My support for the Card was with the thought of the finite aspect of the work, not to excuse the author. Also consider how long it took a non-professional novelist to complete LOTR. I wasnt intending to support or critisize TC in my post.
It seems to me that there is an indirect push for consistancy here. Consistancy, homogeneous uniformity in style - nice even path to unenchantment I say, although your english professor would give you an A grade. Was LOTR the ends to the means as far as the Legendarium is concerned? Or is it the other way around - LOTR fitting into the Legendarium? Or perhaps the author tried to roll it all into one effort, encompassing the reader with both a personal experience and relationship with the characters, and a historical lesson with an almost Eru like perspective. Both micro and macro, in other words, would seem to me to cause the author to utilize not just one but many styles, and many perspectives. If you want all high falutin' - you get the bible. If you want all 1st person perspective, then in this context you would get a post-modern parable.
Whats done is done, the author has sailed West. Like the enchantment discusion, we can pick apart and analyze the published books - with our own personal opinions that "this doesnt work for me here" and "enchantment broke for me there", but it is the body as a whole, wherin the different ingredients of "style" get mixed, baked, and flambéed that, for me, cast a most potent spell. And for me its a unique situation. In a life spent enjoying books, ive never (yet) encountered anything close to the strength of this spell..
