Two Countdowns

Two groups of fans are undergoing countdowns to publishing day, I noticed recently. The first, and probably much the larger, are awaiting the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This week the publishers also released the cover art for the book, and both jackets (American and British) are undergoing exegesis worthy of that applied by medieval clergy to the Revelation of St. John. In general, I like the Harry Potter books, and like even more their power to get children to read, and read beyond their level, and thankfully J. K. Rowling has not succumbed to Jordanitis--the temptation to milk a cash cow by breeding them ad infinitum.

The other countdown--and this one I was more surprised about--is for the publication of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin, Christopher Tolkien's contruction, out of a variety of his father's material, of the saga of Turin Turambar, a human hero of the First Age of Middle Earth. Some Tolkine sites and newsgroups have indulged in speculation on the work, since its table of contents has been released, but nothing on the scale of Potterian guesswork.

I await both works with the melancholy knowledge that in both cases, the books are probably the last major works from each author (in Rowling's case about Harry Potter), both of whom consistently exemplify Tolkien's reflection that the chief opponents of so-called "escapist" literature are those who would chain the imagination.