<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Animated Skeleton
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/sting.jpg" align=absmiddle> Age
OK so the professor would now be 108. That's only 21
years older than my grandfather, who still composes entire piano concertos and writes some of the clearest and wittiest letters I've ever read.
So let's assume that Tolkien was still fully able to write and had resumed full use of his memory... what then? Dictation? I hardly think so. The image of Bilbo in RotK handing his life's works to Frodo together with instructions on how to edit and compile them is of course relevant to Tolkien and probably reflects a lot about his own situation at some point in his life, but I don't buy the idea that old age necessitates dependance on a 'clerk' to finish one's own work really. Presumably CT shared a generous amount of his father's literary responsibilities throughout a large part of his being alive and was therefore the natural and rightful heir of his estate following his death. I like the idea of the two of them working TOGETHER, sharing one another's passions and joining their imaginations to develop and enhance certain areas of the work. It would have to be a world that grew between them and as a result of reader's responses; academic contributions being offered when necessary from fellow professors at Oxford etc; artists throwing in sketches or suggestions for creatures and places; surely in this day and age Tolkien would be having immense difficulty preventing people from trying to shape ME for him, what with all this modern technology and all that. And surely he would have had no recourse but to take what was offered and apply what he liked of it to his and CT's ideas. The possibilities for development nowadays are absolutely VAST, as most of us here probably realise already. I don't think he was anywhere near finished with it, which is one of the reasons I started this thread.
Anyway what was that about a proposed sequel to LotR?
PLease tell me more....
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