On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:45 AM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

He approached his entire corpus of fiction as if it were, instead, a corpus of oral history transcribed over the centuries to written history, and he often lamented that England didn’t have the kind of tradition

A passage I read just a bit ago said - when pressed for a sequel to The Hobbit - JRRT's initial response was to provide what would later become part of The Simarillon. But the editor's reader - when presented with what seemed to be previously-unknown ancient myths - sent it all back, expressing massive confusion.

Contrary to the advice everyone gives on how to write a novel, the biographer points out that - no matter how intricately plotted the final work seems - JRRT started writing TLOTR without an overal plan or even a basic plot. The evidence seems to point to his simply starting his characters on a journey and then waiting for inspiration to strike.

The biographer also points out that Tolkien was a better novelist than many of his imitators, in that he knew how to increase tension by leaving gaps for the reader's imagination to fill. We never find out what caused the too-many echoes after Frodo pitched a rock into Moria's deeps, while the appearance of the Balrog consists of atmospheric hints. Tolkien also litters his work with references to people and events and places which he doesn't otherwise explain, often using wording ("Of course you know . . .") that implies these are all common knowledge. He thus drafts his reader's imagination to make his world feel larger than what's on the page.

--

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.

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