And now I believe I finally have something to contibute here.
Quote:
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Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on.
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I agree with this statement very much, and that is why I find it both amazing and sad how few people I talk to actually take the time to read both the Foreward and the Prologue. When I was a first time reader, I remember being particularly intrigued by the Foreward, especially by such sentences as "I stood at Balin's tomb in Moria" and references to Lothlórien. These things made me wonder, and I was eager to read to find out what he was talking about. Then I came across the statements "Some who have read the book... have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; ... It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved." I had no concerns about the first idea: having recently read the Hobbit and finding it an amazing book I had been waiting for nearly a week to start LotR. But the rest of it made me wonder just what I was getting into. So before I had even started the book I was already interested, curious, and intrigued, and I must wonder what sort of a difference there is between reading the Foreward (and the Prologue) first rather than just plunging in at chapter 1.