you to the action in War and Peace.
At last you strike storyline like a vein of gold. But the ore plays out when Morgoth, the First Dark Lord, captures Húrin to crush the hero's spirit of rebellion in the First Age.
So attention shifts to the nobleman's children, Túrin and his sister Niënor. But they live lives of unquiet desperation, dismay and disaster that lead ever downward.
Finally comes closing confrontation with Glaurung, the worm-dragon of fire sent to fulfill hellish curse.
Just another day at the office in Middle-earth. Or perhaps where you work.
Túrin is no Ranger destined for the kingly triumph of the later works. His sister is no princess royal. Not yet on scene are Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf the Grey and, of course, Treebeard the Ent living in the woods of Fangorn during the Third Age of Tolkien's more popular works.
His son and literary executor opened a view into his father's mind as it sorted out the world that would become the Hobbit's and ours by extension. It's like seeing Michelangelo's chalky sketches for the Sistine Chapel instead of the finished work.
Read it to see how the grandeur came to be.
How grand?
Ask any of us who have an Ent living in our meadow.
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