XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: steuard@slimy.com   
      
   On 2009-06-30, Stan Brown  wrote:   
   > Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:10:38 -0500 from Steuard Jensen   
   >:   
   >> One of the most interesting parts was the massive rewrite of the book   
   >> that Tolkien started late in his life and then abandoned; I actually   
   >> felt a bit indignant about some of the changes he was contemplating   
      
   > Care to share one or two of these changes, if you remember them>   
      
   The biggest thing was just a complete change in tone, from the chapter   
   titles down all the way down to word choice.  Every instance of the   
   narrator's personal voice is gone, and I was surprised by how   
   different the story felt without them.  Here's a sample from early in   
   Chapter 1: "A Well-Planned Party" to give you a feel for it:   
      
      "The hobbit was very well-to-do, it was said, and his name was   
      Baggins.  The Bagginses had lived in the neighborhood of Hobbiton   
      for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable,   
      not only because most of them were rich, but also because they   
      never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell   
      what a Baggins would say on any question without the trouble of   
      asking him.  But this story tells how a Baggins had an adventure,   
      and found himself saying and doing things altogether unexpected.   
      He got caught up in great events, which he never understood; and he   
      became enormously important, though he never realized it."   
      
   I could go on indefinitely: maybe it's just because I've read this   
   book so many times, but great swaths of the rewrite just leave me   
   feeling subtly queasy.  There are a lot of memorable phrases and   
   passages in /The Hobbit/, and in many cases it feels like the magic   
   and wonder has been sucked out of them in the revision, leaving a much   
   drier and less enjoyable tale.   
      
   Also, as is evident at the end of the quote above (and as Rateliff   
   emphasizes in his notes), Bilbo's implied level of competence and   
   knowledge takes a serious hit in the revision.  Maybe Bilbo really was   
   clueless about the importance of the Council of Elrond and all that   
   surrounded it, but that certainly wasn't my impression at the time.   
   As the story goes on, Bilbo proves to be incapable of crossing a river   
   without someone to hold his hand, and somehow manages to be even less   
   useful in the encounter with the Trolls than in the original tale.   
      
   But apparently Tolkien shared the manuscript with an unknown friend,   
   and that person performed a great service by saying something like   
   "this is wonderful, but it's not /The Hobbit/".  Tolkien apparently   
   listened to her, and the rewrite went no farther.  (I'm quite happy   
   that it was never published, but it's interesting to see some of the   
   details that were fleshed out in the rewrite nonetheless, as opposed   
   to details that were changed.  I'm willing to accept that many of   
   those were simply Tolkien giving a more complete picture of the story   
   and its setting than he had taken the time for in the original.)   
      
   > I know for myself that I felt he made a huge mistake trying to   
   > rewrite Silm to start with a round Earth and alter the origin of Sun   
   > and Moon.   
      
   Agreed.  My take on that is that reconciling Middle-earth with   
   real-world astronomy and geography would be entirely impossible in any   
   case, so attempting to bring them closer together really wouldn't   
   accomplish much.   
      
   						Steuard Jensen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)