[SKRIVA] C Tolkien intervjuad

From: Ahrvid <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2013 01:44:04 +0100

JRRs son Christopher (nu ca 88 år gammal) har sällan ställt upp för intervjuer.
Men här är en relativt nylig, från sommaren 2012, som ursprungligen stod i
franska Le Monde, där intervjun gjordes på Christophers sommarställe. Den har
nu översatts till engelska. Kan vara av intresse nu när vi får se filmer om
korta män i hålor i jorden med håriga fötter (och sedan några utdrag):

http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father-039-s-quot-eviscerated-quot-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-j.r.r.-tolkien-finally-speaks-out/hobbit-silmarillion-lord-of-rings/c3s10299/#.UrYFNb1NrT1

"Over the years, a sort of parallel universe has formed around Tolkien's work,
a world of sparkling images and of figurines, colored by the original books of
the cult, but often very different from them, like a continent that has drifted
far from its original land mass.
This commercial galaxy is now worth several billion dollars -- most of which
does not go to Tolkien's heirs, and thus complicates the management of his
heritage for his family, which is polarized not over the images or objects, but
over the respect for Tolkien's words.
He also received his father's papers after the death: 70 boxes of archives,
each stuffed with thousands of unpublished pages. Narratives, tales, lectures,
poems of 4,000 lines more or less complete, letters and more letters, all in a
frightening disorder. Almost nothing was dated or numbered, just stuffed
higgledy-piggledy into the boxes.
"He had the habit of traveling between Oxford and Bournemouth, where he often
stayed," Baillie Tolkien recounts. "When he left, he would put armfuls of
papers into a suitcase which he always kept with him. When he arrived, he would
sometimes pull out any sheet at random and start with that one!" On top of all
this, the handwritten manuscripts were almost indecipherable because his
handwriting was so cramped.
However, in this unlikely jumble, there was a treasure, not only The
Silmarillion, but very complete versions of all sorts of legends only just
glimpsed in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings -- an almost submerged
archipelago, of whose existence Christopher had been partly unaware. It was
then that the work began a second life... and so did Christopher. He resigned
from New College at Oxford, where he had also become professor of Old English,
and threw himself into editing his father's work. ...

At the request of the rest of the family, nervous at this migration, the
papers went back the way they had arrived, to the Bodleian Library, where they
are currently kept and are now being digitized. ... Therefore, Christopher had
to undertake his work with photocopies, which was a great deal of trouble.
Cathleen Blackburn, lawyer for the Tolkien Estate in Oxford, recounts
ironically, "These hugely popular films apparently did not make any profit! We
were receiving statements saying that the producers did not owe the Tolkien
Estate a dime."
The affair lasted from 2003 to 2006, and then things became more poisonous.
The lawyers for the Tolkien Estate, those of the Tolkien Trust, and Tolkien's
publisher HarperCollins demanded $150 million in damages, as well as observers'
rights on the next adaptations of Tolkien's work. A lawsuit was necessary
before an agreement was reached in 2009. The producers paid 7.5% of their
profits to the Tolkien Estate, but the lawyer, who refuses to give a number,
adds that "it is too early to say how much that will be in the future."
However, the Tolkien Estate cannot do anything about the way New Line adapts
the books. In the new Hobbit movie, for example, the audience will discover
characters Tolkien never put in, especially women. The same is true for the
merchandise, which ranges from tea towels to boxes of nuggets, with an infinite
variety of toys, stationery, t-shirts, games, etc. Not only the titles of the
books themselves, but also the names of their characters have been trademarked.
"We are in the back seat," Cathleen Blackburn comments. In other words, the
Estate can do little but watch the scenery, except in extreme cases-- for
example, preventing the use of the name Lord of the Rings on Las Vegas slot
machines, or for amusement parks. "We were able to prove that nothing in the
original contract dealt with that sort of exploitation."
"I could write a book on the idiotic requests I have received," sighs
Christopher Tolkien. He is trying to protect the literary work from the
three-ring circus that has developed around it. In general, the Tolkien Estate
refuses almost all requests."

--Ahrvid

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[SKRIVA] C Tolkien intervjuad

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