THE BOOK OF LOST TALES: Volumes I...

THE BOOK OF LOST TALES: Volumes I and II by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Ballantine: $5.99 each). Christopher Tolkien continues his career of literary grave-robbing with two additional books of rough drafts and sketches culled from his father’s papers. The clumsy sentences are sometimes unintentionally hilarious, as when Luthien’s father (called Tinwelint in this draft) asks her, “Wherefore, O maiden of mine, does thou not pull this folly away from thee, and seek to do my bidding.” Yet Tolkien fils subjects each passage to the kind of elaborate exegesis usually reserved for Biblical commentaries. These tedious analyses might be useful to a graduate student preparing a thesis on “The Lord of the Rings,” but even die-hard fans will find little to deepen their appreciation of Tolkien’s extraordinary oeuvre in these wearisome books. Learning that his first description of Luthien charming the Satan-figure Morgoth (Melko in the early drafts) to sleep ran “Then did Melko fall forward drowzed, and sank at last in utter sleep down from his chair upon the floor, and his iron crown rolled away,” rather than “Suddenly he fell, as a hill sliding in avalanche, and hurled like thunder from his throne lay prone upon the floors of hell. The iron crown rolled echoing from his head” merely proves Tolkien improved his work when he polished and rewrote it--hardly a revelation. Ironically, Christopher Tolkien notes in the introduction to Volume I, “The Lost Tales never reached or even approached a form in which my father could have considered their publication before he abandoned them.” He should respect his father’s wishes and give the manuscripts to an appropriate archive; publishing the “experimental and provisional” contents of his “tattered notebooks” does nothing to enhance his reputation as a fantasy writer or linguist.