{"id":28655,"date":"2015-04-09T06:30:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=28655"},"modified":"2015-04-08T22:04:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T10:04:42","slug":"background-tales-once-told-that-prove-disappointing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/04\/09\/background-tales-once-told-that-prove-disappointing\/","title":{"rendered":"Background Tales, Once Told, That Prove Disappointing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lord<\/a>Two weeks ago I talked about books or series that complete but where there\u2019s an untold story<\/a> that you never get to read but always wonder about?<\/p>\n

I concluded with the following observation: “Then again, sometimes the untold story as you imagine it can be so much greater and more powerful, and also more vivid living in your imagination, which may be an argument for the story remaining untold\u2026”<\/em><\/p>\n

I am a tremendous The Lord Of The Rings<\/em><\/strong> fan, but one of the truest instances I can think of for the “better left untold” scenario was the back-story tales to The Lord Of The Rings<\/em><\/strong>, particularly the stories told through the poems, such as the Lay of Beren and Luthien.<\/em> Their story, as recounted by Strider in the book (when fleeing from the Black Riders, as I recall) sounded incredibly powerful, and as backstory was shot through with mystery and tragedy and romance of the highest kind. As a young teen, my imagination was also fired by the suggestion that it was Luthien who rescued Beren, then together they cast down the great enemy, Morgoth, and retrieved one of the stolen Silmarils.<\/p>\n

\"Silmarillion\"<\/a>You can perhaps also imagine how eager I was to read The Silmarillion<\/em><\/strong> and correspondingly disappointed to discover that it was not a story, like The Lord Of The Rings<\/em><\/strong>, but rather Tolkien’s “history” of Middle Earth. A great deal of the text read as detailed notes—which the material essentially was—and the language used tended to be very archaic in style. So stories like those of Beren and Luthien fell very flat—and led me to believe that perhaps high, heroic, back-story tales should remain untold, after all.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Do you have a similar example of disappointment to share? Or conversely one where a back-story or background tale in one book either met or exceeded expectations when told in its own right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I talked about books or series that complete but where there\u2019s an untold story that you never get to read but always wonder about? I concluded with the following observation: “Then again, sometimes the untold story as you imagine it can be so much greater and more powerful, and also more vivid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28655"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28668,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655\/revisions\/28668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}