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Originally Posted by Maglor
^That about sums me up to a 'T' right now. CoH has whetted my appetite in a way that, sadly, cannot be satiated...  |
To be frank, since finishing CoH I've felt increasingly annoyed that Tolkien allowed himself to get distracted by the kind of 'speculative' stuff we see in The Athrabeth, Laws & Customs among the Eldar, the 'Myths Transformed', etc. Yes, there's interesting stuff in there, but the thought that by devoting so much time & energy to such a dead end we never got completed versions of the Three Great Tales is a frustrating one - to say the least. I'd willingly lose those works if it meant seeing CoH, The Tale of Gondolin & Beren & Luthien in a completed form.
In fact, I'd go further & say that it was this very tendency to run off at tangents that dissipated his creative talent & meant that he never managed to complete The Sil at all. I honestly feel that if he had managed to complete the First Age Trilogy they would have surpassed LotR & have been the work he was remembered for.