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I can accept this up to a point. I would argue though, that he would probably have continued to develop the story of Middle earth in other ways, & not gone on too write more 'Smiths'. Middle earth dominated his thinking, & became his way of analysing the human condition. He wasn't a theologian so his way of doing this was through fantasy rather than through non fiction.
HoME isn't an attempt to 'tear apart the tower to see what it is made of, it is an attempt to present his father's life's work in as coherent a form as possible - in which he succeeds magnificently I might add. Also, just because the tales were left incomplete doesn't make them valueless. In fact, one can see them as 'complete' in a way - they are a continuing & evolving expression of his thought & understanding. David Jones 'unfinished' poem Anathemata springs to mind here. The 'philosophizing & theologizing' is also Tolkien, as much as is LotR, TH & Smith. What I mean by that is, they aren't 'secondary' stuff that he got sidetracked into. They are where he was going. The Sil wasn't finished because it was unfinishable - it was him & he was it. HoME is a collaberative work of literature between father & son, & will come increasingly to be seen as that. Anyone who hasn't read it really should - not as background to the work Tolkien published in his lifetime, but as a literary work n its own right. CT says in his introduction to the final volume that it has become a kind of 'literary biography' of his father. read in that light, it has great value - not least in the way it shows the workings of a mind steeped in myth & language. It may even be that in the end HoME comes to be valued as highly as LotR & TH - or even in some ways more highly valued...
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