Saturday 6 June 2020

My review of Tolkien and the Silmarillion by Clyde Kilby (1977)

Tolkien and The Silmarillion by Clyde Kilby is a hardly-known, slim, minor, but fascinating contribution to the writings about Tolkien; published in the UK in 1977. Its centre is an account of the summer of 1966 which the author spent meeting with the seventy-four year old Tolkien a few times per week, ostensibly to provide him with informed and enthusiastic secretarial assistance to get The Silmarillion ready for publication...

The special value of Kilby's book, and why it still remains well worth reading (if you can get hold of a modestly priced copy) is the 28 page chapter Summer with Tolkien. This I would rate as the best concentrated account I have ever read of what Tolkien was like as a person - in his old age...

So, there are some really good descriptions of Tolkien's appearance, behaviour, manners, mode of speech - and the conversational topics that interested him. Kilby provides a specimen day where he lists, in order, the subjects into-which Tolkien led the conversation:

1. Fan letters, and how T replies to them; 2. Annoyance at an article on T in the Saturday Evening Post; 3. Declaring the birch outside to be his totem tree; 4. How he and Mrs T were annoyed with WH Auden for reportedly making the remark that T's home was 'hideous' in a meeting of the T Society in the US; 5. His dislike of the covers on the Ballantyne paperbacks - and (on publishers more generally) that he was both annoyed and gratified by the Ace paperbacks pirate edition of Lord of the Rings; 6. That he was pleased with the Japanese edition of The Hobbit; 7. Discussing Mrs T's chronic illness; 8. K asks if anyone has asked to write a biography, T says yes and discusses his worries at inner motives being misrepresented; 9. His intention to write a book on the Second Age of Middle Earth, especially Numenor; 10. T showed K some old manuscripts of his work, with evidence of much re-working.

In general; Kilby commented (what the above list confirms) that Tolkien did not seem much interested in working on The Silmarillion!...


6 comments:

Joseph A. said...

The daily conversation list moved me to look up the paperback covers mentioned, though I am not sure that I found the correct editions. My own set that I bought in the early 90s was the Ballantine/Fantasy set with cream colored covers (showing Bag End/Hobbiton, Fangorn Forest, and some imposing edifice [Minas Tirith? It's imposing enough to be in Mordor but looks too orderly and beautiful], respectively). I've always liked them, though perhaps I'm biased. Online, I see a Ballantine cover set that might be what Tolkien disliked -- the style reminds me of mid-century space-age comics -- with blue, pinkish-purple, and red the dominant covers of the trilogy. I'm not fond of the Ace covers that appear to have pleased Tolkien, despite the pirate problem. They look so Robin Hoody -- though the fonts and mid-cover rune strips are pleasing. I hate the covers of the set that I bought my brothers when they were young boys -- just awful. It's the set (with the Hobbit companion) that makes Bilbo look like a fat villain next to a ghoulish Gollum. The artist looks like he mainly painted covers for pant-and-heave novels (one has to make a living, I suppose). Hate them!

Update: I found this page -- pretty neat:
https://www.adazing.com/lord-of-the-rings-book-cover-designs/

I like the 1960 Canadian version, and I see that my set is the 1973 version. My brothers' first set are the first 1988 version shown. Horrid! I wish that I had found the other (Houghton-Miffin) 1988 version for them -- they look pretty cool. Not shown (thankfully) are the covers based on the films. What a terrible idea. I actually really liked the films and have watched them multiple times, but the book is primus!

Wurmbrand said...

You can get Kilby's account of summer with Tolkien here:

https://paracletepress.com/products/a-well-of-wonder

Matthew T said...

Update: I found this page -- pretty neat

Haha, great find - many of them are hilariously dated (which I don't mean in a bad way, just a literal way), like the 80s set, which looks sooo "80s Dungeons & Dragons fantasy". They don't have my copy though, which is my older brother's "3 volumes in one" tome.

Bruce Charlton said...

@MT - My copy of LotR was the whole book (minus appendices) in a single volume version with its cover by the incomparable Pauline Baynes - third and fourth down on the right: https://www.paulinebaynes.com/?what=artifacts&cat=70 - For me this is by far the best artwork for LotR; although I get the biggest thrill from seeing the plain early 70s Uniwin Hardbacks, which were the first volumes I encountered (from the library).

BTW Tom Shippey estimates that the modern adjusted cost of all three volumes of LotR at their first publication was between 2-300 pounds (c260-400 dollars). It was amazing anybody read it. The Ace pirate edition was a help; but there was no complete (with appendices) three volume paperback version in the UK until the late 1970s (more than 20 years after publication). Unwin certainly had their faults, as publishers.

Wurmbrand said...

I have issues of the American "Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" with reviews of the three LotR volumes as they were issued by Houghton Mifflin. The magazine (digest size, cheap paper) sold copies as well as other books reviewed in its pages. Book prices below are for hardcover books.

April 1955: The Fellowship of the Ring $5; Douglas Wallop's The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant $2.95; magazine price 35c

August 1955: The Two Towers $5; Arthur C. Clarke's Earthlight $2.75; magazine price 35c

July 1956: The Return of the King $5; Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars $3.75; magazine price still 35c

A reproduction of a 1955 ad for Piggly Wiggly stores (perhaps like British Tesco) exhibits these as sale prices: 1 pound butter 55c, round steak 69c per pound, four rolls of Charmin bathroom paper 29c. The American editions of the Tolkien books would have deterred many casual buyers, but they received some very good reviews in national magazines, etc. For people who bought hardcover books at all, their prices would not have seemed shocking given the heftiness of each volume (especially the first and third).

Dale Nelson

Wurmbrand said...

A new Ford car might cost about $2,000.