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Does Barliman Have a Beard? And Other Important Fannish Issues - Page 8

© Michael Martinez

It is quite possible we have struck a reasonable compromise in one recent Xenite.Org discussion about how old Bombadil really is: we don't know. But that may not be sufficient, especially since it could have been Bombadil speaking through the Ring on Mount Doom as he and Goldberry spazzed out on some of Galadriel's juiced-up lembas. On the other hand, I don't think people will ever reach any sort of compromise on the origin of Orcs. Tolkien is certainly no help in this department. Some people believe he says they were corrupted Elves in The Silmarillion (he doesn't, actually, but the passage which speaks of the Orcs' origin suggests very strongly they were bred from Elves Melkor captured before Orome and the Valar put an end to his nefarious schemes). Some of us are quick to point out that Tolkien never really made up his mind. He wandered all over the place, and eventually started redesigning the entire cosmology just so Orcs could be bred from Men. Of course, every time someone starts a big fight over something concerning the First Age, The Silmarillion is anted up as the first solid proof that J.R.R. Tolkien really meant things to be this way. Well, he may have meant some things to be a certain way, but he didn't write The Silmarillion. He tried. Sadly, Christopher Tolkien had to put the book together. Okay, Christopher did a great job. But he subsequently spent the better part of twelve years telling us, no, he did a rotten job. Or call it a hack job. Given what he had to work with, I think CJRT did a fine job with the book, but it's often a rather useless source of information in a discussion about what JRRT meant or intended. So, any discussion of The Silmarillion almost inevitably leads to a discussion of canonicity (or is it canonicality -- we can't even agree on which word to use to describe what we're arguing over). There is, in fact, no Silmarillion we can use as canon for discussing...what, exactly, does one discuss when using the Silmarillion (any Silmarillion) as a source? If we're talking about The Silmarillion then we have the book itself to serve as an authority. Or do we? Should we accept "The Ruin of Doriath" as a legitimate part of the "Quenta Silmarillion" even though Christopher has written the equivalent of, "It's balderdash! I made it all up! Ignore it!"? It seems a bit awkward to ignore what the author says in a discussion of...scratch that! Clearly, we can use "The Ruin of Doriath" as a canonical source.

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