[William Cloud Hicklin]

Thank you Lyta. This is a point which Tolkien, as so often, expressed felicitously; "the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

I can't really concur in "towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative". If by 'finale' you mean the denoument, from coronation to Scouring and Havens, it's quite the reverse of headlong: almost too drawn-out. If you mean the Fall of Sauron, again we get the latter part of Book V and the whole Passion of Frodo Baggins setting it up. And I think that Tolkien's skill with "high-falutin' language" demonstrably increased with practice, from hit-or-miss in Book I (the Goldberry passages are excruciating) to the masterful exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-king, and Denethor's speeches of near-Shakespearean subtlety and grandeur.

Nor- and this is key- does Tolkien's many-headed finale ever become confused or lose clarity. Titus Alone and, to a lesser extent AS (and all the Dune books after the first) by contrast induce a massive ***??? on first (and often subsequent) reading.