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A review by neilrcoulter
Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age, Volume 9: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Four by J.R.R. Tolkien
4.0
I often find the final installment of a series to be alternately satisfying and mundane. Satisfying, because it's the conclusion of so much that I've invested in. Mundane, because by that point the only things that can happen are the things that absolutely must happen before the story ends. [b:Sauron Defeated|23600|Sauron Defeated The End of the Third Age The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Four (The History of Middle-earth #9)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388198133s/23600.jpg|2963740] (Part Four of [b:The History of the Lord of the Rings|2329|The History of the Lord of the Rings (The History of Middle-earth #6-9)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1322037593s/2329.jpg|6340] within Volume IX of [b:The History Of Middle-Earth|214175|The Complete History Of Middle-Earth (Middle-Earth Universe)|Christopher Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1334597698s/214175.jpg|18608966]) is like that. I'm still interested to see [a:Tolkien|656983|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1383526938p2/656983.jpg]'s process as he figures out how to bring [b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388181159s/33.jpg|3462456] to a conclusion. But it's the weakest and least interesting part of The History of the Lord of the Rings. Unlike the first part of the series, [b:The Return of the Shadow|15351|The Return of the Shadow The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One (The History of Middle-Earth, #6)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348021528s/15351.jpg|2963703], which showed the wildly different directions Tolkien might have gone with "the Hobbit sequel," the end shows Tolkien connecting the loose ends and bringing things to the end that is required. There are fewer diversions, fewer surprises--not much trivia that is fun or amusing to bring up in conversation with other people. A number of times throughout the text, [a:Christopher|9533|Christopher Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1235772383p2/9533.jpg] says something like this: "In the first draft of this chapter my father again achieved for most of its length an extraordinarily close approach to the final form" (44). It's the end of the writing of The Lord of the Rings (except for the Appendices, which Christopher doesn't cover in this series), but it's not an especially interesting read. And this final part of the history is but one small part of the whole Volume IX of the Middle-Earth history--it takes only the first 141 pages, out of the total 482.
After the conclusion of The History Lord of the Rings, Christopher turns back to where he left off in Volume V, [b:The Lost Road and Other Writings|260109|The Lost Road and Other Writings (The History of Middle-Earth, #5)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328193180s/260109.jpg|2964303], with Tolkien's continued writings on the Fall of Númenor/Akallabêth/Drowning of Anadûnê mythology. The second part of Volume IX comprises drafts of The Notion Club Papers, an unfinished and unpublished idea that Tolkien worked on after finishing LR. What exists of the Notion Club is in two parts, and the first part begins very much in the subgenre that I think of as "Oxford Dons in Supernatural Adventures." It's a subgenre that blossomed in the mid-20th century, mostly pioneered by the Inklings. [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg] was the master of this kind of story, and [a:C.S. Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1367519078p2/1069006.jpg] was also very good (in The Ransom Trilogy and other short stories like "The Dark Tower"). Tolkien didn't make many contributions in this area, but The Notion Club Papers may have become a significant entry. The first part is about the possibility of intergalactic travel through dreams and memories. Discussion among the dons centers on the difficulty of finding a good method of travel in sci-fi stories, and then one of the members, Ramer, explains the methods of dream- or memory-travel that he has been cultivating. Though I found this quite a jarring change coming right after the Lord of the Rings, once I got my mind into it I found it a nice slow build-up an intriguing narrative style, and slightly (pleasantly) creepy and disturbing. Part Two is where things begin to be muddied. It brings a return to the Lost Road idea of people throughout history being connected to the Eärendil story, a narrative device designed ultimately to bring us back to the Númenor story. This is all complicated by plot elements that just don't make sense to me. The main character in Part Two is suddenly Lowdham, who seemed in Part One to be rising as the dark, shadowy antagonist. Ramer fades into the background as Jeremy, a character of only minor importance in Part One, becomes the secondary protagonist of Part Two. There are also leaps in logic and narrative that are somehow accepted by the characters but to me don't fit right with the pace of the story. The growing complexities of multiple ancient languages being revealed, mysterious connections between prehistory and present-day, some kind of travel between eras . . . it all just gets to be too much to keep track of, turning into a story only a Tolkien could love. As Christopher says, the writing had become "a conception so intricate that one need perhaps look no further for an answer to the question, why were The Notion Club Papers abandoned? (282) In the end, the Númenor mythology would continue to develop apart from the narrative frame Tolkien played with in The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers.
The Notion Club includes some enjoyable discussions about language, including this prescriptive/descriptive debate:
'And I detest it, when philologues talk about Language (with a capital L) with that peculiarly odious unction usually reserved for capitalized Life. That we are told "must go on" - if we complain of any debased manifestations, such as Arry in his cups. He talks about Language as if it was not only a Jungle but a Sacred Jungle, a beastly grove dedicated to Vita Fera, in which nothing must be touched by impious hands. Cankers, fungi, parasites: let 'em alone!
'Languages are not jungles! They are gardens, in which sounds selected from the savage wilderness of Brute Noise are turned into words, grown, trained, and endued with the scents of significance. You talk as if I could not pull up a weed that stinks!'
'I do not!' said Lowdham. 'But, first of all, you have to remember that it's not your garden - if you must have this groggy allegory: it belongs to a lot of other people as well, and to them your stinking weed may be an object of delight. More important: your allegory is misapplied. What you are objecting to is not a weed, but the soil, and also any manifestations of growth and spread. All the other words in your refined garden have come into being (and got their scent) in the same way. You're like a man who is fond of flowers and fruit, but thinks loam is dirty, and dung disgusting; and the uprising and the withering just too, too sad. You want a sterilized garden of immortelles, no, paper-flowers. In fact, to leave allegory, you won't learn anything about the history of your own language, and hate to be reminded that it has one. . . . For the One Speaker, all alone, is the final court of doom for words, to bless or to condemn. It's the agreement only of the separate judges that seems to make the laws. If your distaste is shared by an effective number of the others, then pants will prove - a weed, and be thrust into the oven.
'Though, of course, many people - more and more, I sometimes feel, as Time goes on and even language stales - do not judge any longer, they only echo.' (225-26)
The final part of Sauron Defeated gives several drafts of the Númenor story, now using the newly developing Adunaic language for the names. There are significant differences in the various versions of the story--especially the conception of the world as either always round, or at one point flat and then re-made round.
My reviews of the other volumes in The History of the Lord of the Rings series: