"If you want my opinion, a part of the ‘fascination’ [of The Lord of the Rings ] consists in the vistas of yet more legend and history, to which this work does not contain a full clue. For the present we had better leave it at that. If there is a fault in the work which I myself clearly perceive, it is that I have perhaps overweighted Part I too ( Read more... )

Of Tolkien's interest in writing LotR and of Frodo not being another Bilbo...

I do not know what I mean, because ‘aesthetic’ is always impossible to catch in a net of words. Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of languages agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is ( Read more... )