When I first started in Tolkien fandom, the popular thing to say was that I (the fan) could have done a better job of putting together The Silmarillion than Christopher did, mostly because of acknowledged errors like the parentage of Gil-galad that fans were certain that they would have gotten right. I don’t know what the beef is with Christopher these days; grad school has rendered me largely unable to participate in fandom aside from my administrative responsibilities on the SWG and MPTT. But the ongoing disdain for Christopher Tolkien by Tolkien fans has always struck me as self-important and ungrateful.
First of all, Christopher Tolkien is the foremost expert on his father’s work in the world. That is not to say that scholars shouldn’t—and don’t sometimes—disagree with him, but he listened to The Hobbit at his father’s knee; he was JRRT’s primary confidante as his writings took shape. He provides a perspective on JRRT’s work that no one else could possibly have, even those scholars who knew JRRT or who are granted access to materials that aren’t publicly available. In short, his opinions on his father’s work matter, and I say that as a “heretic” who has a very different view of Arda than JRRT and Christopher. But my own interpretation, which has come about over years of reading and research, does not efface other interpretations, nor does it mean that Christopher’s extremely unique perspective on his father’s work has no value to me as a fan writer and scholar.
But perhaps most importantly, Christopher has dedicated his life to making his father’s unpublished work available to JRRT’s fans. Nor did he stop at The Silmarillion; the History of Middle-earth and similar texts offer a view of how JRRT’s world was shaped and how Christopher, in turn, put together The Silmarillion. As a fan writer, this gives me tidbits about the characters that I would not have otherwise had. As a scholar, this lets me see—and analyze, and critique—how the published Silmarillion compares to what JRRT was working on when he died. It would have been very easy for Christopher to present The Silmarillion as a text his father had all but finished, simply posthumously published, but he didn’t, and that choice and the insights we have as a result of the HoMe are a major driver of Tolkien scholarship, to say nothing of the creation of transformative works.
To the fans who think that they would have done a better job with the Silm than Christopher: No you wouldn’t have. The challenges posed by the materials with which Christopher had to work were, at times, almost insurmountable. (Or were insurmountable, given the number if illegible passages.) Tolkien didn’t put dates on things, or do things in order, or write neatly. He had a habit of writing over previous manuscripts to save paper. He went on wild flights and made major revisions that we don’t know whether he intended to actually follow through with or whether he was just trying out a thought experiment. No one was better qualified than Christopher to make the sorts of editorial decisions needed to untangle this mess and make it into a coherent text that reflected as much as possible the state of The Silmarillion at JRRT’s death. It is fair to disagree with Christopher’s approach—I do, preferring that he would have allowed more inconsistencies and kept the narrators, presenting it more as a historical text than a definitive account—but to downplay the accomplishment that The Silmarillion represents and the effort and tough calls that Christopher had to make isn’t fair.
I suppose some people are resentful that Christopher is not shy about his dislike of the movies. So what? If you like the movies, why do you need Christopher’s approval of your opinion? And why does this negate everything else he has done in making his father’s work as widely available to his fans as possible? PJ and Co. had the legal right to make the movies they did; that doesn’t obligate anyone to like them. JRRT himself would have hated them; perhaps we should dislike JRRT too?
In short, Christopher and I don’t agree on a lot of things where JRRT’s work is concerned. (JRRT and I don’t agree on a lot of things either.) But that in no way diminishes the respect I have for his unique opinion on JRRT’s work, nor the appreciation I feel for his dedication of his life’s work to making JRRT’s unpublished writings available to anyone who wants to read and study them.
