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Originally Posted by alatar
Don't you just hate it when, at the end of a book, everything is just wrapped up ever so neatly and conveniently, and nothing is left to ponder? Isn't this the reason for d e m, to fill in the plot holes and finish off the story lines?
Discovery. Wonder.
Tolkien, in LotR, gives us a glimpse at times that there's more to Middle Earth than just the book in our hands. In the Appendices (added in subsequent publishing because readers wanted to know more?) more of the story is given, but even that is just a teasing draught from the sea of material. The more you explore, the greater your rewards. You still have to dig, as it's not all laid out. And even better, the additional material is (mostly) consistent and valid across the whole. The letters mor signify something dark or black (Moria, Mordor, Moriquendi, etc), whether they're seen in the First or Third Age. Other authors cobble together appendices or additional stories, but these are hacks, not part of nor grown from the whole. Your exploration is put off as it's all a cheap facade, not the real deal archeology of Tolkien's works.
So again, as I've stated before, we never get to read about Eru, but occasionally see large fingerprints in LotR, and get the pleasure of playing CSI:ME.
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Far from having to cobble something together, I think if anything Tolkien wanted the Appendices to be longer! There was a significant delay in publishing as he found it so difficult to cut down the information he wanted to include there. He also was not happy that every edition did not include appendices - there is some interesting info on this is the Scull/Hammond Readers' Companion.
I often read LotR as being in some ways
an unfinished tale. Frodo sails for the West, but there is that evocative passage which hints at yet more:
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And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
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I feel so frustrated that I cannot follow Frodo to this new land and discover it with him in the same way I discovered Middle-earth. This way of rounding off Frodo's story may have allowed Tolkien not to have to 'kill' him off, it may or may not be a DEM, but either way, it leaves me feeling flipping frustrated, as though I've been left behind, unwanted on this voyage, while at the same time I feel utterly enchanted...