[mark12_30]

Edit: Dave and Kransha, we cross-posted, so there's no response to your peices in this... Edit #2, Davem, thanks so much for that long quote, it was wonderful!!! I must go back and listen again to those recordings!

Esty, I'll start with #2, the glimpses he gives us of the development of the story.

As a writer, his admissions of difficulty have always given me great hope.

Stories, apparently, can get stuck for other writers too. If Tolkien plodded for five *years* til he stood by Balin's tomb in Moria for a year, perhaps I am not so stuck as I think. When greeted by surprises in my stories I am assured by Tolkien that's all right too. Arry "Revised and indeed largely re-written backwards"-- that strikes me too.

His defiant dismissal of the critics I find both charming and encouraging. Beauty is in the eye of the reader.

His WW2 outline: Sauron is subjugated, Barad-Dur is occupied, Saruman comes up with a ring of his own. The man's wit is sharper than the shards of Narsil.

His diatribe against allegory is neatly balanced against his preference for history, real or feigned, and his endorsement of applicability.

His list of desires: to write a tale that would entertain, etc-- is that the reader may "even" be deeply moved. Here is a hint of his aim at eucatastrophe, his admission that all will not experience it, his hope that some will.

And lastly, the first-person narration always brings me to the same conclusion: how I love Tolkien as a professor, as a creative and witty Loremaster, as a staunch and kindly man of faith who wrote stories for his children. I'd like the chance of adopting him as an uncle, although I'm not sure he and my other family members would have gotten along!