LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 04 – A Short Cut to Mushrooms

[mark12_30]

davem wrote:

the early drafts are among the worst things he ever set down on paper

I'm with Aiwendiil on this one. I agree they are in a completely different tone; they are more in the spirit of Tom Bombadil than Sauron vs The West.

Lord of the Rings is an epic at the same time that it is a fairy tale. "It feels different near the Shire, " says littlemanpoet, and I agree with him.

Tolkien later wrote a poem about (Bombadil) called "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil," published in Oxford Magazine in 1934, long before the writing of the Lord of the Rings began.

Bombadiil went boating, and Bombadil and Maggot were old friends laughing about practical jokes, long before Bingo came into being.

I think of Bingo and Frodo as two different hobbits, just as I think of Strider and Trotter as two different characters. Would Arwen have been disappointed if she had to settle for Trotter? Probably. But that doesn't make Trotter uninteresting to me.