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Originally Posted by davem
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.
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I have nothing to add to this but to say that I fully agree. To think of what might've been...