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Why is it not enough to "merely" create a good story? Is the creation of a thoroughly and profoundly enjoyable work of art not something worthwhile in itself?
I, for one, think it is.
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And I agree. Although -- and here I risk opening an old, old can of worms -- this begs the question of what
makes a great story profoundly enjoyable.
You are quite right that the hypothetical thread would be bound to range through HoME, and, I would add,
Letters. I love his letter to Auden (#163):
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...I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the comer at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlórien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horse-lords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fangorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22. I knew nothing of the Palantíri, though the moment the Orthanc-stone was cast from the window, I recognized it, and knew the meaning of the 'rhyme of lore' that had been running in my mind: seven stars and seven stones and one white tree. These rhymes and names will crop up; but they do not always explain themselves. I have yet to discover anything about the cats of Queen Berúthiel. But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider.
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It's possible that Tolkien is romanticizing here, but if what he says isn't true, then it ought to be. That sense of sheer discovery in the writing seems like pure magic, and does in fact make the First Foreword true in a sense, casting Tolkien in the role of transcriber and editor as much as author.