Quote Originally Posted by dehro View Post
this.. very much this..
I know perfectly well that Tolkien was an authority on Beowulf (did he not already write a book about it that actually got published during his lifetime? I must go look at my stash of books)
That said, I'm starting to be a little aggravated by the notion that Christopher Tolkien still wants us to believe that 40 years after his father's passing, he is still finding untapped material stuffed in the back of a drawer somewhere.
might as well come out and say it clearly that he's been pouring his own scholarly achievements on paper.
I wouldn't hold it against him to have continued in father's footsteps... this whole "tolkien has written a new book from beyond the grave" gimmick is starting to tire me.
Personally, this complaint has never made much sense to me. Tolkien had a long professional life, and a person can get a lot done over the years. Depending on how they organize stuff, it can be quite difficult to make sense of it, or compile it into a sensible whole after the fact.

Besides which, Christopher is getting up there in years now. I don't know who becomes literary executor of the Tolkien estate after he dies, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that whatever fragmentary material there is would be published in one form or another then anyway; almost certainly by people who are less intimately familiar both with Tolkien's works, and Tolkien himself, than his son. It doesn't seem particularly surprising to me that he wants to release the material now, when he has some control over it and better represent his father's work. Particularly after the films - which understand Christopher did not like - seizing the chance to let his father's works speak for themselves as best he is able seems a pretty understandable thing to do.