‘Húrin’ takes a hit

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As expected, J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Children of Húrin’ is selling extremely well since its release last week. On Amazon’s bestsellers list, for instance, the novel has been holding a solid second place only to orders of the final Harry Potter installment.

But that doesn’t mean Tolkien’s book is without its critics. Tolkien has always had them. Think back to Edmund Wilson’s attack on Tolkien’s work as ‘juvenile trash’ in his 1956 piece ‘Oo, Those Awful Orcs’ in the Nation.

Today, Wilson’s mantle passes to the more good-natured shoulders of journalist John Crace, who fired a hilarious salvo at ‘Húrin’ earlier this week in the Guardian’s book section.

In the regular feature called ‘The Digested Read’ -- in which a book is reduced to its bare essentials while some flavor of the original is given -- Crace jabs at Tolkien’s arch dialogue and story line with the sort of humor that Wilson sorely lacked. Here, for instance, is how Crace boils down the role of the major character Turin:

‘ ‘Forsooth,’ he swore. ‘Henceforth shall I remain a derivative Wagnerian hero and wander mindlessly through the realms of Middle-Earth on a quasi-symbolic quest and, Children of the Eldar, resolve only to talk in sentences of unspeakable leadenness, punctuated by manifold parentheses.’ ‘

— Nick Owchar 4/26/07