What if Hemingway wrote the LOTR?

[Gloer]

Go and have a look how other authors would have written The Lord of the Rings.

http://www.flin.demon.co.uk/althist/auth.htm#part1'

One of the great What-if questions!

I personally think Hemingway would have done a great job:

" And earth moved."

What an understatement and still strong.

[Kirinki54]

I used your link, Gloer. Good enough for a laugh!

But as to your question - how serious? - what if actually Hemingway had written the books, it is quite meaningless to compare writers in this way.
Not in amillion years could Hemingway have accomplished anything like Tolkien´s works.

[mirrille]

If Hemmingway wrote LOTR, I would feel all depressed and empty after reading it. Hemmingway tends to do that for me, but that's what he writes about, so it makes sense.

My personal favourite was the A.A.Milne version. Those cute hobbits are made even cuter in that version. I think I should reread Winnie the Pooh. It would make me feel happy. I wonder if I still have a copy anywhere.

[TrewynEvenstar]

That was hyserical! I loved the Bernard Cornwell one...heehee. So true.

[Legolas]

I don't know some of these writers, but I mostly like the George Lucas' and A.A.Milne ones. My parents, who also read that, mearly died from laughing. :D

[Gimly]

Yep! The Lucas one was good: "Gan Dalf". And the dillema of "can we UNdiscover" things was cool too.

[Celeborn]

omg the one written by Flemming was Hilarious

[Spock]

"call me Frodo"

[cee2lee2]

Found this thread when I did a search on Bernard Cornwell (I've started reading the Sharpe series).

These are hysterically funny! :D I love the Star Trek one -- "Boromir, put on that red armour.".... :D

[LeniFreak]

That was so wonderful!

UNdiscovering things. I liked that idea.

If you're going to take the question seriously, it's a rather useless query--because if another author, say Hemingway had written the books, they wouldn't have been written. It wouldn't have happened the way it did, if at all. Who's to say how much of what goes on in the writer's mind to create these ideas is reproducible in someone else? Putting away the concept of innate personality/self for a minute (because it demolishes the idea that anyone else could have written them at all), in order to come up with the same ideas as Tolkein did, the other author would need Tolkein's context, and in order to give the other author Tolkein's context you would need to take away his own, and so his style wouldn't have developed in quite the way it did. And so it would be Tolkein's style and ideas--does it matter what his name is? It'd be Tolkein renamed Ernest. And so no other author would have written the books.

If that makes any sense.

[crickhollow]

hehe, A.A. Milne was great. That's one of my favorite Pooh stories anyway.