[The Mirrorball Man]

Originally posted by Mister Underhill:
Everyone has done a fairly exhaustive job of explaining their point of view. Perhaps the discussion has risen to meet your expectations, TMM?

Sure, I'm delighted. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

However for me it was never a question of quality, but rather a question of approach.

Re: mythology. Let’s play fair now. Tolkien aspired to create a mythology with his body of work, not with LotR alone.

You're right. However, in my case, my using LOTR as an example was caused by my poor command of the language. I just couldn't find a good equivalent for "the work of Tolkien", so I opted to write "Lord of the Rings" instead, hoping that you wouldn't notice. Unfortunately, you did. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Did Tolkien fail in his task even if we include the sprawling corpus that includes his unfinished Silmarillion?

I think he failed, yes. The Silmarillion is larger in scope, but it still concentrates on the themes that Tolkien was interested in, and discards other important themes. In addition, I don't think that the fact that The Silmarillion was unfinished is really relevant. Even if Tolkien had lived to be 111 years old, he probably would never have finished it, and there's no way to know if the extra time would have actually improved the book.

His work will endure for many years to come and continue to make people “happier and better”, to quote Bulfinch. Jenkyns’s sneering review will be forgotten as soon as this thread sinks into the archives.

Whatever we may think about Jenkyns, I don't think that his ambition in writing this little article was to be remembered as one of the giants of the 21st Century. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]