The book also includes drafts of an unpublished novel called The Notion Club Papers, written in the mid-1940s, in which a club of academics - in 1987! - listens to one of their number who has uncovered, through his dreams, another variation on the story of Eärendil and the fall of Númenor which was one of the earliest elements of Tolkien's mythos and which he never quite got right. What's interesting about The Notion Club Papers is that it clarifies the reason for part of the failure: the characterisation is all in the framing narrative, and the epic mythos all in the Númenor bits without really much in the way of interesting personal glimpses. What Tolkine managed in The Hobbit and particularly in The Lord of the Rings was to unite the epic and the personal, but it was only after long years of effort and rewriting, and I don't think either half of The Notion Papers was really salvageable. Still, it's interesting to map the roads not travelled.
June Books 17) Sauron Defeated, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The book also includes drafts of an unpublished novel called The Notion Club Papers, written in the mid-1940s, in which a club of academics - in 1987! - listens to one of their number who has uncovered, through his dreams, another variation on the story of Eärendil and the fall of Númenor which was one of the earliest elements of Tolkien's mythos and which he never quite got right. What's interesting about The Notion Club Papers is that it clarifies the reason for part of the failure: the characterisation is all in the framing narrative, and the epic mythos all in the Númenor bits without really much in the way of interesting personal glimpses. What Tolkine managed in The Hobbit and particularly in The Lord of the Rings was to unite the epic and the personal, but it was only after long years of effort and rewriting, and I don't think either half of The Notion Papers was really salvageable. Still, it's interesting to map the roads not travelled.
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In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells
Second paragraph of third chapter: So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down.The planet earth passes through the tail of a…
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My BSFA votes: Non-Fiction
In my two previous posts on this year's BSFA shortlists ( here and here), I remarked that it was very difficult to select preferences between…
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The Food of the Gods: And How It Came to Earth, by H. G. Wells
Second paragraph of third section of first chapter: Professor Redwood was one of those scientific men who are addicted to tracings and curves You…
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