Never accept the accepted.....poke ...prod..kick ..punch..again and again....always
JRR created a structured fantasy..oh but the gaps ...
I'm an engineer...for twenty years I have poked and proded.
I look at problems in a hard, cold logical way...quickly and efficently. Sauron would be proud of me.
If I was of the Valar, I'd march Tulkas straight over to Middlearth...give him the ring..watch him march straight up to mount doom..and plop..job done.
Don't even start me, on putting Gandalf on an Eagle...swoosh swoosh , plop job done.
JRR spent too much time with his peers...he wrote about an Unearthly Engineer..perhaps he should have talked to some.
Is their anything JRR wise that you feel..grates ?...c'mon ..let it out
I wish there were three books, one for each Age, containing everything Christopher Tolkien thinks is the most valid/final versions in JRR Tolkien's mind. Three complete books with the most accurate information Christopher Tolkien can decide on. No more wondering whether the Sun and Moon were a flower and fruit, or wondering what the correct version of the story of Galadriel and Celeborn is, and having to sort through dates and what-not ourselves.
Pity JRR himself couldn't have done it.
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Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva!
I wish Tolkien had published the Lord of the Rings in the form that he had truly wanted to. He wanted to include a epilogue. Had it all written and then said that it was universally rejected. He also said that he was afraid it was to short in its finally form. What more did he want us to know?!? Should the materials in the History of the Lord of the Rings and the Lord of Rings as we have it now have been combined into one book?!
'No more wondering whether the Sun and Moon were a flower and fruit, or wondering what the correct version of the story of Galadriel and Celeborn is, and having to sort through dates and what-not ourselves.'
Well, CJRT can point to what text is 'latest' sometimes, but not all the time; and as to 'most valid', there are various considerations.
Is the latest always most valid, for example? is a more detailed and finished essay more valid than a brief, hardly legible note scribbled a year later (which seems to reject something from that very essay)? what about giving Tolkien-published text prime authority?
What about a note with 'final decision' on it?
(...) I can point to several cases in the late linguistic papers alone where he [Tolkien] wrote "final decision" against some point of grammar, only to have then almost immediately completely reworked the point a few pages later. Many such stated decisions and intentions were in fact transitory, merely a record of Tolkien having convinced himself of some point or solution at that moment, which he could and not infrequently did then go on, sooner (sometimes very soon) or later, to set aside. (Indeed, the writing of such statements often seems to be merely one more effort at making himself take a decision, when in fact he is still reluctant to do so.)
My point being, that Tolkien's intentions, even his explicitly stated and forcibly asserted intentions, were not necessarily unchanging or absolute until and unless he fulfilled them himself, in print (and not necessarily even then, as changes even to published works attest).'Carl Hostetter
I too would like to hear CJRT's opinions on many matters (and obviously Tolkien's). But it's still fun (for me) sifting through material... because it's Tolkien's material.
