Tolkien and Negative Capability

[Pitchwife]

OK, as a great opening post by itself does not an interesting discussion make, I'll give it a try.
Starting from the end:

Originally Posted by Mnemo

And where do you prefer to stand as a reader? Do you prefer the ambiguities, or the explanations?

Both, in a way, but leaning slightly more to ambiguity. I'm glad to have the two versions of the Elessar and the various versions of the history of Celeborn and Galadriel and their relation to Amroth and what-have-you-got, and wouldn't want to miss any of them, but I can live very well without deciding which of them is the 'definite' one, and with being free to prefer one or the other depending on my mood of the day. And I'm quite satisfied with Bombadil, at least, remaining forever an enigma.

Originally Posted by Mnemo

So on the one hand we have Tolkien the Fairy-story-writer, who is content that things don't always make sense; and on the other hand we have Tolkien the Sub-creator, who needs things to make sense for the world he made to be viable.

Shrewd observation! If I may try to elaborate on it a bit, I think we here see a dichotomy between actual writing as storytelling or poetry and pure subcreation for its own sake (nowadays, I believe, better known as 'worldbuilding' outside strict Tolkien fanship communities). Both are, in my eyes, forms of art, exercises of the creative imagination, and both have to do with exploration of the unknown, but the difference is somewhat like between drawing a map of a piece of countryside and exploring it by walking, without knowing beforehand what you'll find around the next corner (like Tolkien first invented, or rather discovered, the Black Riders and Trotter/Strider with no idea who they really were).
Great fantasy, I believe, is where both work together and complement each other; but for every Tolkien (what am I saying, there can be only one, but you know what I mean) there are countless people out there on the internet nowadays who have the most imaginative conworlds with every geographic, historical and linguistic details fleshed out but never get beyond first chapters...