Aiwendil
I can't see that putting together 'fragments' of LotR, if that was all that existed, would serve any purpose, beyond satisfying some disire in the person who put it together. And if those fragments were from different versions of the story, & differed in sometimes major ways in the story they told, then you could at best only end up with a general sense of the story - you wouldn't end up with a work of art - unless the person doing the constructing (could we even call it 're-constructing' if there had never been a complete version of it?) was an artist - & then it would be their work - not Tolkien's.
When you say you have 'put together a version of 'Gondolin' which you find 'interesting' you make my point for me - a serious scholarly endevour that only produces a result which is 'interesting' to those involved seems to me to be of little academic value. Your 'rules' for what you will & will not allow into a 'revised' Sil seem simply arbitrary.
When you speak of taking Galadriel (1) & Galadriel (2) & producing 'something new' I can only see this as an admission that what you're doing is not revising but re-writing (if not reinventing entirely) 'The Silmarillion'.
If we take the example of Gollum (1) & Gollum (2). What we have is not so much a 'development' of the character - G(1) evolving into G(2), as a substitution of one character by another. In effect Tolkien has removed G(1) from Hobbit & replaced him with G(2). This was done not for aesthtic reasons, but for practical ones - he wanted Hobbit to correspond more closely to the evolving LotR. in so doing he
changes the Hobbit from a self contained story, into a prequel to LotR. And he didn't even do it deliberately - he sent the new version of Riddles in the Dark To A&U as an example of the 'kind' of thing that would necessary
if the Hobbit was to be brought into line with LotR. The publishers used the replacement text without confirming with Tolkien that he wanted them to do so, & in the end accepted the change as a fait a compli.
So, does this supply sufficient justification for choosing the revised version over the 1st ed version, for preffering G(2) over G(1)? The only reason for chosing G(2) is that it was later, & that it removes certain problems in reconciling the characters of Gollum in Hobbit & Gollum in LotR. If you make that choice, for that reason, then you would have to choose all the versions of the stories where changes have been made
simply in order to remove conflicts with other stories. You choices would be made on grounds of practicality, not aesthetics -
or you'd have to 'invent' your own 'new' versions to accomodate the contradictions- which takes you further down the road of producing your own Sil, rather than a version of Tolkien's Sil
Saucepan Man
Its not that I regard the '77 Sil as unecessary - in fact I think its incredibly important - my argument is with the idea of a 'series' of Sil's - which I think will only confuse readers & create uneccessary arguments.
Oh, re the 'two way comunication' with Tolkien - think of it as a mix of philosophical game & a 'fan fic' within the Tolkien 'canon' - its pretty much what Tolkien is saying is possible in Lost Road & Notion Club Papers, as well as in the Fairy Tales essay. - You have to 'disprove' it, not just reject it (that's cheating!), or prove it to be 'uncanonical'
