LotR - Foreword

[Mister Underhill]

Thanks for that, Squatter. For my part, I'm glad we have both versions of the foreword. The first edition version is delightful for all the reasons mentioned, but I also like the glimpses inside the writing process that the second one affords.

I've always meant to start a thread that focused on Tolkien's working methods, and any such thread would certainly have to start here with the second edition foreword. I think it's great that Tolkien wrote the book mostly on instinct and without a clear outline. It seems you can divide writers into two groups -- those who plan, outline, and structure aforehand, and those who dive right in and trust to gut instinct, inspiration, and blind luck to carry them through. The latter method seems to me to be the most romantic and pure sort of writing. One can picture Tolkien in his study, bathed in the orange glow of a crackling fire, scratching away furiously into the deep watches of the night, pausing only to throw another log onto the hearth when the embers burned low.

And then, those long dry spells when "foresight had failed". Reminds me of some verse in Kipling:

This is the doom of the Makers -- their Daemon lives in their pen.
If he be absent or sleeping, they are even as other men.
But if he be utterly present, and they swerve not from his behest,
The word that he gives shall continue, whether in earnest or jest.

I also sense a note of wistfulness in the line, "...the tale was brought to its present end." Present end. As if somewhere deep inside him there's still that irresistible pull to revise and perfect it some more.

As to Tolkien's "lecture" on the meaning (or lack thereof) of the story, I think davem is right in that Tolkien falls prey a bit to the false modesty characteristic of authors' forewords (I could swear there's a letter in which Tolkien criticizes the practice, but for the life of me I can't find it). The most amusing specimen I know of is T.E. Lawrence's introduction to his Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

Half-way through the labour of an index to this book I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized I had never used the index of a book fit to read. Who would insult his Decline and Fall, by consulting it just upon a specific point?

I am aware that my achievement as a writer falls short of every conception of the readable: but surely not so far as to make it my duty, like a Stubbs, to save readers the pain of an unnecessary page. The contents seem to me adequately finger-posted by this synopsis.

Maybe "false modesty" isn't quite right. I think he has an agenda of sorts when he protests that LotR is only a story. I'm reminded of Letter 131: "[The Arthurian mythos] is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal." I wish he would have elaborated, but I think we can get the gist of those reasons. To call attention to any meaning of his story is to transform it instantly into a sermon or a lecture, and so he says in effect, hey -- it's just a story; take from it what you will.

But lurking under that is some ambition. Letter 153: "I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to 'bring them home'."

EDIT: Cross-posting on this fast-paced discussion has put me after a string of posts leading in different directions. Apologies for disrupting the flow from me too.