Und so weiter

[randy_byers]

The weekend tumbled along quite nicely. On Sunday I finished reading Tolkien's new novel, The Children of Hurin, at the Big Time with a couple of pints of the Trombipulator Belgian-style Trippel. Later I picked up my housemate at the airport, but I still owe him about a hundred of those after all the airport service he's given me the past few years. Yesterday carl and I went up to Andy's house and worked on Chunga 13 and ate barbecued brats and steak. Yes, there will be a Chunga 13 in your lifetime, Lord willing. Afterwards, I watched Ernst Lubitsch's crazy 1921 "German expressionist slapstick romantic comedy", The Wildcat (Die Bergkatze) in which Pola Negri spanks the eager wild mountain gang with her whip until her father the gang leader stops her with the warning, "Don't spoil them." Ah, Weimar!

And now it's back to work.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

So how is The Children of Hurin? D. Bratman's description was fascinating, but left me with no desire to read it.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it a lot, but you know, it's a tale of doom and tragedy and cruel fate in an old Germanic mode. As far as Tolkien goes, it's more like The Silmarillion than like Lord of the Rings -- a stoic legend of the Elder Days in Middle-earth, with nary a homely hobbit to give it intimacy. It's also cobbled together from several different incomplete manuscripts, so it has an uneven quality to it. Probably more for the hard-core Tolkien fan than for someone just looking for a good story. However, for anyone who has loved LOTR but bounced off The Silmarillion, this might be worth a shot, because it's full of character and incident, particularly in the latter half, that might be more welcoming than the annal-like quality of The Silmarillion.