Posted on 03/19/2020 8:43:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Maybe it’s because of Amazon’s upcoming TV series, but lately we seem to be learning a lot of hitherto unknown facts about The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, or at least, some old facts are getting spread around anew. Just recently, author John M. Bowers posited that Tolkien may have written his genre-defining trilogy while procrastinating on his academic work. (Would that all our procrastinations were that fruitful.) Now, the @SecretsOfDune Twitter account has posted a page from Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist by Oronzo Chili, which seeks to understand this literary titan by perusing his bookshelf. And in going through Tolkien’s old letters, Chili gained some insight into Tolkien’s opinion on other genre-defining books of the day.
I’m talking about Frank Herbert’s Dune, a towering sci-fi classic that influenced everything from Alien to Blade Runner to Star Wars. What did Tolkien think of it? Read on:
So the pertinent quote comes form a letter Tolkien wrote to someone named John Bush in 1966, a year after Dune was published. Bush, for whatever reason, had sent Tolkien a copy of Dune, and the author wasn’t exactly bowled over:
It is impossible for an author still writing to be fair to another author working along the same lines. At least I find it so. In fact I dislike Dune with some intensity, and in that unfortunate case it is much the best and fairest to another author to keep silent and refuse to comment.
So Tolkien wasn’t a fan of Herbert’s heady space opera. I’d love to ask him why. Speaking as someone who’s read both works more than once, I definitely prefer the warmth and open emotionality of The Lord of the Rings to the chilly precision of Dune, but that’s just me.
Anyway, both of these franchises are about to come back to the fore in a big way, with Amazon’s LOTR series on the one hand and Denis Villeneuve’s new movie adaptation of Dune on the other. Whether you prefer sci-fi or fantasy, it’s a good time to be into genre.
He wasn’t too keen on Narnia either...
WOW!
Considering I am a huge fan of Tolkien, and I absolutely LOVE the majority of the Dune series, I am conflicted.
Really? He was friends with Lewis.
Very old news. His colleagues gave him public Mitt over this when the trilogy began to be published.
He probably didn’t like the Islam stuff.
Now that Christopher Tolkien has passed on expect to see more Middle Earth movies on the way. In fact Amazon managed to make a deal with Christopher before he died and it’s going to be in a different age, back when Sauron was still good looking.
Which is interesting, since he is credited with C.S. Lewis’ Christian awakening... to write his great book “Mere Christians”, and “The Screwtape Letters”.
Tolkein, from his trilogy was a believer in GOOD vs.Evil (the evil of the day being Hitler and before that the Kaiser... both aided as he saw it by the very real Satan).
Gave who what?
Much more than friends-— he converted C.S. Lewis.
I’ve read both. In fact, I’ve read all 20 or so of the Dune series. Think I read all of the LOTR trilogy.
Dune is better. More believable. But then, I am an engineer by training.
LOTR is good for legendbuilding. Thrives on the emotional.
YMMV. ‘Pod
Absolutely— Dune paraphrases Islamic absolutism, the whole desert and “water brother” water rights, or the value of a human is in the amount of water they can have squeezed from them after death.
A kind of soylent green of water on a desert like and very much islamo Arabian desert culture. Same monomaniacal leaders like imama. And also a very techno group insulting to Catholic nuns (of higher orders btw, and the Mendelian monk orders) — the Bene Geserit mothers.
Another Dune Remake?
https://libertyislandmag.com/2019/03/08/another-dune-remake/
I heard the news of a “Dune” remake due out in 2020. I saw the endless comparisons to the disastrous movie that came out in 1984. Sting goes shirtless! Picard is a warrior! But everyone forgets the SyFy masterpiece ...
“The Screwtape Letters” read by Cleese are a masterpiece.
I write this opinion as a premium consumer of literature.
99th percentile, FWIW. I read Mitchell's Gone With The Wind upwards of thirty times because of her superlative writing.
What didn’t he like about Dune? It’s only 10,000 words too long.
It’s been awhile since I studied the lives of both authors. While they were fast friends for many years, I believe there was an estrangement in the 50’s. Part of the trouble, I believe, is that Tolkien was a bit jealous of Lewis’ success not only as an academic but as a professional speaker and writer.
Lewis was familiar to a war-time audience that listened to his radio addresses to a beleaguered nation and also bought his works as they came out. Tolkien was more academic and Lord of the Rings came out rather late in his career—despite having written about the long history of middle earth and its peoples, heroes, and villains for decades. Tolkien’s works were far more ambitious and also took far, far longer to write. I can only imagine his frustration as his publisher kept wanting the sequel to the successful The Hobbit, but kept putting him off over The Silmarillion.
Lewis died in 1963 (the same day as Kennedy’s assassination, in fact) so his loss was completely overshadowed by the late President’s. This was after LOTR was published but just before it really started to take off. Heinlein was big during the late-50s/early-60’s. Then Tolkien and Herbert (who touched on some common themes between them albeit from completely different directions) had their heydays.
There was a movie within the last year, I think, about Tolkien as a young man (college, WWI) but I think it got past me. I haven’t seen it. Just k ew it was being made.
Not me! And Children of Dune was a worthy follow-up!
Hmm. Maybe when he was forging The Rings of Power. Before he went to Numenor...?
LOTR, Narnia, and DUNE (up through Children of Dune, sorry) are all marvels of writing.
Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin books are also on that shelf.
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