I think the maps really helped sell the world to me as a kid. There's such a distinct, foreign style to them. Of course every fantasy series now has a map, but the Tolkien maps are still embedded deep in my brain.
I saw this exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum several years ago. It was a great experience, not just see the art but explore how deep Tolkien went into building the world of Middle Earth. Truly amazing when someone devotes that much time and effort into their craft.
I walked by the Morgan Library on my way to work for years, and never knew they had these cool exhibits until I heard about the Hemingway one right after it closed. Talk about wasted potential...
Yeah... and amazing as they are, the art and maps are just a fraction of the ~staggeringly~ historically singular overall world-building Tolkien achieved. I mean, two complete languages? I can't even.
The personal paintings and doodles for his children were so touching. It just reminded me of personal doodles my older brother used to give me. But technology seems to have robbed the boredom and privacy necessary for these types of tiny artistic gestures.
My cousin and I crafted our own fictional adventure on some scratch paper when we were kids. We usually started by drawing a fantasy/sci-fi map, chose a starting point, and then improvised the story as we "travel" in this world purely out of imagination.
Now thinking back this experience is interesting as it sort of reflecting what Tolkien said, "I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit."
My productivity has abysmally dropped since the release of From Software's Elden Ring. A small thing (among many) that I loved is the "medieval" style of the game map. It's like reading a monk parchemin, or an old book. On an another level, the maps drawn by Tolkien are really superb, evocative and you just want to zoom in and start dreaming in this lands...
From Software has such a neat way of story telling in their games. Cutscenes are far and few between, and the ones that are there really don't tell much story (aside from intro cinematics/game endings, which only give a high-level rundown of the world)
Instead, information is drip-fed to you through NPC dialogues, item/spell descriptions, and level design. Meaning you'll probably pick up very little of the actual story as you play the games, and it's something of a community effort to put the pieces together and figure out what's going on. And even with all that, there's still tons of gaps that can only be theorized about. It really makes the games feel like they take place in a huge world with tons of history that's much greater than you, the player character. The world doesn't seem to care about you at all, you're just an observer of a much greater story.
The creator of the games, Hidetaka Miyazaki has credited this vague style of storytelling to him reading fantasy novels as a kid, without a good understanding of English. There would be parts of the story he didn't really understand, so he'd just fill in the gaps with his own theories.
It's worth recognizing the late Christopher Tolkien for his life's work protecting, preserving and collecting his father's writings, in a deeply moving example of filial piety.
I couldn't agree more with that statement. For someone who had read the hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion and wanted more from that universe. Christopher Tolkien provided a wealth of new books from his fathers unpublished papers released since the 90's and beyond: things like unfinished tales, the children of Hurin, the fall of Gondolin, etc. I couldn't be happier having these extra novels to read and am thankful for the tireless work of his son to bring these to light who worked into his 90's to get them published.
The ideas may have been his father's, but Christopher Tolkien is as responsible for execution as his father was in my eyes, and I solidly consider him to be just as brilliant of a mind, especially for the fantasy-world.
To dedicate your life to your father's work, to forgo carving your own path, and at great risk of carrying blame for tarnishing Tolkien's legacy, and still earning praise for it -- I don't think the money offsets it by much.
Exactly, Tolkien also got paid, but no one could claim he did it for the money. Both hid and the work of his son to preserve and share his legacy were labors of love.
For something completely different, but the same here is a YouTube clip of Billy Strings playing with his dad, a very similar dynamic here: https://youtu.be/_6U6NCvOfl8
I doubt the sum total of royalties for the work released by Christopher Tolkien amounts to even a single percent of those for the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, even if you include The Silmarillion. He could just have leaned back and counted the checks incoming.
It was needed to pay a large tax bill. Taxes were much higher then. In the UK they peaked at 98%, made up of 83% Income Tax and a 15% surcharge for income not directly earned.
I'm pleased Tolkien's image of the Book of Mazarbul is there, I'm currently reading Humphrey Carpenter's biography and there's a mention of the fact that Tolkien painstakingly created the look of the final page, but it was wasted as Unwin couldn't afford to print it in the original edition of LOTR.
I was a bit involved in graffiti stuff in the past, so I went straight to the 'calligraphy' page. I must say, the heading of the second script 'Errantry' could come straight from a subway. Very sick old school style, mister Tolkien!
On a serious note: big fan. This guy and his work amazes me!
It is wonderful these maps and artwork is so freely available. When I first read Tolkien many years ago (long before the Jackson films), you could not get this kind of information, art, and maps. Only whatever happened to be in print, which in hindsight was remarkably little.
Wonderful stuff! To anyone who enjoyed The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, please please please do yourself a favor and read The Smith of Wooton Major as well. It is one of those books that gets overlooked but it's a wonderful read. The experience of reading the book changes with time.
I would love to have an nice hardback of the books that put as many of Tolkien's drawings in them as we have. I have copies that Alan Lee illustrated, and they're beautiful, but the subtlety and the vagueness of these just captures better how I felt about the books when I first read them.
I had no idea he was so prolific outside of writing. It makes me wonder how much I would create if my only media access was radio and lived in a world with far fewer distractions. Then again, everything's relative and there exist many creators today whose genius doesn't seem to be diminished by all our screens.
The scrolling is awful: feels laggy and... squishy? oily? really hard to describe, but it's horrible. Also, it feels like the scrolling sticks at random times while scrolling.
I think it's an unholy combination of things:
- the laggy easing on the scroll (primary culprit)
- the massive occluding header which animates based on scroll direction
- the resizing on page load
The easing isn't terrible, but all 3 together, not good
